“You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.” – Buddha
I always thought forgiveness was a bit of a goofy topic.
Not unimportant, just goofy:
A little too far over on the love and light end of the spirituality spectrum for my taste.
So I didn’t give it much attention, until my 30 day solo retreat last month when I finally softened my cranky old ego long enough to recognize how mission-critical forgiveness really is.
Here’s the TL;DR version:
Whatever we haven’t forgiven sits like a log jam in our mind-body system, obstructing the free flow of energy, causing pain, sickness, and dysfunction.
If that interests you, here’s the expanded version…
One of my primary teachers, Ricardo, once said that the final barrier standing in the way of his awakening was — in his words:
“Forgiving all of the sins of the world.”
All of ’em:
Everything from stubbed toes and overcooked hamburgers to homicide and genocide and beyond.
No easy task for a dude who goes toe to toe with humanity’s deepest, darkest sins on a semi-nightly basis, healing people from suffering so ugly I don’t even want to put it in writing.
But when he finally managed to forgive… all of it… the energetic release unlocked healing abilities that turned him into the most skilled practitioner of his generation.
So that’s cool.
But why, exactly?
What does forgiveness have to do with awakening?
(full disclosure, not fully awakened over here, just reporting on what I’m seeing from my current vantage point)
A full awakening — the complete realization of your human potential — is mirrored in the mind-body as total free-flow of energy:
Nothing blocked, nothing obstructed, nothing being held onto.
And what are most of us holding onto?
A tangled mess of old emotional crap that has little to no relevance on our daily lives:
That annoying thing our friend did last week, the crazy-ass comment Trump made on Twitter, the time our little brother stole the Playstation controller right as we were about to beat the game…
…Blah.
While Ricardo is working on forgiving mass genocide, most of us can’t even forgive our ex-girlfriends.
We think withholding forgiveness gives us power, while it is our very withholding that constricts the channel power flows through.
So the (lofty) goal I’ve set for myself is:
Forgive everything.
Every damn thing, whether I want to or not.
I don’t need to like what I’m forgiving, I don’t need to agree with what I’m forgiving, and I don’t need to make friends with what I’m forgiving.
I just need to forgive it, which means letting go of it, completely, in body, mind, and spirit, so that I’m no longer bound by it in any way.
Not easy, but nobody said this path was.
So that’s (part of) what I’ve been up to.
Try it on, if you find it useful 🙂
– T
P.S. Two additional points, ’cause why not:
#1:
Hardening towards another creates hardening within the physical and energetic structures of the heart itself…
…Which blocks the flow of intelligence, intuition and spiritual insight.
(and, on the extreme end, can cause real physical issues with your heart)
#2:
Just saying you “forgive” doesn’t mean you do.
The words aren’t the real thing.
Forgiveness means actually letting go — unclenching, accepting, feeling the pain and allowing it to drain it out of you — until it’s really, actually, honestly — gone.
In other words, it takes work.
