Guilt and Self-Forgiveness

Although I ended up working several hours on my Sabbath yesterday, it was not until late afternoon.  Both my pastor's message in the church service that I attended and the guests on "Super Soul Sunday" (OWN) provided me with much material for reflection.  Yesterday I wrote about the pastor's message which led me to decide that I really want a soft and open heart again.

Today, I'd like to share from one segment of "Super Soul Sunday."  Rabbi Irwin Kula was the guest "expert" with several guests, each of whom was dealing with significant guilt.  Kula, co-author of
Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life, talked about guilt getting us stuck and the value of forgiving ourselves.  When we wallow in our guilt, it is usually because we obsess on replaying the thing for which we feel guilty, attempting to replay the circumstances over and over again with "What ifs?" 

One of the wisest things that he said is that in order to move beyond our guilt that we must redirect the "What ifs?" into "What now?" or "What next?" His words really got me thinking. "What-iffing" is destined to frustrate us repeatedly because there can never be a satisfactory outcome.  No matter how many ways we replay the past, there is no way to change it; there can never be reality in any of the alternatives that we imagine.  The past is the past, and nothing can really change it.  The only place to make change is now.

Mostly, I've lived my life without regrets but there are three things that really bug me.  I have been guilty of what-iffing...for years, even decades...thinking that if I imagined the perfect combination of events that somehow, like magic, I would be transported in time back to the event for a do-over.  There are no do-overs.  Yet over and again, I've been unable to pull myself out of the do-over mentality.

In each case, I did the very best I could do with what I knew at the time.  No matter how many more resources I have now or how much more I know, it doesn't matter. Although it seems like I've spent lots of time grieving, I may need some more conscious grieving. But, my real work now is to focus on the "What now?" and "What next?" The time has come for forgiving myself, so that I may move forward.

I've often said that the biggest regret in my life is my inability or lack of resources to have saved my marriage and to have hurt the person I loved most in the world (still do) in the process.  I have grown a lot.  Now I can actually see what I could have done differently, but I couldn't learn that without having been where I've been in the last 20 years.  Not only are there no do-overs, but if we could, we couldn't employ resources that we didn't have at the time.

While that is clearly my biggest regret, as I've reflected over the last 28 hours, I think I have much more guilt over the failure of my business.  Actually, it isn't the failure of my business that has caused the guilt, but what happened because of it.  Many people think that the best entrepreneurs are those who have had at least one business failure.  One of my clients--a multi-millionaire in the hundreds of millions--had experienced several business failures, along with his several huge successes. 

Knowing this, I don't beat myself up too much about an economy that went bust at the time current events cut deeply into another revenue stream and just as my publishing house closed the part of the business which published two of my books.  I had been very prudent about having multiple revenue streams and months of retained earnings to carry me over the bumps.  Mostly, I just shrug about that: there really was nothing I could have done to change those circumstances that I hadn't already done.

What makes me ache about my business failure is that when I lost everything, I lost a small nest egg that my father had left me.  My father worked very hard to provide for his family and to send me to college.  I can remember many long days in even longer weeks of doing pretty physical labor.  Quite frankly, I don't know how he did it.  My parents were frugal and good savers. The owned everything outright with no debt. All that hard work and frugality allowed me to start my business and take time to write three books in the first place.  I am truly grateful for those opportunities, and at the same time, it makes me ache that all my father's hard work just evaporated. 

I have serious guilt about losing that money.  In my "what ifs?" about this, I've even imagine having a conversation with him, hoping that somehow if he understood it, I'd feel better.  The truth is that I don't think he would ever understand it.  He wouldn't blame me, but I am sure he would have a very difficult time understanding me being entrepreneurial instead of working at a more conventional job.  "What-iffing?" will never change that.

Finally, I've ended up later in my career in a dead-end job that has been financially devastating to me in the wake of my business failure.  I took a huge pay cut to take a job that I thought would allow me more upward mobility, as well as the opportunity to sleep in my own bed on weeknights.  That was just as the Federal government went into a three-year pay freeze, and now that we've gotten a whopping 1% increase when local cost of living has gone up way more than that, I've netted enough each pay period to buy a latte at Starbucks...if I don't buy a vente.  To add insult to injury, the work environment has been toxic.  Water under the bridge.  I made the move.  It is good resume material, and I have gotten to sleep in my own bed every work night since I took the job...until tomorrow. (A sign?)

The time has come for me to grieve my losses and move on.  The past is the past.  Populated by ghosts, it isn't a good place to live.  I even think it may have had something to do with the hardening of my heart about which I wrote yesterday.  Yet, I don't want to be glib about this.  I plan to set aside a time for a grieving ritual, and then, I think, literally plant some seeds to remind me that, when I plant for the future, something can actually grow. 

Rabbi Kula said that forgiving is not forgetting.  I believe that forgiving is how we free ourselves.  I've written in the blog before about forgiving others.  Now it's time to forgive myself.

The Forgiveness of All Humankind

Almost three months ago, I adopted a new set of eight spiritual statements upon which to focus my spiritual growth during this dark half of the year.  At least several times a day, and sometimes many times a day, I say and reflect upon these affirmations.  Something shifted yesterday.  As I was saying them, suddenly one took on new meaning.  I've had this happen before.  My understanding has to get deep enough for me to truly "get it." I find it a bit like looking at something, which has been in the shadows, but which the sun has finally reached: wow! all the color, dimension and intricacies that I missed when it was in the semi-darkness.

