It Is Not What They Did

While the ego is trying to get us to believe that what other individuals or external conditions and circumstances are the source of our mental and emotional content, to set ourselves free, we need to realize that this is not so. Yes, people will always do what they do, and things will always happen that may not be to our liking, but we, and we alone, have supreme sovereignty over our minds, thus what we think and feel.

I invite you to join me as we explore how to take our power back and how to transcend negativity through the practice of forgiveness and compassion.

Transcript

Blessings and welcome to the path to freedom,

The path of freedom.

This beautiful path that we get to walk,

Where we get to continuously,

Continually,

Through the inner work that we're doing,

Through our intentions,

Through our discipline,

Through our willingness,

Get to be transformed and transform our lives.

Forever and for the better,

Where we get to live in ever expanding love and joy and peace and harmony and wholeness and beauty and all these amazing,

Beautiful,

Wonderful qualities that are never missing,

That are never lacking,

But they're always inherent,

They're always intrinsic to our nature,

They are our nature.

And so we're not getting them from the world,

We're not receiving them from any external source,

But we are setting them free from within us,

We're giving them permission to well up,

Just like any seed yielding to its next iteration.

The sunflower seed does not acquire pieces to put the sunflower together,

But the sunflower emerges from within the seed,

And it is exactly the same with these qualities within us.

Albeit many of us sometimes forget that this is so,

Many of us move through life not ever really waking up to the fact that this is so,

To the truth that this is so,

But this is still nonetheless so.

So I'm very happy that you're here,

I'm very happy that I'm here.

My name is Daniel Rocchio,

And this episode,

This session,

This talk is about an experience that I had about a week ago,

A couple of weeks ago,

That really speaks to this.

And the topic for today is something along the lines,

It is not what they did.

It is not what they did.

And so what happened was that an individual that is close to me initiated this project.

And as they are close to me,

They obviously,

Before they initiated it,

They ran it by me and was asking for my thoughts and my feedback on it,

And if this is something that I would go along with,

Because it would affect me and my life as well.

I was sharing with them that I absolutely have no objections,

They are absolutely free to go ahead with this project,

As long as I do not need to be involved,

As long as I do not need to take responsibility for any aspect of this project,

As long as it doesn't come with unwanted obligations for me.

And they were all fine with this,

And so they started up this project,

And about a week in to the project,

They came asking me for help.

And they came asking in a way that I felt trapped,

I felt obliged to say yes,

To accommodate their request.

Obviously this is not so,

But this was my experience.

I didn't feel free to say no,

I don't want to do this,

No,

I don't want to get involved,

But I felt that I had to go along with assisting them in the way that they wanted me to assist them.

And I was thrown into such emotional and mental hell.

For about a day,

I was stewing,

And I was so angry,

And I was in so much resistance,

And so much resentment,

And the ego conjured up all these reasons,

All these valid reasons to justify my anger,

To justify my resentment,

To justify treating them in a way that was not all that loving.

I turned away my love,

I withdrew my love from this individual,

I withdrew my support.

I wasn't verbally abusing them,

I absolutely let them know that I did not think that this was okay,

I didn't condone this,

But there was no verbal,

Or obviously not physical,

Any kind of abuse in that sense.

But here's the thing,

And this is the difficult part,

It is not what they did that got me upset.

They were not the reason,

Their actions,

Their choices were not the reason for my stewing in this negativity,

For my experiencing this hellish space,

But it was my perceptions,

My judgments,

My thoughts about what they did.

It could just as well have been something that they didn't do,

In this case it was something that they did.

And I remember the ego saying they always do this,

And obviously the ego remembered past experiences that were just like this one.

But the thing is,

And this is the difficult part,

This is where forgiveness comes in.

You know what Jesus said when he said,

Forgive them for they know not what they do.

And we're not forgiving anyone for their sake.

Forgiveness is not about condoning or accepting any kind of behavior on anyone else's part.

Forgiveness is not about us making up.

That may be a byproduct of the forgiveness work that we do,

But it is not the aim of forgiveness.

It is very very rare that I go to bed upset,

But I went to bed furious.

And actually the request that they made,

They made it during the evening,

So when I was like,

It's time for me to go to bed,

The trigger was freshly opened.

I was freshly triggered.

And so I went to bed absolutely pissed off.

I knew that this was happening.

I observed the emotional reaction.

I observed the mental reaction.

I observed the blame that the ego blasted into my awareness.

I wasn't able to free myself of it.

I wasn't able to transcend it.

I wasn't able to release and let it go.

I wasn't even able to embrace and allow it to be,

But I was so stewing in it.

