Discussion about books related to PLRT
I count the book” Radical forgiveness” authored by Colin Tipping amongst one of my personal favorites. This book transformed my mindset and up until now, the learnings from this book bear a strong influence on how I deal with people and situations in my life.
I was in love with this book when I read through the first few pages, where the author states 19 underlying spiritual assumptions that form the foundation to the content of this book. Since I had just read “Journey of souls” and “Destiny of souls” prior to this, I instantly connected to the spiritual assumptions he had mentioned. He prefers to use the word “Assumptions” rather than “Belief” or even “Principal” because simply classifying an idea as assumption allows for possibility of a greater truth emerging in the future. Although I resonate with all the mentioned assumptions, I would quote some significant ones below
1.We have bodies that die, but we have immortal souls that existed prior to our incarnation and continue to exist after death. Therefore, death is an illusion.
2.We are spiritual beings having a spiritual experience in human bodies.
3.Vibrationally we live in two worlds simultaneously:
-
The world of divine truth(spirit)
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The world of humanity
Once we awaken, we can live comfortably in both
4.The world of humanity is a spiritual classroom, and life is a curriculum. Our lessons are the events that happen in life. The objective is to awaken to the truth of who we are and return home
5.When we decided to reincarnate into the world of humanity, God gave us total free will to live the experiment in any way we choose and to find ourselves the way back home.
6.Life is not random. It provides for the purposeful
unfoldment of our own divine plan, with opportunities to make choices and
decisions in every moment guided by our higher self and ego
7.Part of the agreement was that we would forget the world of oneness we came from in order to fully experience the pain of separation. When we have experienced the amount of pain we agreed to have in this lifetime, we use Radical forgiveness to awaken and remember who we are.
Basically, Radical forgiveness works on the premise of shifting our thought process from that of victim hood to learning. It is about Consciously analyzing a situation from the perspective of “what did this person/situation teach me” or “how has this situation /person contributed to me evolving to be a better version of myself”. A touch of gratitude to the situation/person will further enhance the effect of radical forgiveness since gratitude is a magical attitude. What it means is that, the person we think ,could be causing us harm may actually be a part of our soul contract. wherein a certain experience for our soul to evolve, maybe coming from that very person and hence when we have a attitude of gratitude towards that person, there is no scope for animosity against the person .
The author provides a differentiation between “Traditional forgiveness” and radical forgiveness
| Traditional forgiveness | Radical forgiveness |
|---|---|
| Rooted in the human reality of the physical world | Rooted in the metaphysical reality of the world of spirit |
| Willingness to forgive with residual need to condemn | Willingness to forgive without the need to condemn |
| Victim consciousness | Victim consciousness is dropped |
| Judges’ human imperfection | Accepts human imperfection |
| Something wrong happened | Nothing wrong happened |
| Lower vibration | Higher vibration |
The author mentions that traditional forgiveness should not be viewed as inferior to radical forgiveness but simply different
Tools for radical forgiveness
1.Telling the story:
Having our story heard from the view of being a victim
2.Feeling the feelings:
Allow ourselves to feel the authentic pain
3.Collapsing the story:
Give-up victimhood and have high level of compassion for the person we are forgiving. This is followed by releasing our attachment to the story
4.Reframe the story:
Rather than see the situation as a tragedy, be willing to see that, it was in fact exactly what we wanted to experience and was absolutely essential for our growth.
5.Integration:
After we have allowed ourselves to be willing to see the perfection in the situation and turned our stories into one of gratitude, it is necessary to integrate it into the cellular level.
“To Forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner is you”
Lewis B Smedes