Omnidirectional Forgiveness - Practice

This is the practice that is a companion to the Omnidirectional Forgiveness Talk. You are asked to consider a situation that could benefit from forgiveness in all directions, toward yourself, others, and life itself.

Transcript

So I just want to mention here that there is also a talk about omni-directional forgiveness.

So if you haven't listened to that,

You may want to go listen to it,

But this practice is also self-contained,

So it should make sense even if you haven't heard the talk.

So I invite you to just sit in a posture that feels comfortable,

Letting the belly soften,

Letting the spine be fairly aligned so there's an uprightness,

An alertness,

But also a relaxation,

Letting the muscles of the face around the eyes,

The jaw soften.

Then you may even like to do a moment of just gentle massage,

Maybe rubbing your shoulder or putting a hand at the heart,

Just encouraging yourself to settle in for the practice.

Maybe taking a few deep breaths,

Breathing in through the nose,

And exhaling through the mouth,

Inhaling through the nose,

Exhaling through the mouth.

So I'm modeling this omni-directional forgiveness practice on the meta-practice,

So we'll be thinking about a situation and then kind of looking more deeply into it.

So I'd like you to bring to mind a situation that is causing some kind of distress or you know that having some deeper forgiveness around the situation would be healing for yourself.

So we're going to start there with healing for yourself,

At the same time knowing that with all of our practices,

We share the merit,

So any steps we take towards our own awakening helps everyone to awaken.

And whether or not the person who is involved in this situation ever knows directly about your forgiveness practice,

It's quite possible that they will feel some shift just through you practicing.

So bringing to mind this situation and looking for something that's maybe a 5 or 6 on a scale of 10,

So not starting with the most difficult thing or the most difficult situation.

This is because we want to build our capacity and once we get better and better at our omni-directional forgiveness,

Then we can bring it to bigger and bigger situations.

So I'm going to start by inviting you to bring your forgiveness towards yourself,

Directing it that way towards the self.

Forgiving the parts of you that may have made missteps,

May have caused harm,

May have become confused or unsure of how to proceed in the best possible way that compounded difficulty.

So just taking a few breaths and really breathing that forgiveness into the body,

Softening everything.

And notice as you think about this situation and something that may have arisen,

Perhaps something you said or did,

Notice if there's some holding in the body,

Some spot of tension like,

Oh,

My shoulder just grabbed or my jaw just clenched or my eyes just tightened.

That's helpful to notice,

Oh,

That's what happens when I'm holding against myself,

Bracing against myself.

I put tension in the body in this way.

And then breathe in some softness to wherever it is that there might be some tension arising,

Some holding.

And perhaps you didn't do anything wrong,

So-called wrong.

Perhaps really somebody else just wronged you.

But sometimes there's still some forgiveness that wants to happen there with the self.

Oh,

I trusted that person so deeply and they weren't trustworthy.

What the heck was wrong with me?

Why did I do that?

Do you see how we turn?

We kind of turn on ourself.

We hold ourself.

We can kind of begrudge our trust or we can begrudge our vulnerability.

We can judge ourselves harshly for not knowing how to do everything perfectly.

Of course,

We don't know how to do everything perfectly.

That's part of forgiveness is really acknowledging that.

So for each one of us,

As we bring to mind a situation,

There will be slightly different equation of what happened,

How it happened,

Who's quote unquote to blame.

But with whatever that situation is,

Just direct forgiveness to yourself.

Now I talked about in the talk how forgiveness is made up of other components like gentleness,

Compassion,

Equanimity,

Spaciousness.

So when you're directing quote unquote forgiveness towards yourself,

That means you're inviting in kind of gentleness,

Kindness,

Openness,

Love,

Spaciousness,

Compassion.

So just one more breath,

Just breathing in forgiveness for the self,

Directing it toward the self.

And again,

Maybe nice to have a hand on heart,

A hand on low belly.

And now we'll bring to mind the other person or people involved.

This might be harder,

Especially if we have a strong story about how they're wrong and we're right or all the ways that they caused harm.

Just see if you can even bring some gentleness,

Some opening towards that very human person with whom we're having this challenging situation.

Just bringing in some bit of kindness or openness,

Equanimity,

Okay,

I can be with that,

I can think of that person and just sit in this chair and breathe and soften my belly and not get so engaged in the story or the making someone right and making someone wrong and making a list and checking it twice.

Just putting all of that down starts to open up the potential for some forgiveness to enter.

And we can also think about the forgiveness in gradations.

