Let's go to the wisdom of the waves for our daily dose of gentle inspiration.
Everyone has periods of feeling disconnected.
It's part of why we are here.
We disconnect so that we can reconnect,
Realign with our soul.
This is the reality of life,
And so it is.
Everyone needs to be able to forgive,
But forgiveness is not what we have been led to believe.
Whenever we have been hurt,
We often revert to the default mode.
This means we react in ways that move us away from how we want to show up as a human being.
We might replay painful memories repeatedly to no avail.
We may jump into a distraction,
Instead of giving our emotions,
These energies in motion,
A space so that we can process them.
Our minds tend to give us a hard time.
Here I go again.
This isn't fair.
I don't deserve this.
Why can't I snap out of this?
We can't stop this from happening,
That's just the way our brains are wired.
But when we resort to this very easy default mode of taking our thoughts and feelings so seriously and refusing to let go,
We create more and more inner resistance.
With less and less room on the inside,
This breeds resentment.
The antidote in these situations is forgiveness,
But it's not what we have been led to believe.
According to some of the most common dictionaries,
To forgive is to remit,
Let off or pardon somebody who hurt us.
We have been conditioned to think of forgiveness in this way,
But let's get into what it really is,
The original meaning of forgiveness.
You see,
Forgiveness is derived from the words give and before.
So you can think of forgiveness as giving yourself back the life that was there before.
So awful things can happen,
And what we're naturally left with is anger and resentment.
What was our life like before the awful thing happened?
There were times when you felt content and fulfilled,
Being in the moment and appreciating the meaningful moments of connection.
So from this perspective,
Forgiveness means we give this back to ourselves.
Therefore forgiveness does not mean forgetting,
Letting off,
Pardoning,
Trivializing or justifying any of the awful things that have happened to us.
Forgiveness is not necessarily something we do for anyone else.
It is something we do for ourselves,
Meaning we don't have to contact directly or indirectly the other person that hurt us.
Forgiveness is to release our own suffering,
To let us reconnect with things in life that we care about.
Forgiveness requires us to give ourselves back moments of meaningful connection.
In order to do this,
We can practice acceptance of our inner world when we get hooked by the difficult thoughts and feelings.
This is to allow them the space to come and go in their own time.
Then with acceptance we can bring kindness to those moments of meaningful connection.
And this is something to be grateful for.
