How to Forgive

How to Forgive

What do you think about forgiveness? It’s a big idea, full of lots of stuff, lots of emotional stuff, most of it not very nice. There is an old saw I like, “Resentment is letting someone live rent-free in your head. Now, I must say, I have never figured out how to get someone who lives in my head to pay me rent. If you have, please drop me a line and tell me how.

Resentment and forgiveness are quite the pair. Resentment is simply the re-feeling over and over of the bad feelings we get when someone does us wrong by our estimation. Forgiveness is choosing not to re-feel those bad feelings and replace them with peaceful feelings. This is sometimes very easy and sometimes ridiculously challenging.

It’s been my experience in life that a lot of how easy or challenging forgiveness is depends on how righteous we feel about holding onto our resentment.

Why do I forgive? What makes me let go? How have I changed from resenting to forgiving?

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that we should just forgive and forget willy nilly. A lot of what I have now managed to forgive were egregious wrongs that no one should do to nobody. I mis-learned stuff from those experiences about how the world is, how I should be in it, and how I should expect to be treated. I needed to sort that stuff out. I needed a really good teacher. It took me a while. But I wanted to clean out my emo-basement. I needed to work through them, remember them, feel the feelings all the way through, notice what I had mis-learned, and then I could start thinking about forgiving.

For the stuff that isn’t so dire, though, forgiveness is a nice tool. It’s a good thing to practice with because we all experience stuff that gets our goat, so we get lots of things to hone our skills on.

It’s important to remember that resentment mostly just chews on us. That’s why forgiveness is so nice. I have had the experience several times where I found out that someone wasn’t speaking to me because they resented something I had done. No idea. No impact on me. Dang. What’s the point of resenting if it has no impact on the other person?

How do I forgive? You know me, I like to give you specific and easy instructions that work for loads of people if I can. So this is how I do it.

I check to see if I have work to do around the resentment I feel, and if there is, I do it. If not, I become aware of my thoughts. That’s a good habit to cultivate anyway, noticing what we are thinking. We spend an astonishing amount of time thinking the same thoughts over and over. If I’m gonna do that, I would just as soon they be supportive, uplifting thoughts, thank you very much.

As soon as I notice that I am resenting, I think something else. If I can, I will go to compassion for the person. That’s kinda high-level stuff and it took me a while to get there. It’s also good practice. I like to silently sing, “Let it go, let it go, let it go” to the tune of Let it Snow. I do something to distract myself. That is it. Usually, after a few rounds of this, I’m done with it. Nice. If I’m hanging on to the bad feeling, I will look at it a bit more to see where it’s hooked me. Surprisingly simple. Very effective.

The more I practice letting go of something that really only hurts me, the more room I have for nice stuff. I like nice stuff. I like feeling peaceful and happy instead of angry and seethe-y. I like spending my think time on nice stuff like how do I want my life to go? What do I want to accomplish? Why am I successful? So much better than rehearsing all the shit. Heh.

How have I changed from feeling the same bad feeling over and over to letting go and feeling clean?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2016 all rights reserved 01222016

Closing the Harbor of Resentments

Closing the Harbor of Resentments

I am continually amazed by how much unhappiness, misery, and suffering I can bring down on my own head. All by myself. It’s easy. I just have to think certain thoughts, believe certain things, act certain ways and I can suffer to my heart’s content. Isn’t that weird?

One beautiful example of this is resentments. Holding a grudge is a great way to feel crummy. Self-righteous, but crummy. The dynamic is really simple; it’s right in the word, ¨resent.¨ The word literally means to feel again, and that’s exactly what we have to do to harbor a resentment; feel it and feel it and feel it again. Oy!

Scientists say that most of our thoughts are both unconscious and routine. That is, we mostly think the same stuff over and over again and don’t even know we are doing it. I don’t know about you, but that freaked me out a little. I mean, I like to think that I know what I’m thinking.

We can get a pretty good idea of what we are unconsciously thinking by looking at our lives. We are living the results of those thoughts. Am I living a life I like? Or is the life I am living hard, or crummy, or full of misery and pain?

I get to choose what kind of a life I want, regardless of my circumstances. I start by paying attention to my thoughts and bringing those unsupportive, unconscious thoughts up to my conscious mind.

If I feel like I deserve justice for a hurt and that justice will make me feel better, chances are good that I am harboring a resentment. This keeps me stuck in the past. It makes enjoying my days more challenging. Feeling that hurt, re-feeling that hurt, takes a lot of energy.

Why do I forgive? How do I feel when I forgive? How do I naturally let go?

