Forgiveness

We set the intention to forgive with our minds, and we build the house of intent of
love.
But then we allow our true feelings to express within those safe walls.
True forgiveness can only be achieved through evolution of the damaged soul.

WHEN OTHERS HAVE HURT US ...

When someone hurts you...

Cry your pain

Cry your heartbreak

Cry your rage

Cry your grief

Cry your terror

Confronting an abuser from the past rarely solves anything. It certainly doesn't heal
anything. There's only one way to heal your wounds. (See the above list.)

If someone is actively abusing you in the now, heal as much as you can and leave the
situation without confrontation if possible. There is no need to fight with them, or try
to get them to change their behavior. You may want to state your boundaries, and you
may want to let them know that their treatment of you hurt you. But usually this just
turns into an argument about what they did (or didn't do) or how wrong they are, or
how crazy or wrong you are, etc. etc. It's usually best to just leave.

There will be situations where you know the person who hurt you will never ask you
for forgiveness. This is a source of pain in itself. The original thing they did that hurt
you is one pain. But feeling like they don't care about your feelings enough to make it
right with you is another heartbreak. Rage then wants to hammer on them, to make
them see how they have hurt you, to make them CARE. But there may be times when
you have to accept that they don't. Then, all you can do is cry your own hurt, and just
let them go.

The most important thing about forgiving others is -- you can't just choose to forgive.
Forgiveness is a feeling. It's an absence of pain and anger and blame, but it's also
acceptance and love and understanding. Forgiveness without these elements is not
truly forgiveness. It's just lip service.

We receive quite a lot of pressure in our culture to "be forgiving". But every child on
every playground knows that "making nice" and "saying sorry", really means
"FAKING nice". If we hold grudges or stay angry when somebody says they're sorry,
we're judged as hard-hearted or unloving. But the truth is, until the hurt and anger are
completely healed, it's not possible to really FEEL forgiveness for the person who
caused the hurt. The only way to get to real forgiveness, is to cry through all the pain.
And then forgiveness is reached naturally, unforced, and at the deepest heart levels.
You may still choose not to be around the person. You may need to stay safely away
from them. But you feel love and understanding for them, and accept that they are
where they are.

When You Can't Forgive...

There have been times when just the *thought* of forgiving my abuser brought up
such rage that I thought I'd explode.

There have been times when I have been SURE that it was impossible to forgive.

There have been times when my rage felt totally justified in staying angry forever.

If you've been badly hurt, I know you know what I mean.

But what you must know is that the powerful feeling of rage is covering over a bunch
of other feelings - fear, heartbreak, vulnerability, betrayal - and all those feelings need
to be healed. Not for the abuser. Not in order to forgive him/her, but for you. Pain
unmoved is a poison in the system. Pain unmoved can build and eventually fragment,
and you lose a part of yourself.

What often happens is that we start working through the pain, and we hit this wall of
rage that seems to go on forever. We cry and cry and cry and the rage never seems to
heal. Even if we say that we have conscious intent to heal, something within is
holding onto the rage, refusing to let go. And when that happens, no matter how much
rage you cry, you will never get past the wall. You will never be able to connect with
the deeper feelings.

Rage gives us a false sense of power over the pain. It masks the pain of feeling
helpless and hurt. We cannot find our REAL power until all the feelings have been
healed. In order to get past this particular wall, we have to "cross the pattern". We
have to interrupt the ragey spinning, and we have to interrupt it at a deep heart level.
We must set an intention to find forgiveness for our abuser. When we set that intention
- and when we mean it - we interrupt the record that is playing on auto-loop, and then
we are able to reach down into the layers of pain beneath the rage to find complete
healing. Actually, interrupting the pattern will be the hardest part. Once you have
successfully crossed the pattern, you'll know it because your feelings will come
bubbling up, erupting like a volcano. You may feel like you're vomiting pain, spewing
out toxic waste through your tears, out of control. Try to let yourself go with this
process, and just cry as long and as deeply as you can. This is the explosion of all
that's been held down behind the rage wall. And this is the stuff that needs healing so
you can reach your own completeness and power.

