Forgive For Our Sake

Forgiveness is the key, to everything. Until we understand this, carve it into our heart, no real lasting progress can ever be made. When we think about it logically this makes perfect sense. Have you ever prayed and then wondered why you did not demonstrate? In order to fully demonstrate we must be free of self-condemnation and remorse, forgiving ourselves, which happens only after we have fully forgiven others, ridding ourselves of all resentment and condemnation toward them. Though repeated ad nauseum, this truth cannot be repeated enough: “simple but not easy, a price has to be paid. That price is the surrendering of self.” Search your heart, in the secret place of your consciousness is there any “justified” anger or an old resentment lurking you feel is warranted for any reason? If so, perform an act of forgiveness and mean it. If for any reason we cannot do this, by holding on to old hurts, real and imagined we are essentially raising a cup of poison to our lips, believing by drinking it we are punishing those we hate or resent. So, to be truly free, we must put down the cup and forgive, for our sake.

Miracles Of Recovery

© Vincent Lee Jones All Rights Reserved

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Justified Retribution

There is a part of me, and I’m pretty sure you have it too, that keeps score, chiming in with its own sense of justice. When someone does something unthinking or illegal while driving the thought pops up “where is a cop when you need one” or something bad happens to someone we think deserves it and “serves them right” or “they deserved that” crosses our mind. In the same vein occasionally we think we know what’s best and actually wish something bad (serves’em right dontcha know) to befall someone are all examples of self-centered thinking, thinking which ultimately retards our spiritual growth. It does not matter whether or not the offender rightly deserves to be punished, we can never engage in negative prayer or wishful negative thinking, for to do so invites resentment and morbid reflection to take up residence in our heart.

Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God’s will into all our activities, thy will, not mine be done.

It would be less than honest of me not to acknowledge that when I have been cut off or watched someone do something stupid behind the wheel only to see flashing lights appear, the voice in my mind (sometimes out loud) chimes in with “ALRIGHT”  and when bad things happen to bad people, forgiveness is not always my first thought. The wild justice of the carnal mind the Old Testament addresses is alive and well in most of us, certainly in me. So, just for today I will ask for God’s help to pray rightly, to pray the person driving selfishly arrives safely as well as all whose path they cross, to leave justice to God and ask to be shown the way of patience, tolerance, kindliness and love, staying out of the retribution business, remembering all are connected in Spirit, and there is a little bit of bad in the best of us and a little bit of good in the worst and it is no longer my job to measure it.

Miracles Of Recovery 

© Vincent Lee Jones All Rights Reserved

Miracles Of Recovery, Overdose Death, Alcoholism, Wayne Dyer, Drug Addiction, Zen, Emmet Fox, Opioids, Heroin, Einstein, AA, Healing Path Recovery, Drug Rehab, #Drug Addiction, #Drug Rehab, #Healing Path Recovery, #Heroin, #Opioids