walking the sacred spiral
walking the sacred spiral
Nearly every spiritual tradition, 12-Step Group and therapist encourage us to let go of things we can’t change. Releasing people, places and past events is easier to talk about that to do, however.
What if I don’t want to forgive and forget? What if I can’t? What if I’m worried about my kids even if they are adults and I want to advise and help them? What if I can’t let go?
Once I began walking a deeper spiritual path in my middle-twenties, I had to look a lot more into the ideas of releasing and non-attachment. At 22, when I was advised to read Krishnamurti, I couldn’t stand the idea of non-attachment because to me it sounded like not caring. I couldn’t distinguish between trying to help and control, and trusting the process that was happening.
As I learned more, I eventually understood that non-attachment isn’t the same thing as not caring, and releasing wasn’t the same as abandoning. There was a way to be with people and calmly love them, even when I needed to set a boundary with them. It was possible to tell the truth without defensiveness, blame or anger. It was possible to hang in there with someone and offer help if they requested it, without imposing my judgment of what their choices “ought” to be. It was possible to hold my tongue and not offer my advice.
Forgiveness can be even more difficult than loving someone without neediness and control. In order to come to forgiveness, I have to open to the knowledge that the person who hurt me is human, just like me, and makes thoughtless mistakes, just like me, that could hurt someone else’s feelings.
What about those who deliberately hurt others? I believe that behavior reveals an unhappy soul, even if the despair is deeply buried and not at all obvious. Happy people don’t need to cause actual suffering, or to punish themselves with it.
I have known two women in my life whose children were killed. One young man died in a car accident with a drunk driver, the other young woman was murdered. Both women struggled with the grief and despair of these losses. Both ultimately forgave the guilty parties. How? Why?
The despair of holding unforgiveness close to us drains our energy and robs our lives of color and light. It becomes an obsession to remember and cling to the suffering, as if the deceased would not want us to take up our lives and live even more fully and well. The pain inflicted by the event (which happened once) is used and reviewed day after day to keep reinjuring ourselves. Who is responsible for that? Eventually perhaps we are able to take a breath and reawaken to life.
No one can know for us when the time has come for that choice and our grieving is changing to move us back toward life. But when we forego that choice again and again, the lack of forgiveness we cling to is hurting us, not the person whose action initiated the suffering. Shall we let them have that power to continue to eat away our lives?
The hurts I think of today mostly happened long ago in my life. The people involved have probably grown, as I hope I have, and would be more skilled and less likely to cause those hurts today. I don’t want to keep those hurts alive. I’d rather reclaim my creative energy and jump into life fully. As a wise counselor once said, “The best revenge is a happy life.”
What kind of experience have you had with forgiveness and letting go? What do you do when you aren’t yet ready, or are mired in resistance?
If you are holding on today to a wrong from the past, don’t you deserve freedom? Could it be time to lay down that burden and walk on?
What If I Don’t Want to “Let It Go?”
Tuesday, January 27, 2015