Thus with my lips have I denounced you, while my heart, bleeding within me, called you tender names.

It was love lashed by its own self that spoke. It was pride half slain that fluttered in the dust. It was my hunger for your love that raged from the housetop, while my own love, kneeling in silence, prayed your forgiveness. —Kahlil Gibran

When you speak of forgiveness, do you also speak of forgiveness of self? When you are forgiving of others, you must of course know that without forgiving yourself you cannot forgive another without exception.

Oftentimes in life it may feel to you that others harm you with their words, deeds, or their emotional comebacks. How do you forgive someone if it feels like you have been wronged in some way or hurt by another person? It comes from the depth of your soul, the depth of loving yourself first and foremost.

If you are not coming from the stance of loving yourself, where will you be coming from? You may be coming from the feelings of being hurt, feelings of being scorned, or feelings of blame or shame. Yet you know from the depth of your soul that love is the answer. If you can love another person no matter what you feel they have done to you, you can know that the individual is actually in the throes of their own self-hatred and self–doubt, not necessarily from anything that was done to them or said to them, but more from the feeling of not loving their own self.

You have seen this scenario played out time and time again, not only in life, but in the movies and hearing other people’s stories of being wronged. Revenge may come into their thoughts and even at times a feeling of hatred.

How does an individual get into that space of not loving another human being for who they are even though their actions feel so misguided and uninformed? Often times this can begin by someone having their own perception of a person or event, while you have another perception of that same event. And who is to say which is right or which is wrong? For in this universe of love and acceptance there is not hatred, no right or wrong. Only acceptance without condition. We know that many of you think that sounds great on paper, or the words sound airy fairy, wondeirng how do we do that in the “real” world?

You are so engrossed in getting revenge on the person that has wronged you, rather than seeing that the person that is perpetuating the actions of hatred towards you comes from their disconnection to their own inner love. They may have felt unloved all of their life and looked for that outer validation from others. And when they did not get the outer validation that they were seeking, it felt to them like no one is loving them and no one is giving them the strokes of affection that they seek.

When you search outside of yourself for that validation of personhood, you can be very disappointed, because those that you may seek it from may be coming from that same stance of not loving themselves. So when the two of you get together it just becomes that much more intensified. Now the two of you are conspiring to find yet more people that feel just like you do. You are now on the hunt for more people that feel left out, mistreated, unloved, and fearful of giving love because they fear rejection.

The cycle of this has to stop somehow doesn’t it? How do you turn the self-hatred into self-love and self-acceptance if you feel like you have no sense of what that is.

You start by doing your own inward search for some new answers to the old questions. Perhaps you feel like the old stuff is no longer working for you and you are tired, perhaps lonely, perhaps have a feared diagnosis and really are not sure who or what or how to turn it around.

Start where it all began, with the love of self. You all arrive in this world with the love of self and through life’s experiences or listening to those around you who are not sure how to give of their love to another, you become confused about the whole life thing. If I come into this life full of love of self, you think, how does it become some misconstrued? You often times forget about the source of love that you come into this life with. You allow others to guide you rather than paying attention to that inner voice of love and acceptance. You have searched outside of yourself for that acceptance and seemingly received it from outside validation, but in truth, it gave you the feeling of not being good enough or feeling of despair for not being able to live up to what “others” expected of you.

You must forgive those individuals, for they too have lost their inner connection to the source of love and light and now they feel only the darkness that they have brought on themselves.

Turn your lights back on and reach within the depths of your soul-self, the love connection. Reclaim that power of love and light and wholeness. You are all born to be the light for others when they cannot find the light. Send others the love that is seemingly so distant to them. Show them by reaching them on a love and acceptance level, so they too will know that the power and the light and the wisdom is all theirs and that everyone has that ability to tap into the light and love of self. Some may indeed need some assistance because of that disconnected self to their higher self. That is why it is so imperative for people to understand that when others are in that dark space they cannot seem to find the light switch anywhere, and once someone gives to them the acceptance and awareness of their own self-worth they, too, will then be able to reconnect.

It all begins with knowing everyone is coming from their own perceived reality and no one can really know what another is feeling. They have their own misconceptions of who they are, and often feel that no one on the outside can see that they are really feeling lost, alone, hurt, and deprived of love.

Be the love and give of your love and know that when you can be the example of love and forgiveness and acceptance, others will be able to learn from your example.

We send to you all a great big virtual hug from the inside out.

We are the teachers.