Forgiveness as a key component of love

At the moment I'm reading a book about the heart chakra and how our relationships are being influenced through the power of love. This morning I read about the different components of love and guess what forgiveness was right up there.

It said that: "a lack of forgiveness is the main blockage for real love and movement in life. We stagnate and become hooked whilst automatically trying to hold on to the other side. We need forgiveness and we need to accept forgiveness for ourselves. You cannot give your heart freely to someone if you are still attached to the past, if you haven't let go. To love means to forgive and to let go."

The point that most stood out for me was the notion of accepting forgiveness for myself. This is a tough one. A real tough one. Especially when it comes to mistakes I have made in the past and hurt I have caused other people. Despite the guilt (and shame) that I still sometimes experience over those things (even though it becomes less and less, but sometimes it still gets triggered), I'm beginning to realise that in order to have a fully open heart and to give AND receive love freely I need to create space and 'clean' my heart up. I need to let go and detach from past experiences, beliefs and projections as well as from future fantasies and plans. Nothing is real apart from this moment. And nothing real exists apart from love. That's the main thing I've learnt from the self-taught book A Course In Miracles. And forgiveness is, for me, the only way to clean up and open my heart as best as I can.

I want to be able to fully give myself to the experience of true love, be it in friendships,family relationship, intimate relationships or any other kind of relationship and in order to do that I need a heart that uses all its capacity to give and receive love and is not burdened and distracted by old ego beliefs. Forgiveness for others and self liberates my heart, my mind and my soul and opens my heart to the miraculous and divine experience of LOVE.

After reading this book passage I quickly said this little prayer (i know its a bit desperate but desperate times require desperate measures, or however the saying goes)... "Please please divine universe and God quickly clean up my heart and help me to let go of everything that i need to let go of and help me to forgive myself and everyone else so that my heart can be free to experience more love every day, your love and that of others and to be able to give away my love more freer and without fear. Thank youuuu."

Lets hope it works (at least a wee bit) :-)