Finding Forgiveness Until There is No One To Forgive
“Forgiveness is still and quiet and does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality nor seeks to twist it to appearances it likes. It merely looks ,and waits. It judges not. He who would not forgive must judge, for he must justify his failure to forgive but he who would forgive himself must learn to welcome the truth exactly as it is.” A Course In Miracles Workbook
If you can’t forgive yet, then don’t. Look to find it. And let forgiveness show you what to do.
Recently I received correspondence from a person I hadn’t intimately spoken to in a few years that I felt I was very close to. They offered endearing words that somehow tied a bow back onto a broken branch of the heart from a once unified tree between us. The last discussion hadn’t ended bad but it definitely had friction, word throws, differences and core punches.
I was, at the time of severance, very torn up about it. I took it very personally and it hurt me for a long time. I remember finally snapping out of it while I was listening to Marianne Williamson mention a survivor of the holocaust in her audio “Tears To Triumph”. Here, the survivor was forgiving Hitler with serious eloquence. She had let him go once she realized she didn’t want him sitting at her dinner table drinking coffee with her anymore and yet I was still offended by…. nothing. Then I realized i just couldn’t keep carrying this around. It was draining, taking life force and I was giving it an unconscious permission to do so. Gratefully, I had let it go quite a while ago, no longer codependent to needing the situation as an adversarial vice. I worked to do so and so this sentiment to get reached out to was easily received with open arms and no triggers. It was a delightful surprise I didn’t expect.
If we don’t like the actions of another, why do we keep them so close at our bedside?
Instead of a “me/us versus you/them “ as my mission and fuel, I’ve found another. My Source. The Source is my fuel, which is a source of Love, homeopathic and not allopathic in approach. In uncovering forgiveness, I’ve found it is not a naive permission. It’s to no longer pathologize our lives. Forgiveness is alchemy. It’s a process of turning a raw, unrefined base into gold. Forgiving is not forgetting. I can still remember, and I do.
Do NOT forget. And Always Forgive…..not “forgive and forget.”
In greeting another, what do you see? A familiar, comrade Soul, or at least a Soul reaching to find themselves, or a broken person with a lot of faults? It’s an important question to ask ourselves if we desire healthy, long lasting relationships in a life that is all relational.
“True peace is not the absence of a negative force but the activation of a positive one.” Marianne Williamson
It is truly so rare any of us will brush up against one another closely in this lifetime as humans, estimated at 7.7 billion as there are just so many of us. Many scientists feel the earth can only hold 9-10 billion humans! Then there is the realm of Souls. In the belief of reincarnation, it is believed there are infinite numbers of Souls in line up to enter a body as to have relationships and experiences. This makes each relationship quite miraculous. In the laws of karma, it is stated that each being you have ever interacted with was a Divine set up, there for some reason, whether you’ve liked this or not, from the moment of inception. In time, when you are ready, I hope this is some fuel for someone you might be considering forgiving since the lives of us all is quite a privilege and any interaction rare. Sometimes it can be all that is needed on a small everyday basis to keep a healthy relationship growing and going is just to find the first one to finally do it. Not every human interaction and especially groups of humans has been this gracious though, has it?
An entire Spirit realm rejoices anytime any one of us has found a renewed capacity to move forward and to get along.
ALL of us could indeed do some cleaning up and stand up and ask for some forgiveness of past actions so that we do not harbor there and finally set sail. In coalition with knowledge, what if compassion and forgiveness was at our very core of every informed act? The last stitch, truly, where the problem may have more likelihood to never be repeated is forgiveness. A history tends to repeat itself without it, where no lesson was learned and all the information easily forgotten, replicated and relocated into a new face, new relationship, job, culture, geography or religion.
Lather… rinse… repeat? How about just Evolve as to not Repeat.
Have you ever fought with the idea of forgiveness, feeling it was naive, gullible, weak, and somehow gave permission to the oppressor to just keep doing what they get high on, oppressing?
“Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave.” Indira Gandhi
Working on, mending and finding forgiveness takes a serious strength that I hadn’t understood before until l found the first person I really had to forgive. They came to me to show me what forgiveness feels like and what it does in a very challenging way that took it all out of me to get to where I am now, which ended up giving me everything. I got the message. It took the majority of my life, and has brought to me the greatest liberation and freedom along with the greatest power in the Universe, compassion.
A common daily mantra in Reiki I work with is “back to the source with great forgiveness”. I love repeating this in the present, anytime my feathers get ruffled as to not let a disagreement settle into my being and ruin a moment. I’m hoping to catch it as quickly as possible. Forgiveness holds an unbelievable amount of healing Shakti. A pivot, forgiveness is simply a breath of fresh air.
