I Don't Know What it Means to Forgive Myself - Day 171

Wow, sorry for the misleading post title yesterday, everyone. 146 page views and only 5 people gave a +1 haha. Okay: I do not know how to actualize unconditional forgiveness of self and other in reality.

The truth is that I'm not sure that I understand forgiveness really at all. To revisit the definition:

for·give
/fərˈgiv/
Verb
1. Stop feeling angry or resentful toward (someone) for an offense, flaw, or mistake.
2. Stop feeling angry or resentful toward someone for (an offense, flaw, or mistake).

for·give·ness
/fərˈgivnis/
Noun
The action or process of forgiving or being forgiven.

Within these definitions I see that I do not understand and have not really understood how to forgive myself, how to stop hating myself and actually stop turning on myself and being my own worst enemy eating away at myself from within. I mean just saying or writing words isn't the work itself. How do I actually stop my mind? How do I actually stop myself from continuing to go back to these places of eating myself alive?

I haven't really even understood quite exactly what I might need to forgive myself for in order to stop all of this anger and resentment against myself. I mean what's going on when I just completely turn on myself? I don't really get it, and I'm not going to pretend like I get it. I feel pretty fucking lost quite frankly, and overwhelmed with all the various things I'm facing...

But I am able to reflect on some advice given to me not so long ago when I was experiencing extreme emotions and it was suggested that I just breathe. Just focus on my breath for an entire week and let that be the thing that I push myself to do, rather than expecting myself to deal with everything else.

Well I have plenty to deal with from within and without, between family issues, work stress, friendship problems, and my own tendency to rip myself apart from within through self doubt, self judgment, and self hatred.

I suppose that one point might be having unrealistically high expectations for myself, which is a point I've visited before. Expecting myself to just somehow magically be able to do something or basically not have to walk the steps of the process of getting there. "Forgiveness" is a "process."

So I bring my expectations back to: breathing, doing what needs to be done, and doing whatever I can to support myself through that, no matter what that looks like as long as it is self-honest in its starting point. I can't figure everything else out at the same time, and I can't figure anything out if I'm allowing myself to get overwhelmed and caught up in anxiety and self hatred and self judgments and self doubt.

So:

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I am overwhelmed and that there is simply "too much" going on and that there is no possible way to proceed or no possible solution or no possible way to support myself practically through everything that I am facing.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to judge myself for having emotional reactions to the various things that I am facing in my personal and professional life.

I commit myself to no longer judge myself as my reactions and emotions. I commit myself to realize that I am under a lot of stress. I commit myself however to find stability for myself as a gift to myself through my breath so that I do not allow these perfectly understandable and expected emotional reactions to direct me, instead I direct myself to find solutions in very moment that are self supportive and best for all.

I commit myself to no longer judge myself as my reactions and emotions. That will be a tough one.

I will support myself through that by continuing however to realize that regardless of my emotions and reactions, I am the self directive principle of myself, and so to give myself the gift of myself and my own ability to stabilize myself to direct myself in every moment because in any given moment I am probably only really facing one thing, and so to direct myself in self responsible self support in regards to that one thing.

So that when I am at work I am not allowing myself to feel sorry for myself with what is happening in my family or personal life.

I realize that work is an extremely stressful environment. I realize too however that the way that I direct my reaction to the environment is my responsibility. I realize there are resources for support with this when I feel confused or when my reactions get out of my own hands, and at that point I commit myself to seek out those resources of assistance and support.

I commit myself to seek out the assistance and support that I may need as I see fit, and to not judge myself for perceiving that I need or want assistance or support.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to judge myself for feeling that I need assistance or support or another perspective in order for me to clarify my own perspective and stabilize myself with cross references of experience and perspective.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that just because I am facing a lot of different stressful situations right now that this is the time that I should abandon process, when really it would seem as if this would be the time to embrace what I have learned and still can learn more of within this process.

I commit myself to support myself in process in whatever form that takes be it writing or reading or listening, or also even taking a step back to reflect and process within myself and my lived application.

I realize I am juggling a lot right now. I realize I do not have a lot of built-in trusted support systems. I realize that because of this it is easy for me to turn on myself even at this time when I most need to be here to support myself. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to sabotage and abuse myself just because I feel like I don't have anyone or very many other people supporting me.

I commit myself to seeking out assistance and support at work from my coworkers.

I commit myself to seeking out assistance and support in relation to my family from my mom and other family members, because we are all going through this together.

I commit myself to allowing myself to feel whatever emotional reactions come up for me in relation to what is happening in my family because I realize that I have not allowed myself to see how I really feel and have instead suppressed my emotions and it is only with the most recent development where I see that it is having a direct impact on my life that I am seeing that I can no longer suppress the emotions, but again I commit myself to maintain self directive principle over myself and my life so that I do not accept or allow the emotions or the circumstances to scare me into hiding or suppression but instead face the reality of what is happening as something that we all must face: illness and eventual death.

I commit myself to continue the process of facing myself in my friendships and learning how I can support myself to create and maintain healthy self-responsible and self-supportive friendships.

I commit myself to breathing in every moment that I would otherwise judge, doubt, or hate myself: I breathe. I breathe in and out slowly and I stabilize myself in the physical and out of my mind.

Unconditional Forgiveness of Self and Other and the Process to Actualize this in Reality - Day 170

I recently acquired a book (Radical Forgiveness by Colin Tipping) that a friend recommended to me when I asked her how I could bring myself to the place of unconditional love and forgiveness that she had created for herself.

I read the first section of the book and found it to be insightful and also in line with many things I have learned through walking process with desteni, although much of the terminology and reasoning differs.

The first section is actually available to read here: Jill's Story

Now, if you've read the story you've probably noticed a lot of talk about souls and I don't know a whole lot about souls although I've heard that according to the desteni perspective, they don't exist (anymore). I'm choosing to overlook this and some other details and simply take from this book and this story that which suits me in healing myself and in forgiving myself and others unconditionally.

I set aside the book after reading (and scribbling all over) this first section and allowed it to "sink in." I then became overtaken by migraine for two days (I'd had them daily for a few weeks, but these two days were "off the charts" in terms of pain) and so even if I had wanted to I was not really functioning enough to be able to revisit the book or the process I have now set myself to walk in relation to this point.

But I see that I have a few resources accessible to me, this book, the new eqafe interviews about resentment (Part 132, Part 133, Part 134, and Part 135) which would likely be excellent resources, and also the suggestion to have a look at something Jack wrote about parents and what I understand to be maybe a kind of Freudian theory in regards to romantic relationships and parent relationships... I've yet to search the depths of the desteni website to locate that document, though.

I also see that since I have released myself out from under the "dark cloud" of energy it would be very easy for me to skip along my merry way and never look back, until suddenly I would again be faced with this point. Part of why I resisted or doubted the decision I made as a boundary for myself to release myself from this chaotic internal energy was that I feared I was simply running away and evading facing myself. Well, yes, that would be one way to move forward. But the "plan" so to speak was to release myself from the energy via this boundary, and then deal with the energy for as and by myself, on "my side" of the boundary, as is necessary to be done to really actually in fact release myself from myself.

And I have been resisting this, or edging on resistance, but that is okay, it takes some time to get "back on my feet" so to speak and then I was hit with the consequential migraine, within which I constantly questioned my decision like as if this migraine was indicative that I was in fact running away or wasn't doing what was self honest or best for all.

But the fact of the matter is that I get migraines and I have had migraines daily now for a few weeks / months, indeed during the time that I was allowing myself to create and then live under that "dark cloud" of energetic storminess. So having released the trigger for that most oppressive energy through the setting of a boundary, and also having collapsed my posture into the pain, and also having continued then in the calendar of what each day brings and the anxiety that I have created in relation to certain events, it seems to make sense to me that I would go "off the charts" in pain on Saturday, and then be even worse off yesterday after having seen a chiropractor which really is rather traumatic for the spine especially after it having been over a year since my last visit. Today, I am up and moving, albeit slowly and carefully, and I am looking now too at what I must do with this energy that is still with me, lest I suppress it and allow it to come up again at a later time.

And another reason that I had not wanted to read further in this book is because I first wanted to process that which I had already read.

So onward now to the section of the book that did in fact support me in realizing that I cannot run away without facing further consequences and so must continue to face myself and release myself from myself rather than trick myself that just because the stimulus is now gone, the energy is too. It is not. It is still here as me as who I am and as how I will automatically react if and when another stimulus comes along. So, to direct it and take control as the creator of myself now through an as-of-yet determined process, but I have the tools, and I know where to get more support.

