In Life is for Loving, Eric Butterworth explains self-forgiveness in a way that is in accordance with A Course in Miracles. He says: “We talk of forgiveness as if it were something we can easily do by an act of will. [But] forgiveness is not achieved by simply saying, ‘All right, I am going to forgive this thing. . . . To forgive means to pass from judgment to understanding. . . . going deep down into the well of spiritual insight, touching the underground stream of love where we can know . . . that I am my brother and my brother is me. Thus we forgive ourselves for judging our brother which was thus a judgment of ourself. . . . Nothing is unforgivable by law —the law of Divine Love.”

Perhaps you are harboring a sense of guilt for something done or left undone in the past. Your past is retained only by your thought. It is not the incident but the memory of it that causes the effects of it today. The moment it is dropped from your consciousness it is gone from the only place it ever existed. This doesn’t bespeak license, but liberty, freedom from the bondage of the past to which you have bound yourself. True forgiveness, perhaps the only kind of forgiveness, is self-forgiveness.

Eric Butterworth, from Celebrate Yourself!