Spiritual Longing and the Path of Forgiveness

God’s heart exists within your own heart, and as you travel along the pathways of spiritual life, your own divine nature begins to emerge and awaken. As your spiritual essence becomes more manifest, your heart begins to awaken and to seek the way Home.

A heart that longs for love, and that longs to find the way home to God, opens a pathway of light from the human, embodied self to the soul that exists eternally in the realms of spirit. This important connection creates a funnel that can transmit knowledge, love, light and comfort from the realms of spirit to your embodied self. Truly it can be said that longing is the path Home to God, for it activates all the forces of heaven and Earth to infuse you and your daily life with God’s light and love.

Spiritual longing not only activates spiritual growth and transformation, but it also activates the healing of any and all inner blockages to love that may exist within your being. Pain, resentment, anger and blame that are directed towards others eventually sap the life force from our own inner light, and so at some point on the spiritual journey, we are led to the path of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is a state of being that emerges from love. Forgiveness cannot be forced, especially if you have been abused, neglected, or treated cruelly, or have suffered trauma at the hands of others. In this kind of situation, healing needs to progress in stages, first by allowing yourself to feel all the emotions that resulted from the trauma.

This first stage of forgiveness involves not an immersion in the feelings, but an allowing of them to emerge, within a space of safety. The emotions need to be held in the container of God’s love. For many, this is best done with the support of others who can hold a healing space by offering you a loving and steady presence. This stage can last for a while if the traumas run deep, or can be passed through more quickly if there is sufficient light and love present to help in the transformation process.

After this phase there is a kind of lull, and a sense of emptiness, as the emotions that were held inside for so long are no longer existing within you. Like so many phases of spiritual life, one must first be emptied out before being filled with the new.

After this phase has passed, a sense of new life and hope begins to emerge naturally from the cleansing effects that happened during the period of emotional release. These emerge as seeds of the new that spring into consciousness or even appear in daily life as harbingers of a new day to come.

During this time, opportunities are given for you to review the past with fresh eyes. You may come to a deeper understanding of the meaning of the painful situations that you experienced. At this point, the opportunities for forgiveness begin to emerge. It is important to understand that these cannot be forced or manufactured.

Forgiveness can only come from a heart that is open and that has released the burden of anger and resentment fully. What this means is not that you will never feel anger or resentment again, but that you are no longer holding onto the anger. Instead, you are seeking to return to love, harmony and wholeness. You want to be released from the past so you can be free to live, love, and move forward into the new.

There are some things that we experience that are so terrible that it does not seem possible to forgive or heal from them. In this kind of situation, extra care is needed to not place judgments upon yourself. If you have experienced a severe trauma, you may not be able to experience forgiveness quite yet. You may need more time to go through the emotional healing process, and to pick up the pieces of your life, and to go deeper with your relationship with God.

To have the intention to forgive is the first step towards a complete freedom and release from the trauma. In some cases it may take time to arrive at this point. Once you are ready to be willing to forgive, your healing process has already begun.

Spiritual longing is the desire of the heart to be free, to be at one with the divine nature of our own being. Spiritual longing activates a profound process of transformation and healing that is capable to freeing us from even the deepest of traumas. Forgiveness, when it comes, is a blessing of love that releases us from the chains of the past and opens a new doorway to healing.

Forgiveness is one of God’s greatest gifts, and is greatly needed in today's world. Your own healing process not only benefits you, but all those you come in contact with. As a freer and more loving being, you become more capable of being a presence of love and light for others during these very challenging times we live in. In this way, you contribute to the healing of the world, one heart at a time.

Mashubi Rochell is a spiritual counselor and the founder of World Blessings.net, an online spiritual support community which offers spiritual guidance and healing to people of all faiths.