Early on in the story one character asks the other, "Jill, can you ever remember feeling this same way when you were a little girl?" And immediately I saw myself in this as I had already previously come to recognize that the conflict I was engaging in was simply me re-enacting scenarios and reliving my relationship with my dad. This came up in CoDA as well when a woman pointed out that she just felt like she would break if one more unexpected thing happened, and she reflected back on how she feared she would break when she was waiting her turn for her father to beat her.

So I have to continue to look at how this situation mirrors for me what I have already lived but not healed through my relationship with my dad.

Then there comes the idea that, "Life will always prove your beliefs right," and "If he hadn't [stopped mistreating you], you would have felt perfectly happy to leave him and find someone else who would treat you as though you were enough. We always create our reality according to our beliefs." And so here this plays into the realization that I was unhappy in this relationship / friendship, and I knew I was unhappy, but I did not feel "perfectly happy to leave" because this relationship / friendship confirmed for me my beliefs about myself and thus set reality in alignment with my beliefs.

However, "Looked at from a spiritual standpoint, our discomfort in any given situation provides a signal that we are out of alignment with spiritual law and are being given an opportunity to heal something. It may be some original pain or perhaps a toxic belief that stops us from becoming our true selves. We don't often see it from this perspective, however. Rather, we judge the situation and blame others for what is happening, which prevents us from seeing the message or understanding the lesson. This prevents us from healing. If we don't heal whatever needs to be healed, we must create more discomfort until we are literally forced to ask, 'What is going on here?' Sometimes the message has to become very loud, or the pain extremely intense, before we pay attention."

And so here we are indicated toward the time-loop effect that comes into play when we ignore our reactions and energies and allow them to overtake us to where they will then direct us in our living when and as these various scenarios arise. However, to face, direct, and clear the energy is to heal the wound so as to take self directive principle of oneself and one's life, thus "learning the lesson" that is within the friction or discomfort.

And in this way, "having yet another opportunity to look at and heal this issue is a gift!"

Later, on page 26, "Any time a situation in our life triggers the memory of this pain or the idea attached to it, we emotionally regress. Thus we feel and behave like the little kid who first experienced the pain." An experience to which I can very much relate as I knew full well that I was behaving in a way that was immature and childish and failed to take into consideration what I have learned throughout the years since the first incident and especially what I have learned in process. Hence also my experience of seeing myself as "young" and therefore "inferior" at work.

The story does not really show the work of forgiveness as applied in the physical. Instead it suggests that this is a personal internal process, "There is really very little for you to do... From this point on, it's more a question of how you feel inside yourself. Do you understand that you are no longer a victim? Do you understand that Jeff is no longer a persecutor? Do you see that the situation was exactly what you needed and wanted [created]?" So here I am now to watch myself as my internal movements and direct my energy and heal myself.

So here I see how this whole ordeal is really just basically a way to see who I am as who I have accepted and allowed myself to be and to heal that, and that if I don't heal it now I will have to face it again.


Okay, so:

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to try to create rules and regulations for myself on how I "should" heal myself based on what I believe other people want me to do or what I believe other people think I should do.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to judge and doubt myself as my chosen way of healing this point within myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate in a relationship / friendship that I did not enjoy simply because it confirmed a belief within me that I was not worth anything better.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate in argumentative communication that sapped my energy and created more angry energy for me because for me this was a way to relive and re-enact my relationship with my dad in trying to find a new solution. I realize there is no solution within this, the only solution is with healing the original pain.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to involve another person in this game that I played with myself and another of reliving and re-enacting my relationship with my dad.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to blame another person for the things that my dad did or said or was because I saw so many similarities and my energies were so much the same that it became difficult to differentiate, so that all of the past unhealed energy from my relationship with my dad also became a part of this new situation / relationship / friendship and so that person became the target for my anger and blame and hurt.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to go through life thinking that I can just sweep my pain under the rug and that it does not have to influence my living, as long as I keep it tucked away and hidden.

I forgive myself therefore for accepting and allowing myself to be abusive and irresponsible with myself and others by not facing myself and taking responsibility for myself and who I am within and as my thoughts, back chats, judgments, beliefs, and energetic reactions to conflict.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to see my reaction to conflict as "just the way it is" and not something I can control when in reality it is something I must face and heal so that I am able to stand clear and stable in communication with another even when we disagree.

I realize that my aversion to "conflict" is limiting me in many ways in my life because within it I also have an aversion to open honest communication because I fear that this will birth conflict.

I realize that what I fear is what I manifest and by expecting or fearing conflict I will end up communicating in a way that births conflict.

I realize that conflict can and does exist within and as me even without it existing within and as another or within and as our communications.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to take full responsibility for myself and who I am within and as conflict.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to see similarities between another person and my father and to not really think anything of this, not realizing that this is meaningful in an energetic way and that the accumulation of these similarities and my noticing these similarities, not directed, meant the demise of the friendship within my mind and my inability to handle the energy that came up while still participating in the friendship, and so I had to create a boundary just to be able to breathe.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create a dynamic within myself still of "winning" or "losing" like in an argument or conflict where I want to withhold my friendship as a way of maintaining within my mind that I have "won" or I am "winning" because withholding my attention from another person is one of the only tools I have ever developed to try and gain power in a relationship.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be stuck in polarities of inferiority / superiority and winning / losing such that I have never accepted or allowed myself to truly exist equal to and one with another individual or all as life.

I commit myself to equality and oneness and discovering how to live this as me.

I commit myself to focusing on myself in healing these wounds and to continuing on in this process using the new tools I have for self support and taking responsibility for myself in self honesty, and abandoning the old tools of blame, judgment, hatred, anger, manipulation, withdrawal, and hiding.

I commit myself to identifying the specific points within this broader point of the grudge, the wall, the father-figure, the desire, the disdain, and whatever beliefs I have created and existed within and as about myself, about others, about men, about relationships, and about life, and walking through and clearing those points as a gift to myself to assist and support myself to living equal to and one with all as life as what is best for all.


I'll be revisiting this topic periodically as I move through my resources and discover points to share.

Walking Through the Wall - Day 144

I continue to have difficulty with actual forgiveness.
I continue to prefer looking at the wall instead of what is beyond it. I continue to rebuild the wall.
I continue to put up the blocks and defenses of energy. I continue to create separation through energy.
I continue to get hung up on holding onto energy.

I mean this scenario is lose-lose. I am stuck, angry, stagnant. And within this, neither can move forward. I mean it's like the other "can't win," because I will always put energy in the way, and no one else can remove that energy. And within this I can't win either, because living in energy is living in a prison.

To make this win-win is actually very simple. I let go. I let go of the energy. I stop building the wall and I walk through the fucking wall. I put it behind me. I forgive. I stop it, end it, and leave it. I do not accept it or allow it.

No contingencies. No stipulations. No "ifs" "ands" or "buts."

Unconditional and absolute as what is best for all: win-win.


I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to see the energy coming up again and that I have done nothing about it, that I have merely seen it, but have not faced it, have not processed it, have not directed it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed the energy to come up again.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed the energy to direct me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create separation through and as energy.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to rebuild the wall through the passage of time and suppression of energetic experiences.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to stuff the energy into my body as an experience of heaviness and feeling blocked and dense in my chest/stomach area.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to weigh myself down with energetic experiences, holding onto energy.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to support myself to release the energy.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to justify not facing / processing / directing the energy because I was "clear" momentarily and so I have believed the little bits of recreated energy does not matter or is not enough to make a difference, or like somehow magically it didn't matter because I had been clear briefly.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to let the energy grow and compile and condense into a wall or block because I have not wanted to face it / myself, because I wanted to believe I was done, because I wanted to believe that maybe it was that easy.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to ask myself, "how did that happen?" and answer for myself "temporary relief of validation through communication with another," and yet to not follow through on this realization that this was not real relief, this was not real stability, it was merely a drainage, but the energy was still flowing in / through / as me, and I would soon fill up with it again if I did not stop it.

