Forgiving Yourself And Others ... The Importance Of Forgiveness
finding yourself innocent of all charges! Whereas we are often willing to forgive others for fairly major indiscretions, there is a tendency in many people to punish themselves endlessly for relatively trivial things. 
Why are we so hard on ourselves? We are programmed from an early age to be self-critical. Our unconscious parents, relatives and society have projected their own judgements and insecurities onto us, as their parents did to them. There is no judgement in this statement, for they were truly innocent. Lacking the capacity to discern truth from untruth, we simply absorbed, as truth, everything we were fed. We live in a society where judging, criticising and blaming are the norm. If you tell a two year-old that they are bad or stupid it is taken as truth. These patterns are so firmly imbedded in our psyche that on a deep, sub-conscious level we still believe that we are basically flawed and never good enough. We then constantly find justification for that belief in the events and circumstances of our lives. I hope that, in reading these words, you are already feeling more love and compassion towards yourself. I have dedicated a separate page on how to forgive others. 
When you clearly understand the roots and causes of self-judgement, forgiving yourself becomes much easier. After years of criticism as a child, I grew up to be very hard on myself. We don't realise as children that the adults around us have their own issues. Our interpretation of criticism is that there is something wrong with us. The day I saw through this and "proclaimed myself innocent of all charges" was one of the sweetest of my life.... what a relief!!! For me, this shift occurred from understanding that: • I had no choice over the beliefs and programming that I took on board as a child. • My parents, my teachers, the society were not to blame either. They did the best they could according to their own level of awareness. • Every choice I have made in the past was the best I could make at that time. If I had known better, I may have made different choices. • To be imperfect, to make mistakes, to be flawed, weak, afraid is simply part of being human. You Are An Ass, I Am An Ass!
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