(For)give a little

Forgiveness Mandala

Recently I completed an exercise on http://www.radicalforgiveness.com/ called the Radical Self-Forgiveness/Acceptance Worksheet. It is a counterpart to the Radical Forgiveness Worksheet (which I have not yet completed).

The purpose is pretty self-explanatory..... it's an exercise to help you forgive yourself or someone else. Many people throw around the word "forgiveness" and don't truly understand or appreciate what it means. "I forgive you" does not simply mean "I'm not busting out your windows throwing a fit every time I see and talk to you" or "I just won't talk about it anymore." True forgiveness is truly letting go, and that's the end of it. One of my favorite definitions of forgiveness is "Giving up the hope for a different past." When I say that you can't go back and change the past, people think I am being flippant and dismissive. No, I mean exactly what I am saying..... I CAN'T go back and change anything. Last time I checked, the DeLorean was not sitting outside my apartment building. So to truly forgive is to quit hoping Doc shows up to scoop you (or the other person) up.

So at the suggestion of another Twittizen (@basseyworld) I went to go check out this Radical Forgiveness Worksheet. However, when I got to the site I realized the person I most need to work on forgiving first is myself. Self-forgiveness is the hardest type of forgiveness because we are constantly in our own heads with the negative thoughts about ourselves swirling about. We feel like we shouldn't or can't forgive ourselves, especially when we are in a situation where we don't feel like the other individual(s) involved have forgiven us. After all, why should we feel good about ourselves when nobody else does?

But this is flawed thinking. You cannot wait around for someone else to forgive you before you forgive yourself, because they may NEVER forgive you. They may always be mired in the past wanting you to go back and make things better, or dwelling on the fact that you can't and taking every opportunity to remind you of that ("woulda", "shoulda", "coulda"). Forgiveness of yourself is mutually exclusive of forgiveness received from other people. Even when there is nobody else to forgive you for some real or perceived wrongdoing, there is still a need to atone. Well, atonement can only go on for so long before it starts to eat at you from the inside out. At some point you must say "What's done is done. I'm sorry it happened, but I can't change that it did. That does not define who I am, and I am allowed to release the feelings surrounding it and move forward with my life."

So what is this Radical Self Forgiveness/Acceptance Worksheet thingy all about? It's an online form that takes about 30 minutes to complete (or more, depending on how much you write). It starts off with detailing what you have done/failed to do and how you feel about yourself over it. It's kind of brutal, especially if you've never taken the time to admit it to yourself (this includes admitting it in such a way where you're not enveloping it in justifications and excuses). After you have stated your feelings about yourself and the situation, you then work through a series of questions where you are asked to recognize and accept those feelings, and that there is purpose behind what happened by answering Accept, Willing, Open, Skeptical or Unwilling.  A few of the statements that stood out most to me were:

"Even though I don’t know why or how, I now see that my soul has created this situation in order that I learn and grow."

"I am willing to see that my mission or ‘soul contract’ included my doing this thing for whatever reason."  This one was particularly interesting to me once I read the definition of a "soul contract":

A soul contract is an agreement that we made with other souls, prior to coming into the human experience, to carry out certain pre-planned missions — to balance karmic energies, to heal group pain, to raise consciousness around some issue, etc.  Who could possibly know what the mission really was? We just need to be open to the possibility that the situation we have guilt around might have involved a soul contract and, if there are others involved in the situation, they may well have been the other souls with whom the contract was struck.

(Sidenote: One question that I couldn't really "accept" was the notion that nothing anyone has ever done is right or wrong because it is just all part of the divine order. The best I could do was to put "Open" because while I know that in every shitty situation there can be something good that results, I do have an awareness of right and wrong.... can't just be out here all willy nilly saying that it's just all part of the divine plan.  Even if it ultimately is.)

Next you work through a series of statements in which you release your negative feelings and forgive and accept yourself.

Easy, no??

Naw, not that easy. I felt a little better after I did it, but I can't say it was some miraculous instantaneous transformation. I printed out my answers and have reviewed them once or twice, and each time I feel just a little teeny bit better.  You may not feel instantly absolved, but at least it's a start and gets you thinking about yourself and your life and your feelings and other people's lives and see how they all inter mesh.

Try it. It might be helpful. Might be a little too New Agey for you. If you're not really a person who gets the concept of Divine Order (I definitely do..... I have a HUGE tattoo of her (the Egyptian goddess Ma'at) across my back, which you can see in the picture in this post here) and spiritual energy, you will probably use this worksheet to line your bird cage. For everyone else, it really is worth 30 minutes of your life.