I forgive myself that I did not accept or allow myself to really unconditionally and perpetually support myself by filling myself with my breath.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to basically abandon myself and "move on" just because I found temporary relief, so that now that it was no longer urgent I did not want to look at it.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to really see, realize, and understand that this relief was only temporary and it was in no real way facilitated or created or directed by me, but was dependent on the response that I got from another. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to notice that, but to resist doing anything about it, resist directing the energy for myself and ensuring that it was really done, by myself really actually stopping it.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to actually forgive myself, or actually forgive another, because I have continued to exist in energy and continued to perpetuate the energy.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think that the energy that was rebuilding was not enough to matter, and also to project my responsibility into the future, where I thought "I'll deal with it later, when the time comes to face the conversation."

I forgive myself that I did not accept or allow myself to see myself always and support myself unconditionally through any and every energetic experience, especially those which, in self-honesty, were clearly going to lead to an energetic clog of a wall or grudge.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to ignore the fact that I have been allowing this wall to be rebuilt, by turning a blind eye, not seeing myself in such a way that the wall could like "sneak up on me" without me even realizing that I was slowly become more and more clogged and blocked and less able to breathe.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to hold to my commitment unconditionally to watch myself for any new or old energetic hoarding, to see how I would fill the emptiness in a fear reaction to the relief I found through an external source.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to clear myself from within.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to make a friendship contingent on who another person is, or what another person says or does.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to try to manipulate a situation / friendship / person so that I do not have to take absolute responsibility for myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continue to blame another for my energetic experience of myself, ignoring the fact that I am the only creator of my experiences.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to still therefore try to look at what another should or "needs to" do differently rather than seeing what I need to do differently, and then changing, unconditionally.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to make who I am contingent on who another is or what another says or does, so that the reality I create for myself is contingent on external factors.


I stop.

I breathe.

I walk through the wall.

I put it behind me.

I forgive.

I breathe more.

I forgive again.

And I do not look back.

Write and repeat.

Previous Pertinent Posts:

• Breaking Down the Wall Between My Father and Myself - Day 4
• Conflict Character - Day 73
• Holding Grudges and Retribution - Day 96
• Having Things "My Way" - Day 97
• Betrayal - Day 104
• The Grudge - Day 105
• Hindsight? Why Not See NOW? - Day 106
• SF in Response to Forum Post Pt. 1 - Day 112
• Forgiveness Defined - Day 113
• Emotions, Responsibility, and Actual Forgiveness - Day 114
• I am Not a True Friend - Day 118
• Learning to Let Go - Day 121
• The Sailor and the Storm Within - Day 122
• Getting Unstuck & Taking Responsibility - Day 125
• Resolving Conflict through Conversation with Myself - Day 126
• Wall or Nothing - Day 127
• Still Stuck - Day 128
• Not Communicating My Intent - Day 129
• Together, Al(l)One - Day 130

The Sailor and the Storm Within - Day 122

Story time:

There once was a sailor who was planning to go out to sea. He was going to live out on his boat out at sea. He prepared his boat pretty well, got whatever supplies he needed, you know, whatever. I don't actually know enough about sailing to make this a very detailed story.

Okay, so he's out at sea. He's sailing. He's doing his thing. He's thinking, "This is great! I can sail the world!"

Then, a storm rolls in. And the winds bellow and the waves crash and the sailor's sails rip and tear.

"It's a disaster," he thinks. "That stupid storm! How dare nature take its course! How dare this thing happen that I cannot control!"

And as he continues on shouting at the wind and waves and cursing the storm and coming up with all these reasons that this storm is seriously a stupid jerk, a leak springs in his boat. And he continues on shaking his fists at the environment, at nature, at the natural world, at that which he cannot control, and his boat begins to sink.

I mean, this would never happen, right?

You don't go out to sea on a sail boat and plan to live there if you are unprepared. Sailors are aware that storms happen. Sailors are aware of the precautionary measures they can take to ensure that their boat is stable when they go out to sea. The waves will still crash and the winds will still bellow, but the sailor will not blame the storm if something goes wrong -- he will blame himself and his lack of preparedness, he will blame the structure of his ship, he will see that he missed a point in his preparation or reparation, he will see where he neglected that which he could control. He will take responsibility for himself because his life depends on it, because cursing the sea, cursing reality, does nothing.

So I am like sinking. I am cursing at the storm. I am cursing at nature and reality, I am cursing at all that I cannot control, all the while continuing to neglect in ignorance my own responsibility for myself to stand in stability, to support myself to stand in stability, to support myself to move with the wind, to rock with the waves. Things are happening all around me, and I am ignoring the very thing about which I can actually do something -- myself.

And so then let's say this sailor somehow gets rescued or otherwise survives. Would he then go on for the rest of his life living in the past of this experience when his boat was tarnished by the wind and the waves? Would that be who he was, would that be his existence? Focusing in on that gust, or that splash, and how nature really screwed him over?

Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn't. But what would be the point of that, if he did? He would be holding onto the past, and not learning anything from it. He would be continuing on in anger and resentment. He would remain engaged in the battle, even though the battle is over -- because the battle was always in his mind, and he is still with, within, and as his mind, because he has not stopped it.

And I mean, what good would this do him anyway? What is he expecting? Someone to pat him on the back and make it all go away? The storm to apologize for existing? A time machine? (And if he had a time machine -- what would he do with it? Would he go back and prepare himself better, or would he avoid the storm altogether? Is there something he realizes he could have done differently? If I want a time machine, as I so often do, what do I expect I would do with it? Why can't I take responsibility now?) The only way in which he is suffering anymore is of his own making. I mean, really? What does he expect to come of all of this resentment and blame and holding onto this grudge?


What would be the appropriate course of action for our sailor friend? He would first prepare his self and his boat accordingly, preparing for any circumstances which might arise, ensuring that he is ready to face himself in reality whatever happens. He would then set to sea, and he would be aware of the status of his boat, of how the sails are holding up, or other things that one must keep track of on a boat. He would also concern himself with the weather, checking to see what might be coming so that, in awareness, he can prepare more. He would not expect "smooth sailing," and he would not allow himself to hope for it to such an extent that if rough waters come his way, he is not prepared to face them. And as the storm rises, he would move through it as one must on a boat in a storm, adjusting, adapting, and doing whatever he needs to do to maintain the integrity of his boat. Maintaining integrity. It is something which must be constantly monitored and maintained, isn't it? And when the winds died down and the waves stopped crashing, he would find he was successful, he did not fall. He might find some points where he could re-examine his preparedness and do better next time, but, because he took all the necessary precautions, because he was prepared, because he was truly stable, he was able to remain stable even after the storm. And so he might then come back to land, and he might share the story with his peers, but he wouldn't be doing so to whine and complain and hold onto the past. He would be saying: Look, here is what preparedness did for me. Here is this point I walked, and I came out stronger and more stable on the other side. He would share his experience to assist and support his fellow sailors. And he would move on. He would sail again, or go do something else, you know, whatever he wants, because he has not chained himself to this devastating experience wherein he did not support himself absolutely, wherein he chose to blame anyone but himself for the consequences he faced.


I think this story is applicable certainly to environmental changes to which I react. People are part of my environment, though, so I am trying to decide if this story is applicable to the ways that people behave, which I also cannot control. What I can control is myself. However: where is the storm, really? Within myself. If I truly prepare, if I truly am stable, there should be no storm to begin with.




I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to curse the reality of what has happened, to blame everything that is beyond my control for who I am, not taking responsibility for myself.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to stand in stability and to always maintain my stability through adjustment and adaptation to reality.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to focus on the external factors that I cannot control, to project my anger outward as blame and as holding a grudge, when really I should be looking at myself in every moment to see who I am and to stand stable within and as myself in self honesty and self responsibility and self support.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold onto the events that have transpired, and also to hold onto my interpretation and judgments about those events, holding onto my reactions, holding onto memories, holding onto reasons and justifications for blame, holding onto excuses for why it is not my fault that I have reacted the way I have, holding onto the stories I have told myself about what has happened, and constantly pointing my finger at others or another, never looking at myself, refusing to look at myself and take responsibility for myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to live in by holding onto the past, holding onto interactions and reactions, rather than stopping, breathing in this moment, and moving forward and onward in each subsequent moment, learning from the past to assist and support myself in gaining stability now.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to stunt my growth and progress within my process through holding onto the past and holding onto memories of interactions and holding onto blame.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to be new in each breath.


