Acceptance & Forgiveness

When we struggle to accept something that has already transpired, or forgive another (including ourselves for past behaviors), many times we are the ones suffering. Acceptance (word used during this talk in place of forgiveness) is a practice that allows us to heal and find peace. Acceptance does not mean we condone or condemn another's actions, nor does it provide a free pass to behave indiscriminately. Rather, it allows us to take life events less personally, blame less and find peace.

Transcript

Hello everyone,

Thank you for joining me today for this talk and guided meditation.

This talk is going to focus on forgiveness and acceptance.

And before we do any practice,

I want to provide a foundational understanding about the concept of these two words.

Have you ever had that experience where someone reaches out to you to apologize for a comment they said or an action they did and you have no memory of the incident?

I've had this happen to me a few times when someone said,

Hey,

Remember when I said X,

Y,

Or Z?

And I'm thinking,

No,

No,

I don't remember that at all.

They proceed to tell me how they've been incessantly thinking about this for several months now and they wanted to reach out and say they're sorry.

See in their story of world events,

They believe that their comment or behavior was something that wounded me.

As their story goes,

Since they're still thinking about it,

I too must still be feeling the hurt.

However,

I hadn't given it any thought.

Of course,

As we all well know,

The opposite is just as likely.

We walk around suffering with our hurt and anger and resentment and upset,

Replaying the past over and over again,

Mentally rehearsing the alternatives,

Envisioning a reality that never existed,

Getting stuck in if only-ing.

If only I hadn't said that to my spouse.

If only I had said that to my spouse.

If only I woke up early.

If only I stayed home.

If only I quit that job.

If only I spent more time with my mother.

If only I stopped smoking.

If only I had exercised more.

If only I had worked harder,

Faster,

Smarter,

Differently.

Yeah.

No matter how many times we revisit the past,

The facts don't change.

What happened actually happened.

All of this provides clues to the essential components in the practice of forgiveness and acceptance.

Now throughout this talk and practice,

I use these terms interchangeably since I have found that the word forgiveness is often triggering for many people,

Typically due to the mistaken perspective that forgiveness connotes approval.

This however is not the true spirit of these words and for that reason,

I prefer the word acceptance.

Let me talk about what acceptance is and what it is not.

Acceptance is a practice,

A practice of cultivating in this very moment how we want to experience the world,

Experience others,

And experience ourselves.

The practice of acceptance allows us to take responsibility for our reactions and feelings.

Acceptance is the unflinching acknowledgement of what happened without blame,

Shame,

Or taking events personally.

Acceptance is a foundational orientation strategy and one of the ways we can activate the healing engagement system and the activity of the vagus nerve,

The parasympathetic system.

Trying to accept the past and well,

The present and unknown future regulates our nervous system.

When we repeatedly replay past events wishing for a different outcome,

We mobilize and activate our sympathetic nervous system since we feel unsafe with the essential reality of what transpired.

Our minds continually dig around in the dirt of the past seeking an alternative reality,

One we find more acceptable or to our liking.

The only problem is that when we fight with reality,

Reality always wins.

And since it is a practice,

Acceptance is a skill that can be learned and trained,

But it requires dedication and time.

Now more importantly,

Let me talk about what acceptance is not.

Acceptance is not an act of condoning or condemning a behavior.

And that's because acceptance is not about the other person or what actually they did.

In no way does forgiving or accepting suggest that we are okay with or force ourselves to like or love what has happened.

In the 80s and 90s,

While working with people living with terminal and life-threatening illnesses,

I heard patients being encouraged to love their cancer,

Love their HIV,

Love their Parkinson's,

Et cetera.

The practice of forgiveness or acceptance does not require us to do this.

We don't have to love our cancer.

However,

In this very moment,

When cancer is present in our body,

The practice of acceptance asks us to reflect on how do I want to be in this moment when I have cancer?

And then to take the necessary steps to cultivate peace,

Peace,

Peace,

Which means not fighting with reality because let's face it,

That fight will never be won.

This ability to accept,

Even ourselves,

Hinges on our capacity to step out of our own perspective and take things less personally.

Consider something you find unacceptable,

Something about which you might have said this out loud or even to yourself,

I just can't accept that.