Forgiveness did then show me what to do. I also began catching onto the truth that I couldn’t escape the teaching. it wasn’t like if I decided to not forgive that i would indeed bypass the pain and it would just disappear. Forgiveness was a component of the pain lessening its grip on me. It was either that or bring the damage with me in all of my relationships, unable to receive love.
And so, I worked on forgiveness very recently again, in a much smaller dosage, knowing the outcome is pretty stellar for all involved if I am up for the task. In truthful inventory, there might be some amount of forgiveness I must both find and ask for everyday. it is a part of what my morning rituals are all about when I sit down to meditate.
The point of finding forgiveness is not to fault someone or call them out, which is a very understandable and possibly important step to identify if it is that clear, but it is not forgiveness, it’s identifying, which is a coming to terms with what was totally inappropriate and saying no to it. Amen. That step is first and the most important. Forgiveness may be way down the path. It can still take some warming up to depending on how enmeshed we became in it or to what degree it took us over. Forgiveness is not implicit. It doesn’t excuse actions.
The Golden Rule: what I am doing to you I am doing to me.
I’m more invested than ever in calling myself in and less to calling everyone out.
Forgiveness is not abdicating. If we are “forgiving” to prove we are right, it’s called “false forgiveness or false humility” according to The Course. A smoke screen, it’s a pretend way to actually remain above them and “better than” them. Refreshed and authentically moving on, no one is on top and no pain is a win. If we keep looking, on and on, to find fault, we may be all the more held to our injury.
Finding real forgiveness is for healing. It is a hopeful conviction that the situation does not return nor the tendencies that brought it there reappear. It’s not always easy to ask for forgiveness, especially when you might not feel the interaction entirely your fault. The other might even think you’ve now proven their innocence or finally realized and fortified all of your imperfections. None of that is necessarily true. The Universe isn’t quite so binary but it indeed documents and records everything. There is an entire Spirt world watching it all play out with great concern, preferring wounds healed and errors corrected.
“The wound is the place where the light enters you.” Rumi
I’ve found it just so refreshing to reach for a sky view, where no tally marks on who has done more of what to whom is to be found, learning from any past pain and beginning a new day. Truly, suffering is universal and so many beings suffer. Forgiveness is not even necessarily THE truth, but it points to where the truth may be revealed, where creative solutions may arise unannounced and an offering of reparation standing on it’s own. This could give rise to signs of completion to what is no more. Who really wants anything painful to go on and on?
Instead of the attitude of “F” them ….. I’m working on turning my “F” words around into “Forgive Them”. t’s incredibly worth it to me to learn the lesson if I find the relationship worth it. Compromise, without getting sacrificed, is a humble enough act that reveals the strength it takes to get out of the “game” of putting the other in our relationship constantly down. A more gentle human race overall willing to learn from our injured past is victory. Each relationship is a microcosm of our relationship to the whole. Forgiveness, which leads to accepting Love again, if ever it was lost, is victorious. May you offer or accept a victory today, healed, humbled and moving on.
Let forgiveness show you what to do. –Swan Michelle
“Hold no one prisoner. Release instead of bind, and you are free.” A Course In Miracles
Being well informed and educating ourselves is a maintenance that is vital to the order of such a disheveled planet in which I hope we all want to do our part to recover. It also helps to validate a mission so that the mission is taken seriously, in hopes of more repeatable, life affirming results instead of the not so life affirming insults that make it so we find ourselves having to do a lot of apologizing and forgiving, again and again.
“Forgiveness is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself. Forgive. And forgive everybody.” Maya Angelou
Forgiveness is to no be found in the information we will gather although it can certainly inspire us to remember why it’s needed. Read a history book about the Trail of Tears, or what was nicknamed the American Holocaust (just as 1 example) and you will remember we are ALL first hand byproducts of a few things that are pretty atrocious. There is a way to know our past so that we too do not forget AND no longer carry or impose continued guilt or fear. If we can not, it makes it all the more likely that we too find ourselves possibly acting in some small way like they very thing we do not care for or care to forgive.
I’m not interested in calling others out. I am invested in calling myself in. I repeat this to myself A LOT. I have decided the calamities of the world are not my fuel, reinforcing even more what is broken. The Source, unbroken, is my fuel. And from that Source, I pray I will then better understand how to earnestly and whole heartedly respond to each broken calamity.
There will be error in your actions as you find your way yet no ones Origin is errored. Forgiveness is errors correction. We must also learn to forgive ourselves and take responsibility for ourselves and let others do the same. We will be bringing all unresolved pasts with us into every relationship until we take some time to work through how those unresolved things can finally be put to rest.
You may find it skillful to state your apologies in your relationships, going first, expecting nothing in return, really putting yourself out there. You might not get anything in return. Those might not be your close proximal, long standing relationships. Not all relationships are suppose to be. We will experience many different types of relationships in our lives considering the globes population. It could be ever so easy to develop a codependency to the reinforcement of the problems instead of the solutions in any relationship.
