The Unforgiven

After touching on fear, and identifying my fears, to some small degree, the rest of the list of things that could be blocks in my wall seem to not fit me very well.  But I will go through them, write things out and who knows, I might run across a brick or five that I didn't realize existed.

The next on the list is unforgiveness.

Is there someone I haven't forgiven in my life?

I thought about this a lot, and nothing really springs to mind.  When I was 17 I went to a retreat called Chrysalis.  It was a weekend retreat with other teens and we all had periods of lecture, silence and so on that gave us information on how to grow spiritually.  It was one of the best things that ever happened to me.  At that retreat, one of the girls in the group talked about how she practiced forgiveness.  She would write out a letter to the person she needed to forgive.  In it she would tell them everything that they had ever done to hurt her.  She would tell them how their actions had impacted her life.  She would hold nothing back.  She would then hand the whole thing over to God, and at the end of the letter write that she forgave them.  The letters never got sent, they got burned.

I practice a similar form of forgiveness.  I write out the hurts, or I scream them out, or talk them out.  But I go through them, I get them out and when everything that has been floating around in my brain because of the hurt is out, I release it.  I forgive.

This doesn't mean I forget.  What is the old addage?  "Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me."

I can forgive.  I can release the hurt, I can let go of the ill will, I can move forward with no hard feelings.  That doesn't mean I will forget.  Forgiveness is, in my opinion, about releasing the resentment.  Forgiveness is about letting go of the hatred, the pain, the dark spot that spoils the light.  Forgiveness is about walking past the hurt and remaining open to the possibility of something healthy and happy.  To be unforgiving is to hold on to something that just rots and goes bad.

Forgiving, doesn't mean that everything is back to the way it was.  When I forgive, when I let go of the pain, it doesn't mean that you earn the right to behave in the same way again.  I will offer an example.  I have a friend, T, she has a very bad habit of drinking and then rehashing something that has bothered her over and over and over.  She has some jealousy issues with my relationship with a mutual friend.  When her jealousy is peaked for various reasons, she lashes out and will say things to me like, "Why are you even friends with X, I know you don't really like him."  This doesn't come up often, but her judgment of my friendship with X is something I can forgive, but not something I will put up with for long.  I recognize that she is jealous, and I understand where she is coming from, but that doesn't mean her behavior is acceptable.  I can forgive her, I can move past it and we can remain friends.  I don't however let her continue her tirade.  I tell her firmly that she can be as upset as she wants, but that I have explained to her my relationship with X, and she can either accept it, or not.  But that she doesn't get to lash out at me over it.  And I have left conversations with her when it comes up.

It comes down to boundaries.  I can forgive you for crossing a boundary I have set, that doesn't mean that the boundary has moved.

So I guess what I need to do is decide if the reconstruction of my boundary is actually a sign that I haven't forgiven you, or just the division that separates me from you.

And that comment there just sent me into a flash of awareness I hadn't had before.  That goes into the whole idea that really we are all connected on a universal level as part of the ONE and our roles and parts as pieces of the Divine that must be reconstructed to create perfect harmony which is perfection and God itself.

I couldn't explain it if I tried, but I hope I don't forget it...Alas, like a dream it will likely fade.  I do love those moments of perfect clarity.

I digress.  I don't think that the establishment of boundaries, is a sign of being unforgiving, because I honestly can't find any resentment or residual darkness that comes as part of the establishment of my boundaries.  But like with anger, I will remain aware of it and try to notice if I am putting blocks of unforgiveness in to my wall.