What does this really mean?

Most of the time when we make such a declaration,

What we're really saying is I don't agree with or I don't like or I don't wish to acknowledge whatever has transpired.

Okay,

Take a rather simple example of a spouse or child leaving a dish in the sink.

As in the example of a person seeking my forgiveness for a comment I don't recall,

The person leaving the dish in the sink doesn't give it a moment's thought.

The significance or meaning for them is inconsequential.

The person asking for forgiveness is much like the disgruntled parent or spouse who just can't accept the other person's behaviors.

They can't accept that their child is unable to clean their dish or put it in the dishwasher.

In both cases,

The person who is suffering is creating a story,

A narrative that is focused solely on themselves failing to take into account other possible experiences or motivations.

They hold a narrow singular view of the cause of events and spend time fixated on that.

What most of us are really saying is more along the lines of this narrative.

My child is more than capable of cleaning their plates.

They're not blind.

They know what they're doing.

If it is important to me,

Then it must be important to them.

If they care about me,

Then they would respect my wishes.

And therein lies our fatal errors.

Not only do we assume that what is important to us must be important to everyone else,

We mistakenly assume that if we see or hear or experience something,

Then everyone would see,

Hear,

Or experience the same thing in the same way.

And furthermore,

They would react in the same way we do.

Imagine fighting over which tastes better,

Chocolate or vanilla.

This involves a preference to a particular taste.

Now assuming for a moment that everyone has the ability to taste,

Everybody has the same number of taste buds,

That still doesn't mean that everyone will swoon with equal delight from the same piece of rich,

Dark chocolate.

How we experience an event can be frightening to one person,

Exciting to another,

Or even fail to register to someone else.

Do you know that optical illusion,

The image that can either be the young or the old woman?

If all your mind can grasp is the old woman,

No matter how hard you try and stare at that image,

The image of the young woman may not come into view.

That is until somebody traces her outline on the image and then you suddenly don't know why you were unable to see her all along.

But a few weeks later,

Stumbling upon the image again,

You might find your mind resorting to its original pattern of perception.

As you struggle to see the young woman all over again.

Clinging to our singular view of reality leads to blaming and taking things personally,

To surefire ways to stay stuck and unable to accept or forgive.

When we blame and take things personally,

We view what happened,

Reality,

As a threat,

Which in turns activates our nervous system to go on alert.

In the face of threat or danger,

How can we ever find peace?

Remember this is not about liking,

Condemning,

Or condoning what happened.

Acceptance does not mean we reconcile with others,

Invite them back into our homes,

Or even like them.

Acceptance is all about acknowledging and admitting reality.

I don't have to like what someone said to me.

I don't have to like a dish in the sink,

Nor do I have to like my own behavior of yelling at my spouse about the bowl that remained on the counter for two days.

The practice of acceptance requires me to confront and face reality,

To be present with what happened,

Which then allows me the opportunity to cultivate my experience to lessen my pain and suffering and choose how I want to engage in the moment.

If I want peace,

I embrace reality and choose how I want to respond.

Another flaw in our thinking is that we tend to assume that awareness is the fundamental motivator for behavior.

If my spouse leaves their empty dirty plates on the counter,

Acceptance asks me to consider how they might be seeing the world.

Blaming and taking their actions personally blinds me from the fact that they didn't grow up with my mother who would leave notes above our sink that read,

Please put the dishes in the dishwasher,

The management.

That's a direct quote.

And I hope that gives some clue as to the training that shaped my developing nervous and perceptual systems.

Acceptance requires that I recognize that my spouse has not been conditioned to see the world and dishes the way I do.

They are not deliberately doing this to make me mad or hurt.

A dish is just insignificant to them while my mother trained me to see dirty kitchen ware as a sign of cleanliness and organization skills and hence about personal worthiness and value.

How could that not be threatening?

It is due to my own conditioning,

My own adaptive response that I become triggered and react.

The practice of acceptance offers me a chance to rewire my habituated response to be more aligned with my values so I don't believe that another person's behaviors are an indication about my own worth and value.

In other words,

Acceptance,

Forgiveness allows me to take back my power and reduce my suffering.

