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A person commented that the pain we now feel does not come from the love we did not get in the past, but from the love we ourselves are not giving in the present. She told the following story. A man approached her with the complaint that his father did not give him presents when he was a child. This had greatly disappointed the man. She suggested to the man that healing would come to him by sending his father lots of presents now.
Rather than focusing on the source of our emotional pain and seeing ourselves as deprived and victimized, we can participate in our healing by generosity. That generosity may take any number of forms. However, healing will take place in our giving to others exactly what we feel has been withheld from us.
And, let us remember, that basically what we all what is Love, regardless of the forms it takes. Likewise, every act of selfless giving is an act of Love Loving through us. We, then, no longer can lay claim to the giving or the Love. Such selflessness itself is healing, as much of our woundedness arises from a focus on the self.
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Over time, as we grow in Christlikeness, we give, not to heal, but only as the spontaneous fulfillment of Love’s intent to love. We open to this Loving through us by a simple act of humble consent. Surrender opens us to be this Means of Grace, which is Love overflowing all boundaries to bring blessing.
Love, then, is Its own motive and acts according to Its own freely outpouring Presence. Then, Pure Love works, dissolving the chains of regret and woundedness that had held us captive to the past.
Ironically, by giving in the present, we are freed from the habitual attention to the past, which was intended to bring healing. This attention, however, had validated our woundedness, continually confirming it in the present. With a new focus, we come into the moment and, being released from the past, receive healing and the grace to forgive others and ourselves.
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