Yesterday, the statement  "My work is the forgiveness of all humankind" shifted. Since I write, speak, and coach, I have been thinking that I was supposed to encourage people with whom I come in contact to forgive people in their lives.  The idea, I thought, was that if enough people forgave enough others that eventually all humankind would be forgiven.

As I've sunk more and more deeply into this spiritual learning, a different meaning has revealed itself to me.  To paraphrase, sometimes it is all about me.  Yesterday's revelation was that I am supposed to forgive everyone with whom I have ever come in contact, no matter how big or small their grievance.  At first doing so didn't really seem like such a big deal.  I regularly "purge" myself of grudges, resentments, and anger with forgiveness.  I don't think that I harbor much.  People in my life who have committed egregious offenses have not only be forgiven but forgotten as well. I even forgive myself from time to time, although I admit that I am not nearly as good about self-forgiveness.

Consequently, I am not sure why forgiving all humankind seems like such big deal, besides the fact that "all humankind" is a whole boat load of people.  As I've meditated on this, the spheres of influence on forgiveness have broadened.  Not just people who have done things to me, but resentments I may carry about violations of others are included.  Then, there was the wave about people who have committed destructive acts to the planet and even crimes against humanity. Of course, with my personal interest in politics, there are plenty of politicians that could do with some forgiving. There are also the historical violations of our individual and collective ancestors, such as slavery, the treatment of Native Americans in the US, and the near extinction of many species.  You get the idea.  The more I sit with it, the more I am able to see just how much in the world is to be forgiven. 

I am certain that this forgiveness of all humankind is the work of a lifetime.  I expect that in the time during which I forgive one or two that a dozen more acts will have been committed to be forgiven.  If I really think about it, I am overwhelmed, so I just don't think about it...at least not in a worrisome way.  If I did, I'd have to forgive myself for worrying.  I am still trying to just be with how this plays out, but I sense that at the end, I will be back in that most alluring spot: being present.  With nothing to pull me into the past or the future, here I am...now...present.

I believe I've mentioned before that spiritual teacher Carolyn Myss has said our most important spiritual work is to be present.  As I explore the many dimensions of spiritual growth and learning, all roads seem to lead back to being present.  It makes sense that if we get to the place where we can truly be present in the present, we would have mastered many other spiritual lessons along the way.
For now, it seems to me that the dimension of being present with which I am currently engaged is to forgive...and forgive...and forgive some more.

Forgiveness

Meditation truly is a gift I give myself.  This morning I took my 20 minutes and extended it by 30.  I was wrestling with understanding what is Truth.  As I went deeper and deeper, the contradictions became more intense and then they melted away.

I have written previously about the several spiritual statements or affirmations that I recently adopted.  This morning as I meditated I found myself lingering on one: "Forgiveness is how I return to God/Love."  I thought I'd forgiven those in my life for what they'd done to me. Then the questions came. Have I really forgiven if I still carry resentment? Have I really forgiven if I still guard myself or am wary?  Of course not.

Then I attempted to forgive; I wanted to get to the place where I could feel nothing but unconditional love. As I went deeper, I found that in each of the two relationships I lingered with I had accountability. Hmmpf.  :-) Did I not know this part? 

For several years I provided spiritual coaching in three-day, one-on-one intentional living intensives.  Each was unique to the person with whom I was working, and my guides would give me unique coaching questions and exercises for that person.  Most were used only once.  However, for most a similar exercise on forgiveness was given to me.  It always involved three levels of forgiveness: acts which the client needed to forgive others for, acts for which the client needed to ask for forgiveness, and acts for which the client needed to forgive him- or herself.  Finally, we'd explore the gifts that had resulted from hurtful circumstances.

As I meditated on forgiveness this morning, these three levels kept intertwining. Back and forth, I went from offering forgiveness to asking for forgiveness to forgiving myself and back again. Then I drifted deeper.  I'd written two books on fear and courage: were fear and courage not really about forgiveness?  If there were always gifts, why would I not have courage?  Why would I be afraid?

Almost when I felt like I'd gotten to the bottom of understanding the relationship between fear and courage and forgiveness, I found myself going broader.  I've always thought that my purpose was to help people find the place of pure Love that dwells inside themselves and connect to the place of pure Love that dwells in each of their fellow human beings.  When I had been meditating on my new affirmations a few weeks ago, what had come was that my purpose was the forgiveness of all human kind.  I thought I'd just go with it since that is what came, but thought my real purpose was connect us to and through Love. 

Only this morning in this meditation did I realize that they were the same.  Only this morning did I realize that the reason the forgiveness exercise was always given to me for clients while other exercises were unique was that my purpose was forgiveness.  These clients wouldn't have been brought to me if they didn't need to learn forgiveness. The Aha! moment for me was that forgiveness is my gateway to Love; it is the gateway through which I lead others to find pure Love. Without forgiveness, we will never find that place in ourselves where we are Love, and we certainly will never find that place in others where they are pure Love.

This knowing didn't come printed on bulletin boards: it came from listening to what I know in my heart. This wisdom came because I showed up to listen and floated through lots of clutter to the crystal clarity of what I know.