I realize that some of you might be saying,

But what about that person who did do something to deliberately or intentionally hurt you?

They purposefully insulted or criticized you.

They tried to make your life miserable.

Once again,

Acceptance has more to do with our own sense of peace and less about the other person.

As I said earlier,

Acceptance is never about condoning behavior and this is far from a passive process.

I might very well take steps to prevent the action from happening again as in the case of someone hitting or harming me.

I may seek to get them help,

Try to find them counseling,

All the while realizing the reason that they did what they did has everything to say about their past conditioning,

How they see the world,

Their own neurobiological adaptive response.

As many of us have known,

Studies have shown that those who abuse were often abused themselves.

The abuser might even say how much they loved the person they are hitting.

However,

That does not condone the violence nor does it make it okay.

When we accept in this situation,

We do not deny the truth of what happened.

We acknowledge it in order to take steps to find peace.

We do not need to replay in our own minds what we did wrong or could do differently to create a different outcome for an event that has already happened.

No,

Instead we pack our bags and leave.

By practicing acceptance and taking the other person's behavior less personally,

We recognize a fundamental truth expressed during most breakups.

When the person ending it says,

Seriously,

It's not about you,

It's about me.

When we are in the receiving end of those words,

Many of us cry out,

What's wrong with me?

And we're taking the other person's actions personally.

In some way,

We are blaming ourselves for our own existence.

Yet,

Would we think that this person's disdain of chocolate renders it useless and without value?

By blaming less and taking their preferences less personally,

We remind ourselves that we are damn good chocolate and go about seeking someone whose preferences align with ours.

No judgment,

Nothing personal,

No suffering.

Many of our behaviors,

Especially the ones that we label as self-destructive or at the very least unhelpful,

Are a result of our conditioned hardwired patterns,

Our neurobiological adaptive response.

And if that's the case,

What else can we do but accept and forgive?

By taking an honest and sustained look at our own behavior,

We can see that we are in a constant dance for safety.

We long to feel peace and we will do anything in our power for us to feel this way.

If I feel anxious and smoking is the only activity that leads me to feel less so,

Albeit for only five minutes,

Then unless I have found another way to feel safe and more secure,

I'm going to smoke.

Now said this way,

I am neither condemning or condoning the behavior.

I'm not saying people should smoke.

Instead,

Acceptance can be empowering rather than perpetuate self-debasement and continue to chastise myself,

Which mobilizes my nervous system,

Or to feel such shame that I shut down,

To freeze,

To immobilize.

I can acknowledge what has happened and then engage with the essence of the behavior,

The motivation that started the cycle in the first place,

The anxiety,

The lack of safety.

I can take steps to feel into it,

Not shy away from these feelings,

And explore alternative methods for responding.

In other words,

I can take steps to orient to the world in a new way and hopefully rewire my nervous system to new potentials.

Now,

Not a week goes by where a patient doesn't talk about their struggles with letting it go or putting something down.

Their mind is caught in a perpetual loop of examining all the possible things they and others could have said or done that would have led to a different outcome.

And by different,

Let's be clear here,

They mean better outcomes,

Something other than what actually happened,

Something to their liking.

And that could range from a conversation with a spouse to a comment between coworkers,

Or it might take the form of berating themselves for past behaviors in light of current health diagnoses,

Such as rewinding the video in your head of all the times you told yourself,

Stop smoking,

Yet you continued.

Now,

Confronted with lung cancer,

We fail to accept our past behaviors rather than forgive ourselves,

Accept ourselves.

We beat ourselves up from making bad choices.

Such mental gyrations are exhausting as we mentally fight or flee from reality and are never able to find peace.

I hope you are beginning to understand some of the foundational principles for acceptance,

For forgiveness.

Before we move into practice,

I'd like to outline some of the basic steps involved in acceptance.

At the very first,

It's important to set our intentions.

I invite everyone to ask themselves,

How do I want to live my life no matter what is happening?

More specifically,

How do I want to engage with this specific experience?

How do I want to be in this moment?

Do I want to suffer or do I want to find peace?

Now,

If the answer is peace,

The next question involves our level of commitment.

How willing and ready are we to do what is necessary?

If we are being truthful with ourselves,

How committed to the process are we really?

