Holding old resentments keeps you from the happiness you deserve. Often we are aware of these resentments; often we are unaware, having hidden them from ourselves.
Resentments come from envy, fear, jealously, or our own low self-esteem that leaves us feeling inferior to someone or something else or feeling someone or something has control over our life. These old resentments rear up at others when we express anger inappropriately, which we do when we find ourselves enraged for the slightest fault of another, when we find ourselves enraged for no apparent reason, or when we discharge our anger at an inappropriate person.
How many of us have felt anger at another driver for a minor mishap, at a grocery clerk for keeping us waiting, or at a loved one because they were not who we wanted them to be?
Believe me, I know of what I speak. I’ve had to work through old resentments. I’ve known betrayal by someone I loved. He was the husband who left me at the oral surgeon’s office when I had my wisdom teeth pulled and moved in with my “best” girlfriend. I’ve known injustice. When I was well into adulthood, my mother married a man with whom no one in my family, expect Mother, would get into a car with if he was behind the wheel. He drove in front of a semi-truck one day and killed Mother and two of her friends. He survived only to have his estranged children show up to claim everything Mother had worked her whole life to accumulate and the antiques that had been in our family for centuries.
I’ve known heartbreak. That was the man who asked me to love him and when I did he told me while we were in a foreign land that he and his former wife were getting back together. I wrote a book about that one. I’ve had more pain in my life than I care to think about—and that’s the idea—eventually—to no longer feel or think about the pain.
You want to be able to work through the resentments, angers, betrayals, and all those ugly emotions that keep you down, so that you can let pure joy through. It’s not easy, but you can do it. If I can, you can!
In the end, it’s never about you and the other person. It’s always about you and your personal journey. It’s never between you and the other person. It’s always between you and Spirit. The other person has a journey different from the one you are taking, and you want to make the one you are taking the best possible journey imaginable—and you want to take the world with you on this magnificent, wondrous journey.
This is the day you let go of old resentments. They are standing in the way of your happiness. First, stop blaming others and recognize you are the one responsible for your life and the situations you are now in. You may not be able to get this at an emotional level, but you can begin today to do your best to accept responsibility for your life, which means accepting your own power and the proper way of using that power in the world.
As you clear away old resentments, you become clearer as to how you create your life. You come to understand it’s not always what you attract to you; it’s also how you deal with what comes to you. As you see the other’s words and actions and their impact on you, you come to understand how your words and actions affect everyone and everything in the world. You come to understand that life is an ever-flowing, changing embodiment of both the human and spiritual and that at some level you, as a soul spirit, agreed to the journey as it is unfolding in your life, even if sometimes the human part of being sucks.
Once you get this, happiness deepens and stays with you. You are constantly correcting your thoughts and deeds to align with happiness. You recognize your power to harm yourself and others, so you choose to use different words and to move differently in the world. You recognize the pain of the other and come to understand that the pain they caused you came from their own wound, not because they wanted to hurt you. You also see that this adventure together was a soul contract between you, and it gave you astounding gifts once you learned to mine them.
You will be able to find the most astounding gift of all— happiness. It is waiting for you.
But first let’s clear away those old resentments. And remember what you clear away from your life—for your personal world—you also are clearing for the greater world.
To clear and cleanse old resentments, sit quietly in a comfortable position, feet flat on the floor, spine straight, and hands resting in your lap, or sit in a meditative pose. After taking several deep breaths to relax, imagine a cone of golden light moving from above your head and into the top of your head, moving all the way down your body feeding every cell with this golden light.
Now imagine a cord of golden light moving from the base of your spine, down into the center of Mother Earth. Allow all thoughts other than the tingling of this golden light to leave, just to slip away. Experience this golden light as pure love, divine love, love that is greater than you ever imagined love cold be. Experience it, feel it, allow it to flow freely through you and allow yourself to be loved.
Now imagine this light moving out from your solar plexus and forming a bubble in front of you. Ask that all resentment within you to appear in this bubble now. The bubble may turn a dark color, or you may imagine different figures or shadows in the bubble.
Now imagine another bubble of golden light that comes from your heart. Allow this bubble to encircle the original bubble with your heart’s love that is being fed by the golden light that flows into you from above your head and flows through your heart and into the heart bubble that surrounds the solar plexus bubble. Allow the heart bubble to permeate and diffuse the first bubble with love, deep divine love that comes through you from your loving source, a divine source that is love.
Rise and carry this feeling of lightness, of love with you, returning to it whenever you find yourself caught in resentment.
As you do this process, cleansing and clearing those you hold resentment against, you will have memories of those you have hurt or wronged. Gently forgive yourself for any part you played in interaction with anyone who hurt you and anyone you have hurt. Have the understanding that you did your best at that time and promise yourself to continue your journey to happiness that you may never again wrong yourself or any other being.