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to make my existence about my reactions and my memories and blame. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to make myself as my existence as my focus on the past and my focus on things I cannot control.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to blame reality for happening and existing. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to blame another for being themselves, for departing from the image I created in my mind, or not being what I hoped they would be, or not being what I expected them to be, regardless of where I got that expectation, because saying that they misled me is not acceptable -- I allowed myself to be misled.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to learn anything but to simply continue to react. I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to live here and now in this moment but instead always referencing back to what I thought, what I believed, what I wanted, what I hoped for, what I expected, what I judged, what I did, what I said, what I didn't say, what was said to me, and what was done unto me. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to reflect on memories and point the finger that another should have done something different -- should I not have done something different? I put myself in this position. I failed to support myself into and as stability.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to remain engaged in battle within through and as my mind, as myself, as who I am, because I am accepting and allowing myself to be stuck there, I am not accepting or allowing myself to stop my mind as this conflict and friction of memories and judgment and blame.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate within and as this conflict in my mind as this judgment and blame and anger and even hatred, expecting something to come of this, expecting that this is somehow productive or best for all, not even questioning what alternatives would be better, not even questioning my participation, but simply resigning myself to this energy as who I am, not realizing it is who I have made myself to be, and I can make myself to be someone else.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continue to expect someone or something else to swoop in and somehow heal or solve the problems I am creating within and as my mind as myself, expecting and hoping for someone else to somehow make it better, or some new change / shift in the environment to somehow make it better, abdicating responsibility for myself to support myself, not seeing myself in self honesty, refusing to really see myself as my responsibility here in this storm I have created.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to identify another's actions as a "storm" like the kind of storm that a sailor might meet which he cannot control. I cannot control another's actions either, but it is not a storm, I do not have to be affected or impacted by it at all.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to see realize and understand that the only storm is within and as myself as my reaction, my ongoing reaction and blame and judgment and anger, and the ongoing friction I experience as I project my energies outward rather than stopping to see myself in self honesty.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to resent another because of my own internal stormy experience which I have created as a reaction to what I interpreted and perceive and accepted and allowed within a relationship / friendship with another person, who is not responsible at all whatsoever for who I am.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to try to make myself responsible for another person by "supporting" them, or believing I am supporting them, by over extending myself, or believing I am over extending myself, to be their friend and supportive of them, when I have only ever done this because I wanted them to do it for me, and because I wanted them to approve of me, and so I did not ever make myself responsible for myself, I did not ever support myself, I did not ever extend myself toward myself, I was never a friend to myself, and I did not ever approve of accept myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to set myself up for disaster by not properly supporting and stabilizing myself, so that now, because I believe I have done things for another, I blame the other for not doing the same in turn for me, rather than seeing, realizing, and understanding that I am who neglected to do those things for me. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to identify what another person could "do for me" as being that that person must behave a certain way and be a certain way and thus not be themselves, but instead the image I created for them or the person I had wanted them to be.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to be the person I want to be.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want another to apologize for existing, for being themselves, for not being who I wanted them to be.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to care who another is more than I care who I am, so that it does not throw me off when I see all that there is to see about myself, but instead I allow myself to be thrown off and angry and projecting blame when I see anything about another person that goes against what I want or expect.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate within and as the energy of wishing I had a time machine, wishing I could just go back in time, when really what I mean is that I wish I could just make it all go away, just make it to have never happened -- but something has to happen instead, so I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to consider what I actually might do if I had a time machine. If I had a time machine, I would still only be able to control myself in that time travel. I would still only be able to direct myself -- not another -- and so, if I really did have a time machine, what would I do? What would I do differently? I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to actually consider the implications of if I did in fact have a time machine, and how this really indicates that there are things I could have done differently. I commit myself to acting and directing myself now in such a way that I will not wish for a time machine tomorrow. I commit myself to taking responsibility today, because yesterday is gone, it only remains here as my energetic reactions and memories.


When and as I see myself getting caught up in and blaming "the storm," I stop and I breathe. I realize there would be no storm if I did not allow myself to participate within and as my mind. I realize that no matter what occurs outside of me, I create the storm. So I see that the "weather" is within my mind, but that my boat is my body and how I support myself through and as my physical existence. So I commit myself to continuing to build self support, self honesty, self responsibility, and self stability. I commit myself then to clarity within my mind. I commit myself to stopping and breathing when and as I see a storm brewing. I commit myself to the realization that I am the storm. I commit myself to directing myself within the I of the storm, realizing and understanding myself as creator and destroyer. I commit myself to complete absolute unconditional responsibility and ownership of myself and who I am. I commit myself to equality and oneness within and as myself, by which I will achieve equality and oneness with and as all life, as what is best for all.

Learning to Let Go - Day 121

I've been hitting a wall and I haven't really known how to get over or around it, or even if I can get over or around it. I keep hoping it'll just crumble. I keep thinking, "I've never done that before, it's totally new to me, what do I need to do?" and hoping that someone might have the answer (I've not looked everywhere I could for an answer).

The truth is that I have one friend that has been my friend for more than just a couple years. Only one friend that I am actively in touch with, whom I have known for longer than just a couple of years. We've been friends for 10 years, since I was 15.

There was a point however, when I was 17 and she was 18, that we almost stopped being friends. Why? Because she did something I didn't expect her to do. She "betrayed" me by being herself, and not the image of her I had created, not the person I had wanted her to be so that I could feel safe and secure and know what to expect. We fought about it, and I cried a lot, and I felt really angry, and I felt really abandoned, and then I abandoned her and myself by abandoning the friendship over this petty incident.

How exactly I came around, I'm not totally sure. I think it was that the next year I went off to college myself, and I grew up a little, and I learned what it's like to be a freshman at college, and although I didn't decide to do what she had done, I did other similar things, and I began to see how that kind of thing happens, how it isn't such a "bad" thing and it doesn't make a person "bad" for partaking.

Eventually, I apologized. We've laughed about it since. Since, there have been times when I have felt really ashamed of how I rejected her because of her behavior, because of my opinion of her behavior. I rejected a person because of what I thought about something she did, some action she took. A person! And not just any person, but a person who really was a good friend, who supported me unconditionally through some really tough shit that nobody else wanted to even look at or acknowledge was there.

There have been times where it has hit me how much I value this friendship and how I basically threw it away years ago, and how I could still not have it, if I hadn't reflected and apologized and realized my mistake. Fortunately in that instance it didn't take me "too long" to do so, although it was still about a year.

When I reconnected with a friend from college a couple weeks ago I saw how crazy it was that it took me 5 years to take responsibility for myself, and 5 years for all of the negative reactions to become meaningless to me, to be things I didn't want to hold onto anymore.

So anger is something I like holding onto. That's what a grudge is, right? And it still comes back to my wanting retribution for what I perceive as others doing "wrong," or create consequences if none seem to appear.

To note: perception of something wrong, seeming to appear. This is all based on what I am able to perceive, which is not much. I do not know the full story behind a person's actions or behaviors; I only know my reaction. I do not know what actual consequences have manifested beyond the ones within myself as my reaction. And here I am just perpetuating consequence for myself and others by holding grudges and holding onto anger.

And my reactions are completely mine. My reaction of holding onto anger is a reaction. It isn't real, it doesn't have to be real except that I make it real, I manifest into and as myself into and as reality as how I move and direct myself.

I was telling a student last week, there is so much more to life than her emotions and what she feels right in this moment. I told her there are things that used to upset me, that don't upset me anymore, because I don't let them upset me.

So why do I still react? Why do I still hold onto anger? I want to. I accept and allow it. I crave it. Why? Why can't I just let it go, as I did with my friend from high school, or as I finally eventually did with my friend from college? Did I ever really let it go from myself? I mean if I am angry, it is not at anyone else. It is at me. Why am I so angry at myself, and why do I so resist letting go? And what will it take to really truly see realize and understand that this anger is sourced with me and directed at me, so that I can stop projecting it onto others and destroying friendships and continuing to hurt myself through engaging in self abusive relationship patterns?

What if I didn't react? What if I could step outside myself as my reactions for a moment and just see? What if I could remove the emotions and just see what is here? People. Life. Suffering beyond my imagination, so far beyond the suffering I create and preoccupy myself with within my mind. Abuses that I accept and allow in myriad form, including through and as my own abuse of myself. What if I could see the span of time, the all, and what if I could see the point in time in the future when I finally let go? Why not now?