I was so stewing in it.

And I couldn't even do my evening routine.

I have this evening routine,

And to be perfectly honest,

I'm not doing it every night,

But I'm doing it most nights.

Where I lean into gratitude,

I give thanks for whatever has happened,

Whatever I feel grateful for in the moment.

Me being who I am,

Where I am,

Things that are in my life,

Things that are coming into my life,

Things that are emerging,

People that are in my life,

Events,

Experiences that are in my life.

And then I ask if there is someone I need to forgive,

And I do some forgiveness work around that.

And then I bless the individual or the situation that I need to forgive.

And then I ask for guidance.

I ask the angelic realm to inform me,

To let me know,

To guide me during the night so that I may wake up a different person.

I couldn't even bring myself to do this.

And so I woke up with a little perspective,

And perspective is always good,

Or distance.

Distance is always good.

And so I woke up and I realized that,

Hey,

This is futile.

I mean,

This is pointless.

I can continue to stew in this.

Nothing is going to improve from me being angry.

I'm not going to feel better.

They are certainly not going to feel better.

But most of all,

This is affecting me more than anyone else.

So how do I want to approach this?

And so I began to,

During that day,

I didn't really have the time or the space to engage in formal forgiveness.

But over the next couple of days,

I incrementally and gradually approached forgiveness,

And I began treating my mind,

Asking God to help me see them as God sees them,

To help me see this individual through the eyes of unconditional love.

I asked for help to release and let go of the anger and the resentment and the negativity that I was holding on to,

You know.

It took about a day,

And the intense emotional reaction began to dissolve.

And it came to the,

This is really,

Well,

Maybe it is relevant,

But it came to the point where I realized that I want to help them out.

They are absolutely doing the very best they know how to do.

They could not foresee the implications and the work that entailed this particular project.

And it went beyond me and them.

This project,

In the long run,

Will benefit more than just them.

It will benefit other individuals that are near and dear to me as well.

So I was able to overcome that negativity.

But the point of it all is that it is not what they did.

It's like that beautiful statement that goes,

Everything is nothing until we make it something.

Everything is nothing until we make it something.

People act the way they act.

People do whatever they do.

Things happen the way things happen.

It is not what happened.

It is not what they did that made us angry,

That made us whatever the case may be.

It is our perceptions.

It is our judgments.

It is the stories that we hold on to.

The thoughts as to what should and should not be.

And so this is what forgiveness is all about,

Releasing and letting go those judgments.

And we're not doing it for them.

We're not doing it for the other individual.

We're not doing it for anyone else.

We're doing it for the sake of our peace.

For the sake of our joy and harmony.

It's like another beautiful statement.

Do we want to be right or do we want to be happy?

I mean,

My ego was so adamant about how justified I was.

How they had wronged me.

How they had forced me to do something that I didn't want to do.

And that might be from a certain perspective.

But from a higher perspective,

Is this serving me?

These stories that I'm holding on to,

These judgments that I'm holding on to,

This resistance that I'm holding on to.

Is this serving me?

Is it serving me to walk around pissed off?

Is it serving me to walk around like a grinch?

Of course not.

Of course not.

It serves me to choose peace.

It serves me to choose joy.

It serves me to choose harmony.

It serves me to release and let it go.

Not saying that it was alright for them to act this way.

And later on,

A couple of days later,

We got to have a conversation around this.

So that we could find some common grounds.

So that we could find a way forward.

So that we could set up boundaries.

And I was able to articulate and describe to them that when it works for me,

I'll absolutely help out.

But there are certain spaces and times when it doesn't work.

And they need to be clear on that.

Not to say,

Not to ask.

That's not what I'm saying.

They're always free to ask for my help.

And at times,

I'll absolutely say,

Sure,

I'll do it.

And there will be other times when I'll say,

No,

I'm not going to be able to do it.

I can't do it right now.

So we got to have a beautiful conversation around that.

And that was the result,

A direct result of the forgiveness,

The work that I had done.

That I was able to raise myself.

I'm not taking credit for it.

This is not for anyone of you thinking that,

Oh,

He's so bad,

That dude.

That's not it at all.

But this beautiful experience serves to illustrate how we can choose.

We can choose in any given moment.

I tried to choose during the first 12 hours or so.

I wasn't able to.

I wasn't able to.

I didn't beat myself up over it.

I didn't blame myself for not being able.

But I realized that,

Hey,

I am doing the very best I know how to do.

I'm sitting on this awareness that this is not serving me.

But I'm not able to free myself of it.

So that's all good and well.

