F + MO
Plus some info about the next online Death + Dying Coffee Convo
Hi!
I have a folder of bits + pieces. Thoughts, ideas, things I’ve read that I wanted to remember. Sometimes when I write I sit down and let it come. Sometimes I look through the b + p to see what jumps out.
This morning it was this: Earth is forgiveness school.
My first reaction, no coffee yet, was sheesh, no it’s not! Earth is impossibly hard! There is nothing forgiving about this place!
Fortunately it only took a second to realize what that sentence actually says.
Earth is forgiveness school.
It really is.
We talked about this in our spiritual wellness group the other day: how do we forgive ourselves? How do we forgive people who have harmed us?
The longer I live the more I believe this four-word sentence to be Truth. And also that forgiveness of self and of others is critical if one wants to live a good life.
Which I’ll simply assume you do.
Let’s walk through this:
#1 How do I forgive myself for the things I’ve done that I regret?
I have used a visualization for this that I find to be powerful. I go back in time, as who I am now, and encounter each version of myself: baby, child, teenager, young woman, young mother … and I hug that version of me and tell her that I know she did the best she could, even if she was the worst person in the room. I let teenage me or little girl me rest her head on the shoulder of 59-year-old me. I let her know that everything is OK. That we only know what we know at each stage of life.
As long as you have committed yourself to extracting the lessons and not repeating poor choices, you are on a path of spiritual evolution. No one makes it through this life with a clean record, that’s not how it’s supposed to work. The lessons we encounter, embedded in the situations and relationships we experience, are meant for us. It’s the only pathway toward evolution. Baked into this is the reality that we are going to screw up a lot.
Guilt is a useless, harmful waste of time. Visualize yourself waking up every day and strapping on a fifty-pound backpack filled with guilt. Makes it hard to get anything done, right? The only thing you’re doing by continually holding all that guilt is making your guilt muscles stronger. Guilt serves no purpose at all.
Write letters to yourself, if that works for you. Create a visualization that you like. Whatever it takes to remove guilt from your mind.
Here’s another visualization I use:
I am standing tall and my auric field is a beautiful cloak of white light around me. I am careful about who and what is allowed to dump their energy in my sacred space. When it feels like someone else’s stuff is taking up too much of my thoughts, I imagine myself gathering up all of that energy into a ball and handing it back to the person or institution, telling them, respectfully, to please go work on your stuff.
In the case of guilt, which, in my life could easily stem from the religious part of my childhood in which I was taught that I’m a bad person who does bad things, I might gather up a big ball of that energy, then imagine a Catholic priest outside my aura. Here you go, Father XYZ, this is not mine, please go do your work on yourself.
Sounds silly, but it works. Your thoughts create energy. You draw to yourself the contents of your thoughts. If you live your days hovering over all your regrets, stoking the fires of guilt, you’re just keeping alive something that is of no use. What do you expect the outcome of this to be?
Of course we have all made choices we wish we could undo. And you can. Make amends if that’s necessary, articulate to your beloveds your understanding that you have done harm, then live differently. Don’t do it again. Forgiving yourself is a power move, and we all know how good empowerment feels, right?
#2 How do I forgive others for the harmful things they’ve done to me?
I was about to write that this depends on the degree of the burn. But then again it doesn’t. If Earth is forgiveness school then we have to, have to forgive whoever harmed us. I have heard stories of prisoners of war forgiving their captors/torturers. Anything is possible if we decide it is.
When we cling to anger and disappointment we will ultimately make ourselves sick. The body keeps the score. If you can’t forgive a parent for parenting you poorly, you will suffer, always. If you are a parent, too, no doubt you’ve screwed up, too. Let the old folks off the hook. They probably had lousy parents, too. Do better! That’s how the cycle of mediocrity is broken.
We are all a bunch of novices here, fumbling our way through the mass of morass we’ve set up on this planet. I’m sure that people have hurt your feelings and let you down and broken your heart a hundred times by now. Look how ridiculous we all are!
Ultimately it all comes down to what you choose to think. Like fly fishing and cross-country skiing, looks easy, but is actually hard.
Sounds easy; takes a lot of practice.
Every single day you can decide what to think about any situation in your life. This is the incredible freedom you have to create for yourself a good life.
Do I wish I hadn’t been a drunken fool at one point in time? While I had three kids and was actively contributing to the demise of my second marriage? Most definitely yes. I have apologized to my kids and to my former husband, many times, clearly articulating my poor choices, taking ownership of the bad choices I made. And I have chosen a life of sobriety. I will never be that version of a jerk again. I’ll be another kind of jerk before it’s over, but hopefully it won’t last too long.
You can forgive another person across the distance, and energy workers can help you with this if it sounds confusing. You don’t have to confront someone, especially if you know it won’t go well. You can forgive in your heart and in your mind, opening space within yourself for the healing you need.
You can forgive someone with something written.
You can forgive someone in person. This happens from time to time, at end of life. It makes me sad that we wait until the bitter end to say the words everyone needs to hear, but … bltn, I guess. As a medium, I’ve channeled the words I’m sorry more times than I care to count.
My first job, after college, was teaching at Rippowam Cisqua School in Bedford, New York. I was an assistant in Kindergarten and sweet little Lily Rabe was in our class. Those of you old enough might recall the wonderful actress, Jill Clayburgh, who died in 2010. She is Lily’s mom. I deeply admired her and the way she was present and involved with Lily’s life. An interviewer once asked the elegant Jill the secret to her long marriage and she answered, simply, “forgive and move on, forgive and move on.”
Forgive for real, don’t give it lip service. Forgive yourself and forgive everyone who ever hurt you in any way. Make amends with the people who matter to you and hope they will forgive you, too. Make it your goal to be the valedictorian of Forgiveness School.
It matters.
xomo
Thank you so much, some of you, for asking about the online Death + Dying conversation. I’ve scheduled one for Saturday, July 20. You can sign up HERE and I’ll send a Zoom link close to the date.
Thanks for supporting and participating in the things I love!
This one’s coming home today ❤️❤️❤️
And we are leaving soon for new vistas … Slovenia!