One way to uncover that answer is to ask ourselves the age-old question,

Is it more important to be right or happy?

Honestly,

I can tell you the number of times every fiber in my being wanted to scream to be right.

But when I allowed myself to settle,

To be still and reflect,

I saw that the only person suffering in the situation was me.

And like many a Shakespeare tragedy,

It was by my own hand.

So take a moment and ask yourself,

Am I ready and willing to commit to the process of acceptance,

The process of forgiveness?

Once you have set your intention and you've identified your commitment,

The next step in the process is to fully identify our own experience.

Look,

Before we can change anything,

We must clearly see.

We must clearly see.

So in this case,

We must clearly see our current experience as thoroughly as possible.

And it's the skill of mindfulness that helps.

This practice trains us to see more clearly with gentle,

Mindful awareness.

We break down our experience into its components.

So first,

Without any elaboration or judgment,

That means without blame or taking things personally,

Identify what actually transpired,

What happened.

In other words,

Just the facts,

Ma'am.

List just the facts.

And here we are practicing teasing apart the event of a situation from our mental reaction to the situation.

We want to separate what happened from our narrative and stories about the situation.

So can you objectively,

At least as much as possible,

Identify what happened?

In your mind's eye,

Are you able to see and hear the events without coloring them with interpretations?

An example of that would be saying,

John said,

I have no idea what you're talking about.

Or Jane left three dishes on the floor by the sofa last night.

Or I yelled at my kid at 10 p.

M.

As he was getting ready for bed.

And we can even break that down even further if we want.

I raised my voice and saying he is so selfish and don't care about anybody else.

So I can clarify what I mean by yelled.

But again,

In a very factual way.

Once we get a sense of what happened,

The next step in the process is to identify the narrative we create about the event.

In other words,

The meaning,

The thoughts,

The judgments we ascribe to the event.

Blame is a narrative which tends to include thoughts that the actions were directed at us.

Blame involves taking things personally and seeing things from a singular vantage point,

Ours,

Without understanding that each person has their own conditioning that leads to their own neurobiological response.

So when in the first example,

John said,

I had no idea what I was talking about,

The narrative would be,

John thinks I'm dumb.

In the factual events,

Jane left three dishes on the floor by the sofa last night,

The narrative would be,

She doesn't care about me.

In the factual events of I yelled at my kid at 10 p.

M.

,

The narrative might be,

I am a lousy parent.

So now that we've identified the event and our cognitive mental reactions,

That's our narratives,

Our stories,

The blame,

The shame,

It's time to recognize our physiological responses and these often tend to be overlooked.

So as you think about this event in your mind's eye,

Can you identify any changes to the following?

Did you notice any changes in your posture?

Did you instantly slouch or make yourself tighter?

How about your muscle tension?

Did you clench your jaw,

Tighten your fists,

Tense your belly?

Or the opposite,

Did you get weak in the knees or go limp?

What happened to your breath?

Did you hold your breath?

Did you sigh or yawn?

Did you breathe more rapidly?

What about your bodily sensations?

Did you get lightheaded,

Dizzy or queasy?

Did your heart race?

Did you start to sweat?

Interestingly I tend to give less weight to the emotional word that we use to describe our reactions to these events.

We might say we're anxious or angry,

Hurt or sad,

Elated or joyful.

To those words I always follow up by asking,

How do you know?

What tells you that you are anxious,

For example?

This is where those other reactions have importance.

The meaning that we give an event will generate our emotional response.

As with the dish in the sink,

My child might see it as nothing at all and hence has no emotional reaction about it.

While in my mind it suggests that I'm a failure as a parent and creates a lot of physical tension and mental rumination as I have to correct the situation in order to feel safe.

So armed with all this mindful awareness,

We then are ready to begin rewiring our experience.

Notice how the mere thought of something we have yet to forgive or accept brings about a lot of activity in our physical body and our thinking.

Our mind might begin to race and our body,

Well it's just responding as if it was about to start that race.

Now is time to regulate our nervous system.

So we want to disengage from our habituated response.

My favorite way of doing this is through the breath.

When we regulate our breath,

When we breathe more slowly,

Diaphragmatically and mindfully,

We focus on the experience of the breath rather than our current narrative that is triggering.

