The sentencing of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for the Boston Marathon bombing and the sad aftermath of Dylann Roof’s racial killings in Charleston, South Carolina have raised the question of forgiveness in an acute fashion.

A fellow set out to find a particular saint who lived in a remote village. The shopkeeper told him he would find the saint under a certain tree, teaching disciples. Excited, the seeker made his way to tree, but instead of finding the saint he saw a drunkard blabbing with a couple of guys.

When we cut through the smoke and mirrors of guilt, we can see that the thoughts and emotions that ignite guilt are all made up. When our self-awareness “muscles” strengthen, we find that we’re less apt to fall into the default pattern of simply reacting to the unconscious flow of our thoughts and emotions.

It has been well established that people have a “bias blind spot,” meaning that they are less likely to detect bias in themselves than others. However, it hasn’t been clear how blind we are to our own actual degree of bias, and how many of us think we are less biased than others.

Disgust is a universal emotion – we all get disgusted by things, just as we all experience other “basic” emotions, such as happiness and sadness. Disgust has many functions. It protects us from products that might cause us harm (food that has gone off), it can give us a moral compass (when we see someone being treated unfairly) and it keeps us away from things that remind us of our animal nature (dead bodies).

Have you ever been lied to or betrayed by someone you loved and trusted? Has anyone not believed you when you were telling the truth? Has anyone you loved walked away from the relationship and refused to try to work out the differences? Everyone has been hurt by someone else. How do we get rid of the hurt and move on with our lives. How can we forgive?

One of the teachings that is emphasized by many teachers is that of acceptance. Accepting what is. What exactly does that mean? Does it mean accepting the way things are? Well, yes it does. It is an impartial observation: I see how this is, I acknowledge that this is so. Yet, does it mean that nothing can change?

I like the anonymous quote, “Holding resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” This poison can negatively affect every aspect of your life. Make a commitment towards love and clarity in your relationships.

I had a nasty neighbor who regularly picked fights over all kinds of issues. People drove too fast past her rural home; her neighbors partied too loud; vandals were supposedly stealing from her water line; trees encroached on her property line; and on and on...

After 9/11, I was writing (and publishing online) inspirational messages that focused on peace... Now twelve years later, we stand at the precipice of who knows what, and peace still eludes the planet...

As long as people are determined to cling to their preconceived opinions, mistaking them for Truth and refusing to consider dispassionately the positions of others, they can neither escape hostility nor arrive at blessedness.

The pain from the past that people experience often follows them to their deaths. I had been visiting Vince weekly for five months, and every week he began by telling me about his distaste for his brother, whom he hadn’t spoken to in twenty years. His animosity had to do with a...

Is there a resentment that lives inside of you? When we first started our counseling practice, a woman came to us that had been raped. We asked her to try forgiveness and compassion. She looked at us like we were crazy. One month later...

We can upgrade all kinds of old patterns and situations in a much shorter time than it took to create them. Before we can do that, however, we have to let go of the notion that healing takes a long time, is hard, and requires pain...

Daily dedication and a willingness to heal our past will automatically move us forward on the spiral path of transformation. When we let go of old, outworn patterns that no longer serve us, we can energetically free up space in our psyches so that learning from the future becomes not only possible but the most...

Many of us find it hard to forgive. Yet, what if we had to forgive the killer of our son, or wife, daughter, husband... Would we be able to forgive in that situation? Would we want them to be sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of parole?

Wayne Dyer pointed out that when you squeeze an orange you get orange juice. What comes out when you are squeezed is never the fault of the squeezer. It is only the explicit expression of what was already implicit within your mind.

Everyone has experienced an event that they’re sure was terrible. Then, when you think about it ten years later, you realize that if that hadn’t happened, you wouldn’t be here right now enjoying life. So how could that have been...

by Marie T. Russell. Years ago I read a small (yet immense) book entitled The Door of Everything. When I first saw it in a bookstore, I immediately bought it. It sat at home for a few weeks, until one morning, as I was headed out to the beach, I heard "Take the small book." I looked around and wondered...

Let's look at the system of reward and punishment as it is practiced among humans. We reward ourselves or others when we judge an action to be 'good'. We punish others or ourselves for something 'bad'. Yet who calls the shots on this? Who is the one qualified to judge?