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hide behind my anger, to create walls of anger between myself and other life, life with and toward which I am one and equal, and so separating myself in divisions of anger and resentment and bitterness.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to hide from other people when I am angry at them, to want to keep the walls up, the defenses up, because I do not want to be vulnerable, because within my mind they are the one who hurt me.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to see, realize, and understand once again that when I build walls as grudges, I am confining myself, locking myself into and as my mind, like locking myself in a room with my enemy, because I am the only one here who is capable of hurting me.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to actually forgive myself, but to instead punish myself constantly through building walls of anger.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continue to project my anger and blame onto others so that I can pretend like I am not the person who is responsible for myself and who I am, but that it is this other person who has done this to me, and this other person is to blame, and so I have to just sit here and wait until it dissipates or passes, or wait until someone rescues me, or wait until someone provides me with enough sympathy and care as like a medicine to heal me, not realizing that I am the person who is wounding myself, I am the person who is not allowing myself to heal.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to build a wall of anger and grudges and then wonder why I keep on hitting this fucking wall. No shit. I put that there. That is the same wall I built to "protect" myself, and now it is keeping me in, because I keep on "hitting" it, because I built it so thick and so tall that not even I can get out.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold onto anger.

I commit myself to investigating why I hold onto anger.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want others to suffer because I myself have created suffering for myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want others to face consequences because I myself have created consequences for myself.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to just accept and allow reality, accept and allow other individuals to walk their lives as their processes, to take absolute and unconditional responsibility for myself, because without doing this I am useless to changing the world, because without this I am not changing myself. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continue to focus more on what others are doing than I do on what I am doing, and who I am, and why.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I know what is going on for another person within their life within their inner world, and that within this knowledge I believe I have, I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I can identify if/when/as another person has done "wrong," that this person should be punished for having done "wrong" rather than simply understood, so I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to understand another or understand myself, instead reacting and operating from and as reaction, blame, projection of anger, and desire for punishment and retribution.

It is like the militaristic model at the school I work at. They make absolutely no effort to understand the student or the behavior. All they see is the behavior and its immediate results, and to this they react with an iron fist to bring about their own power and control as exacting punishment as like revenge for their offense that any person could behave in such a way. How dare he have his hands in his pockets while standing in formation. How dare he do something that any person might do in that circumstance, in that series of events.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become offended by others, believing they have done wrong, allowing myself to become offended as my ego, and within this defensive, wanting to defend my stance as my ego as where I was standing before the offense threw me off base, because I did not expect that.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to have expectations of others just as I have created expectations of physical reality so that when something goes "wrong" I believe it is the other, and not myself, who is wrong, because here I have established this expectation or plan, and placed myself in opposition to reality, not one with and equal to and as myself within physical reality, one whole, standing stable, but instead able to moved and swayed by the changes, and so expecting and hoping nothing to change, expecting and hoping things to always remain the way I expect and hope they will be, and when they do not, losing my footing, losing my balance, becoming offended, and reacting in defensive anger and resentment with a desire for punishment and retribution rather than stopping, breathing, and seeing myself, seeing how my standpoint was not stable, I was not stable, and that is why I fell.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to use others as examples for myself of who I should be rather than being my own example. I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to do what I know is right in self honesty, to do what I know is best for all. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold onto anger because I do not want to let it go, I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold onto anger because it is in my own self-ish interest to hold onto and fling it outward like a cannon ball to attack others with my anger, to continually lob bombs of blame onto others, so that I do not have to look at myself, I am only looking through and over my fortress of walls I have built to defend myself, built also thus to keep myself in.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to direct myself based in my perceptions of what seems to be happening, rather than through and as self honesty and self responsibility, focusing thus on myself instead of others.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create conflict and friction through and as my reactions, manifesting my reactions into and as myself and into and as physical reality through how I direct myself from and as those reactions.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to get caught up in my own emotions and reactions, my own little internal reality, that I cannot see reality for what it really is anymore, that I cannot really even see myself, but am instead caught and swept up in an internal story with characters and personalities and drama and conflict and motifs and morals, holding on also to an ending as dictated by me, trying to match reality with the story in my mind, and resisting reality when it does not coincide with the story I have created in my mind.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to crave emotional energetic experiences such as anger, believing that I need these experiences and this energy.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to maintain crippling anger toward and as myself, not allowing myself to investigate the source root of this anger and to gut myself of this anger, to rid myself of this anger, to let it go.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to resist seeing myself as this anger as the creator of this anger so much that I blame others for my anger and I blame others for my emotional energetic experiences.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want others to face specific consequences or somehow redeem themselves in my eyes, come to me and confess their sins, or say they were wrong, or take ownership of their behavior, where even if the most awful thing imaginable was done unto me, I would have to move on with or without that kind of confession, that kind of ownership or responsibility taken by another; I would have to take ownership and responsibility for myself, I would have to move on. Why don't I move on?

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing MYSELF to be contingent on others, my experience of myself contingent on the actions or words of others, where first I reacted, "because" of another, and now I resist moving on and letting go, "because" of another.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to let go. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to suffocate myself through and as my own self interest in holding onto my anger, fear, resentment, and other emotional energetic experiences. I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to really breathe.

I commit myself to learning to let go. I commit myself to letting go. I commit myself to being here within and as myself fully, absolutely, unconditionally, which means: self support, self honesty, self responsibility, as what is best for all, and that is it. That's all. No more judgment of myself or another. No more anger. No more justification. No more excuses. No more waiting. No more hoping. No more believing. No more wishing. No more resisting. No more looking at others and waiting for others and judging others and depending on others and expecting of others. Only me, myself, and absolute unconditional honesty, support, and responsibility.

Emotions, Responsibility, and Actual Forgiveness - Day 114

I'd been given an "assignment" so to speak to just breathe and slow myself down for about the last week.

I can't say it's been as deliberate a practice as I'd have liked, but that's okay -- it's a constant ongoing skill to learn and develop. I can say though that being given such a simple assignment as this as a practical and realistic step to assist and support myself helped me release some of the self judgment I'd been creating about what I do or do not or should or should not be doing all at once -- expectations I'd created about doing things, walking process, facing a particular point, a certain particular way.

And even though I was not totally aware of myself breathing at all times or totally aware of myself slowing down at all times during the last week, the mere fact that I did not have in my mind some standard or expectation for myself beyond these two things meant that I was not pushing myself forward as fast as I might normally, and I was not losing my breath as much by going into those judgments and expectations. So I was better able to stay here in each moment.

And the main thing that I have learned in this past week that has already supported me the next time it came around, which was last night, was to see how easy it is for me (and actually I have known this for many years, but have thought it is just "how I am" immutably, not something that I have any control over) to get really tripped up on, stuck in, and locked into emotional experiences. I mean the back chat is just so constant and so convincing, absolutely everything within an emotional experience directs me to stay there, or go further in, to become the victim, to be SO ANGRY, to blame, to get tied up in wanting consequences for others (or myself, depending on the situation), etc. etc. To be completely NOT HERE within an emotional experience.

So I saw that happening again last night as I reacted to something. I started with all this back chat, things I wanted to say, things I really believed. It feels like standing up for myself. It feels like having a back bone. But it isn't. It's actually a complete denial and rejection of myself. Because I am here, and I am life. And any denigration of another is a denigration of myself. And to not take responsibility for myself is the same as not supporting myself, because within this I am not honest with myself, and as such I am lying to, deceiving, manipulating, and abusing myself.

(And let's note here how cool this is! Earlier this week I was in the absolute midst of an emotional storm without awareness that it was a reaction, within belief that it was reality and true and an accurate representation of my physical experience. This time, rather than re-entering that same emotional energy, I was able to stop myself and at the very least see that it was a reaction, an experience of my own making.)

So self responsibility must be unconditional and absolute. In some ways, self responsibility is the same as self honesty is the same as self support. It's all one when applied.


It's a difficult point to navigate, to be sure: forgiveness of another. My tendency in my life, besides becoming very caught up in emotional turmoil and using it to justify my behavior and rage, has also always been to cut people off and build walls. So it's a really fine line for me, really fuzzy, between coming back to and focusing on myself, and cutting someone off. To come back to myself without at the same time saying / energetically participating as the thought, "Fine, I don't need you anyway, you're nothing to me," or to come back to myself without at the same time doing so as a way of retreating and evading, like as if evading a battle, wherein there are still sides and separation and judgment and blame. But neither is self-honest and neither is true self responsibility or self support -- it is simply a way to cope within and as my mind, still accepting and allowing the judgment and anger that I am trying to forgive.

