I had the pleasure of feeling and exploring deeply and all month in our meditation group we’ve been intricately examining our relationship with forgiveness.
Too many of us use it and other spiritual principles as a way of #spiritualbypassing to skip over feeling, not just intellectualizing, the hurts, the hard convos, the anger, pain, rejection and grief; I know I did.
Always quick to forgive, I got a lot of accolades for “being the bigger person“ and “getting over it and letting go so quickly” all of this is part of my tough girl syndrome. Part of my savior syndrome. Part of my inability, to be vulnerable and show weakness. And brilliantly adapted as part of an old program from my first relationship with a terrifying malignant narcissist, who tried repeatedly to break me and I knew that’s what he wanted so I would never show it, I would never give him the satisfaction.
Enter tough girl armor.
I told myself I forgave him because I understood he was sick and broken, etc. “I’d signed up for it so it was my responsibility and choice” but when you understand the psychology and nervous system you start to see an even deeper truth and another layer of emotional avoidance in that language and belief too.
Cuz the truth was, I had been deeply harmed, and I was never honest about that pain with myself him or anyone anyone around me. I “higher minded” my way right into another toxic 12 yrs that I continued to tell myself “you’re not a victim, you have a choice, and you’re choosing this “. It empowered me or so I thought, but as I practice rigorous honesty, I see a deeper truth still; I was disconnected from my sense of choice, because I was in a trauma mind and body, I was being reactive, powerless to my unconscious pains and now the drug addiction to cope with them - not responsible,no ability to respond- but me not being responsible or looking responsible was one of my worst fears. So I continued to tell myself things like “it’s nobody’s fault, he doesn’t mean it, I choose to be here, he’s doing his best, patience, unconditional love” etc etc
It all perpetuated the cycle.
This last relationship I did work out of that pattern as it came up. I expressed myself instead of just forgiving, I clearer my resentments lovingly with compassion and learned to balance it with truth, but I got exhausted bc he wouldn’t/couldn’t do the same.
Still I persisted “I love you, I know this is hard for us rn, idk what we’re in for but I’m here for it”. There were many things we’d neglected and I’d bypassed with “loving understanding” language and when he saw how much he was needing to work on (confirmed by our therapist) to meet me half way as I’d stopped holding the relationship up, he sunk it. He abandoned ship. He retraumatized me, and called it his best effort, called it love.
10 months of feeling the mud and muck and hate and anger it finally feels like the lotus flower of authentic forgiveness is budding.
I’ve been staying WITH my victim, hearing her, not rushing this even though everything in me just wanted to “be nice” and “let go”, there was continually more to feel and heal. So I continue to practice.
The forgiveness practice can not be forced. And in my experience the first thing to forgive is all the parts and patterns in you that helped you survive and simply wanted to love and be loved.
Then as Confucius say “when we truly understand ourselves we naturally understand others”.
Stand under and up for yourself. Speak to the parts that everyone else dismissed, everyone tells you to get over, including your hate. Learn to see it’s trying to protect you from harmful experiences. Then “forgive yourself for loving it.”
Forgive those pushing you but have those honest boundaries too. They truly do not know grief and I understand it bc I teach it and still it’s a deep practice each time I meet it. I get why ppl bypass, it’s a helluva lot easier in someways, in other ways it gets stuck in our cells and creates more trauma and I’m still unraveling decades of that and agreed, my amends to myself, was never to store it again.
So “forgive me” and hopefully be inspired by me as I show you how ugly this process is over and over (it’s repetition that builds a muscle;)
& then, once we’re rehabbed, we can turn to
See the same grace in the other who is still broken with nowhere near the awareness or perseverance or capacity it will take for them to do the same. I have always understood this for him, and I let that understanding of others keep me from my pain, no more.
Once we fully practice this, the lotus of surrender forgiveness and letting go can happen as a natural blossoming of letting it be.
But first,
The mud.
Or, continue running from true love and connection within and without. It’s up to you. PS I would forgive you if you ran bc this shit ain’t for the faint. ;)
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