We can also do this by making changes to our posture and muscle tension.

Finding a relaxed upright posture,

Releasing the habitual tension in our body,

Softening the eyes,

Relaxing the shoulders,

Softening the belly,

All of that can adjust our physiology which then in turn creates a new reaction to the event.

After several moments of breath regulation,

It's time to practice the rewrite,

The rewrite of the narrative.

While we don't have to like it,

What happened,

Happened.

Yet when we are stuck in a loop,

Suffering because we cannot accept another person or what happened,

We are saying that we know better that they did something to us and if they had known better they would not have done it in the first place.

That their habituated conditioned responses are easy to change.

And I want to pause here for a moment to emphasize.

If it is that easy to change direction instantly,

If it is as easy for others to be nice and smile and always to be kind to us,

Ask yourself,

Does that apply to you too?

If we say,

Well my parents should have known better so they should have done X,

Y,

And Z.

If it's as simple as that for them,

They should have just changed on a dime,

Is this as true for us as well?

If change is so easy,

Do it right now.

Stop suffering.

Stop taking other person's responses personally.

Not that easy is it?

As you can see,

This requires practice yet I am convinced change or acceptance or forgiveness is possible.

It begins by remembering that everyone on this planet wants the same things.

Everyone wants to be safe,

To be healthy,

To be happy,

And to live with ease or some permutation of those fundamental things.

We all act out when we don't feel safe.

When we feel threatened or in danger,

Even with our own narrative,

Our nervous system takes off and we find ourselves responding in ways that we just may not like.

However acceptance helps us acknowledge our conditioned response so that we can stop fighting ourselves and begin to practice something new.

And then the next step in the process is to envision asking for forgiveness and acceptance and practicing loving kindness.

So I hope this talk helps set the stage for what we're about to do.

So in the meditation that follows we are going to be practicing these steps of acceptance.

So now let's take a moment to transition into our practice.

To start off I invite you to set your intention for being here today.

Just check in with yourself and ask yourself for what purpose are you showing up for guided meditations?

What are your overall intentions?

It could simply be to take some time for yourself to help regulate your nervous system.

Yet in this meditation we are going to be focusing primarily on the practice of acceptance,

Forgiveness and compassion.

To begin let's start the process of landing here right now.

And one of the best ways to do that is a very simple mindfulness technique.

To start I invite you to find a comfortable position,

Something that you can relax,

Soften the body so that you don't need to be focusing on any physical discomfort.

Traditionally we do this in a seated upright position if that works for you.

So find a comfortable upright but not uptight position.

One where you can fall awake if you will as Jon Kabat-Zinn says,

Not fall asleep.

So finding a lengthening of the spine,

Allow the chin to come down a little bit towards the sternum,

The neck is elongated,

The shoulders fall away from the body.

And if you prefer doing this in a lying down position please do so and see if you can lengthen the spine in the process,

Perhaps putting something underneath your knees.

And if you need to cover yourself with a blanket or a shawl to prevent yourself from focusing on temperature please do so as well.

And once we've settled in this meditative posture we're going to begin to do a simple mindfulness of sensation exercise.

We're going to start by focusing on three things that we see even if our eyes are closed,

Three things that we hear,

And then three sensations we feel in our body.

The process of mindfulness is to be aware of the present,

This moment,

Without any judgment or elaboration.

So when we focus on the sensation of sight or sound we're observing it as completely as possible without coloring it with any other words and trying to get to the very root of the experience.

So if we're talking about three things that we see,

Again with our eyes open or closed,

We're observing the colors,

The shapes,

The textures.

We're not sitting there and saying,

Oh look at that pile over there,

That mess.

Because mess is not mindful,

It's not objective,

That's a judgment.

So you might find that you observe these sensations without any words,

It's the very fundamental experience or you might notice that you could simply name it chair,

Desk,

Window,

Tree.

Or you can even begin to break that down even further by describing the size,

The color,

The shape,

The textures.

So let's begin taking a falling out breath here,

Maybe perhaps a bit deeper than normal,

And letting it out with a sigh,

A slow sigh.

And invite you to turn your attention gently to sight,

Whether your eyes are open or closed.

