Forgiveness

OH FORGIVENESS!

So popular and misundertood, in the virtual world you can find a lot of quotes around forgiveness, we hear our yoga teachers speak of it, our therapist push it to our face like it's a piece of cake (pun intended)

If you ask me, the forgiveness that is become so wildly used and expressed contains a hint if not a lot of self rightness.

How so? You may wonder.

Well, when we have been hurt by others actions and/or behaviour, we become the victim, in many cases the aggression is physical, some others mental or emotional, all the same we get hurt, wounded and something in ourselves changes.

Whether we lose trust in others, we lose hope, we might become insecure, calculating, etc.

I could keep going on with all kind of symptoms that we develop out of being hurt because we all feel things in a different way, we also get affected by these situations differently.

But we all acquire something in common; blame. We blame the world, God, religion, people, our parents, teachers, luck, we blame ourselves for ever trusting others and soooo victimhood begins.

I spent most of last decade working on forgiveness.

Forgiving my father for not being who I thought he should've been. Forgiving the friends that did not see me for who I was. Forgiving people for mistreating me, for bullying me. Forgiving them for not knowing how sentive a child I was, for not accepting my weird and my light.

Forgiving this - forgiving that.

Forgiving those that didn't even ask us to do so,forgiving those that "don't" deserve it aaand there you have it! that is where we can go all omnipotent and still not have reached the core issue and the real meaning & impact of forgiveness.

Of course doing the work of allowing yourself to have compassion towards others is a HUGE step and it helps to heal and move forward, yeah it is necessary but there is still deeper work to do.

We have to forgive OURSELVES! And that is when it got interesting for me.

I hit a wall.

Because at the end of the day, everytime something happened to me, no matter that somebody else decided to actively DO something to me.

I was the one reacting.

I was the one giving away my power.

I was the one who did not recognize my worth.

I was the one that allowed others to step over my boundaries.

I was the one not knowing where my boundaries were to begin with.

I was the one who did not speak or stand up.

It was me who didn't embrace the wholeness of who I am.

It was me who lost sense of my essence.

It was me who neglected myself help, love, and even an outlet.

It was me who was ever so scared.

But you know what?

I decided to extend that forgiveness that I so willingly (not easily) opened to those that one day (or many) hurt me.

Here I am.

Recognizing myself when all I ever heard was that I needed to be something else, someone else.

Self-love sounds oh so perfect and magical.

And in this generation it is greatly encouraged (thank God for that) yet for some of us our life mission depends on Self-love and therefore it can be one of the most challenging things to accomplish.

We grasp it intellectually, yeah, but how does it feel like? How does it really look like? What is the full expression of it?

I think it is pretty much messy, most days it feels like a battlefield rather than a spa day, it also requires practice, discipline and work, some days you will get the hang of it, others you will struggle.

Some days you will follow your soul's call and others you may surrender and give in to resistance. Some days letting go will look like nothing that you thought it would be.

The truth is that you can do hard things and you are never alone.

Sometimes you have to ask for help and that takes courage, this might be your journey but that doesn't mean that you have to do it all on your own.

Honor yourself.

Recognize yourself.

And no matter how many times

you have to do it;

Forgive and free yourself.