In “The Five Stages of Forgiveness,” the entry posted to my blog on July 3, I wrote about the first three stages of the process that Colin Tipping writes about in his book Radical Forgiveness—“telling the story,” “feeling the feelings,” and “collapsing the story.” Then in my last entry “Synchronicity” (July24), I wrote about how something spiritual is operating behind the scenes. Now I will share the last two stages of the five.
When you’ve completed stage three, hopefully you have realized that the story you’ve been telling yourself about how you’ve been mistreated is not “true,” that it is actually based on “a few facts and a whole lot of interpretation,” (24) so now you’re ready to see your story in a different light. Stage four is “reframing the story….This is where we allow ourselves to shift our perception in such a way that instead of seeing the situation as a tragedy, we become willing to see that it was in fact exactly what we wanted to experience and was absolutely essential to our growth. In that sense it was perfect.” (226)
In stage four, “reframing the story,” you will have the opportunity to release the “victim story” you identified in stage one of the Radical Forgiveness process. For Jill, her victim story was that her husband Jeff was abandoning her by giving all of his attention to his daughter Larraine. But after talking to Colin, Jill was able to see that something else was going on, something spiritual which made this hurtful experience with Jeff “essential to her growth.” At this point in her forgiveness process, she looked for a different explanation than that “Jeff was abandoning her.” Again, because she had the help of Colin, she was able to realize that this experience was triggering her “core negative belief” that “I am not enough.” Because Jeff had created this experience, he was giving Jill an opportunity to heal this core negative belief that was running her life.
On P. 272 of his book Radical Forgiveness, Tipping gives a list of “core negative beliefs.” It’s very possible that the experience that you are attempting to forgive will have triggered one of these. In addition to “I am not enough,” I especially resonate with “It is not safe to be me,” “It is not safe to speak out,” and “I am unlovable.” However, as Tipping says, you may not be able to identify the way in which this hurtful experience was “essential to your growth,” as Jill was. Tipping says this is okay. If you accept Tipping’s belief “that thoughts, feelings, and beliefs create our experiences, and that, furthermore, we order our reality in such a way as to support our spiritual growth,” (278) it is not necessary that you can identify exactly what the message is. Just being open to the idea that there is something operating on the spiritual level that will continue to bring you experiences into your life that are opportunities for you to heal will be enough to help you to begin the forgiveness process. Reframing the story is crucial, because it is “the step of transformation, for as we begin to become open to seeing the divine perfection in what happened, our victim stories, which were once vehicles for anger, bitterness, and resentment, become transformed into stories of appreciation, gratitude, and loving acceptance.” (226)
The fifth stage of Radical Forgiveness is “integrating the shift.” In this stage, it is “necessary to integrate that change at the cellular level. That means integrating it into the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual bodies, so that it becomes part of who we are.” (227) Tipping says that we can make a statement such as this: “I completely forgive myself, ________, and accept myself as a loving, generous, and creative being. I release all need to hold onto emotions and ideas of lack and limitation connected to the past. I withdraw my energy from the past and release all barriers against the love and abundance that I know I have in this moment. I create my life and I am empowered to be myself again, to unconditionally love and support myself, just the way I am, in all my power and magnificence.” (299–300)
And he says that “the importance of this proclamation cannot be overemphasized.” He says, “Say it out loud, and let yourself feel it. Let the words resonate with you. Self-judgment is at the root of all our problems.” (288)
Understanding Colin Tipping’s Five Stages of Radical Forgiveness is life-changing, because once we know how to follow this process, we don’t have to get stuck in seeing ourselves as a victim and struggle to forgive. Instead, whenever someone upsets us, we can immediately recognize this experience as an opportunity to forgive. “The person upsetting us may be resonating something in us that we need to heal, and in that case we can choose to see it as a gift—if we can shift our perception. The situation also may be a replay of an earlier time when someone did something similar to us. {Jill’s ex-husband’s womanizing behavior was a similar experience for her.} If so, this current person represents all the people who have ever done this to us before. As we forgive this person for the current situation, we forgive all others who behaved likewise, as well as forgiving ourselves for what we might have projected onto them.” (231)
Lastly, Tipping says, “These five stages don’t necessarily occur in just this order. Very often we move through them, or some of them at least, simultaneously, or we keep coming back and forth from one stage to another in a kind of circular or spiraling fashion.” (227)