WHEN WE HAVE HURT OTHERS ...

There are 7 elements involved in forgiveness of the self (not necessarily in this order):

Owning what you've done.

This is the beginning of bringing acceptance to the situation and the step that requires
the most courage. We start by admitting to it, and looking at it honestly. Feeling the
feelings involved, ALL the feelings, not just shame at having done it.

Making a commitment not to do it again.

This is the beginning of bringing love to the situation. Heart is extremely sensitive to
the hurts of others, and is wounded by every heartless act, including our own. Broken
hearts armor up or fragment away. When we commit to behaving differently, we help
our heart feel safe to come back home, and come out of its self-protective armor. We
set an intention to bring love to the situation. Of course, it's never just as simple as
setting the intention. There is still much healing work to be done.

Healing the cause.

All the parts of us that are not inside the circle of loving acceptance have the potential
to be perpetrators, heartless, cruel, blind to pain in others, etc. People are only "safe"
or "trustworthy" as much as they have themselves healed. Since nobody is 100%
healed and whole, nobody is 100% trustworthy. We all have parts that we would not
want to own, that have done truly awful heartless things. That does not mean we are
bad people. It does not mean that those parts are bad. We must allow ALL our parts to
cry through their rage and terror and grief, to fully heal and come back within the
circle. When they're healed, they won't act out in cruel ways anymore. This is the only
way we can truly become trustworthy.

Healing the shame.

Real shame can be cried. Remorse shows that you have heart present in the situation.
This can be cried and healed. However, shame and remorse are not the same as guilt.
Guilt is a false feeling, a pressue, a judgment. It hooks itself onto our real feelings of
shame or self-hate, and then acts like a critical voice that actually keeps us spinning in
thoughts of self-recrimination and self-blame. Spinning in thought will never heal the
feelings. And that's the point. Guilt does not want us to reach self-forgiveness. If you
find yourself spinning in guilt-driven critical-thought spirals, you need to try to stop
thinking altogether. Take it to the mat. Guilt cannot be cried. So, let the feelings come
up as raw, visceral feelings, and get the tears flowing. Then shame will heal, and guilt
will have no home within you, no hook to attach itself to, and no tool to beat you
with.

Forgiving one's self.

This is where love and acceptance are naturally born, once the previous steps have
been completed. You cannot just jump to self-forgiveness. You can set an intention to
forgive yourself, which will open the doors to owning what you've done, etc, etc. But
until you have healed the cause and gained the understanding of all the parts that have
acted out in their denial, you won't find true self-forgiveness.
Getting the forgiveness from the ones we hurt.
This is an important step, but not always an easy one. Many people don't ask for
forgiveness because it feels like groveling. They fear the other person will attack them
or make them "eat dirt" to pay for what they did. If you feel afraid or reluctant to ask
forgiveness, then you can be pretty sure you still have shame or guilt held inside,
unhealed. Asking for forgiveness is not groveling. It is our heart, reaching out and
trying to make things right with the person we hurt. Heart always wants to bridge
gaps. Always. And when you have healed all your shame and all the other feelings
involved, heart is born in that place where the pain was. When heart is born there, you
become parental to your own acts. Then Heart can reach out without shame. You can
take responsibility without self-flagellation. You take responsibility for what you have
done, without excuse, without kow-towing, and without guilt.

If you're finding yourself feeling defensive, you're still not ready to ask for
forgiveness. This is a sign you have guilt sitting on unhealed shame. When the shame
is fully healed, you don't have to defend. You admit to what you've done. You can
explain why you did it, if they're open to hearing it. But the feelings of defensiveness
won't be there.

Most importantly, you let them know that you feel for their pain, and have committed
to not hurting them in that way ever again. You don't have to grovel, or let them abuse
you (which is where guilt would try to take you). If they need to express their pain
and anger, you can listen to it, as much as you are able, as much as feels good to you.
You may need to set boundaries around this however. Verbal abuse heals nothing. If
they will cry with you, if they can reach ignition, THEN you have truly begun
bridging the gap and that is true pure gold.