We may not 100% forgive these people by the end of this sit today.

Even if there's 10% more forgiveness,

That's time well spent,

Even 1%.

And sometimes the heart surprises us and it unravels a bit and there's a surge,

There's a 50% opening.

I know it seems silly to give it this mathematical equation,

But you get a sense of what I'm talking about.

We don't want to be forcing ourselves to pretend we've completely let go of a situation if we haven't,

Or we really have forgiven someone if we haven't.

But we can celebrate the movement toward,

Wow,

I'm really seeing that I'm not holding that with quite as much energy and contraction and fury as I was last week or last month.

Part of what makes this not spiritually bypassing is acknowledging,

As we do specifically this piece of it,

Trying to send forgiveness to the other people involved,

Is noticing,

Oh,

There's a holding in my heart that just won't unravel,

Or,

Oh,

There's that tension in my belly,

I'm working with it,

But it's still there.

And then again,

You turn then the compassion and forgiveness back to yourself,

Oh,

I really see how I'm working with this,

And I'm wanting to bring more peace and forgiveness to this situation,

But it's tricky,

And I can even forgive that.

I forgive the trickiness of life,

I forgive the trickiness of the human condition,

I forgive my own trickiness,

My own confusion,

And I will put that aside for a moment.

And this third aspect is to kind of forgive the situation itself,

Like to take that larger perspective of these two co-workers,

These two colleagues,

One of them is you,

And this other person,

You know,

This is just,

This is something that happens in life.

It's hard to work closely with people and know how to collaborate in a good way,

Or with a spouse,

You know,

10 years into this marriage,

Three months into this relationship,

Whatever it is,

We both are still trying to figure out how to communicate about difficult things,

Or how to raise the kids,

Or how to divide the labor,

Whatever it is,

Right?

Just seeing that situation and being like,

Okay,

Sending forgiveness toward life itself,

Toward interpersonal relationship itself,

Toward the complexity and stickiness of opening our heart with others,

Or trying to collaborate and do good work,

Trying to understand how to be part of an organization,

Trying to understand how to remain true to ourselves and also be flexible with others.

It's helpful here to really start to put some language to that larger picture,

Which can bring in more spaciousness,

Also can have,

We have compassion for just our shared humanity,

Okay,

To people that are having difficulty,

That's probably everyone in the planet is experiencing something like that in this moment.

Marriage isn't easy.

Work environments don't always go the way we'd hoped.

Knowing how to parent is complex.

Knowing how to be in relationship with our parents and our shared history is complicated,

Can be complicated.

So this is where this really this omni directional like forgive everything,

Forgive everything,

In every direction is the invitation.

Knowing full well that that is not easy,

And it doesn't usually happen just overnight or with one sit,

But it is time well spent.

How do we know it's time well spent?

Because it creates a life that is more open and free and gracious and loving and spacious and compassionate.

Whereas holding on to the anger and the grudge and the challenge makes us smaller and more volatile and more aggressive and more self righteous and perpetuates the harm.

It perpetuates the harm and it's an omni directional harm.

The harm goes to the other and the harm also comes into the self and the harm is also induced into the world through the marriage or the family or the community or the work environment.

So gentleness is a piece of this.

So please don't judge yourself harshly,

Wherever you are on your path with this kind of omni directional forgiveness is perfect.

And it takes a lifetime.

So don't be in too big of a hurry.

Just stepping in any way toward this sense of omni directional forgiveness to yourself,

To the others and to the situation itself,

Toward life itself,

Toward the complexity and messiness of life,

Just send some forgiveness there,

The complexity and the messiness of life,

Breathing it in,

Breathing it out.

And what has the potential to transform the complexity and messiness of life?

There's only a very few things,

Love,

Forgiveness,

Patience,

Equanimity,

Compassion.

These are the only few things that have any kind of true potential to start to heal and transform our very lives and our very self.

So just take a few more breaths.

One breath sending forgiveness to the self,

Exhaling and letting go.

One breath in and maybe even begrudgingly sending some forgiveness to the others involved.

Maybe,

Okay,

Those humans,

Those messy humans,

All right,

Some little bit of softening or perhaps some large amount of softening,

Whatever's true for you.

And then in inhaling and sending out forgiveness towards just the larger situation and complexity and messiness of life,

Maybe a little sigh in there.

May all beings everywhere without exception live with ease and wellbeing.

May all beings everywhere without exception be happy and healthy,

Safe and protected.

And may we all awaken from delusion and confusion.

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