Notice three things that appear in your vision without any judgment.

You might simply name them or notice the colors,

The shapes,

A splash of green,

A desk,

A microphone.

Now turn your attention gently to the experience of sound and just hear,

Just listen.

Notice three things that you hear.

Now if you instantly name it,

I hear a plane,

I hear the buzzing of the computer,

Go a little bit deeper.

How would you describe the sound of the plane?

How would you describe the sound of the computer?

It's a buzzing,

A whirling,

High pitch,

Low pitch.

Because remember,

Sound is just waves moving through the air,

Hitting your eardrum.

We give them meaning.

And then turning your attention to your physical body,

Observe three sensations in the body.

Now just like sound or sight,

You don't have to go hunting for them.

You don't have to search for them.

Just open your awareness to physically feel.

Just three sensations.

If you say,

I can feel my feet resting on the floor,

What is that sensation of it resting on the floor?

Is it pressure?

Is it buzzing?

Is it vibration?

If you feel the temperature in your hands,

Notice that.

And then any time our mind starts to judge it,

Go off on a story about it,

Come back to the sensation.

So now we're going to repeat this process with just two sensations.

So I invite you to bring your attention to two things that you see,

Even if it's behind closed eyelids,

Any colors,

Any shapes.

Now take note of two things that you hear,

The two sensations from hearing.

And then notice two sensations you feel in your body.

Without effort,

Without force,

Without grasping.

And now I invite you to direct your attention a little bit more to the physical body and allow your attention,

Your awareness to land on the breath.

So where right now in this moment today,

At this time of listening to this,

Do you feel your breath as clearly as possible?

It could be in the belly and you feel the stretch of the muscles.

Maybe you feel the expansion and contraction of the rib cage.

Maybe you feel the air coming in and out through your nose or your throat.

And again,

What is that sensation?

Is it temperature,

Coolness on the in-breath and warmth on the out-breath?

And perhaps you had your mind jumped to every single area that I mentioned.

Allow your mind,

Your attention to settle on one and just be with the next breath.

Give the breath as it comes in and out on its own.

If the mind starts to wander,

If it starts to judge,

Observe that,

Note that and then bring it back to the sensation.

This was just the foundational piece of our practice,

The grounding for allowing us to show up here right now.

I invite you to turn your attention now to another physical sensation,

Another area of the body,

The heart.

You might want to put a hand on your heart or you could feel into your heart.

Some people like to imagine breathing in and out through the heart.

As one of my teachers once said,

If you're having trouble feeling your heart or your heartbeat,

Just go in the neighborhood.

Just bring your attention to the area around your heart.

So many of us have a self-critical eye,

A self-judgmental tone,

A voice in our head that appears even when we're not aware of it.

So today I want to practice a little bit more equanimity,

More peace,

More acceptance and forgiveness.

Starting with ourselves can be such a challenge.

I invite us to cultivate an image of someone or some being,

It could be a pet,

Someone that had an impact,

It could be a loved one,

Someone when you think of,

When you think upon them,

When you look at their image in your mind's eye,

You smile,

You feel the warmth in your heart.

I want you to note that experience in your heart.

Perhaps you can feel it opening as you gaze upon them.

In the process of acceptance,

We're learning to be present with what has happened.

We're learning not to fight ourselves.

We're learning to not spend so much time ruminating about the past,

Wishing for a different outcome.

We're learning to not take things that we have done or said to others as well as the things others have said and done to us as personally.

We're remembering that our behavior is motivated by a myriad of influences.

It's conditioned by our neurobiological adaptive response.

Connect with your heart by calling to mind that loved one,

That person or pet that when you think of you smile.

Now imagine a time you may have said or done something that you regret,

Something you wish you hadn't said or done.

This doesn't need to be a huge transgression.

It doesn't have to be something profoundly upsetting,

Just a minor incident where you behaved in a way you wish you hadn't.

Thinking about that situation,

Thinking about that scenario,

Maybe even seeing it in your mind's eye.

I invite you to reflect on these words.

Imagine connecting to these words from your heart to theirs.

If there's anything I have said or done in my words or my actions,

Consciously or unconsciously,

Personally or unintentionally due to my own conditioned response that has caused you suffering,

I am truly sorry.

