"What is the law of cause and effect? Is it not creativity bringing into form? That is what the law of cause and effect is. There is intent. There is feeling. And there is the effect, the form.
The form takes many shapes, but the most profound and highest
shapes it takes are love and forgiveness. If, instead of coming into that feeling of guilt and punishment, you come into a sense of love and forgiveness, what do you think happens to this ball of karma wrapped around you? It disappears.
The first person who has to let go of the karma is the person whose head was lopped off. Once he recognizes, 'So you lopped off my physical head. At the time it was a fitting punishment for the crime I committed. You were doing your job. I am alive and well. I have a new body and everything is fine. So let's forget the whole thing. I forgive you. I don't have any ill feeling toward you. Let's just bury the hatchet.' Now we have love and forgiveness coming in here. That ends the karma right there. It doesn't go any further.
The person who is the lopper still has further to go because now he must forgive himself and that, Beloveds, is where you get caught. Most of the time you can accept quite easily and quite thankfully that someone forgives you. But you have a saying upon your earth which you all honor and live up to profoundly, 'I will never forgive myself.' How many times have you said, 'I will never forgive myself for that?' The truth is, Beloveds, that you don't forgive yourself.
So now you have no karma to the person. No karma. It is over. But now you develop a self-imposing karma upon yourself... To people who come into your friendship or association of any kind, you feel inferior to them and that feeling begets what? No self esteem... You are right back here to punishment and guilt and you will find someone or some set of circumstances that will punish you for your guilt.
That punishment takes many forms, Beloveds, many forms: financial difficulty, poor health, relationships that go awry, children who grow up and don't appreciate you, friends who abandon you in your perceived hour of need, jobs that are not fulfilling, opportunities that you just can't get a hold of, people who use you or take advantage of you. All of these are the results of guilt and punishment and self-karma...You have to forgive yourself.
Let us examine love and forgiveness for a moment. Love is the recognition of the true value of the self. Now what is your true value?
Is it your job, your marriage, your relationships, your bank account? No. Those are transitory things. The true value of the self is that you are a child of God. You have a holy Father, a holy Mother. Therefore, you are holy. So recognizing the holy estate into which you were born and in which you dwell is the beginning.
As you do that, you draw the vibration of love very profoundly into your consciousness and as you do, this idea of guilt and fear and all of that begins to dissipate. It begins to go away. When you begin to love you, it is a magnetic force.There is nothing more magnetically powerful than love...It is going to matter how much you are willing to allow that love than is already within you to bring itself to the surface and manifest. The only love that you can know is the love that you give. I know everyone thinks that the biggest blessing is to be loved. But the biggest blessing is to be loving."
- Archangel Gabriel, KARMA AND LOVE, October 1, 1999, Pgs. 11-16. Copyright 1999 Rev. Penny Donovan. All rights reserved.