One way to help yourself love yourself is to forgive yourself. Self-forgiveness returns you to love and truth; the Truth of who you are (which is wholly innocent), and the true loving nature of reality.
This page includes the “Mirror of Self-Forgiveness” Meditation. This is a guided meditation written out in steps below you can learn off-by-heart and experience in an inner guided meditation.
You may be harder on yourself than any other, which can manifest in any number of ways. Some problems and difficulties in your life may be a direct result of a lack of self-forgiveness and the self-love that also blocks.
In life you’ll make mistakes, mess up, get hurt, hurt others, hurt yourself even, make ‘bad choices’, sabotage, get caught in ego traps, trip, fall, fail, abide by limiting beliefs and stories, you name it. That’s humanness.
Let yourself off the hook once-and-for-all and experience the love, joy, freedom, peace and powerful transformations that forgiveness can bring.
Below is a guided self-forgiveness meditation you can explore. Read it a few times to get the gist of it. Don’t worry if when you do this meditation you don’t do it exactly as it is written, but give it ago having memorized the general process. You can always practice it again and repeat on other occasions.
Not forgiving yourself can lead to guilt, shame, self-punishment and self-sabotage (consciously or otherwise), and diminished levels of love, joy, success, feelings of deserving, and so on.
Often what you haven’t forgiven yourself for, or what it would serve you to forgive yourself for, isn’t always conscious. It may be something you did when you were young, as a child or adolescent, something you’ve forgotten, denied or repressed, etc.
It may not be something you’ve done to another, either. It may very well be something you’ve done to yourself, such as not loving yourself, abandoning yourself, betraying yourself, disrespecting yourself, and so on.
Whilst it can certainly help to get clear on what you want to forgive yourself for, and to write that down too even, you don’t need to do the meditation.
The “Mirror of Self-Forgiveness Meditation” moves us beyond intellectualizing about forgiving ourselves to actually experiencing it at a deep level.
Mirror of Forgiveness Meditation
1) Relax deeply and enter a meditative state. Do so in whatever way feels natural and easiest for you. You may want to listen to some soft meditation music, or a guided visualization meditation, deepening your breathing, or whatever technique works for you, perhaps just stillness, allowing your being to become deeply relaxed.
2) When very relaxed, gently count down from 5 to 1, imagining yourself going deeper and deeper, becoming more and more relaxed.
3) At the count of one imagine yourself in a place in nature, anywhere that appeals to you. It could be in a meadow or grove, on a hill top, in a valley, or woods, by a stream, or at an ocean beach. Imagine yourself wherever you want to be.
Start by imagining the sights and the sounds to make this place as real as possible. What surrounds you? Feel the earth beneath your feet, smell the air, feel the gentle wind on your face, hear the call of bird, the rustle of leaves, etc. Open your inner senses as much as possible.
4) In this place you find a mirror, a long standing mirror that for some reason just happens to be there in this place in nature. You turn to find it somewhere, or perhaps it appears out of nowhere. This is the Mirror of Forgiveness.
5) You walk up to this mirror and see there on the other side the ‘you’ you want to forgive. This ‘you’ may appear very different. It may appear as an animal or monster-like, grotesque or distorted, ugly or disfigured. Or perhaps they look just like you, but you see they are wounded, or enraged, or afraid, or hurting, scared or scarred, and so on. Just allow this ‘you’ to appear, this you that you are going to forgive, in whatever form that you shows up. Let those shadow parts appear in this ‘you’, which may even shift-shape before your eyes and change appearance during the meditation.
Look at this you, however vividly or vaguely you see it visually, perhaps just sensing it there, and witness or get a sense of the parts of you to forgive. You may feel a pain, a sadness, a sorrow, and perhaps great compassion for this being in the mirror that is warped through its own suffering and twisted perceptions of self and reality and a separation from love.
6) Get in touch with the love and compassion you feel for this you, or these parts of you, showing up in the being in the mirror, and the unconditional love you have for your less-than-pretty sides, inner shadows and darkness, that which you dislike or even hate about yourself, seeing the wounding behind that, seeing the innocence in the core of this being before you. As you feel this love you feel your heart open.
7) Holding your hands out in front of your heart a light of love, care and compassion streams from your heart as a violet light of forgiveness. It may also stream down your arms and out of your hands, forming a sphere of violet purple light above your hands in front of your heart. If you a struggling with feeling this love and compassion, imagine that it flows in from the divine above you, down through the crown of your head, down through your arms and hands and heart, and out into the space above your hands to form a sphere of violet light before you. If you don’t visualize very clearly just know it is happening through your decision, desire, intent and willingness.
8) This sphere of violet light is a sphere of forgiveness. When you sense this sphere of purple light tangibly there, seeing it with your inner-eyes if you can (but don’t worry if visualization isn’t your thing, just get a sense and knowing that it is there), you gently throw this sphere into the air and into the mirror in an arc to land on the other side onto the you that you are wanting to forgive.
9) You see this violet light covers and envelopes this you inside the mirror until they glow with a beautiful iridescent violet light. As this light encases them they begin to transform, magically, beautifully, into the being of light they truly are, that YOU truly are.
10) You then step into the mirror and embrace this being of light and are also enveloped in the violet light. The two of you merge to become one. You feel a beautiful love and a wonderful sense of wholeness and joy.
11) You then step back through the mirror to your place in nature where you began, feeling renewed and transformed, filled with love and light, knowing something is very different; healed, alive, whole, awake.
12) When you are ready you count yourself back from 1-5 and open your eyes.
I have broken this meditation down into 12 steps, but it is actually quite a short and simple meditation process as it flows.
If you read it through a few times you will get a sense of it, and you can then practice it as a guided journey. Don’t worry if you don’t get it exactly right. It is is the loving intention and a willingness to forgive yourself that counts.
Perhaps you do it slightly differently, which is totally fine, do whatever works for you. It is always the energy and intention that counts and is most powerful.
You can also record the steps with a voice recorder or via your laptop, PC or phone and then guide yourself through the meditation. Whatever works for you!
To commit to the meditation, how about setting a time and date that you will do this meditation exercise? This evening or tomorrow morning, for example? Don’t make it a ‘should’ though. It is a beautiful choice and an act of love for yourself. Get excited about that and honour the process.
Much love,
Aine Belton
