Find the courage to confront our own insecurities and attitudes, as we meet those in others who are violently opposed to our thinking, and to find the connection between us all.
Sometimes we are angry at someone who was important to us. And sometimes, we don’t have an opportunity to resolve it with them. Perhaps they have faded out of our lives, or perhaps they have passed away. This may trouble us, leaving us feeling guilty or ashamed. But what must always be remembered is that sometimes people wanted us to be angry with them.
They wanted there to be a rift between us. Because it’s the way that they barricaded themselves against the connection. It’s the way that they avoided vulnerability.
Sometimes the real issue does not lie within the conflict itself, but in the purpose that it served. Sometimes, the conflict was just their way of hiding from love.
They wanted you to be angry at them because that felt easier than being close.
Conflict is not always what it seems.
Forgiveness is not a concept. It’s a process.
And, if you choose not to forgive at the end of that process, it doesn’t mean that you are unhealed. It doesn’t mean that you are a lesser human. It doesn’t mean you are not spiritual or evolved. It doesn’t mean you will come back in the next lifetime to live it out again. It may just mean that forgiveness is not actually in your integrity.
The assumption that forgiving the abuser is the benchmark of a completed emotional and karmic process is the mistake.
The real benchmark of resolution is whether you have gone through your emotional process authentically and have arrived at a place where the negative charge around the experience has dissipated.
Perhaps you will learn some lessons, or perhaps you will eventually be legitimately liberated from the memories.
Perhaps you will work it through so completely that you have very little energetic charge around the events.
Or perhaps you will actually realize that forgiveness is not essential to your healing, and not your responsibility.
The point is that focusing on our responsibility to forgive a wrongdoer sidetracks the whole process. Your sole responsibility is to arrive at whatever destination is true to you.
I always think self-forgiveness is much more important than forgiving others. When I focus on that wounds heal much faster.
Peace is only possible when one of the warring sides takes the first step, the hazardous initiative, the risk of opening up dialogue and decides to make the gesture that will lead not only to an armistice but to peace.
We are given over to absolute solitude. No one can speak with us and no one can speak for us; we must take it upon ourselves,
love light and peace
ps/smoh
