I Forgive you for Everything

If any of us want to survive and to be functional in our lives we need to find ways to forgive ourselves for anything we have done, for after all, none of us are perfect and we are all bound to make mistakes either real or perceived. And many perceived failings were never real in the first place and no one else even noticed. So, in order to not carry around all this baggage in our subconscious minds and the cells of our bodies and get cancer from it all, we need to find ways to forgive ourselves and others in order to stay alive.

So, I was taking a nap today and I usually go into an early Buddhist prayer to comfort myself which is:
May all Beings attain Bliss and the Cause of Bliss
May all Beings be free from suffering and the Cause of Suffering
May all Beings never be without the Supreme Bliss that is Free from
all Near and Far all grasping and aversion

However, I was thinking that instead of just generating compassion I wanted to generate Forgiveness of myself for my whole life for everything real or perceived that I may have done. I wondered how I could clear out my subconscious mind and cells in order to forgive myself for any real or perceived wrongs. So, I tried saying different things to myself in my mind as if I was my own parent or God to myself like "I forgive you Fred for everything. or "I love you Fred and forgive you for everything". As I kept cleansing my subconscious and interesting thing happened. I found my subconscious not only started to release me from everything it also started to release any bad feelings I had about anyone or anything else. I thought to myself, "Well. This is pretty remarkable. I think I really have something here." So, at a certain point God came in and said, "It's important that you forgive yourself first, Fred, and then at some point I will do the rest." So, God was sort of giving me a boundary which I felt appreciative of.  I have found through peer counseling about 10 years ago that finding ways to release the past (especially childhood traumas) is very important to ongoing adult functionality and balance.

Recently (last Summer) my 37 year old son and his wife separated and it brought up a whole lot of issues regarding my 2 divorces. So, even though I have been happily married now for about 20 years in my third marriage I realized that I had had to just sort of compartmentalize my feelings at the time of my 1st and 2nd divorces because I had to support children and starting with my first divorce in 1977 I had custody of my son by mutual consent of my first wife and I. I did not have time to worry about how I felt about everything.  And when I was alone I would sometimes cry in secret and alone or have really awful dreams that I would wake up in a cold sweat in shock afterwards back in 1978. So, just keeping on going was the way everyone survived in those days anyway they could, a lot like now.

But because my son's divorce brought all this stuff up from my first two divorces I realized that I had more work to do to be okay with all of my past. So, forgiving myself for any real or perceived mistakes in any part of my life appears to me to be part of the work I need to do to move forward now. So, even though I'm already 63 if I want to live to 100 or more I have to find ways to forgive and let go of the past if I don't want the past eventually to make me ill like it does many or most people on earth over time. So, if it is useful to you in a self comforting and self healing way, feel free to try my method of self healing. I'm likely not the first to do this nor will I be the last. So Happy Forgiving!