Suggested ACIF Forgiveness Walk Meeting format

Holding hands in a healing sessionA Course in Forgiveness (ACIF) Forgiveness Walk Meetings are intended for the purpose of celebrating one’s expanding awareness of one’s Divine Eternal Being state and personal growth through the sharing of loss and pain with others. In the meetings, participants support each other’s healing as they discuss how ACIF forgiveness ideas have helped them to become more whole and to experience peace. This group celebration of forgiveness can be a powerful healing experience when conducted in a manner that supports emotional safety for all participants.

Emotional safety occurs when individuals are not harmfully impacted by others when their sharing their personal stories of pain and loss. While there can be no guarantee that one may not feel emotionally moved in a group, when all participants are seeking to heal, overt and deliberate exposure to the pain of situations and the details of another’s suffering is neither helpful nor required. In fact, A Course in Forgiveness defines the boundaries are necessary for forgiving safely.

The following is an Emotional Safety Policy that is recommended by the author for ACIF Forgiveness Walk groups. This should be made available to all participants prior to the first meeting and read at the start of the meeting by the group facilitator.

Emotional Safety Policy for ACIF groups

Policy 1

ACIF Forgiveness Walk groups are NOT replacements for the care of professional services, such as psychologists, psychiatrists, or other helpers. ACIF groups may enhance a healing journey, but they are not intended as personal or group therapy. The focus is on one’s experience of the ACIF ideas and how these ideas have impacted one’s life.

When gathered for the purpose of creating a safe healing space for sharing towards our mutual ACIF Forgiveness Walks, we will refer to all matters of our personal experience of harm or loss only in general terms, such as, “my past harm/loss/situation”; “the past harm/loss I experienced”.

Policy 2

No specific names of individuals or entities who are perpetrators of harm are permitted to be stated. Anonymity is required to keep the group focused on their Forgiveness Walks. Thus, the terms “person/people/entity/group” are used instead of specific and accurate identifiers.

Should anyone not follow Safety Policies, the group’s facilitator must stop the sharing and refer the participant back to the Emotional Safety Policy for ACIF Forgiveness Walk groups and ask the participant to follow it in the interests of all those present.

It may be that there are participants for whom the presence of their Ego-Consciousness will not permit their compliance with the Emotional Safety Policy for ACIF groups. Should this occur, the group may consider stopping the meeting and engaging in a process of consciousness in which the group determines whether it is safe to proceed, or whether the participant in question should be respectfully invited to seek personal professional assistance for the grief they are experiencing.

Policy 3

Facilitator’s duties

  1. Welcome, introduce yourself, first name only.
  2. Read the ACIF Forgiveness Walk Safety Policy to the group.
  3. Remind the group that the discussion of ACIF Forgiveness Walk material only is permitted during the meeting: this is a meeting to share how A Course in Forgiveness is impacting their lives.
  4. Invite the group participants to state their first name only by way of introduction.
  5. Tell the group that there is to be absolutely no cross talk: asking for more information, comments, interruptions are allowed when someone is speaking. A talking stick, or other such tool, can be used to represent this fact. Remind participants that they are free to ask permission to discuss someone’s shared experience with that person after the meeting, in their own time and place.
  6. Limit each voluntary sharing story to five-minutes. A timing device is recommended. Limiting sharing helps to maintain emotional safety for all participants. Much can be said in five-minutes.
  7. Begin the meeting by reading Meditation 1 from A Course in Forgiveness and then invite participants to share on any aspect of A Course in Forgiveness that has impacted them and, if they desire it, tell the group of how their life is changed due to that impact.
  8. Close the meeting after one-hour with a reminder to participants to honour the sacredness of sharing by maintaining the confidentiality of what was shared in the group.