In order to fully embrace gratitude you must release any need to forgive or be forgiven.

Religious belief systems teach the need for forgiveness. Many people hold onto resentment and anger as a consequence of their experiences with others and refuse to change until the person(s) who harmed them seek their forgiveness.  This attitude keeps them locked into fear and darkness and by doing this it causes them to deny their own truth, their own soul, and God.

If we look at the big picture perspective we are all aspects of God exploring this universe and this realm of duality’s unique energies.  Whatever we experience with others is what we have chosen to do on a soul level prior to incarnating.  The people who harm or cause us the most heartache and grief have the greatest love for us on a soul level because we have a powerful bond of love with them. We purposefully have no remembrance of those bonds and choices we made prior to incarnating in this world so that we can fully experience our choice to learn about the positives and negatives of duality in this realm. 

Fear is the opposite of love, so we cannot experience fear and all of its manifestations when we come solely from a place of love and awareness In order to fully appreciate that Earth is a realm of duality, we choose to have experiences with others and to co-create together.  We have to deny the truth of who we are in order to do this though. Often though, when we arrive at this level and live out the pre-planned experience, we give our power over to those experiences and the resulting emotions and then want to shoot whoever delivered the experience or, more accurately put, the learning opportunity!  This reaction, of course, is part of what we choose to experience, but at some point we have to choose to stop allowing our creations to control us, the creator.

In order for us to take control again we have to accept the fact that we are simply experiencing that which appear to be so negative to us. We will come to realize that we do not need to seek forgiveness nor give forgiveness but only to embrace gratitude about what we have experienced—so that we can understand more about creating with the energies of love and the energies of fear available to us in this duality. 

When you allow yourself to embrace gratitude towards those you have co-created your experiences with, you will open to the truth of who you are.  When you finally understand that whole paradigm from a place of gratitude, your creations will no longer control you, the creator.  It is only then that you will be free to be who you really are—an all powerful, unlimited aspect of God.