MY WEEKLY BLOG<\/p>\n
NOT GUILTY<\/p>\n
Have you noticed that no matter how hard you try to forgive
someone, the same old shit keeps coming back, over and over? It\u2019s
disappointing. We say to ourselves, Didn\u2019t I forgive him yesterday? Didn\u2019t I get\u00a0rid of that anger a week ago? I thought that once I sobbed it out, the trauma\u00a0would be gone for good and I could forget about it.<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t work that way which is something we discover when
we\u2019re on a spiritual path. I was reading the book, \u201cDead Man Walking,\u201d when I\u00a0had an awareness that stayed with me. It was based on the true story of a nun,\u00a0Sister Mary Prejean, an advocate for ending capital punishment. She was ministering\u00a0to a man on death row and after he was executed, the father who had lost his daughter\u00a0told the nun, \u201cI\u2019m not like you. I can’t just forgive like you do.\u201d<\/p>\n
She responded, \u201cOh no, it’s not like that. I have to keep\u00a0forgiving over and over. Every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
In my interpretation, she was telling this man that\u00a0forgiveness is a practice, not a one time event. You don’t just \u201cforgive and\u00a0forget.\u201d You forgive and you forgive and you get mad again and you keep on
forgiving. I had a bad marriage that left terrible scars on my heart. When I\u00a0finally got away, I didn\u2019t want to be defined by that terrible experience, but I\u00a0didn’t know how to forgive him. in fact, I didn’t want to, but I kept trying. I\u00a0was successful for periods of time, but it kept coming back. It still does, but\u00a0not so often. I learned that forgiveness is a practice, something I have to\u00a0keep on doing. I don’t know if the trauma will ever go away completely, I may\u00a0have to carry it always, but I can get to a point where I recognize when it\u2019s\u00a0here and try to let go in the moment. In that way, I don’t allow it to take\u00a0over my life. Rather I let it inform my life.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The most important and hardest part of this kind of practice\u00a0is to forgive myself. But I know I have to absolve ourselves before I can do it\u00a0with someone else. In Buddhism, they talk about \u201ccultivating\u201d forgiveness. I\u00a0like that word because it implies something that we\u2019re working on. Not\u00a0something that is finished. The way a plant grows. Slow and steady. When I feel\u00a0discouraged because the same upsets are playing over and over in my mind, I\u00a0remember the words of a spiritual teacher: \u201cHere it is again. Big surprise.\u201d\u00a0The issues we are working out don’t just go away. They are touchstones for our
healing all the way through our lives so we might as well make friends with
them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I told a counselor once that I felt guilty about my brutal
marriage.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat was your crime?\u201d she asked me.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe violence wouldn\u2019t have gotten so bad if I\u2019d left\u00a0sooner.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat isn’t a crime,\u201d she said. \u201cYou would have left if you\u00a0could have. And you finally did. You just had to get strong enough. I find you\u00a0not guilty.\u201d It felt like she had banged a gavel.<\/p>\n
Pema Chodron lays out the steps:<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst we acknowledge what we feel \u2013 shame, revenge,
embarrassment. Then we forgive ourselves for being human.\u201d<\/p>\n
She calls forgiveness a natural expression of an open heart.\u00a0She suggests that when we see it as a practice, we find our own speed to slow\u00a0down the unhealthy emotions that cause harm to our well-being. And so, each\u00a0moment is an opportunity for a fresh start.<\/p>\n
Everyone alive has hurt ourselves and others along the way. We\u2019ve
suffered and we\u2019ve made other people suffer. But that doesn’t mean we deserve\u00a0blame and shame. Blame is like getting caught in a pothole on the road. We spin\u00a0our wheels faster and faster to try to get some traction, but we only go deeper\u00a0into the hole as our anger rises and takes over. We forget how we got into the\u00a0rut in the first place, how innocent we were and still are, and we forget that\u00a0taking our foot off the accelerator and breathing will allow us to figure out what\u00a0to do.<\/p>\n
When we face our problems, that is when we learn that love
and forgiveness are fundamental for a good life and for our very survival. We\u00a0are giving up our desire for payback and revenge when we agree to let ourselves\u00a0off the hook. The way I see it, forgiveness is not about filling up with\u00a0emotions. It\u2019s about emptying ourselves and feeling the lightness that has\u00a0always been there, the openness that makes life so much more rewarding.<\/p>\n
I find\u00a0us all not guilty. Now we have to find it for ourselves.<\/p>\n
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MY WEEKLY BLOG NOT GUILTY Have you noticed that no matter how hard you try to forgivesomeone, the same old shit keeps coming back, over and over? It\u2019sdisappointing. We say to ourselves, Didn\u2019t I forgive him yesterday? Didn\u2019t I get\u00a0rid of that anger a week ago? I thought that once I sobbed it out, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2137,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2138"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2139,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138\/revisions\/2139"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}