Forgiveness practice

How do you feel about the “F” word?  Does it make you cringe?

Do your shoulders go up around your ears, a possible shudder or does it make your teeth hurt?  

Do you glare at the person who uses  “that” word and then turn your back?  

Do you tell them how offensive you find that word and that the use of that word shows limited development?

Oh yes, by the way, I’m not talking about the word – Fuck – I’m talking about the word Forgiveness.  

Forgiveness, such a gorgeous word, but so frigging tricky to actually do, yet exceptionally important for your sake, not anybody else’s.  You know the old saying – “Holding onto anger and resentment is like drinking a glass of poison and hoping the other person dies?”  It’s so true, half the time the person you are angry at doesn’t give a flying fig, can’t remember, doesn’t care or a myriad of other reasons, but you holding onto this energy does hurt you.  So unless you are one of the exceptional few who has figured out how to ingest a substance and send it through the ethers into another human body, you might want to try a different route.

About 8 years ago one of my fabulous mentors advised me that I had a bit of an issue with forgiveness and they suggested I should work on that.  Excuse me?  I don’t carry grudges, I have no resentments, all is well in my world – mmmm, have to say, bullshit.   So I chanted the Ho’oponopono for 2 weeks (yes a full 2 weeks, most of the time under my breath).  Now if you don’t know what I’m talking about, or think that I am referring to some exotic tropical beverage, it’s the prayer of forgiveness and it’s super simple there are 4 lines.  You pull the image up of the person or situation and sing, say, chant “I’m sorry, Please forgive me, Thank you, I love you.”  

Now that may sound totally daft to you or you may have worked with it, but it does work.  If you want more information there are some fabulous sites online with a more detailed methodology and the back piece of where it came from.

So after the allotted time my response was – Sweet!  I did two weeks of this so I’m all good right?  I’ve released any anger, resentment etc that was there.  The answer that came back was yes and Heck NO!  I had most certainly dug deep and forgiven my 3rd grade teacher, my ex-husband, and everyone or anything else that I had a resentment to, but I hadn’t bothered forgiving myself.  

My delicious ego kicked up with “Why do I need to forgive myself, I am a positive paragon of virtue!”  (Which I am most certainly not).  The fact of the matter is I’m human and I do fuck up (there’s that other F word), I have said unkind things, I have hurt someone’s feelings, I have forgotten a kids assembly at school, I have hurt my own feelings and state of being with huge negative self talk, disparaging comments and self attack.  

So what I realised was as fantabulous as it was to do a two week process, I needed to have a daily forgiveness practice, not just a now and then one. Daily I needed to release any anger, blame, shame, judgement, fear or perceived stuff, whether directed at someone else or at myself.  Why?  Because that stuff can build up and be pushed down and it was limiting me, it was feeding fears, it was something I couldn’t change other than to say “I’m sorry”, it was energy being wasted.

So if you are thinking – I don’t need to practice forgiveness.  Really?  Come play with me for a moment and let me paint a random day.  

You drive to work and someone cuts you off and you have to slam on your brakes to stop from rear ending them.  WTH!!!!  You were there, in that lane, didn’t they bother looking?  At work there is drama happening and you hear through the grapevine that someone you thought was a friend is having a good old gossip about you, and it’s not very pleasant.  The work day trudges along and Maria from accounting comes bouncing up to tell you how her latest fling is taking her to Cuba for 2 weeks, yet you can’t get your husband to go to the next State.  Traffic is bad on the drive home and you swear, curse and beat yourself up about life in general.  You didn’t pitch your very cool idea at the office meeting, you allowed yourself to be talked over…….

You get home to find that your darling family (who’s been home for a few hours now) are all just lounging around, or are out, the house is a mess and no one has bothered to open the fridge and think “What should we have for dinner.”  You cook dinner, your youngest is in a foul mood and apparently feels it’s all your fault so most certainly acts out, you have to heckle the kids to do their homework and then you receive an email from work that asks for yet another thing that wasn’t meant to be happening for 2 more weeks and finally after everyone else has been tended you fall into bed exhausted.  

So no resentments, no anger, no self attack?  

If you can say you have none of the above then I should come meet you and you better be sitting under a Bodhi tree and looking uber serene!

So I invite you every night before you close your peepers, make a list of what you forgive, who you forgive and most importantly forgive yourself. Forgive your fears, your shame, your blame and your judgement, forgive the neighbour and their yappy dog that barks at 5am.  Come back to the place of loving and appreciating yourself.  The reality is you are awesome and you are human, that doesn’t mean you need to spend your time beating yourself up and holding onto anger.  The more you forgive those around you and yourself, the more space you create in your life to flourish.  

Drinking water or a nice cuppa tea is far better than drinking poison.