“Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness”.  It’s one of my favorite “lessons” in “A Course in Miracles” (ACIM), a teaching consisting of a “Text”, “Workbook for Students”, and a “Manual for Teachers”.

(I love the 365 daily lessons -the “Workbook”- of ACIM.  I find the “Text” completely unreadable.  Others are deeply moved by the Text, but left cold by the lessons. In the lessons there is a great deal of language referring to “Jesus”, “God”, “Almighty”, “Savior”, etc. that didn’t really work for me.  When I first did the lessons, every time I bumped into a God-reference, I read it as if it referred to “my Higher Power.”  Now I think of those references as my “Buddha-nature.”  Doing the ACIM lessons dramatically improved the quality of my life and opened my heart.  I heartily recommend ACIM.)

I was thinking about this particular lesson because I recently interviewed Eileen Barker on the subject of forgiveness.  Eileen is a mediator and conflict resolution specialist.  Over the 25 years or so that she has helped resolve dispute, both personal and professional, Eileen has come to a profound respect for the healing power of forgiveness.

Eileen teaches that forgiveness is a skill, it can be learned, and it is best learned as a daily practice.  As the adage says:  Holding onto resentment is like drinking poison hoping the other person will die!  As we enter a daily practice of forgiving, we find ourselves letting go of past hurts, slights and indignities, freeing ourselves of stress, ridding us of “toxic” thoughts, and creating more “room” in our hearts for love and joy.  And, as Oscar Wilde so famously declared: “Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”