This step is valuable even if you believe you have done nothing wrong. If you feel the
other person is hurt or angry with you unjustly, you can still make an apology from
the heart that does not make you or them wrong. You can simply say, "I'm sorry you're
hurting." Or, "I'm sorry my actions hurt you. I didn't mean to hurt you." However,
since we all have parts in a state of denial that might be acting out a covert agenda, it's
not usually possible to say with 100% certainty that 100% of you didn't want the
person to be hurt. In that case, you can say something like "I didn't consciously want
you to be hurt. If I have parts that DO want you hurt, I will look at that and I promise
to heal it."

Getting divine forgiveness (from Father/Mothergod).

Believing that Divine forgiveness is always there for us is very hard. We all carry a
deeply embedded, bone/marrow-level belief that we are here, cut off from spirit and
light, because we are bad, because there is something wrong with us. We believe, in
our marrow, that we are unforgiveable. These feelings need to be cried too, but it's
sometimes the most difficult thing to bring to the surface because its so closely tied in
with our survival. The marrow imprint that says we are unforgiveable, also says that if
we touch that place of pain, if we show how unforgiveable we feel, we'll have to
admit that it's true, and then we'll have to die. So we avoid this place, much like the
ways we avoid our own self-hate. Opening to the love of the divine Father and Mother
triggers an avalanche of old stuff, and it all must be cried and healed. It's the old story
of pouring clean water into a glass full of muck. There is no room for the clean water.
As the new lovingness and forgiveness comes in, the old mucky shame and self-hate
must pour out.

The love of the Mother is the sweetest, most comforting thing imaginable, and the
Father's love is bright and supportive and soothing. There is no act or feeling that they
do not accept, and cannot forgive. Unfortunately, we can't just jump to this place and
expect that it will magically heal all the other things. It won't. We still have to cry our
own parts that were lost, that committed the hurtful acts. We still have to heal our own
shame, and find our own self-forgiveness. If you start with this step, you'll find
yourself triggered right back through the other steps, so it really doesn't matter where
you start. Just know that the process isn't magical. It's pretty simple. It's just not easy.

My Fault / Your Fault

The Double Sided Coin of Blame & Guilt

Spinning in Guilt and Blame

Guilt (my fault) and blame (your fault) are two sides of the same coin, opposite
extremes of a primarily mental activity that is designed to stop, suppress, or mask the
real feelings.

Guilt and blame manifest in a sort of "spinning". When I'm in one of these spins,
whether it is focused outward or inward, I find I can't cry my feelings.

Guilt masks and uses self-hate, primarily.

Blame masks and uses rage, primarily.

I say primarily, because both these activities can be used to mask, stop, or suppress
other feelings as well.

Blame uses real and true blaming-rage / hurt-rage. Sometimes it masks terror and
other feelings, but most often it uses my real rage as the bedrock for its judgments and
proclamations and assigning of fault. Then I find myself spinning in thoughts of
blame and rage and how they did XYZ, and s/he said ABC, and so on, cataloging all
the nitpicking details of how the person harmed or wronged my. I may tell myself "If I
could only tell them how I feel, that would make it better, if they would just listen and
hear me, then it would heal." Actually, the healing doesn't happen like that.

I know this. I KNOW it. From many years of experience healing my rage, I really do
KNOW it. But it still doesn't stop me from wanting to lambast somebody or tell them
how rotten I think they are.

Guilt uses real and true feelings of self-hate, shame, regret, and so on, to keep me
spinning in a cycle of self-judgments. Again, there may be other feelings involved, but
often guilt uses self-hate as the bedrock for its judgments and proclamations against
me. Then I find myself spinning in thoughts of embarrassment, shame, self-loathing,
wishing I hadn't done XYZ, or how I should have ABC.
Until the activities and spinning are stopped, the true feelings held hostage beneath
the surface will never be able to rise up and cry and truly be healed. But until the real
feelings underneath are healed, the pattern won't really be stopped.

