Stress and Internal Conflict: Heal Yourself With Forgiveness

All stress, regardless of the source, will undermine our wellbeing if left unchecked. The accumulated stress can eventually lead to conditions such as anxiety, insomnia, high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer, stroke, ME/chronic fatigue and depression, to name but a few. So, any steps we can take to reduce our stress will be beneficial.

What many people do not realise, is that much of their stress comes from conflicts within their minds. Think of your mind as an iceberg. The part of it above the water is your conscious mind. This is where you hold your ideals and principles, where you make your everyday decisions and hold your religious and political beliefs. This is the part of your mind that you are aware of. The larger portion under the surface is the hidden world of your subconscious mind. The subconscious is the land of dreams. It has its own agenda which is often in direct conflict with what you want consciously. Each and every conflict results in stress, and every source of stress undermines your strength.

The Poison of Unforgiveness

One major source of such conflict is unforgiveness. Often, we say that we have forgiven someone, but that is only believed by your conscious mind. More often than not, your subconscious mind is refusing to forgive and has even vowed to hate the perpetrator forever!

So, what effect does this have? It's very simple. Every time your conscious mind and subconscious mind disagree on an issue, there is conflict. Think of it like computer software with a bug in it. It is impossible for the conflict to be resolved, because part of you will never be happy with the outcome.

For example, consciously you might think, "I forgive my sister for breaking my doll." Meanwhile, your subconscious has filed, "I vow to hate my sister forever for destroying my doll." It is impossible to resolve both these programmes at the same time. You either forgive someone, or you don't. You cannot do both. The mental programme therefore runs in a continuous, never-ending loop, which uses up a huge amount of energy and produces mental and emotional stress. In the case of this example, the conflict may have been running for thirty, forty or fifty years! Even if you aren't thinking about the incident, on a deeper level, your mind is still struggling with the conflict. Imagine how many conflicts like this you are holding within your brain right now. These internal conflicts produces stress, and lots of it!

Forgiveness Exercise

When you want to forgive someone do the following exercise. The wording is designed to act in a specific way, so make sure you follow the steps carefully.

1. Close your eyes, bring to mind the person and incident you want to forgive.
2. Now, focus on your heart energy. As you breathe, feel that energy getting stronger and mentally let it expand out of your body, connecting with the energy of the Universe.
3. Ask the Universe to show you the highest perspective of the incident. Wait and let the response come from the Universe - this will feel like a warm energy moving through your heart and body.
4. Now, ask the Universe to explain to your cells that you have learnt all you needed from that unforgiveness. Wait and let the response come from the Universe again.
5. Then, ask the Universe to teach your cells what it feels like for it to be possible to forgive this person. Again visualise or feel the energy responding to your request.
6. Now, ask the Universe to show you how much forgiving will benefit you and your life. Let the healing flow through you.
7. Finally, ask the Universe to teach you what it feels like to have forgiven them completely. Once again, allow the energy of the Universe to flow through your body, healing anything that is necessary. Make sure that all the energy has stopped moving before you open your eyes.

This sequence of healing energies and understandings will soften the old blocked unforgiveness, and enable it to disperse. Once the unforgiveness is gone, the mental conflict will dissolve and that stress will be released permanently.

Everything you can do to free yourself from accumulated stress will be good for you. I recommend that look back through your life and do some tidying up. Whenever you think about an incident which upset you or made you angry in your past, focus on it for a few seconds and see if you feel the old emotion surfacing again. If you do, then you need to forgive. Simply take yourself through the forgiveness exercise to shift the negative energy.

It is also really helpful if you take the Bach Flower Remedies of Holly and Willow. These clear deep-seated anger and bitterness which you have probably been storing for years, and cleanse the unforgiveness from your cellular memory.

It really is true that forgiveness is a blessing for both parties. Not only does it show love by releasing the perceived wrongs of the past, but it also increases the wellbeing of the person who forgives. Even if it seems hard to do, it is worth the effort.