by Donna Quesada: Although I have written about forgiveness before, it continues to stand out in my mind as one of the essentials, in terms of self-work.
It is such an important part of personal healing that without it, the possibility of experiencing true and genuine joy is compromised.
As long as we are carrying the weight of a previous injury or offense, we are not able to be light in this moment. There’s a heaviness within that makes lightness impossible. We are, in effect, sabotaging ourselves by our abiding preoccupation with what happened. We make ourselves into victims and then invest our emotional energy into it, to keep our “story” alive.
When we feel that we have been hurt or mistreated, there’s something in our psyche that wants to hold on to it. Even if we don’t say it in these terms to ourselves, we “victimize” ourselves and we don’t want to let it go.
We stew on it and we run the event through our minds, over and over, justifying our stance.
And we keep ourselves stuck there and never feel like we’re able to let it go. We can’t move on and just enjoy the present moment. Crazy as it sounds, we feel as though we could somehow redo what happened by continuing to run it over in our minds.
It’s as if we would be trying to reverse the hands of time… Trying to control the uncontrollable.
But acceptance is what dislodges this mechanism. To accept is to enter into the ease of non-resistance. As all wisdom teachings say, this is the first step to healing. To accept is to let go of the resistance so that we can enjoy what is.
Or… we can continue to chew on it. There comes a moment where we realize, it’s a mental choice.
As long as I am “chewing the bone.” I am simultaneously investing emotional energy into it. I am literally draining myself. I’m saying, “I can’t be happy until X.” Of course, X is an impossibility because we can never reverse things. And I am placing my happiness on something that is impossible… even if it is just the hope of getting an apology. In essence, I am holding myself hostage.
Acceptance pushes that block away. When I simply accept, I take my power back and begin to heal. I take my energy back to rise above what ever it was.
It is the way forward. It turns the key to the door of a new chapter of our lives. It sets in motion the healing process.
Why would we want to make ourselves miserable, anyway? I have found that it boils down to two reasons: Firstly, because it doesn’t kill us on the spot. Secondly, because we think that if we accept it, that this gesture will be akin to condoning it.
But to accept is not to condone… to accept is not to say “what you did is okay.“ To accept is to say “what you did is what you did.” And I can’t begin to know the 100 reasons why. They probably don’t understand their own behavior! So, how could we begin to understand? It doesn’t much matter anyway.
When it all comes down to it, this moment is all that really matters.
What is, is what is.
Say to yourself… “I choose to heal. I choose to take my power back.”
I choose to forgive!
