Radical Forgiveness has played a very special role in my life since the passing of my son Brian almost 7 years ago. I feel that Radical Forgiveness literally saved my life, so I am eager to share this blessing with you.

I received this message today from Colin Tipping, author of Radical Forgiveness and I invite you to apply what he shares in your own life and pass this along to those you care about…

From Colin Tipping:

I was asked recently to do a foreword to a book entitled Leavelight, a much needed guide to holistic end of life planning jointly authored by Jacqueline Janssen and Marilyn Gearey.  My foreword was about the need to forgive our parents before they die and why we need to forgive everyone before we make our own transition.  I offer it here in this newsletter for you to ponder upon.

Foreword to Leavelight

My father died suddenly at the age of 63.  He was working in the garden he loved on a fine sunny day when he had an instantly fatal heart attack.  I was not yet 30 and had not in any way prepared myself for his dying. It was a profound shock for me to lose him in such a way.

Many people say that’s how they would like to die – here in one moment, gone the next – the thinking being that when you die this way there is no suffering, no pain and no anxiety to face.  Of course, that assumes we don’t take our suffering with us.

There is no way of knowing for sure how it is for the person when death comes suddenly, but there is plenty of evidence that derives from the many thousands who have had near death experiences that the suddenly departed spirit is very confused and in many cases not even aware that he or she is dead for quite some while after.  The film The Sixth Sense, starring Bruce was a wonderful exploration of that idea.

On the other hand, people say, a sudden death may be easier on the person who dies this way, but it is very hard on the people left behind.  It is too much of a shock for them.  That was certainly true for me, but now that I think about it, it was only because I had given it no prior thought and had never made the time to have a decent conversation about our lives.  I remember feeling cheated – abandoned even.  Because he left so quickly there was no possibility of having that kind of conversation with him.

It was more than just a need to say good bye.  I wanted to have the chance to finally know him, touch his soul and make the kind of connection I had never been able to have with him in everyday life.  If the dying had been slower, he might have able to tell me that he loved me and had forgiven me for everything.  I, in turn would have been able to tell him the same.  There would have been a completion.  The grief would have been just as strong but I would have been able to move through it a lot quicker.  And I believe he, too, would have felt more free to move on into the spiritual realm had he had the chance to complete with me, my mother, my brother and sister and everyone else in the family before the time came for the last breath to leave his body.

This is a cautionary tale in the sense that a lot of end-of-life-planning unconsciously focuses on the idea that death will come slowly and that we will always have time to take care of these things.  And how perverse is it that we think the only right time to talk with each other is just before we die?.  The ubiquity of hospice care and the publicity surrounding cancer may be the reason for this, but life never works out quite as we plan it, and the manner of our dying is no exception.  All the more reason therefore to do this work now rather than later, no matter how old you are.  You, too, may be here today and gone tomorrow.

Since developing in the early 90’s a form of forgiveness known as Radical Forgiveness, which is now  recognized worldwide as the easiest, quickest and most successful method of forgiving out there, I have come to the conclusion that most of our pain and suffering in life arises from an unwillingness to forgive.  Also, when we carry this with us into the death experience the suffering continues.

It is also my observation in my work with cancer patients that those who choose to take their resentments, judgments, unmet expectations and frustrations with them, tend to have a transition that is a lot more painful and a lot less peaceful that those who have already let go of all their victim stories.

Even if your parents are already deceased, it is still important to forgive them if you haven’t already done so.  I can virtually guarantee that almost every instance where you have issues with people in your life now are based in unresolved issues with one or both parents.  If you truly forgive your parents, you are almost certainly going to find that all the other forgiveness issues that you have will melt away.

Finally, there’s the issue of self-forgiveness.  No greater gift could you give yourself, as part of your end-of-life-planning, than to first make a list of everything you feel remorseful about, and then apply the principles of Radical Self-Forgiveness and Self-Acceptance to each one in turn.

