[1/24/22] Mind-Body Monday: Forigveness and Acceptance (part 3)
In the first week of Forgiveness, I shared the phrase that, “holding onto anger is like grasping a burning coal with the intent to throw at someone else, which only burns us.” Holding on to unforgiveness truly only hurts us, the person that has already been hurt. Every time we go into the memories of yesterday to resent or be angry with another person, we are giving away our energy to them, which makes them and their actions stronger (in our minds) and ourselves weaker. Try imagining yourself pouring cup after cup of ‘thought energy’ toward the memory of another, filling them up while you become drained and depleted. Visualize them getting larger and stronger while you become smaller and weaker. Is this what we want? Do they truly deserve to keep getting our thoughts and emotional energy, stealing more of our precious life and time while we spend it rehashing past pain?
I like to remember the adage, “a life well lived is the best revenge.” If we want to “get back” at another person for harming us, then live well and fully, surpassing the harm and fear, and grow beyond what anyone could have ever expected of you. This is the way we overcome, and the way we find forgiveness. A happy and contented person does not need to harbor thoughts of ill will toward another. They don’t have the time or desire to waste their precious energy on resentments or wishes for retribution; they are too busy building an amazing life and becoming their own hero. We have the capacity, despite what we may have been told as children, to become the hero of our own story. Every obstacle, challenge, betrayal, setback, or poor choice, can become an opportunity for growth and change. The most fascinating thing about unforgiveness, and its end result, suffering, is that we are the author and therefore ultimately, the Master of it.
As, author, Neale Donald Walsch, says: “The purpose of life is to create your Self anew, in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever you held about Who You Are.”
We are not stuck if we don’t perceive ourselves to be. We are not limited unless we perceive and hold those limitations within ourselves. What we need to do to change our perspective, is simply to believe that we can. We can shift the energy of our thoughts from suffering to surpassing.
We can even choose to look at an experience, that upon its initial happening seemed “unforgivable,” in a new way that makes it not only forgivable, but appreciable. Let me give you a possible example. Imagine, that you are in a relationship that you perceive to be of mutual love. And One day your lover does something that makes you realize that they are not the person you thought they were, and they do not love you in the way you need. This creates the realization that you must end the relationship. Now, you may initially find this act to be unforgivable, but over time and in retrospect you may find that it enabled you to shift and change your life in a new direction that you never would have conceived of. Can this act then still be considered unforgivable? Is it not instead a gift? A gift of immeasurable value, because it kept us from wasting our precious moments of life in a relationship that was not capable of being what we needed. It helped us move forward and learn about ourselves in ways we might have been unable to do without the impetus of another’s actions. While we are undergoing this awareness we might feel pain, shame, or loss. However, when we arise from the initial shock and let ourselves be free from our expectations, we will see that we were better off having learned the lesson. No experience in life is a failure if a lesson is learned and growth is created.
Surprisingly, we often hold on to unforgiveness because we blame ourselves far more than we blame the person we believe has harmed us. We think that if we would have been wiser, not had our “head in the sand” or been naïve etc., then we could have seen “it” coming and prevented or minimized our suffering. We should have known; we rail at ourselves time and time again, and when we have exhausted that, then we go back to screaming at the heavens, “how could they?” We perceive that whatever happened that we didn’t like, or that hurt us in some way, must have been wrong. That the way we wanted it, would have been the Right way of things. This, however is a fallacy.
A fallacy is a mistaken belief based on faulty reasoning. In this case, the fallacy is that We’re right. So what is wrong with that? Well, firstly, I want to share with you the thought, that there is no such thing as rightness. I know, that takes a minute, doesn’t it! ;) But think about it. In this world which is swirled with a maelstrom of color, there is no true black and white, there is only perception. Our perception is based on our experiences, learning, culture, environment, imprinting, teachers, history, social group, language, biology, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, gender, politics, age, infirmity, socio-economic status, etc. etc. This is how we form our reality and thus our perceptions and beliefs, are solely ours and ours alone. And as such it is an amazing thing, and a precious product of the totality of Us.
However, our personal reality and perception, should never be construed or believed to be the ultimate truth. It is not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It is simply and wonderfully our truth. It is what we believe and base our decisions, our choices, our words and behaviors upon, and it is wonderful and unique. It doesn’t need to be shared by anyone else, and in truth while others can agree with us (and we often gravitate to those who do, based on our innate desire to be accepted), they can never match completely with our own personal truth. Our truth is how we validate ourselves in the decisions we make, how we comfort ourselves in times of trouble and concern upon whether or not “we did the right thing”.
It is what we all use to strengthen our own inner and inter-personal arguments. It’s how we build the foundation for the life we lead, and how we learn to trust ourselves and our judgments.
However, the REAL and ULTIMATE truth is… that we were never right. And…, we never needed to be. Take a patient breath with me… because I know this sounds completely contradictory to what you may believe. I say we (and me) were never right, because again there is NO universal ‘rightness’. All things can be found subjective in the experiences of the participants. Even murder can be justified by the murderer. They could see it as due to…., self-defense, poverty, fear, entitlement, prejudice etc.. It doesn’t make it right. It certainly doesn’t make them right.
Because, Our ability to justify our actions to ourselves does not make those actions right, to anyone else. It simply enables us to keep on keeping on in a world filled with confusion and uncertainty. That is all it needs to do - to help us create, maintain and live in a crazy world full of competing thoughts and contradictions. That’s what our ‘rightness’ does. It helps us reaffirm our own personal truth, our own personal reality with all its layers and components and complexity, like I described above. And that is beautiful, if we understand that it is ours and ours alone and was never meant to be placed the actions or beliefs of another person. Remember, no one is here on this earth to be responsible for our emotions or our emotional symptoms. They are here for their own reasons.
In addition, to none of us being right, and therefore no one else being right-er than us, lol. The most important part is that we never needed to be right. No one ever expected it of us. Not even God or Goddess. No one ever asked us to be the knowers of perfect truth or rightness because we are human beings with intentional individuality.
So, to recap: we were never right, and we never needed to be. It’s okay, we are okay, and in fact we’re exactly as we are meant to be. Brilliant, original, unique and some would even say perfect for all our imperfections.
So, if you are still with me and willing to accept the thought that ‘we were never right’ you will notice that this opens you up to entirely new thoughts towards those that we feel have wronged us, and that is: what if they were right? Right for them, of course. Just as our choices were right for us at that time in our past, that we did our best, even if they were not right for someone else. Thus, neither of us were ever Right, with a capital R. We simply and unequivocally were ourselves, which is all we were ever meant to be. Take a breath with me. This means that you can finally free yourself from the need for perfection. Accept yourself wholly and completely for who you were and who you are from this moment forward, and you will find yourself healing in ways you didn’t even realize were possible.
Thank you so much for joining, I am going to go to the comments, and as always if you have questions please feel free to ask in the group, or click my calendly link and schedule a free, freedom from pain session with me.
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