It would be a lot easier for me to focus on myself if the person to whom I am reacting, the trigger, or the stimulus, wasn't in the picture. It's also easier on my ego, although that's not really the point, but is still a point to consider -- to not have to face another while feeling like / thinking / believing that another is also facing, watching me (which actually reopens a point I wrote on a couple weeks ago in private that I'd like to edit for easier / more appropriate / less specific sharing, perhaps at another time).


So I really have to do some actual re-prioritization within myself. Not within my schedule, but within myself, and this process, and who I am. Am I my own priority? Am I here for myself? Why? What does that look like? Can I let go of all those memories I'm holding onto that trigger emotional reactions that take me away from myself, away from here, away from self honest self responsibility and self support?

---

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to judge the way I can or do support myself, judging always that I should be doing "more" that I should be taking on "more" and that I should be able to handle "more," not seeing, realizing, and understanding that this is me complicating matters and moving away from the simplicity that is my breath and awareness in every moment as the only absolute constant way to support myself.



Emotional Energetic Experience dimension:

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to, upon entering an emotional energetic experience, or when and as I see that I am within an emotional energetic experience, stop and breathe.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate in an emotional energetic experience through my participation in the generation and maintenance and justification of back chat, judgment, blame, anger, resentment, and self victimization.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to get stuck there, and to hold myself captive there within that experience, like luring myself into a prison and locking myself up there and not telling myself that I have the key or revealing to myself that I am the one who put myself in there in the first place.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself therefore to believe that I can be deceived by others and that others can manipulate me in general, an experience / perception to which I often react in emotional energetic experience, not seeing, realizing, or understanding how the process by which I participate in and maintain an emotional energetic experience is me deceiving and manipulating myself.

I forgive myself therefore for accepting and allowing myself to blame others not only for my immediate reactions to them, but also then for the continuation, growth, and sustenance of the virus that is my emotional energetic experience, wherein I do not see realize or understand that I am the person who has accepted and allowed this experience within and as myself.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to be honest with myself, not choosing to listen to myself in self honesty, instead listening to the voices in my head which are deceptive, self interested, egotistical, manipulative, arrogant, and only exist so as to entice me willingly into and as my mind experiences, fantasies, imaginations, and energetic reactions.

I forgive myself therefore for not accepting or allowing myself to really listen to myself, and also for not accepting or allowing myself to refine for myself who I am within self honesty so that I can tell more easily what is self honest and what is self manipulation.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to abandon myself as life as my human physical body and as myself through and as my mind as my willing participation in aiding and abetting the deception and manipulation within my mind, wherein I allow myself to become caught up in and locked into the emotional energetic experience as created through my mind, allowing myself thus to validate and justify this experience as real.


Self Responsibility dimension:

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to deceive myself within the thought / feeling that validating my own emotional energetic experiences is akin to "standing up for myself" or "having a back bone."

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to confuse self support with self survival.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to take absolute and unconditional responsibility for myself, always turning all points back to myself because I am the catalyst for all that comes out of me, I am the origin and source of myself, I am the creator of myself, and also because I can only take responsibility for myself, and as such trying to take responsibility for another is a waste of myself, is not self honest, and is not self supportive.


Forgiveness dimension:

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to resist forgiving another because I want to see another suffer or be punished or face consequences. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become so invested in and attached to retribution that I wish to by my own hand distribute consequences if this is seen as "necessary," doing so through engaging in manipulative tactics in order to have my will be done. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not only thus be looking and focusing my awareness outside myself, but also then moving outside myself, moving from a self dishonest starting point of trying to manifest consequences for another.

When and as I see myself participating in thoughts, judgments, and blame about another person and what I perceive as what they do or do not need to do, or should or should not have done, I stop and I breathe. I turn the points back to myself. What does it look like if I change the structure of the point to myself as the source? Can I see in myself that same point? Can I see in myself that same behavior? And, does it even matter? What can I control, for whom can I take responsibility? Only myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create such a pattern within myself of holding grudges or reacting in polarity wherein first I "like" another person but then I want to reject another person if/when I perceive that that person does not "like" me as a protective and defensive measure wherein I tell myself "I don't need them" or "they're nothing to me" or "they don't matter anyway."

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself also to want to evade and hide during conflict so that in an effort to turn points back to myself and take responsibility for myself within my reactions, I confuse this with evading the other person and the situation, because these seem to look very similar although the starting points are very different.

I forgive myself therefore for accepting and allowing myself to fear turning points back to myself and supporting myself because I fear that I will not be able to delineate between self honest self support and self deceptive evasion or rejection techniques which I have in the past used to support myself only as my ego, protecting my ego, as a coping mechanism as my reaction to conflict in the past.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to see and recognize a "thin, fuzzy line" and so to fear that I cannot actually see that line and I cannot actually direct myself within self honesty to always ensure that my starting point in who I am is self honest and is from the starting point of self support and self responsibility, instead fearing that "the line is thin and fuzzy, so inevitably I will cross it, so it is best if I just do not go over there."

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself thus to limit myself from actual self support in self honesty and self responsibility because I have identified a "problem" but have refused to walk a solution.

So I commit myself to self awareness in self honesty and self responsibility in every moment in differentiating between the sides of this thin fuzzy line and determining for myself if my starting point in who I am is self honest.


Creation of a Grudge dimension

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to cut another person "out of the picture" in order to deal with my reactions to / toward / about that person, because I see this as "easier" and also I see that I do not want to have to take full responsibility for myself within my present or future interactions, but instead feel ashamed / embarrassed about that which I have already seen in myself that I have not yet taken responsibility for, and also see that I am still reactive and pointing fingers in some other areas, and so to me it seems easier to just cut that person out, let that person go, sort it out, and try better next time, where next time might mean with a completely different person, so that within this the effectual result is yet another grudge, another hiding of myself, another running away and evasion of a "problem" so that I do not have to face myself as the other person to whom I am reacting.

Nonetheless I commit myself to give myself the time and space to support myself, yet again still always walking that fine line between self honesty and self deception, where external results may look the same, and so only I can know my starting point and only I can know if I am being self honest in who I am and the decisions I make. I commit myself to listening to what I communicate to myself as what I need in order to best support myself to really actually changing myself, wherein self change is the goal, and within self change I should thus then be able to face another person without reaction, and so therefore I commit myself to keeping this "in mind" within the understanding that if I do not change, I have not supported myself, and that I can tell if I have changed if/when/as I am able to face another without reaction.


Priorities:

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to make this process really absolutely unconditionally about myself. I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to make my starting point from the start, myself. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to walk so many points with a self dishonest starting point, with ulterior motives, with thoughts and back chat and judgments always going through my mind all along. I forgive myself for this. I do not hold it against myself. I realize too that I am here now. Up until now is what has gotten me here. I would not be here if it were not for there, for then. I commit myself from here onward to make this process completely absolutely unconditionally about myself in self honesty, self support, and self responsibility, as one with and equal to all as life, as becoming this principle, as directing myself to be a living example and expression of what is best for all. A journey indeed!

Forgiveness Defined - Day 113

Perhaps some of us, certainly myself, have encountered a kind of automation within writing self forgiveness. It is a specific formula applied to assist oneself, but as such it can become somewhat monotonous. I have used it sometimes as a way of delving into myself and discovering what is really there -- I find that as I start, and then continue, I go deeper, I get to the real point: it is a practice of self discovery and understanding. I learn things by the end of writing that I did not really see or understand at the start. And this is awesome, period. And useful, even if not altogether the point in terms of what "forgiveness" really means. But sometimes writing self-forgiveness becomes merely statements of who I am preceded by "I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to...," and at that point there is no actual forgiveness involved, and who I am remains the same -- I've not actually forgiven myself; I've merely stated who I have seen myself to be.

I mean, to actually forgive myself, means not only to take ownership for that behavior as a thought or action as created by me: seeing, realizing, and understanding that I directed myself within that behavior -- it is me, and therefore I am the person to be forgiven -- but to also really literally forgive myself for that, within the realization / understanding that there are more opportunities still to be something or someone else, that I am not that, immutably, unchangeably. To make amends with myself, in a way -- to say, "I'm sorry, me, that I put me through this, that I made this who I was in this or these moments, that I accepted and allowed myself to exist in this way." So to stop holding it against myself, to stop defining myself by it, and to understand it is not who I have to be, it is not who I immutably am. Then, to make (create myself as) the self commitment / corrective statements, is to actually stop the behavior and change.