Take some time here connecting with the intention,

The words,

The heartfelt emotion.

If there is anything I have said or done in words or actions,

Consciously or unconsciously,

Intentionally or unintentionally due to my own conditioned responses,

My own fear and lack of safety that has caused you harm,

I am truly sorry.

For those of you who are more visual,

You can imagine connecting from your heart to theirs,

Sending brilliant,

Clear,

Bright shining light,

Sending them love.

Perhaps you recall a specific moment,

A specific incident and your mind begins to wander.

There starts to be a discussion in your head.

If you notice that,

Turn your gaze once again to that person standing before you and repeat this sentiment,

Connect with the words.

If there's anything I have said or done in my words or my actions,

Consciously or unconsciously,

Intentionally or unintentionally due to my own conditioned response that has caused you suffering,

I'm sorry.

In this moment,

We are connecting with those times in our life when we even have said to ourselves,

I know better.

Why am I doing this?

Why did I say that?

And the why is very simple.

We did so because of our conditioned responses,

Because we didn't feel safe.

And that's a broad term.

Safe could be we didn't feel loved,

We didn't feel heard,

We didn't feel respected,

We didn't feel cared for,

Whether this is true or not,

Our nervous system felt that way.

And then because of our patterned response,

We reacted.

If there is anything I have said or done in word or action,

Consciously or unconsciously,

Intentionally or unintentionally due to my own conditioned responses that has caused you suffering,

I am truly sorry.

Our conditioned responses as a result of our own fear,

Worry,

Because that's the real reason we behave the way we do.

I am truly sorry.

I invite you now to imagine that loved one turning to you,

Turning to you and saying these same words that they said or have done something out of frustration,

Out of worry,

Anxiety,

Grief.

They didn't feel safe and they acted out.

So imagine now hearing these words directed to you.

If there is anything I have said or done consciously or unconsciously,

Intentionally or unintentionally due to my own conditioned responses,

My own fear,

Worry and grief that has caused you harm,

I am truly sorry.

Notice what it's like to even imagine hearing those words,

Receiving those words and that sentiment.

Imagine ever any of us have said,

I know that person cared about me but we just negated the first part and here is where we're connecting to that.

Imagine hearing and receiving those words,

If there's anything I've said or done consciously or unconsciously,

Intentionally or unintentionally due to my own conditioned responses that has caused you suffering,

I am truly sorry.

Out of our own fear,

Conditioning,

Worry and anxiety.

As you receive those words,

Recognizing that that other person behaved just as you had,

That they are no different than you,

They don't feel safe,

They don't feel cared for,

Heard,

Loved.

And that's the motivation of their behavior.

Receive those words and notice what happens in your very own heart.

And now I invite you to imagine gazing upon yourself.

In your mind's eye,

See yourself standing in front of you.

Call the mind a moment in your life that you find hard to let go and you know you find it hard to let go when you replay it over and over,

Waiting for a different result.

We cannot accept,

We cannot forgive when we blame and take things personally and in this instance we're blaming ourselves.

So opening your heart,

Gazing upon yourself and expressing the sentiment,

If there is anything I have said or done in words or in actions consciously or unconsciously,

Knowingly or unknowingly,

As a result of my own fear,

Worry,

Anxiety,

My own conditioned response that has caused my self suffering,

I'm truly sorry.

And to add to that,

And I accept and forgive myself.

Now as I said that word,

Forgive myself,

Notice what happened in your body.

Perhaps you felt some tightness,

Maybe you felt your jaw clench a little bit,

Your belly tighten,

Your shoulders raise a little bit.

Practice softening into it.

If there is anything I have said or done in words or actions,

Intentionally or unintentionally,

Due to my own conditioned responses that has caused my self suffering,

I am sorry and I accept,

I forgive myself.

Connect with that same experience of heart opening that you felt when gazing upon your loved one.

When the mind starts to judge,

It starts to feel averse to this practice.

Find the tension in your body,

Soften it and allow the next breath in.

If you hear that critical narrative,

Notice it,

Acknowledge it,

And then repeat the new narrative.

