Sydney Banks - A Quiet Mind

Uploaded on Feb 15, 2008

Forgive Yourself and Others
from The Salt Spring Island Conversations

Our thoughts get us into trouble and it's our thoughts that get us out of trouble. If you're in trouble with your thoughts there's no sense in digesting them over and over again. You forget them, you forgive yourself. You have to learn to forgive yourself and other people, and unless you forgive, you'll go through life in a hell hole, to put it bluntly. And if you look with logic, you'll see what I'm talking about is common sense.

When a person is suffering because of their past, to go back into that past again and create more suffering, it doesn't make common sense. What that person needs is love and understanding to get over the trauma of the past. And if you give them love and understanding and the knowledge that it is a memory carried through time via thought, then there's the healing process has taken place right there.

When you forget the past, it doesn't mean to say you actually forget the past.

A lot of my past is beautiful memories, and there's nothing wrong with having a beautiful memor. A beautiful memory is a healthy memory, there's nothing wrong with that. It's when you have unhealthy memories that are creating your mental problem now: You drop those unhealthy ones.

And the healthy ones you realize it's just a beautiful memory. That's quite different.

And another important thing to remember: Each day in our life we have probably thousands and thousands of thoughts going through our head. Some are good, some are bad, some are positive, some are negative. Now this is where your free will comes in. You have the free will to use whichever thoughts you want to. That's quite different. You know, if you have a bad thought you don't always act on it. It'd be a terrible life if everyone acted on their bad thoughts. You just ignore them and you act on the good thoughts.