Attain Inner Peace Through Forgiveness

This morning I was exploring the connection between complaining and forgiveness. Identifying our complaints is actually a way of finding where forgiveness is possible and needed for our spiritual awakening.

Why is this important?

I'll tell you a story about what happened for me. I have a dear friend named Michael and he's very wise. Michael and I enjoy the kind of friendship where we can speak the truth to each other.

One day, many years ago, Michael said to me, "Ana, you're just complaining to God."

After he said that, I felt like I'd just been hit with Zeus' lightening bolt. For three days I went into a kind of deep, inner turmoil because I felt so horrible that I had been complaining to God.

I realized the truth of what he was saying, but I also felt really guilty, which was my familiar way of functioning at the time. Now I realize that noticing and learning from my mental complaining is valuable, but I don't have to - and we don't have to - further our trip into the labyrinth of guilt in order to receive the teachings from this situation.

In fact, where we are complaining is where we have a grievance. Where we have a grievance is where there is no peace. Where there is no peace is the place to forgive. That is why all of these things are connected.

Noticing the large and small ways that you complain about this moment, about the past, and about your projection of the future will tell you a lot about your inner journey to peace. Through a radical form of forgiveness, you can turn all of your complaints around. These spots are surfacing for release, for forgiveness, and for compassion, and you can bring them all -the whole darn movie - to the Holy Spirit for healing.

Another friend of mine mentioned to me recently that he was with a group of people in a training seminar and somebody said, "Well, in his famous speech, Martin Luther King didn't say, 'I have a complaint!'"

No. He said, "I have a dream!" He proceeded to put forth his incredibly eloquent and poignant vision of the equality of all beings and humanity. It struck a powerful chord in our united mind. That is why the I Have A Dream speech brings tears to my eyes, no matter how many times I hear it.

We all have this dream. We all carry it with us somewhere, either very loudly and colorfully in our hearts or buried deep down in our subconscious...we all have it, this dream of how we want to live.

A Course in Miracles calls it the happy dream. We experience it when we have completed the course and brought all of our grievances to the Holy Spirit.

Until that happens, there are blockages in our personal and collective energetic field. They are kinks; they are constrictions that come from errors in our thinking. There is no way to live in the happy dream without first confronting and releasing the places of complaint, blame, and grievance. This is true reconciliation with Spirit.

We can't gloss over this uncomfortable stuff. Neither do we want to wallow in it. That is why the forgiveness work is so essential. It brings us to a deep, direct and cleansing experience of the peace of God.

And what could be better, or more important, than that?