If there's anything I have said or done in word or in action,

Knowingly or unknowingly,

Consciously or unconsciously,

Due to my own conditioned responses that has caused my self suffering,

I am sorry and I accept,

I forgive myself.

My conditioned response was about safety,

How safe I felt in the world.

Continue to gaze at yourself.

Any time that internal debate arises,

Any time that should have,

Would have,

Could have,

Remind yourself that you did the only thing you could have done in that moment with the resources you had.

Another new narrative to practice.

I did the only thing I could have done in that moment with the resources I had.

Now if we want to go a step further,

We can imagine before us other people.

Just that we ask forgiveness for,

Meaning that we can stop replaying the events over in our mind.

Call to mind an incident.

This can begin to be a bit more charged.

Call to mind that person in front of you,

Connecting from your heart to theirs,

Knowing it is not about how they respond,

But about our own peace.

If there's anything I have said or done in word or action,

Intentionally or unintentionally,

Due to my own conditioning that caused you suffering,

I am truly sorry.

In no way does forgiveness and acceptance mean reconciliation.

It does not mean that we find ourselves in the same room with that person again.

What we are doing is putting down our armor,

Putting down our need to be right,

Putting down our need to prove ourselves,

Because those people,

Those people that we're asking for acceptance,

Forgiveness for,

Those people may be gone now.

They may no longer be in our lives.

And yet we continue.

We continue to replay those events.

So coming back to yourself,

Standing before you find that individual,

And from your heart to theirs,

If there is anything I have said or done in word or deed,

Intentionally or unintentionally due to my own conditioning that has caused you suffering,

I'm sorry.

And we can have this turn the other way.

In our mind's eye,

We might see someone that we find unacceptable,

Unable to forgive.

And we remember that they behave out of their own conditioned response,

Their lack of safety,

Their lack of health and peace and ease.

This doesn't condemn or condone them.

It doesn't mean we want reconciliation.

But in this moment,

We can accept what has happened.

So imagine this individual saying to you,

If there is anything I've said or done in action,

In word,

In deed,

Consciously or unconsciously,

Knowingly or unknowingly due to my own conditioned responses,

I am sorry.

And then in your mind's eye,

Repeating back to them,

I accept you.

Note when the narrative jumps in.

But that was bad behavior.

How can I accept them?

They hurt me.

And ask yourself now,

How do you want to treat yourself?

Connect back to your intention.

How do you want to be in the world?

Because we remember that we cannot accept or forgive when we take things personally.

And we are making their behavior about us.

So now let's shift the words a little bit.

As we look upon them,

We can say if there is anything you have said or done,

Consciously or unconsciously,

Intentionally or unintentionally due to your own conditioning that has caused me suffering,

I accept and forgive you.

If there is anything you have said or done in word or action,

Consciously or unconsciously due to your own conditioning that has caused me suffering,

I accept and forgive you.

Connect with that sensation of the heart opening,

The body softening,

The mind relaxing.

When we are more accepting,

More forgiving of ourselves and others,

We move through our day with more ease and grace and peace.

Let's take a moment right now to pause and think about moving through our day with more acceptance,

With more forgiveness.

Rather than thinking about how this impacts me.

What would it be like when we begin to acknowledge that that's the same narrative other people are repeating to themselves,

Preventing them from finding peace?

So repeating our new narrative,

The one that replaces our ruminating narrative of blame and taking things personally,

If there's anything I,

You,

Have said or done in word or action,

Consciously or unconsciously,

Intentionally or unintentionally due to your own conditioned responses that has caused suffering.

I'm,

We,

Are sorry and I accept and forgive you.

In the final moments of this meditation,

Let's connect with some meta.

In loving kindness meditation,

We remember that everyone on this planet wants the same things to be safe,

To be healthy,

To be at peace and to live with ease.

So connecting from your heart to a loved one's heart,

To your community's heart or perhaps to all sentient beings everywhere.

May all beings everywhere.

May we be safe.

May all beings everywhere.

May we be healthy.

May all beings everywhere.

May we be at peace.

May all beings everywhere.

May we live with ease.

Thank you for joining me.

I hope this practice provides a little respite and a little bit more acceptance and forgiveness to your heart.

May you go gently knowing your goodness.