One of the super cool things about Creative Questions is that they work on our unconscious mind. The unconscious mind loves to find answers to things, and Creative Questions are very dynamic things.

As I have lived my most recent year, I have from time to time found myself resenting the bad things that have shown up in my body. I blame my body for making them. And then I don’t treat it well. Interesting how that works, isn’t it. When I notice that I am not eating, or taking my supps, or doing my loving movement, I know that I am re-feeling that blame. I change my bad creative questions for good Creative Questions.

Why am I interested in what I am learning about me? Why is this moment perfect for me? What makes me love being alive? Why would I embrace my circumstances?  How do I take care of myself?

By asking myself Creative Questions like these, I am giving my unconscious something else to do besides re-feeling that old hurt. This is a very effective way to let go. Catch the thought, change the thought. Feel good about taking care of you and your mind!

How have I changed from harboring resentments to choosing to be free?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2015 all rights reserved 08282015

Getting Free

Getting Free

We talk about this one from time to time, but I think it is worth remembering, and addressing. The card I pulled is “Why do I forgive?” Oo, powerful. This is a mighty let-go question, good for serious clearing, making serious room for nice things to come into our lives.

There is a lovely practice called Ho’oponopono. In the ultra simplified version we say, “I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.” There is a formal practice with it, and trainings are available, and you can just start using the phrases right now.

We all make negative moral judgments about a lot of stuff. We make them about each other, about people we don’t know, about corporations and governments and nations, even about humanity in general.

The ability to make moral judgments is necessary for us to live well. It’s how we structure our code of ethics; this right and this is wrong. Useful for getting on with stuff, staying out of bad trouble, not hurting others for the fun of it.

One way we do make trouble for ourselves is by judging ourselves too harshly. We judge our behavior, our appearance, our intelligence, our habits, our possessions, our home, our circumstances. We find them not meeting our standards, and we punish ourselves, often in ways we would never punish someone else, Often in ways that we are barely aware of. Oh, poor little we.

Why do I forgive? How am I kind to myself? What makes me let go? Why do I trust? Why can I choose?

There is a big difference between blaming ourselves and taking responsibility for our circumstances. We all have circumstances. Sometimes we bring them about, sometimes they just seem to show up. It’s how we cope with them that determines how we feel about them.

I can spend my energy fighting them, hating them, beating myself up for being in them. I can blame, I can “should” myself to pieces, I can keep myself up nights stewing about them. If psychic energy, and physical energy, were dollars, how much would you be spending on all this re-feeling about stuff?

I can grant myself clemency. I can ask myself useful questions. How could this benefit me? What might I want to change? How do I accept my current circumstances, and thrive within them? Why am I strong? How am I competent? What makes me capable? Why am I worthy?

Choosing to forgive myself, to let go, is a power-choice. When I choose to accept my current circumstances as perfect for me at this time I am choosing to be free. Free from my “shoulds” as in I should be doing something else, I should have different circumstances, I should be a different way.

When I wake up stressed or anxious in the middle of the night. I am should-ing. I should have done my taxes/laundry/homework/job-hunt/exercises/project. I can use the Ho’oponopono phrases to myself, as a chant, to forgive me for my shortcomings, my omissions, my mistakes in judgment. I can do a body-scan to get me out of my head, or pay attention to my breathing. I don’t have to feed the bad feelings. I can forgive me.

How have I changed from judging my behavior harshly to freeing myself with forgiveness?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 07272014

Understanding Forgiveness

Understanding Forgiveness

The card I pulled today is a biggie: Why do I forgive? It’s a biggie for the obvious reason, that is, forgiveness is a simple thing we do as we grow up to set ourselves free. But it is also important because we sometimes do weird things with it. Oh, yes, I said “weird things.”

We can get a bit obsessive thinking about forgiving the wrongs we think have been done to us. We start out thinking about forgiveness, and end up thinking about the wrongs, and get ourselves all riled up about ‘em.

Thing is, the more we rehearse that stuff, the more we are hurting ourselves. At this point, of course, it’s all in our heads, if you see what I mean. That outside hurt happened, and then we think about it over and over. The other person isn’t hurting us now, we are.

Why do I treat myself with kindness and respect? How am I good to me? Why would I let go?

By rehearsing the hurt, we stay stuck in it, and when we are stuck, well, we can’t move ahead. We end up feeling helpless, sometimes even hopeless. When we try to get help from that place, we often think that there is no help, or it’s the wrong kind.

And so we can let go, which is all forgiveness is. I need to let go of the hurt. Sometimes I need help with that, to work through a situation. I need to let go of my harsh feelings toward the person. Sometimes I need help with that. I don’t need to choose to have them for a bosom buddy, but resentment is a clench inside me. And I need to let go of the habit of rehearsing the hurt on their behalf. That is a wonderful place for me to use my good Creative Questions.

