Let love be your guiding force

Forgive…let the past be the past

I’ve been away longer than I would like and am so glad to be reconnecting. I’m deeply immersed in other pressing writing projects which, when added to the usual demands of family, has meant finding the time to blog is challenging. Despite this, the affirmation has coloured my reality and in the contemplation of it, I have witnessed more of my resistance fall away, which has been beautiful.

Forgiveness, I believe, is far too meaningful and indeed powerful to be ensnared by the limits of the conceptual mind and its deep attachment to right and wrong. I have instead immersed myself in forgiveness in the context of the great teachers like Buddha and Christ, who challenged us to work with it as an essential experience or practice of spiritual awakening.  

Many people consider forgiveness to be conditional, determined according to how nefarious the harm that was done. Forgiveness for these people has a limit, a point beyond where it, and so their own soul’s loving awareness, cannot flow. Often, they see this restraint as an act of self-preservation, to cut the pain and avoid further discomfort. In truth though, they are restraining their own beautiful heart, which then creates additional struggle, and perhaps pain, to open it.  A cornerstone of spiritual life is obliterating limitation, so given a choice, I will follow the wisdom of the masters and work with forgiveness as an inside job – as challenging as that can be!

Have I experienced the giving and receiving of forgiveness? Yes I have. Are there still remnants in my mind where I hold a lack of forgiveness? I suppose so – but they are few. That is the point right there, that  lack of forgiveness resides in the judging mind fed by the story of the physical drama and the ego’s attachment to who did what to whom.  Oh how we love being right. When I am in my righteousness though, I can hardly breathe – it can’t be healthy! How long will I wait for the apology that may never come? Not one moment longer! 

I can understand how people who have had massive harm done to them or family can’t move out of their head to their heart – the pain is too acute – I get it, but I still believe the journey must be made; in this life or the next. If we begin to open in the smaller pain, at least we are moving.

We must let the stories go so that we can drop into our heart where the seeds of forgiveness are waiting to be watered – maybe with our own tears. When I breathe into my heart, the stories fall away and I just feel this great presence of where I am right now. To truly be present in the now, we must honour everything that brought us to this point – even that which was painful or, in our eyes, wrong and know that it is part of something much, much greater.

When meeting life from the heart, forgiveness as something you bestow upon another really has no meaning. To me, to forgive someone is a little pious, as though I’m claiming superior spiritual ground – no thanks! No, for me it is far more about a state of awareness that unifies the impermanent but often tragic human condition with the eternal sanctity of soul. In the face of fear, whenever we seek love and security outside of ourselves, we scramble and compete and harm and sever. In the common ground of our humanity, in all our glorious imperfection, how can I cast the judgement shadow on another? In the words of Ram Dass, “We are all just walking each other home”. Sometimes the road is really dark and pierces our heart, other times it is breathtaking in its beauty – but we’re all in it together and the road is lighter in forgiveness.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean that I want to open myself to more pain - in fact the opposite is true. Clinging to painful experiences, especially in angry righteousness, creates far more pain than taking it to your heart, then letting it go. It doesn’t mean I want to be in the company of people that have wronged me either, but not because I am holding a grudge, or am in fear, but simply because often they are still attached to the old so there can be know true new ‘now’ between us. I remain open to whoever enters my life, mindful of finding our common ground, not our differences.

When we are in pain, we all long for remedy, for sustenance and grounding, and often when we have been hurt by others, we are left with no choice but to find it within ourselves. For me, the poet Rumi sums it up best:

“Honour this longing. Those that make you return, for whatever reason, to the spirit, be grateful to them. Worry about the others, who give you delicious comfort that keeps you from prayer.”

The embodiment of those sentences has taken me years of practice, specifically in working with my book, Your Beautiful Life. www.yourbeautifullife.com.au But it has released so much struggle and pain that I can only love and cherish this now moment, which must influence my perception of the past that brought me here.

My new affirmation for the week is:

Let love be your guiding force

That follows on nicely from the last one, as true forgiveness is guided by true love.

Namaste

Sally