A beautiful prayer that I have really appreciated from “Healing The Soul of America” by Marianne Williamson was one she offers to both the indigenous native nations of this continent in particular, whom we commonly call the “ American Indians”, and to the humans we termed slaves that we took from their homes and families in Africa, whom we often call “African Americans”. She takes you through an entire prayer for all BIPOC, Black Indigenous People Of Color, via our founding fathers of our country, asking for forgiveness on behalf OF US ALL, since this is the very foundation from which our colonized country began that we all live in. I have found this prayer very helpful and humble. Take inventory by looking back, THEN move forward. It is not healthy to remain there.
Forgive until there is no one to forgive. We often feel that in letting go, we are no longer safe. It is within being reSourceful that we are the most safe. Instead of avoiding wounds think of someone to forgive that is close and release them. Let the light enter into it. Begin with something approachable. A past break up or a manipulation of a family member from your childhood. If that is resolved within your heart, then go for it….the person that violently abused you, a convicted Priest of sexual abuse of another, the BP oil industry that polluted and still pollutes the entire Gulf waters that we swim in, or the President.
Surely there is someone you can find to forgive. If we are still holding onto it, we will judge it, which lowers our and our shared energy field. Our purpose is Love. Sometimes it is just a simple “I am sorry” when you mean it. Love has quite a gravitational pull. Finding forgiveness is to put Love on replay, giving another a greater chance to act like an even more optimal them if it is available. Sometimes it is not. That is ok too.
In sound therapy, cacophony, although vivid, is not as strong as harmony. Cacophony just can’t hold its own the way harmony does but it does arise when a new pattern is forming. I would much rather imagine one day a world that doesn’t need me to assist in mending it and a place where there is nothing to forgive, both oppressor and oppressed. We ourselves have been forgiven many times and given many chances. We can do the same. It is in us.
Some things we have all experienced are just not places we wish to return to. This is a dignified right. Cutting cords, with forgiveness, might allow for you to be at peace with not receiving the apology you just may never get, It might bring you to a place where you appreciate the Soul of an “enemy” at a distance but don’t ever have to impose an obligation to excuse the actions. In that case, “do nothing and let forgiveness show you what to do.”
I pray this offers restitution for your heart so that your priority of Love before rightness is not lost, especially if we have taken on wronging others as a repeated, designated job. Relationships can only withstand this for so long and according to A Course In Miracles, all relationships are assignments. All relationships are experiences. Unwilling to forgive, our lights dim, relationships and experiences never heal and an unhealed mind is easily fooled in veiled repetition.
In time, picture you Love well and receive Love well. There is an untouched part to you that is never threatened. A light that never goes out that is beyond all of this. It comes from a Source that we all share. The same Source is shared by the one you may still be upset with. Contempt is not worthy of you. You are worthy of this light entering in . You are worthy of a new chance, as are all the others.
If ever you have felt wronged, know there are beings that watch over you and that do care, recognize your pain and desire you healed.
This is the beginning of healing our relationships and in finding one another again. We can bring out the best in one another or continue to reinforce the worst, where defense or offense lies waiting. To heal all relationships, go to the Cause, (their Soul) first before the effects, of which not all inevitably will be savory. Begin to recognize how it has affected your reactions to the relationship you are in. Forgiveness is both for the ones you will not be inviting to your dinner table ever and the ones that intimately stand the tests of time as lifers. There are those that count on you to be reliable at love. Some are close. Some far. Be reliable.
If you can’t do better, an “I am sorry” just kind of has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
“The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which forgiveness always is.” — Honore de Balzac
In peace, Swan Michelle
WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
SWAN TALKS DELUXE is a monthly membership where you can and unsubscribe anytime you want.
As my Birthday gift, sign up in February and 3 MONTHS OF THE DELUXE VERSION ARE FREE by clicking here.
Swan Dharma Deluxe will always have a lot more….my care, experiences and trainings all tied into one thing, Love. After 3 free months, it is an ongoing $12 per month investment with insights to promote your personal practice and personal evolution towards in-dependence. It can be canceled at any time.
The overarching purpose of the Dharma Deluxe to offer, inspire and ignite. Nothing more.
Sign up for Swan Talks Deluxe to:
1. Extended 2-hr hour long Video : Energy Clearing Class: Finding Forgiveness
Forgiveness meditation and Cord Cutting of what does not serve all personal relationships, family relationships, work relationships, Nation based relationships, our relationship to the earth, and FORGIVING OURSELVES.
2. Pranic Healing and Chakra Clearing Energy Clearing Practices and tips focused on Forgiveness
3. List of powerful resources and books on forgiveness that I have found helpful on my sincere path to forgiveness
LOVE this! Thank you, xo