Well, let's break it down and see:

for·give
/fərˈgiv/
Verb
1. Stop feeling angry or resentful toward (someone) for an offense, flaw, or mistake.
2. Stop feeling angry or resentful toward someone for (an offense, flaw, or mistake).

for·give·ness
/fərˈgivnis/
Noun
The action or process of forgiving or being forgiven.

So to forgive actually means to STOP the anger and resentment, basically thus stop the blame and judgment. That is what it means to forgive. So if I write, "I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to..." and then continue to judge myself for that behavior and maintain anger and resentment toward myself, or other energetic reactions, I have not really forgiven myself. I have simply abused a writing technique that is meant to support me, instead making it automatic and false.

And, also important to note, is that forgiveness is a process! And we already know that a process takes time and steps -- so it takes time and steps to forgive oneself / another and it takes time and steps to be forgiven. Forgiveness is a process.

Therefore:

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to uphold for myself the actual meaning and value of the words I have written within self forgiveness in actually stopping my self judgments, anger, resentment, and other reactions to and as myself as who I have seen myself to be.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to always take seriously what I am writing through self forgiveness as this process of forgiving myself and of writing / speaking these words in complete self honesty and self responsibility.

I forgive myself that I have not always accepted or allowed myself to really mean what I have said but instead have simply used these statements as a way of getting out what is inside of me, but not actually forgiving myself for it, not actually stopping the judgment and self hatred I have inflicted upon myself as a reaction to myself.

I mean it is really cool to start a string of self forgiveness and see things about myself by the end that I did not see at the beginning. I am okay with using self forgiveness for that end. What I am not okay with is using self forgiveness as a way of conveying or expressing myself, as a way of writing out the person I have seen myself to be as the person I intend to remain, because I am still in that moment, in that behavior, in that thought, in that judgment. It is not okay to say, "I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to" and then insert some factoid about myself that I am not actually really ready to forgive. That is an abuse of the tool.

So I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to write out self forgiveness automatically and also to write it out as like a way of saying who I am in that moment, rather than saying who I was, who I intend to not still be.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to sometimes just write out strings of self forgiveness that are simply statements about myself preceded by "I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to" but with no actual intention of forgiving myself of that behavior / thought / belief / pattern.


I forgive myself also for not accepting or allowing myself to fully see, realize, understand, and embrace the fact that the forgiveness of myself is a process, it is this process I walk, and so it is okay if I am repeating self forgiveness from time to time, and it is actually very expected that I will have to face points more than once because I have certainly already participated in them much more than once. I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to see, realize, and understand that just as this entire process is "a process" within all that that word indicates, so is each individual forgiveness of myself a process, each individual change or shift within myself is a process unto itself, an occurrence which takes practice, time, and space.


So when and as I see myself writing self forgiveness statements merely as a way to describe myself, I stop and I breathe. I realize that sometimes this is an easy way to see myself through writing and that if this is the easiest way I can see myself in that moment, it is self supportive. However I also realize that sometimes I write out self forgiveness within an energy of self judgment, wherein even as I am forgiving myself, I am still mad at and resenting myself. And in this way the self forgiveness is not real, it is merely an automated writing pattern which allows me simply to see myself -- but it is not self forgiveness at this point, or, if it is, it is only the very earliest stages of the process that is forgiving myself. So I commit myself to being aware of myself within my writing of self forgiveness, to understand myself as my starting point in each statement and to see how I am supporting myself in each statement, who I am in each statement. Am I actually forgiving myself? Am I investigating myself through a method of digging deeper? Or am I merely describing myself within the formulaic framework of self forgiveness statements? None of these are "wrong," but I commit myself nonetheless to an awareness of in which of these three I am engaging so that I can understand who I really am at that point and where still I must walk to walk through the points about which I am writing. I commit myself thus to maintaining responsibility for myself as who I am even within forgiving myself, here, seeing, realizing, and understanding that forgiveness does not absolve me of my responsibility, and my responsibility must stand even in the writing and process of forgiveness.

Integrity is key. It is the same as self honesty I suppose.

What's interesting to note here is that actually the words "forgive" and "forgiveness" within their specific dictionary definitions are very appropriate for our approach, not surprisingly, but the specific definitions for their synonyms tend toward implying an absolution of responsibility or justification for behavior. So it's interesting how quickly the word "forgive" or "forgiveness" can actually become a way of condoning that behavior within the apparent accepted language of the English dictionary. This also seems like it could create a challenge for some including myself in terms of being able to "forgive" self or others, wherein I might link the word forgiveness to a denial of responsibility and thus resist forgiveness, perhaps because I have divested of myself in a self-interest in retribution. However, it seems clear to me that within the specific definition of forgive and forgiveness, apart from synonyms, responsibility is indicated, but simply punishment, resentment, and anger are not. So concern with retribution / consequence is not a part of forgiveness.


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to resist really actually forgiving myself, and others, because I have so divested of myself into my self interest in retribution, punishment, and consequence. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself therefore to hold myself and others hostage to my own bitter resentment and anger because I have created for myself a definition of forgiveness which is intertwined with absolution of responsibility. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continue to divest of myself in my self interest in retribution and consequences for others, wherein I have wanted to see others suffer because I myself have created suffering for myself in my reactions to others' actions, and so rather than forgive myself for another for my reaction and their action, I choose instead to withhold my forgiveness, holding onto instead my resentment and anger, and insisting within my mind upon a resolution which involves retribution and consequence, visible unto me. I forgive myself therefore for accepting and allowing myself to play judge in terms of wanting to approve of the level of retribution or consequence which comes down upon another for my perception of their failure to take responsibility for themselves. I forgive myself also for accepting and allowing myself to basically sacrifice myself as my own self honesty and self responsibility and thus ability to exist in any form of contentment as one and equal as all as life as what is best for all, instead sacrificing myself, punishing myself because I am so determined to punish another, to see another face consequences. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to remain nasty and hateful and resentful within and as myself because I am so attached to seeing another suffer if I am suffering, because I am so attached to placing blame upon another for my suffering, and because I am so attached to any point of suffering that I refuse to let it go, to forgive it, to take responsibility for myself within it, and to move on. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become stuck and stagnant within negativity and resentment and anger, giving myself over to the creation of grudges and denying myself my own responsibility for myself, my own ability to support myself, denying and disowning and rejecting myself, doing exactly to myself what I have reacted within a belief as another having done unto me, all because I care more about seeing another punished than I care about myself in terms of unconditional self support. So I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to simply drop it and move the fuck on, within the realization that it does not matter, it is all within my mind, it is not real, it is not here, it is not what is best for all. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to abandon myself as my process as being here within and as myself in self responsibility and self support, aligning within and as myself as what is best for all, because I would rather exist in anger and resentment toward another for the reactions I myself have created and for the memories I myself have held onto and for all that I myself have accepted and allowed within and as myself, thus not seeing, realizing, or understanding that part of self responsibility is understanding what is my responsibility, and what is the responsibility of another, and realizing that I have no ability to respond for another, I have no ability to take responsibility for another, I am only able to take responsibility for myself, and any attempts to do anything other than this is a waste, indeed negligence and abuse.

So I commit myself therefore to continuing to walk this process from here on out for as and by myself alone, all one, one whole, one with and equal to all as life as what is best for all, seeing, realizing, understanding, and then integrating what each of these phrases really applicably practically means, and living this out as myself as who I am, breath by breath, moment by moment, point by point, day by day, for myself and no other, always coming back to myself, coming back home to me, turning each and every point back to myself, always realizing that I am the start of this process, I am this process, I am the director of myself, and so who I am is always me and because of me, caused by me.


Related posts:
Self Honesty Before Self Forgiveness
What is Process? - Day 33
Writing Automaton - Day 53
Phrasing of Self Forgiveness - Day 101



Now, one thing to note as I went through my timeline and gathered posts relevant to this one: Sometimes self-forgiveness is repeated in terms of the topic or point. This doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't "genuine" the first go-round. This simply means it happened again -- I directed myself again from and as a starting point that was not self honest. This is process. I have become automated within my reactions / the aspects of myself that I am forgiving, the same automations which allow me to write self-forgiveness automatically. The Self that is really here, underneath it all, is not automated, is not a robot, but is actual life. This takes daily work, presence and awareness within and as my breath in every moment, to direct myself in self honesty, to deprogram and direct apart from the automated systemic reactions of the robot I have accepted and allowed myself to be.