I’ve always thought of death as the final healing but there is a great deal we can do while we are alive to heal ourselves, our lives and our relationships.  And I believe that forgiveness is the key to it all.

Blesssings,

Colin
http://RadicalForgiveness.com

Many blessings for your prosperity and well being.

Linda Miller
828-652-4714

Colin Tipping is the author of Radical Forgiveness, a book that literally saved my life after the passing of my son in 2003.  If you have not yet ready my story, you will find it here:

Beyond a Mother’s Nightmare to Radical Forgiveness

The principles of Radical Forgiveness have changed the way I look at the world… so I was very happy to receive this article about what is expected to happen in 2012.

I will let you read the article for yourself and I hope it brings you peace…

2012 by Colin Tipping

As the movie ‘2012′ plays in theaters this week I am reminded that in 1999, I wrote the following as my mission statement: “my mission is to raise the consciousness of the planet through Radical Forgiveness and create a world of forgiveness by 2012.”

Even then I thought, who the hell did I think I was to imagine I could make this kind of a difference? How grandiose of me!  Was I really being serious?

Well, yes, but only up to a point.  I had heard about the Mayan calendar coming to an end on December 21, 2012, and I had also read about the predictions about earth changes made by Nostradamas in 1503 and those of Edgar Cayce in 1940s and so on, but still the whole idea didn’t seem very real to me.

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Did you happen to see the Oprah interview of Elizabeth Edwards, wife of John Edwards?  I am sharing with you an article I just received from Colin Tipping, author of Radical Forgiveness, with his explanation of this affair.  This is such a perfect example of the principle of Radical Forgiveness.  Please share the article as it will also help others to understand some of their similar experiences…

The John Edwards Affair

If I had known earlier what I have just learned from reading excerpts, in Newsweek, taken from Elizabeth Edwards’ recently released book, I would have gone out and put money on the absolute inevitability of her husband’s infidelity.  I am quite certain that John Edwards had no choice in the matter.  His soul did it for her healing.  Let me explain.

It is clear from her own writing that ever since she was 13 years of age, Elizabeth Edwards has been carrying her mother’s pain caused by the suspicion of Elizabeth’s father’s infidelity.  Here are some of her own words as quoted in Newsweek:

“At 13 I had read my mother’s journals. I discovered that my mother believed my father had been unfaithful to her when I was only a baby.  I will say clearly that I do not know if that is true.  I only know what she suspected . . . that my father found other companionship while she was buried in babies..  She even thought she knew where – the Willard Hotel in Washington – the place where I had my senior prom, which must have been a bitter pill for her, although I had a suitably terrible time because, unbeknownst to her, I knew what that hotel meant to her.  She lived all those decades still loving him, but with something deep inside that would always be restless, even after he died.  The possibility of my father’s infidelity ate at my mother, I knew, but she stayed there, stayed with him and loved him, and after his stroke when he was nearly 70, she cared for him for two decades with a selflessness that is almost unimaginable.

“Don’t ever put me in that position,” I begged John when we were newly-weds. “Leave me if you must, but do not be unfaithful.”

If ever there was a case that perfectly illustrates how unresolved pain, especially pain that is carried on behalf of someone else – usually that of a parent – will find a way to become healed through being re-enacted later in life, this is it.  Elizabeth witnessed her mother being “eaten away” by the suspicion of the infidelity and it has surely eaten away at Elizabeth, too, all through her life.

[Since cancer eats us alive, it is not too much of a stretch to implicate this trauma in the causation of her cancer.  It is after all in the breast which is the heart chakra.  In my experience in working with cancer patients, my observation is that breast cancer is often the result of a broken heart.  Not only was her own heart broken in sympathy with her mother's but she has clearly not forgiven her father for causing the heartbreak.  Since forgiveness, or the lack thereof, is also carried in the heart chakra, as well as repressed rage, I am not at all surprised that she should have cancer of the breast].

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