Process of Crossing

[AncestralEchoes]

Making sense of the situations and people in our lives has been a head scratcher for me. I'm of the belief that we choose our lifetime circumstances to facilitate some type of growth or learning, but I sometimes wonder if I'm so dense that only a painful and challenging journey would work? I say that somewhat in jest but suspect that the impacts we have on other people in this lifetime also play a role in the path chosen.

I've worked hard to overcome the things that were done to me as a child and in re-enactments as an adult. Like I said, I must be hardheaded, lol. Much of the work was to stop attracting abusive energies and get beyond the self-destructive emotions like rage, revenge, and resentment to a place of understanding and empathy. Trying to cultivate forgiveness didn't really work for me. I can understand and have empathy if someone that does the wrong thing owns up to their failures and is sincerely regretful. I can even pray for an unrepentant spirit to be healed from the wrongdoing that may have been done to them and they can move on to a more enlightened and positive life here and beyond.

My mother was one of those unrepentant spirits, and she had an excruciatingly long, painful demise. I tried everything to forgive, and ultimately decided that it was better to hold space in the hope she would have a transformative passing and to personally keep moving forward. Somehow true forgiveness has always seemed to be above my pay grade. But letting go and trying to move on is within my ability.

Not saying that abusers aren't sometimes pure evil and should be treated as such. But it's my experience that they are mostly acting out their own suffering and ego. Once I began to make that shift in thinking, the agony of how their ignorance and pain has impacted the entirety of my life began to subside. And I hope I've been able to share with at least a couple struggling souls that recovering personal sovereignty and spiritual integrity after abuse is difficult, but totally possible. We are so much more than what happens to us. Did I come here just to learn and try to live that? Maybe so.

[iamthat]

Originally Posted by AncestralEchoes

I'm of the belief that we choose our lifetime circumstances to facilitate some type of growth or learning, ... My mother was one of those unrepentant spirits, and she had an excruciatingly long, painful demise. I tried everything to forgive, ...

It is quite possible that you and and the Soul who became your mother agreed before birth that you would have this kind of relationship to provide particular lessons for both of you. Of course, once we incarnate we have no memory of any such agreements and so we play out our allotted roles with all the drama involved.

If you are still unable to forgive your mother can you at least feel compassion for her as a human being struggling with her own limitations? And who knows what she experienced when she was growing up to make her like she was.

And what about your own responsibility? This was surely not some random thing which happened to you. What kind of karma might you have incurred from your own past actions which led to your experiences in this life? I suspect that you were not just an innocent victim of abuse.

An inability to forgive comes from resistance. We resist what happened, we think certain things should not have happened, we think that people should have been other than they were. When we stop resisting then we can accept that whatever happened happened.

And whatever did happen now only exists as a memory, a thought we carry around with us. It is a story we tell ourselves. As Byron Katie would say, who would you be without your story?

And perhaps after you leave this body all these experiences will have the substance of a passing dream. And you might see that nothing really happened and there is nothing to forgive.

Peace

[AncestralEchoes]

Thanks for making these points iamthat, as I find the way people talk about forgiveness to be different than the way I experience it. Yes, I absolutely have compassion for what my mother went through and how it played out in her life. I also agree that my role in the relationship was part of the equation, that none of it was random, and that what happens to us turns to memory and thought and fades to dream as we pass from physicality.

The original post in this thread made me think of what I've tried to transform the thoughts and memories around the harm experienced from abusive relationships, especially when there is denial and lack of remorse from the abuser. Perhaps when I say forgiveness didn't work for me, it's because my interpretation of the word forgiveness is slightly different. Having compassion or empathy for someone that has caused you harm is one thing. It offers nonjudgmental acceptance of what has happened, yet it does not "absolve" or even consider responsibility for what was done. Compassion acknowledges suffering.

Forgiveness, as it commonly is used however, seems to wipe the slate clean and imply that the transgression is done and everyone can move on without making amends or correcting the impulse that caused the harm in the first place. Some of this interpretation comes from the way the word forgiveness was used in my upbringing, and some of it comes from my own observation that forgiveness (or a request for forgiveness) without introspection or acknowledgement can be a hollow gesture. It's not my job to figure out what another person needs to do to right a wrong or how they should evolve, but I also feel that for true forgiveness to happen, harm must be transmuted, and that's a two-way street.

As usual, I might be off-base on this, but the distinction has helped me find peace and move on from a difficult relationship.

[Starman]

For me forgiveness is not a two way street, I forgive for my sake and not for the sake of the other person. They may never request forgiveness, they may never acknowledge any offense. I can not wait around for them to ask for forgiveness. For me forgiveness is about me transmuting my pain; its about me over time learning how to let go.