It's an important distinction to know that guilt and blame at this level are not feelings.
In order to move guilt off our planet and out of our souls, we need to really see it for
what it is. And what it is not.

Real pain can be cried and healed. Blame and guilt do not cry. That is how you can
know what is a pattern and what is not. That is how you will know when you have
succeeded in reaching beneath the pattern to the real feelings.

The Spiral

Blame generates guilt, which generates blame, which generates guilt....

When someone hurls their blame at me, I feel BLAMED. It hurts. It triggers my self-
hate which says I must deserve to be hated and blamed. When I accept this blame,
when I take it in as something I deserve, I let guilt steal my essence, take my space.

Guilt pressurizes. Guilt pushes on us and makes us smaller and smaller. Guilt lives in
the space we abdicate. Guilt manipulates, and little by little, erodes your life so that
pretty soon, something OTHER than you is in charge of your life.

The smaller I feel, the more helpless rage is generated.

I may not be able to rage at the person or situation that is blaming me and
compressing me. But deep down, in the pit of my stomach and lower, in my survival
chakra, a churning rage boils and bubbles. This rage turns to the acting out mask of
blame.

Guilt has generated blame.

My blame may not manifest directly. My rage may feel so helpless and suppressed
that it may come out as blame at another person entirely. I may blame someone
smaller or more helpless than me.

They in turn might feel bad, suppressed, pushed on, pushed down, hated and blamed.
They might accept the blame and let guilt take a little more of their space.

And so on, and so on. And round and round it goes.

How to Stop the Spinning?

I have had the experience when trying to stop the guilt spinning, of having the needle
"jump" to the other side of the record. I notice myself spinning in guilt, and I try to
stop the thoughts, stop the run-on litany of how awful I am, and all of a sudden I find
myself running on the track of blame and spinning in the litany of how awful "they"
are. I haven't stopped the pattern from spinning, I've just jumped over to the opposite
side of it. The same thing often happens when I try to stop myself from spinning in
blame. I flip over into guilt and self-hate.

It helps me to think of the patterns as if they're somewhat alive. They are powered by
many many years of survival that says we must not feel what we really feel. And so
they have an investment in continuing to spin, in keeping the real feelings suppressed.

Since our goal is healing, it's essential to get to the real feelings underneath it all.
When I find myself spinning in blame, I try to let myself cry the helpless rage I feel.
When I find myself spinning in guilt, I try to let myself cry the self-hate I feel. Or
whatever the feelings are that are hiding beneath the mental activity.

The first time you do this it might be surprisingly easy. The next time it might not be
so easy. That's because the guilt/blame pattern itself, and your own resistance is
caught off-guard the first time. But after that it becomes aware that you're trying to
break its control, and it clamps down harder.
Blaming rage has been stuck spinning in blaming and acting out for so long that it
knows no other way. The best way to start with stuck blaming rage is to make it non-
verbal. Blaming rage, at the deep gut level, IS a true feeling, and it can be cried, but
it's one of the hardest feelings to get to because it has been conditioned to go
immediately to masking, which means acting out either blame on others, or guilt on
one's self.

Good solid blaming rage that moves in sounds and tears is an immensely healing
thing. But it needs to be allowed to really cry so that it doesn't continue to act out on
others and cause more harm in the world.

You might need to use some tricks to get around the walls that suddenly appear
between you and your real feelings.

Once you've cried the true feelings under the blame, then the magic happens. You'll
find new and creative ways to resolve your relationships. You may need to talk to the
person about your angry/hurt feelings, but you'll be able to do it without attacking
them. And if the relationship needs to be severed, you'll be able to do it without guilt
or shame or doubt. And you'll find new acceptance for yourself, faults and all. You'll
be able to take up the space that belongs to you, and take your life back from the guilt
that has been sitting in your rightful place.

It won't happen all at once, and it's not easy. It's a process, it's a path we walk one step
at a time. But as long as we keep crying, we can't help but move forward. That's the
real magic of the Path of Tears.