The ho’oponopono meditation, “I am sorry, please forgive me, I love you, thank you” is both humbling and revealing. Naturally, those who we believe have hurt us come to mind and it becomes confusing as to why are we seeking forgiveness from those who have hurt us. Why do we say “Please forgive me” instead of “I forgive you”?

How is it that we ask for forgiveness from the ones who we believe should seek our forgiveness? Here are my thoughts.

When we examine our thoughts, our opinions of “those” people, we may come to realize how we have contributed to “them” hurting us via our own thoughts, words, and even actions towards them. While actions and words are visible or audible, our thoughts are neither. What did we really feel or think about them?

When we ask ourselves this, our true feelings about “them” will surface. These have always been there but these subtle powerful feelings get masked with the explanations and reasons we give ourselves to justify our own actions or words towards “them”. Because we find a valid reason or explanation for our own behavior, we walk away thinking we have resolved the matter burying your guilt about it deeply in our subconscious.

This gets registered at our soul level (Our Higher Self, Spirit – for sake of ease) and it’s never forgotten. This gnaws at us making us subtly lose confidence, self-worth accepting the painful behavior from others because deeply we feel we deserve it because of how we thought about them or what we have done to them. The guilt that sits there unnoticed and unattended burdens our soul hugely and it chips away at our peace and freedom.

Now if we remember that others only provide a mirror to us, then “those” who hurt us also provided a mirror to us via their behavior towards us. It’s up to us to examine what we see.

At the soul level of every human being, there is pure innocence, wholeness and Love. Any thought, speech or action that undermines that innocence and wholeness is an assault against our own soul. In our defense, we quickly move to reason, explanation and blame ignoring the deep guilt that we experience. Our soul does not judge whether you should feel guilty or not, whether you were right or wrong, it simply feels what it feels. When we ask for forgiveness, we are asking for forgiveness from our own soul to having thought, said or done to bring pain to others and then in turn to ourselves.

We get lost in the “what about what you did”, “I did this because of how you behaved”, “its your fault that I did this” etc. Guilt does not keep count of right or wrong, it a soul’s reaction to having caused pain to another and to itself by your actions, thoughts and speech. We don’t cause pain to others without causing pain to ourselves at the soul level.

This is part of our human experience. It’s not right or wrong, it’s about recognizing the subtle parts of our making and how to connect the dots and keep moving towards wholeness. We accumulate a lot of guilt over our lifetime keeping us in defense mode all the time. This consumes our precious energy and moves us away from ourselves. Pain only brings more pain. To do the above meditation is to recognize this and to forgive ourselves.

Ask your soul for forgiveness and free it in Love. When there is no guilt, you will feel what’s always been there. – Love. Love is what’s always there. It’s time to release the guilt and be the Love that you are. When you experience guilt, become softer instead of defensive. Our soul is always looking for redemption.   Let go of the explanations and justifications; recognize the subtle deep feeling of guilt and release it.

Guilt of having done something is worse than the “thing” you feel you have done; just like I explain to my clients when it comes to guilt around food that the guilt of eating junk food is far worse than the junk food itself. To err is human, claim your humanity and simply forgive yourself.