That is all good and well.

And when I was able,

When I woke up the next morning and the following day or days,

I was able to gradually free myself of the negativity.

But we always want to ask the beautiful question.

This,

What I'm engaging in now,

And there are different variations of this question.

But one version that serves this experience is what I'm engaging in now,

What I'm turning my attention to now.

And in my mind,

I was turning my attention toward how wrong they were.

How,

What's the word?

It doesn't matter.

I was turning my attention toward what they did,

Rather than how can I choose to stay in peace.

I could have taken a walk.

I didn't.

It didn't occur to me.

I could have.

I could have gone into meditation.

I could have gone into prayer.

There were a number of things I could have done.

Most of them didn't occur to me,

And those that did,

I wasn't able to make that choice.

That's all good and well.

But when I was able to make the choice,

I was able to ask myself the question,

What I'm engaging in now,

Or what choice can I make that is in alignment with the good that I wish to experience?

What choice can I make that is in alignment with the good that I wish to experience?

And if we ask that question on a regular basis,

That question will become so integrated with our being that even when we're not consciously asking that question,

It is still operating within us.

But the bottom line is that we need to choose it.

Yes,

They did whatever they did,

But what can we choose?

What can I choose to find my way back to peace,

To find my way back to love,

To find my way back to harmony,

To find my way back to freedom,

To find my way back to wholeness?

That is far more important than what they did.

People are going to do whatever people do,

Including us.

And as long as we give others the power to dictate our mental activity and our emotional activity,

We're in trouble.

In big,

Big trouble.

So we want to bring it all back to home.

We want to take our minds back.

We want to assume responsibility for ourselves.

So it is not what they did.

And in conclusion to this,

I want to share a beautiful tool that we can use when we want to do forgiveness work.

And there are four,

Actually five,

Simple sentences.

Four simple sentences,

And then one concluding sentence.

And I'm just going to say them,

Maybe repeat them once,

But I'm not going to go into them.

If any one of us want to go deeper into forgiveness,

There are a number of forgiveness tracks where I explain these and describe these and how to work with these.

But for now,

I'm just going to sort of mention them.

Where the first one is,

You have no power over me.

Whoever,

Whenever,

Whatever,

You have no power over me.

Be it an individual or a circumstance or condition,

You have no power over me.

The next one is,

I stand in my own authority.

I stand in my own authority.

The third one is,

I set myself free.

I set myself.

And the last one is,

And I set you free.

I set you free.

And then to wrap it all up,

We can just affirm that all is well between us.

All is well between our souls.

An aspect of this work that we're not going to go into today is while,

And this is so for every challenge,

Any challenge that comes into our experience,

We're always wise to ask,

What good is here that I presently cannot see?

Yes,

There is turmoil.

Yes,

There are things that I don't want to experience.

Yes,

There are things that I don't want this,

I don't like this,

I don't enjoy this.

But what good is here that I cannot presently see?

And it always brings us back to how we need to release and let go of something.

As in my case,

I needed to release and let go of the judgments,

The opinions,

The stories that I was holding on to,

That I was being hijacked by.

What good is here that I presently cannot see?

But what good is here that I presently cannot see?

And that question beautifully guides us into the work that we're being invited to do to transcend this challenge,

To go beyond this challenge so that we can graduate and move on to new challenges,

New lessons.

All right,

Beautiful being,

We didn't take any breathing spaces or breathing pauses today.

That's all good and well.

But this is an aspect.

This is an exercise in forgiveness.

And obviously the invitation for us today is to ask the question,

Is there anyone that I need to forgive?

Is there anyone I'm harboring or holding on to anger,

Resentment,

Negativity toward?

It is not doing much for them.

It is doing a whole lot to us,

That negativity that we are swimming in as it creates or creates,

That's not the word I was looking for,

As it,

Let's go with create,

Creates and distributes toxic chemicals,

Speeds up the aging process,

Weakens the immune system.

So who do I need to forgive?

Is there anyone I need to forgive?

And then begin to release and let go of the judgments that we are holding on to,

The resentments,

The small and limited thought patterns that we are holding on to where this individual is concerned.

Thank you so,

So much as always for participating,

For joining me on this beautiful,

Beautiful,

Magnificent journey.

I'm so happy to be here.

I'm so grateful to be here.

And I'm grateful that you're here with me,

That we get to walk this path together.

Until we meet again,

Until the next time,

I,

As always,

Bless,

Bless,

Bless our days,

And I bless,

Bless,

Bless our ways with much love and many blessings.

Namaste.

Reviews

We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are. Thank you Daniel!