I sometimes do. And I admit as inspiration for this post came, and words for it started flowing together in my mind, there came a moment when part of me said Oh no, don’t write this, your readers will think that you are an awful resentful person. And there was an ugly gray-brownish bad vibes inner image with it. 😀
But I think all of us can agree, that sometimes stuff happens that is hard to forgive.
It can be hard to forgive, even if you are trying to be a good spiritual person. Or if you simply know, that holding onto some resentment isn’t good for you and you heard the metaphors for it countless time. You know I am talking about these two:
1. “Holding onto resentment is like drinking poison and expecting other person to die. (I mean, die? I don’t want them to die. I want them to get it what they did wrong, acknowledge it and apologize. Chocolate and flowers wouldn’t hurt either.)
2. “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else — you are the one who gets burned.”
I mean, they are good metaphors, but after you heard/read them many times, your ego just does a little yawn, a little eye roll and keeps on hating those shit eaters who hurt you.
But the more evolved part of you is tired of dragging around that weight of old painful memories, and you can recognise that they are dragging you down. So you want to forgive. And you know that doesn’t mean you have to hang out with those people again, if you don’t want to. You know you don’t have to tell them you forgave them. You want to forgive for your own good, for your own peace of mind, so you can be in the flow of life more fully.
And while it is usually easy to forgive, when a person who hurt us understand why we feel hurt and apologizes, there are sorrys we will never hear. And those can be tough to let go off.
Especially, because our protection manager wants to make sure that such a thing never happens to us again. Ah, trust issues.
So, I have a list of events and people I am having a hard time forgiving.
Not that kind of list.
I made a list of those memories, because the same ones keep repeating themselves.
I love how just making a list makes the feelings associated with those memories more manageable. They don’t feel any more as something huge that is taking up your body from behind and you can’t exactly see what is. On paper (or screen), they seem like something you can observe, as watching a picture or a video.
So I wondered what happens, if I go regularly through that list and practice forgiveness. How will the images in my mind change? Will I heal my trust issues?
And most importantly, will I heal the self-trust issue?
You know how you start to blame yourself when some things repeat themselves? Different people, same pattern. Of course, it happened to me again. I never learn. I had a bad feeling about this. My intuition tried to warn me and I didn’t listen. I am so stupid. When I will learn the lesson?! Stupid, stupid, stupid, doom doom doom.
I wrote the list 3 weeks ago and went through it 8 times so far. Saying I am sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you (known as Ho’oponopono ) or saying I forgive you, I release you.
The images associated with those painful memories started to change. At moments, when going through the list, I could see myself laughing together with those people.
But today I felt slight irritation while going through the list. And I started saying I see you, I acknowledge you in my mind. To myself.
I see you. I see how confused you were in this situation. I acknowledge, how painful that was. It’s normal to feel sad about this, it hurt, you lost something dear to you in this situation. That caused you to question and doubt yourself. I am sorry about that. It really was confusing.
It felt so good.
And so I learned something I wanted to share with you.
Sometimes is not hard to forgive, because we are not under-standing enough of other person’s situation. Sometimes is hard to forgive, because we are not co-standing with ourselves.
With Love,