Why am I strong? What makes me capable? How am I competent? Why do I trust?

I don’t need to trust untrustworthy people. I have gotten myself into a lot of trouble doing that. I have learned to discern degrees of trust, how much I can give someone. And trust is not the same thing as love. I can love someone to pieces and know that I might not want to tell them a secret, for example. Or that I might not want to rely on them for X, but can certainly rely on them for Y. This is about paying attention, being aware, and really listening to someone, noticing how they are from a place of compassion.

The more I let go, or forgive, the less time I spend thinking about my old hurts, and the more room I have inside for the nice stuff. The more I let go, the more relaxed I get. The more relaxed I get, the more peace I have inside, and the less outside stuff can hurt me.

The most important person on my list of people to forgive is myself. I need to stop beating myself up for the time I spent around people who were hurtful to me. I need to stop beating myself up for not forgiving me sooner. I need to forgive myself for the time I spent re-hurting me in my memories.

As I let go of old hurts, it becomes easier for me to not let hurtful behavior hurt me, and to find compassion for the hurter. As a dear friend said to me the other day, “Hurt people hurt people.”

Letting go is a way to more freedom inside. The more internal freedom I have, the less I need to pretend to control outside stuff. And boy, howdy, do I like that feeling of serenity that comes right along with letting go.

How have I changed from rehearsing the hurt to feeling free?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 06222014

Forgive Me, Again

Forgive Me, Again

One of the greatest blessings of being a grownup is feeling free. Free from resentments, free from fretting, free from being stuck in a bad mood. Free from a whole lotta stuff.

As I take responsibility for my stuff, I have the power to change things. Sometimes I can’t seem to  change the outside aspect, but I can always change my inside aspect. One of the things I have the power to do is forgive.

A curious thing about forgiveness; in some cases, I can do it all at once, and it’s done. In other cases, I may have to forgive again and again before I can really let it go. I know I’ve succeeded when the memory of the situation doesn’t fire up a lot of emotion.

I was surprised yesterday to find that I still had some stuff that I needed to forgive, for at least the third time.

In order to forgive, I have to do some stuff.

I need to remember that I am not ‘justified’ in  feeling resentment, or anger, or hurt, that those are feelings that eat me up. I need to remember that my natural state is soul-happy, and when I am feeling resentment, or anger,or hurt, for example, I am off-path.

Why do I choose to be free? Why am I happy? What makes me feel uplifted?

I need to remember that compassion serves me and resentment consumes me.

How am I compassionate? Why am I a caring person? What makes me let go?

I need to remember that we all make the best decisions we can make at the time, and that my hating on you for your decision only really hurts me. Unless I think revenge is a good idea, and it never is.

I need to remember that we are all at different points in our growing up, and while I am more grown up than some people, there are also some people more grown up than I. I want to emulate those grownupper grownups, and model good behavior for the others.

I need to remember that I also deserve forgiveness, and might wanna do that from time to time if I find me riding myself about stuff, or feeling crappy and spewing it, or whatever the case might be.

Sometimes, I can find a silver lining in a situation. Not always, but it sure pays to look. Sometimes, that silver lining may be that I learn something about me, or maybe about you. Sometimes, I may learn that you might not be someone whom I can consider trustworthy. Knowing that, I will stop trying to change you and getting hurt, and can accept you as you are, something we really do want to do with everyone.

It will always help when I can accept the how-it-is of a situation, rather than thinking it should be some other way. Once I do that, I am back in a place of my personal strength and power. And I can forgive again.

How have I changed from harboring hurts and resentments to enjoying the freedom of forgiveness?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 04142014

Parasite Control

Parasite Control

Vengeance, retribution, settling the score, revenge, tit for tat, an eye for an eye, retaliation, maybe even justice.

What do you think about getting even?

Me, I don’t believe it’s possible.

Sometimes we do things that hurt each other. Sometimes we do it by accident, sometimes we do it on purpose. Sometimes it’s a small thing, sometimes it’s a really big thing. Sometimes we don’t even know we’ve done anything at all.

When I decide that you can make me feel stuff, I’m in trouble. I throw away my free will, and end up as helpless as a toddler in her playpen. Now, I am subject to the whims of people who may have no idea of the power I’ve given them. I perceive that I’m being hurt, or done wrong, and I lash out, looking to feel better, but it doesn’t happen.

After venting, I may feel relief. and I may think that relief feels better, but I still have that wrong you did me festering inside, and I will need to find relief from that over and over.

