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Dear friends,
This is a very exciting letter for me to write.
Because it is an invitation to you to participate in the most amazing
International event.
And the best part is that you can do from the privacy of your home
and with your eyes closed.
Yes, literally - with your eyes closed.!
Before I tell you what it is (what can I say? I am a writer, I like suspense:))...
please, read the story below 8and then go to www.WorldWideForgiveness.com to read more.
Sometime in the spring of 2008 an idea came to me seemingly out of the blue.
An idea that wouldn't leave.
What if I were able to connect great numbers of people on the same day and at the same time so that all of us would focus together on one singular thing?
What an immense wave of energy that would be!
And if I were able to do that, figure out a way to bring all these people together, what magic can come out of our combined focus?
What powerful change will everyone participating be able to create!
These days, with the Internet at our service, figuring out how to make this happen wasn't all that hard.
Plus I have my own radio show where over 30,000 people a week listen to yours truly.
The more I thought about it, the more excited I became.
And that's how the idea became a vision, and the vision became a reality.
At this point you are probably wondering what was it that wanted us all to focus on?
What was it that made me lose my sleep imagining possibilities?
It was the most beautiful thing of all:
Healing the heart, forgiving the past and letting go of it all once and for all.
I wanted to create a vortex of energy where people could forgive themselves and others, heal their heart's pain, heal their Soul and set themselves free.
Did we do it?
You bet! And it was the most breath-takingly beautiful and poignant experience.
I created a 45 minute, 6-Part video, "Time Doesn't Heal All Wounds. Forgiveness Will."
I recorded 2 Forgiveness Meditations: one - to forgive yourself, and one - to forgive another.
(Why the meditations? Because it often is the most elegant and powerful way to experience forgiveness.)
I put it all up on my website, and sent out the Call.
I chose the date for the event to coincide with The International Day of Forgiveness, which was originated in Marin County, California in 1996 and is celebrated every year on the first Sunday in August.
And the word spread like wild fire.
Countless numbers of people downloaded the meditations.
And the movement: The World Wide Call to Forgive was born.
It was an amazing, stunningly powerful experience!
Gathering in groups or in the privacy of their own homes, people from all over the world meditated together at the same time last August 3d, releasing the burden of pain they had been carrying inside all their lives.
A year later, I still continue to receive feedback on this.
I decided to keep the meditations on my site (it's been over a year now) and to this day, every week more and more people keep downloading them. I am deeply touched.
This year we are celebrating the 1st Anniversary of The World Wide Call to Forgive.
Read all the details about it on www.WorldWideForgiveness.com
Yes, of course we are doing it again.
August 2nd, 2009
First meditation: 11pm Eastern Standard Time (8am Pacific)
Second meditation: 1pm Eastern Standard Time (10am Pacific)
Please, join us. Be part of this amazing experience.
Download the meditations, and do them with all of us!
And now you know what I meant when I said you can participate
with your eyes closed!
Here is this week's food for thought:
What would you say to me if I asked you to imagine spending most of your life in prison, serving a life sentence without possibility of parole?
Perhaps, serving it for the crime you did commit, or worse -
serving it for the crime that had been perpetrated upon you?
Even imagining this is enough to send shivers down your spine.
Yet this is exactly where you live, as long as you carry the pain of the unforgivable inside your heart, inside your body, inside your soul and inside your spirit.
It is your own internal prison.
It may be invisible to others, if you are really good at wearing a mask, or it may be very visible and obvious to people who know you well.
Regardless, it is still a prison, a prison in which you have voluntarily put yourself and threw away the key.
Before you get angry at me because I may not know what happened to you in the past, what was done to you or what you might have done to others...listen.
It's true. I don't know of your painful past (or present.)
But I do know pain.
There was once a time I thought I would drown in it...Often, I wished I did.
I am yet to meet a human being living today who doesn't know this dark place.
I used to called this bottomless pit "home" for so many years...