Hindsight? Why Not See NOW? - Day 106

After writing Betrayal - Day 104, I decided to send a message to the friend who was like the "ring-leader" of the whole ordeal. I simply said I was sorry:

I'm sorry I was depressed and needy and made it difficult for you to hang out with [E]. I'm sorry I got so reactive and upset and felt betrayed by you guys. I'm sorry I ended our friendship because of my reactions and my inability to cope with emotions / change / things ([E] moving in) I didn't want and couldn't control. We had so much fun together. I hope you're doing well.

I noticed even after I sent it and I browsed his facebook page a little I felt jealous and bitter still, just a little bit. I could see clearly a particular interaction I had neglected to look at / write out. For moments within this I partially regretted sending the message and the friend request (oh, the digital age), because I thought: Am I really ready to see stuff pop up in my news feed? Am I really ready to forgive myself, and forgive him, and move on? But I just breathed through this, within the realization I had already sent it, and also the realization that yes! I'm ready. I can do this. It isn't magic, it will be work, but I can do this, I have the tools, and it is time to do this, for myself. I'm the only one who can do this, and I want it to be done.

I just heard back from him this afternoon, and when I saw I had the message from him I was a little anxious. Like, oh boy, what if he's going to dredge up the past, what if he wants to have it out? He didn't.

Hi Kaitlee,
I was just thinking about contacting you a few weeks ago. I didn't because I feared your rejection. I'm sorry for hurting you so badly. I'm sorry that I let my stress and depression get in the way of being a friend to you. You were one of the closest friends I have ever had. I've missed you.
I hope that life has been good to you.

I did matter to him. All the things I thought about and projected onto him as my reactions, my assumptions that he was intentionally trying to hurt me, that he didn't care about me, all of that, were just lies I was telling myself, lies I've carried with me for years to inform my movements every single day. 

Now, I did try to open up communication a lot during the time that this all occurred. And I can't say for sure why it did or did not support a solution. I do think my friends didn't want to face themselves in it all. But fuck I did not want to lose them. I tried to get them to understand me. But I didn't try at all to understand them, or even really understand myself -- so maybe that was a big part of the problem. 

What was most interesting to me that I learned from writing out that post as a general realization about grudges and ending friendships, was how really I only hurt myself and my friends by choosing my reactions. I thought I was protecting myself, I thought I was like "standing up" for myself by holding so tightly onto my reactions as being "right" and "valid" and holding onto the idea that they were wrong, they were jerks, I didn't deserve that, I can never forgive them, they deserve horrible things. I thought I was having a back bone in that. I also thought I had to do that to survive. 

But the whole time I was just hurting myself and hurting my friends. I was just creating more pain and suffering. For myself, through my rigidity within my reaction, through deceiving and manipulating myself into holding onto my reaction despite any potential for change. Suffering for them, telling them they were horrible people, cutting into them with my words through a letter that delineated all they had done wrong. Suffering for everyone around me, as I made it like a central feature of my life that was just always at the forefront of my mind, ready to tell anyone who would listen about this horrible thing that had happened. And suffering again for myself in the long-term, as this experience and my reactions carved out the shape of who I am today.

I mean really every single part of who I was in that situation was a choice, and it could have gone so much differently if I had chosen differently. We could have all stayed friends. I could have at least not been miserable and paranoid and not drawn conclusions about myself or "people in general" or "friendships" based on that experience. Letting my emotions do the living for me isn't working. Running away from friendships isn't fucking working. Running away from myself isn't even fucking possible. I hurt myself, and these guys, who were like my family, so much, by choosing to honor my emotions more than honoring the reality of co-existing with other human beings, and loving and supporting myself and others unconditionally as one and equal as life. What would have happened if I had just stopped and breathed? Like really stopped myself, stopped the momentum of those reactions, stopped the build up of the justifications. STOPPED. I would have seen that none of it mattered! I would have seen that I was okay, and I would have been okay. I would have directed myself to make self supportive decisions within self honesty about who I would hang out with, but not punished others or myself through reactivity and emotions. I could have found stability. I could have found understanding, seeing another as myself, seeing myself, taking responsibility for myself.

But, I don't have a time machine. What I do have is the ability to write, to say I'm sorry, and to forgive. And I've done that. And it feels good. I mean this was a big big thing I've held onto all these years. I am interested to see where I can go from here. I'm interested too, to see how I can use this realization to direct myself now, in present grudges.

And now, five years later, I regret the way I reacted back then. I wish I'd been able to see then what I can see now. Five years later! Do I want to wait five years to see myself again, as who I am now in this moment? Do I want to direct who I am now in blindness, in alignment with myself as my emotions, only to later finally see? People say "hindsight is 20/20," but I think that's just an excuse. I think that's just complacence in regret. I could have seen myself then, if I'd had these tools. And I can see myself now, if I just stop and breathe.

So, now, I have to stop myself. Now, I have to see what matters (hint: not my petty mind games, not my ego, not what I think I know about anyone else). Now, I can foresee the consequences of who I am. Now, I have to see how everything about who I am now, is a choice. I am choosing this. I am choosing a grudge. I am choosing anger. I am choosing resentment. I am choosing bitterness. In choosing these things, I am choosing inequality, separation, and myself as my ego and my mind. In this, I am also choosing a future of regret, of feeling like I didn't do what I wish I had done, of looking back on a friendship lost. Well, no more. I choose, instead: self support, in self honesty, in equality and oneness, as what is best for all. I am choosing to write myself out, thus, to do the work of seeing myself, to face myself before this grudge has a chance to take hold and cover me up.


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to make a decision about myself and my friendships based in emotional reactivity and judgments, projections, blame, and a sense of insecurity within myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to abdicate my own responsibility for myself, expecting instead for others to take care of me, for others to do as I want them to do in order to keep "my world" looking the way I wanted it to look, expecting others to adapt and adjust to me, expecting others to walk on eggshells for me, expecting others to come with me into my mind into my paranoia into my imaginary reality where things I do not want to see do not exist, so I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to expect others, my friends, like family, people about whom I claimed to care, to actually do the work along with me of manipulating my reality to fit what I had wanted through and as the walls and defenses of my mind.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to really see myself during that time, to see how I was holding on to my grudges as a way to be "right" and as a way to have like power, a way to have a sense of control, and a way to be domineering and have a hand in implementing consequences and punishments unto others.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to manipulate my own reality as my experiences as the people with whom I interact and the activities I enjoy in order to punish or enforce consequences for another, so that it's like I don't even care that I'm miserable as long as another is miserable too, because I perceive that the other made me miserable first, and so rather than take responsibility for myself and make myself un-miserable, I make myself even more miserable in an effort to also make the other miserable.

I forgive myself therefore for accepting and allowing myself to direct myself and my future into a place of misery and paranoia and fear, all for the sake of trying to punish or create consequences for another whom I perceive has hurt me, where here I give myself the power to punish but I do not give myself the power to heal, which is strange, like if I am powerless and helpless in terms of healing myself, what makes me think I am almighty and powerful in terms of punishing another?

So I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to invest so much of myself into creating consequences and punishment for another, and also myself, rather than simply stopping, breathing, writing myself out and taking responsibility for myself, continuing to move through life in each breath in each moment, rather than conniving and planning another's demise at the expense of my own.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to end friendships based on temporary emotional reactions which I build up and convince myself are "real" and "valid" and "meaningful" in terms of being accurate and worthy like road maps for me to direct myself by, so therefore I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be directed and driven by my emotional reactions.

So now I commit myself to when and as I see myself participating in a grudge, stop and breathe. I realize that this has far reaching consequences for myself and others. I realize that in every instance now of grudgery that I have created for myself, every single one of them has come around full circle to a realization that it was not necessary, that it was not self honest, it was not even beneficial to me, and it certainly obviously is not aligned with principles of equality and oneness as what is best for all. I realize that grudges are separation and participation within my mind as my ego. I also realize that I have grudges still before me to work through, old and new. So I commit myself really to stop and breathe when I see myself participating in the maintenance of the sentiments related to a grudge. I commit myself to writing out these relationships I have created with these people. I commit myself to clearing the points that I find. I commit myself to aligning myself with equality and oneness as what is best for all within the realization that this is a work for my own benefit as well as the benefit of the other, and the benefit of all.