Apologies From The Other Side

Departed loved ones have come through to me many times over the years with a message of apology for how they treated me, or one of my clients. There is typically a common thread in these spirit messages: they didn’t know better at the time, but they do now, and they now see things differently. With the apology usually also comes great regret and remorse, acknowledging the pain they caused us.

For anyone who has been on the receiving end of abuse, I have come to believe that there is also a lesson in this. For me, the lesson has been learning to love myself. I was a people-pleaser for most of my life, and to some extent this is probably still the case, but there is a lesson in this too, in learning about self-love and learning to put my own needs first. My experience has been instrumental in enabling me to identify with others, and, in turn, I have become more able to help others the best I can.

I love the teachings of the spirit guide Emmanuel, as channeled by the late Pat Rhodegast. Emmanuel says, “If we were not meant to have done something, we would not have, but that it was all appropriate at the time.” I seem to recall his teachings stating that this does not mean that we should condone the harsh treatment of others.

As adults, we have more choices, but when family and loved ones treat us harshly, we often hope that things would get better, or that perhaps they were just having a bad day. I personally would do just about anything to please them, desperate to get their approval. Others often commented on and in hindsight they were right, but I would continue to hope.

Forgiving what we cannot forgive creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future ~ Lewis Smedes

Over time, we tend to bury the hurt, but I learned that keeping past wounds under wraps is often done so because of the shame we feel in allowing others to treat us this way. In addressing old wounds, I often tell clients that there is an element of bravery on their part, because they are likely to feel the rawness of the unhealed wounds, in order to fully process and release them.

More and more modalities of healing having become available to help us In recent years, even remotely through technology. These healing modalities range from psychological therapy, psychic reading, energy alignment, chakra balancing, regression therapy, and many more. Even spiritualist churches offer healing services to their congregation.

My first experience of getting such an apology from spirit was some 20 years ago. I was in between classes at the Arthur Findlay College of Psychic Research, minding my own business, when a lady came up to me who must have been attending another of the many classes going on at the time. She said, “I have been observing you for a couple of days now during our breaks, because your grandmother has been nagging me to talk to you.” This lady turned out to be a well-known medium in that area of the United Kingdom.

I was grateful to the lady for giving of herself and her time, but must have come across as somewhat disinterested, because my grandmother didn’t like me very much. I could understand why. In later years, on rare visits to see her, she saw I was drinking too much alcohol! This was in the years before I became sober. Overall, I had tried to gain my grandmother’s love and affection, but to no avail.

“I am so, so sorry,” my grandmother said though the medium. “I treated you so unkindly, because I knew no better. I was treated with contempt as a child too.”

Forgiveness has nothing to do with absolving a criminal of his crime. It has everything to do with relieving oneself of the burden of being victim — letting go of the pain and transforming oneself from victim to survivor ~ C. R. Strahan

I guess what my grandmother was trying to say was that the abused often becomes the abuser. I thanked the messenger lady, but it never occurred to me in that moment to offer my grandmother my forgiveness. Perhaps that is what she was looking for, and why she was justifying her hurtful behavior?

I have since worked on forgiving anyone who has come to mind (living or passed) whom I feel has been unkind to me. I have also remotely asked of those living or passed for their forgiveness. I absolutely know that this forgiveness technique is also heard by those who have passed, because of the confirmation I had received. Only a few months ago I said out loud that I forgave a person and that I released them in love to evolve into their new world in spirit. I did not tell a soul about the forgiveness ritual I’d recited (unless my dogs snitched on me). I was subsequently blown away when a wonderful medium said only two days later: ‘He is so glad and relieved that you have forgiven him…”

And, most important of all, I also forgave myself for enabling others to be unkind towards me. After all, A Course in Miracles states, forgiveness is the key to everything.