In my pain, I believed I had a right I to stay in that prison, after all - bad things had happened to me, and no one seemed to ask forgiveness...
I remember saying to the man I was in love with once: "you must know that I can never forgive."
Yes, I wore my pain as a badge of honor. I even used it to threaten and to manipulate with.
Did the man recoil? Not at all. He could totally relate to "not forgiving." It made perfect sense to him.
I stayed in my prison and wondered why I could never make love work in my life, why my successes never lasted or brought any lasting fulfillment?
Why happiness remained unattainable? Why did I have health problems?
And had I stayed there longer, you would probably not be reading this letter now, nor would I still be around to have written it.
And then a miracle happened. A dear friend entered my life and gently pointed me in the direction that saved my life.
It was the path that took me to forgiveness.
As I began to wake up, I realized that unless I find a way to let go of what pain I had experienced in my past, that pain would eventually kill me. If not physically, then emotionally.
I realized that was all in my hands.
I was the one with key to my own prison, and it was up to me to use it or not.
That key was forgiving and letting go.
I understood it. And still, I couldn't do it.
It seemed easier said than done.
I would get angry at the very thought. And as long as I was filled with righteous anger and rage, it was impossible to forgive anyone or anything.
You can spend years in therapy - gaining every kind of awareness and understanding and insight.
But it won't ever be enough.( And if you have tried that - you know it yourself.)
Unless you forgive and let go of the past for real.
Awareness is very important - as the first step. But it won't lift your pain. It can't.
Only forgiveness will bring you peace.
Only forgiveness will release you from that past.
I learned that You cannot negotiate this. You cannot go it halfway.
Sometimes forgiveness came to me in stages. Other times - I could forgive in one full sweep - never knowing how it happened exactly, just knowing that it's over. I was free.
And because I had been on both sides of forgiveness:
from refusing to forgive, to trying and failing at it, to finally succeeding and stepping - like through a looking glass - onto the other side, I can talk to you about it from my heart, from own experience.
Listen.
Forgiveness is a Mystery. It is perhaps the greatest mystery of all, because it is Divine Grace.
It is a miracle, it is a gift.
It is all of these things and so much more.
Words are inadequate to describe the miracle of forgiving. We can't really "do it."
You can take the steps, do your part and then - receive it.
You need to experience this. And once you do - nothing is ever the same.
Understand: Forgiveness does not mean taking away accountability.
It doesn't mean you will now have to bring back into your life the people who caused you pain.
But it will set you free from them. And then - it will be up to you to ever see them again or not.
Because it is not about them. It is about YOU. You deserve it!
You don't have to live at sufferance of what happened.
And if it is yourself that you need to forgive - the same rule applies.
You won't be able to ever be as loving and as giving as you could be, if deep inside of you there is a "knowing" of something you did that was unforgivable.
But what if that's true? you might think.
How DO I forgive the "Unforgivable?"
It is a very important question and it comes for so many people.
That's why I created a 6-part Video "Time doesn't Heal All Wounds. Forgiveness Will" addressing the controversy of forgiveness.
It is all on www.WorldWideForgiveness.com
The meditations are yours forever, to be done any time it feels right to do.
Every time - forgiving at a deeper level.
So join us.
What have you got to loose? The old baggage and the old pain?
You can always bring them back if you start missing them and you know it by now, don't you?
Imagine what life would be like on the other side of the looking glass?
Once you step through?
Imagine the life you will be living once your past doesn't hold you back?
You have an entire week to watch the video, to think...and to get ready.
All for now.
See some of you next Tuesday!
Much love to you, always,
Auriela.
The School of Hope and Inspiration
Tuesday, July 28
Gathering: 6:30PM -7PM
Class: 7PM - 9:30PM
We will meet at the same location in Southern Marin.
RSVP for address and directions
Auriela@AurielaMcCarthy.com
I appreciate if everyone RSVPs, so I know how many seats we need.
Please, be on time, we will start promptly at 7pm
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