No one can hurt us like those who are closest to us. The experience can shut us down or it can transcend us beyond the concepts of earthly love, or the love we may have thought we should have received from those closest to us. Healing from the wounds inflicted by a stranger is much different then healing from wounds inflicted by a loved one.

For me, it was about learning how to deal with my own feelings, raw and tender feelings that had been much more then just bruised. It was a healing journey which took decades to come to terms with. Who suffers more, the person who is angry or the person who one is angry at? I never received an apology and the people who abused me are now dead.

I forgive to end my suffering over a particular offense, I forgive myself for the hate I felt towards my abuser. If I feel like the only way my suffering can begin to end, is if the offender acknowledges what they did to me, then my suffering may never end; in my opinion. I also feel that what happened to me was fated to happen because it began at a very young age for me.

But how much is fate and how much did I unconsciously create? Self determination vs. predetermination, newly created karma vs. reacting to old karma, etc. It may be possible that we were born into an abusive family for a particular reason or purpose, yet to reveal itself to us. In my opinion everyone has their own burden, or several burdens, to learn from transmute and release, and how we view our burdens will determine how we approach them.

Peace and Good Journey

[iamthat]

Originally Posted by AncestralEchoes

...It's not my job to figure out what another person needs to do to right a wrong or how they should evolve, but I also feel that for true forgiveness to happen, harm must be transmuted, and that's a two-way street.

Originally Posted by Starman

For me forgiveness is not a two way street, I forgive for my sake and not for the sake of the other person....

I am with Starman on this.

Forgiveness as a two-way street seems to be conditional forgiveness - I will forgive you if you acknowledge that you behaved badly and you want to make amends.

The problem with this is that we are waiting for the other person to change before we are willing to forgive, and as Starman says, we could be waiting for a very long time. And in the meantime, we suffer.

I prefer the approach of radical forgiveness - trying to forgive everyone for everything, whatever they have done, whether they regret their actions or not. The other person may not change in the slightest, but we will be at peace in ourselves.

Peace

[Native spirit]

I agree with that


Namaste

[PecaS]

I can relate with much of what is being said here and a lot more of what Lynn graced us by sharing. My father was also an abusive, violent POS created, developed, and encouraged by his mother, another abusive POS.

In my culture, Mexican. More often than not that these POS are always surrounded by people who love them, even when they are the absolute worst. His mother was, and still is, remembered with tenderness, love, and kindness by the remaining children (even though I would not consider them exemplary men), and my father was loved by my mother until her death.

It has taken me years to heal and I am not totally healed, I can finally call him "father" without arching in disgust. He was a lousy father and a terrible husband. And certainly not the type of human he was supposed to be. But what Lynnn tells us makes me realize that I am right. I thought I was wrong.

[Rah nam]

Some take the hard road, simply because they can.
Hallelujah

[Lynn]

Hello

I sit here this AM in so much pain from my sciatic acting up on me yet again. I too reflect on yesterday in a long line at the food check out. There were three of us all ladies around the same age....and all three of us were in bad pain. We too all "choose" the energy of the same check out clerk as he is truly amazing at his job. He finished loading onto the belt the other ladies goods and got her help to her car. I was next in line.

The store manager came up an said there were 2 other check outs open, I told him I refused to use either cashier (as food retains negative energy and they are both very negative). He did not know how to reply to me, so I said to him I get its hard to find "staff" my work is the same way but I am the paying customer and if I choose to wait that is on me. The lady behind me was in so much pain she went to sit down til I was done...leaving her buggy in my charge behind her. The manager goes to move her to the next cashier and I said to him she too chooses to "wait" and had the same reply I did. He then looked at the lady in front of me....and saw the pattern. Saw the compassion the check out clerk had for all of us.

What I realized is that while I was too in great pain there are those worse off than I am (I had help at home to take the food into the house, to put it away for me, I had a ride home. I did not need to walk with a cane, or take a seat to rest. I too had the patience to wait for the line to move. We left laughing and smiling, sayin the same thing life could be worse !

I am whom I am today for a reason, I suffered a path for a reason. I understand more than many for that path I walked. For that I am blessed to be a shoulder for others to cry on or a back for them to lean on. We can choose two paths it seems the "Poor Me" path in life or the "Strong and Free" path in life.

I was talking with hubby today and he said that a death alone might be the worst one of all. Yes you might well be in your sleep but too you are alone, what part of you knows you are dying? Or does any part of you know that, and when your gone from the body at what point do you realize that ? Then you look maybe down and see how "alone" you truly were in life ? Abandoned by your kids (for he abuses you caused) living with a family friend that would 'check in on you'.

I do not feel that is a way I want to pass, while in peace in your sleep seems calm I do no wonder what really goes on.

Lynn

[Rah nam]

The wondrous thing of it all is, the perception of all that is, is so different, after we get back home.