Since the hurt is inside me, I may find that I pull it out and rehearse it, nourishing it, fostering it, until it grows. Thing is, my resentments feed on me, parasites who consume my well-being for their survival.

In our society, in our communities, in our families, we have agreed on consequences for certain actions. In general, positive actions garner positive consequences, while negative actions result in negative consequences. When I trust that “what goes around comes around,” or that the Universe will provide, I can let go. I can release my resentments, and reclaim my power.

Why do I let go? How am I free? What makes me trust?

It’s kind of like resentments take up space in our psyches where we could hold resources, solutions, support, and love. When I let go of my resentments, I can let go of my story, too. It’s kind of surprising that I keep my resentments in my story, my story about how bad my life has been.

Why am I strong? What makes me competent? How am I capable?

When I nurture my resentments, I am coming from a place of fear, anger, guilt, blame, and worry. When I decide you have the power to make me crazy, or angry, or scared, or helpless, I give up my personal power. I am not saying that we should be reckless in dangerous situations, I am saying that we can choose to reclaim our power by attending to our good Creative Questions.

In every situation, we have a minimum of three choices. We can accept that this is how things are, let go into the flow of life, and find the lesson we are meant to learn. We can change the situation, by changing our thoughts, our behaviors. We can leave the situation and notice if we find ourselves in the same place again, a pattern for us. Sometimes one or two of those choices seems impossible, and we choose to respect our judgment, or, if we aren’t sure that our judgment is sound, then we go to our trustworthy advisors and check in with them.

How have I changed from feeding the parasite of resentment to choosing to own my power?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 03232014

If you like what you find here, please + or share. Thanks. What makes you great?

Closing the Harbor on Resentments

Closing the Harbor on Resentments

What do you think about forgiveness? Is it something you do, or do you nurse and nurture your old emo stuff, refeeling old hurts, rehearsing betrayals, let-downs and disappointments? Does forgiveness strike you as something lame, for dorks or dummies?

Forgiveness was a tricky one for me. If someone was cruel to me, how could I not be mad at them? If someone betrayed my trust, how could I not just feel betrayed forever and ever? If someone stole from me, or cheated me, or lied to me, how could that not just be part of my sordid and miserable past? Wasn’t that the reasonable response?

Why do I forgive? How do I let go?

An analogy I really like is thinking of my unconscious mind as a basement, full of stuff. Some of if is nice, carefully packed with tissue paper and lavender, or cedar balls, but some of it is shoved willy-nilly into rotting paper bags, stuffed in a damp corner picking up mold.

One of my tasks as a grown up is to clean up my emotional basement. I need to spend some time there, paying attention to what I find, and, at the very least, identify and let go of, my old emo crap around you. My resentments, in general, have very little impact on you, but a huge impact on me. They can screw up my sleep, knot up my guts, give me headaches, and wreck my relationships.

What makes me dump my resentments? Why do I choose to live clean? How am I free?

In some cases, I found that I had to work through and complete some kind of traumatic experience around an old resentment. Sometimes, I needed help to do that. I tells ya, it was so worth it.

Do you know how to let something go? Is that a skill you’ve been practicing? This is a very useful skill in general, but if you have trouble sleeping because you can’t seem to shut off your thinkin’, you will benefit greatly by mastering this skill.

I am the boss of my thinking. I am not the boss of my thoughts. My thoughts just flow, like stuff on the banks of the river. That’s the job of the mind, to make thoughts, but I get to decide what thought I will follow, if I choose to follow any at all. A meditation practice helps develop this skill, so does just sitting, being aware of thoughts moving through, noticing when I follow one, and bringing my attention back to just noticing them.

When I need to let go of something, that means it is flowing into my awareness, I latch onto it, and think on it, usually getting myself all worked up and mad, scared, or something. It gets in the way of what I’m doing, it gets in the way of my feeling good.

So I will do something like, imaging the bad thoughts as turning into dandelion fluff, and blow them away, thinking “let it go, let it go” and imagining the seeds taking root and blooming into beautiful flowers.  Or I will imagine them as a bunch of balloons, and release them, imagining them floating to the sun to be turned into good energy. Then I ask good Creative Questions, especially ones like, How to I feel when I feel light? How do I feel when I feel happy? How do I feel when I feel clear and right?

I love making room in my emo basement.

How have I changed from giving safe harbor to bad feelings to allowing my center of light to grow?

(c) Pam Guthrie all rights reserved 03012014

Please, remember to share or + if you liked this post.

That Bully, Past.

That Bully, Past.

