Forgiveness

The trees tell me they are in a constant state of total acceptance of all that is. From this place of awareness, forgiveness is unneccessary. Oh to be so free from judgement!
Life has it’s conditions, this is always the case. We have basic needs of survival, for food, shelter and protecting our children until they’re grown. We can offer a homeless person five dollars or even twenty, but we might not invite them home. Life is conditional. A mouse may choose to go on living, would rather not be a meal for someone else if he can help it, yet someday he might be that meal. We all make choices to continue living, just as what ate the mouse did. Our life is an amazing gift and we own the rights to care for it.
Acceptance takes us to another level of care. We can accept a homeless person’s right to be and choices she makes. We can offer compassion for those choices, out of respect, not guilt. We would not think of uprooting a tree growing on a windsweept cliff, judging it a poor choice of this tree. We might even admire it’s tenacity to handle such adversity. There is a randomness in nature that fits a perfect bell curve, we too are part of that.
Acceptance is a big goal. Most of the time we look at it as something we offer the external world, yet it truly begins in how we treat ourselves. Our humaness is not always easy to be with. An ideal is held in our minds eye and we strive to meet it. We fail, beat ourselves up and sometimes give up, locking into a pattern of stubborness that protects us but does not serve us. We hold up our imperfections to others and suggest that we can’t do anything about them. We wallow in being stuck, judge ourselves incapable, and deny responsiblity. We are more than this.
Today consider looking at some aspect of yourself that you don’t like. Maybe not the biggest, toughest thing. Pick something small and maybe concrete, a little habit of picking at your cuticles, or judging a particular type of person, anything really. Then hold that part of yourself as human, not perfect but okay. Hold yourself in compassion for this little fault, for this small imperfect part of you that is oh so human. Open your heart to forgiving yourself for this and allow your love to embrace it as you would a small immature child. This is a part of you, allow it. It’s okay to be an imperfect human. Allow your heart to nourish this part also, not just the parts you like.
This is how we begin to open to a new level of awareness, in just small steps as this. This is what is held in our ’shadow’ side; the parts of ourself we don’t want to see and face. You have probably tried the ‘all is love and light’ path and sensed that it’s not taking you where you want to go. Light does not exist without the darkness. They balance each other and teach humanity how to achieve balance also. Think of the darkness as moving the light forward. When we feel or see that disliked part of ourselves, we finally have the opportunity to take action.
We can choose to ignore it thus causing it to be projected outside of ourselves (hence our troubled relationships) or we can begin to befriend what we don’t like. In quantum physics the observer changes the observed. We can begin to heal ourselves by sitting in acceptance of what’s not so nice. This is challenging of course, yet now is a good time to start. In wanting our world to be filled with peace and light, we can create it by taking in vs projecting out what we don’t like. In loving what is, we absorb and transform our personal darkness into light and sadness into joy.
We have perfected the pushing away of what is not good and it hasn’t worked. Now we can begin to be present for ourselves in a new way that heals us. This builds trust and awareness, and awareness opens new dimensions of reality, allowing new depth and meaning to nourish our hearts.
Blessings,
Laurel