Jacob Marley in Dicken’s masterpiece says, “I wear the chain I forged in life! I made it link by link and yard by yard! I gartered it on of my own free will and by my own free will, I wore it!”

Links of regret, links of resentment, links of ignored traumas, links of misery and suffering and cruel words said in anger.

Yeah. I was pretty weighted down by my chains, and I wasn’t even a clanking ghost.

And then I got sick of it. Carrying around all that past was hard work. I was exhausted. I ached and felt crappy most of the time. All the clanking and jangling ruined my sleep, and all those links came between me and a lot of nice stuff. I wanted a nice life.

I started to think that maybe I had a shot at a happy life. Maybe I could feel lighter, and less bitter. Maybe I could have friends I loved, who loved me back with kindness and fun. Maybe I could do interesting things instead of reading about other people doing interesting things. Maybe I could live a life I loved instead of slogging through.

Maybe.

I knew I had to choose it, and because I wore all those chains of the past, I had to choose it over and over. I still do, some days.

Sometimes, it’s one link at a time, prying it open, wiggling it free from the rest. Sometimes, I can dump a bunch at a time. Sometimes, it’s as easy as remembering that I choose to live easy, sometimes it has taken years.

Why do I choose to feel free? What makes me clear my past? Why do I choose to clean up my act?

When I release old resentments, I acquire freedom from my past. When I complete old experiences by feeling my way all the way through to the real end, I have a fresh start each morning. When I break my old habits of feeling bad, I can enjoy new habits of feeling light.

I am no longer subject to the tyranny of hidden memories. My past is no longer a source of unhappiness. I am no longer wearing the chains I forged in life.

Sometimes we fear delving into our past. We don’t wanna rile things up, we don’t wanna damage old relationships by remembering.

Thing is, it’s all in there, those memories, having their way with us, mostly out of our ken. Even though we don’t know we are thinking them, we are having unconscious thoughts all the time. That’s why we call ‘em unconscious. Seriously, most of our thoughts are unconscious. And every thought has a corresponding emotion. When our unconscious thoughts become unconscious emotions, we can have lots of nasty feelings, and sometimes even feel like we are going crazy.

We’ve already lived through the past. We survived it. Now we can choose to refuse to be bullied by it.

How have I changed from letting my past lead me around by the nose to being the boss of my own self?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 11192013

Betrayal, Perfidy, Dishonesty

Betrayal, Perfidy, Dishonesty

I could care less, but I like how much I care now. Or, rather, I like what I care about now.

Didn’t always used to be like that.

Back in the dark ages, I used to worry about everything. One of the things I liked to worry about was what felt like my lack of compassion. What was wrong with me that he was crying and I was unmoved? I felt so much better when I found out that I often don’t feel anything when I’m being emotionally manipulated. Good to know. I’ve saved a lot of money on emotionally manipulative movies, and learned to steer clear of emotionally manipulative people.

Why do I learn from my emotions?

Back in the dark ages, I held on tight to resentments. I would regularly pull out and burnish betrayals. I hung onto hurts. I took it all personally. I even worried that strangers were talking about me. Life was exhausting.

Back in the dark ages, your opinion of me was worth more to me than my opinion of me. In fact, your opinion of me often became my opinion of me. But only if it were poor. Opinions in general were not my strong suit, except for all my negative emotional judgments. I couldn’t tell you my favorite colors (today, magenta) or my favorite foods (today, soup) or my favorite kind of music (today, Cantopop from the 40s and 50s). How do I know what I like?

Oh, dear, life was complicated back in the dark ages.

And then I started to take responsibility for me. And then stuff started to get better. And I felt better. I felt lighter. Life felt easier.

When I rehearse my bad feelings about something someone did to me that I didn’t like, I’m not changing anything for the better, I just hurt me. I stunt my emotional growth, I hold a negative vibe around me, and I make my life harder in general.   

Why would I choose to let go?

When I seek revenge for a perceived wrong, I am perpetuating a set of negative interactions, and sometimes I am escalating that bad scene. If I want to evolve, I have to stop that. And, while I often find revenge movies entertaining, revenge is not a mature or compassionate lifestyle.

Why do I choose to forgive?

By going inside and cleaning out my resentments, I make a big difference in the quality of my days. I have a lot more room for nice feelings, feelings like bliss, or joy, satisfaction, peace, that sort of thing.

By going inside and cleaning out my resentments, I make room in my perceptions for you to grow. If I am stuck, you are going to seem stunted to me, too. But as I mature, as I forgive, and release my old crap, I become willing to see you make progress in your life, too, and our relationship can grow. I like that.

How have I changed from anchoring me to my past with resentments, to letting go and feeling free?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 10252013