Day 5

I have gone two full days now without getting impatient or annoyed with anyone. They have not been easy days. I woke up this morning with an inexplicable depression all over me. I wonder if it isn’t my emotional body just trying to find balance with the changes I’ve made to my behavior. Still there is something very different when you experience difficulty without the accompaniment of the sharp edges of blame. I’m just sitting openly with the feelings in my body trying to get my work done. It’s really not so bad and if this is just an adjustment period, it may be leading somewhere very positive.

L

Day 4

I feel really good about today. There were many challenges and none of them were able to make me begin complaining about my day or becoming unnecesarily annoyed with anyone. I mainly used the breathng exercise wth the total forgiveness mantra spoken off in the last two posts.

Sometimes in the Spring, when my allergies are starting to kick in, there is an intense and uncomfortable chaotic feeling that comes to my body. This is especially true if the weather is shifting around alot. Today I went through several hours of this discomfort. It always takes me awhile to realize that it is just my body overreacting to pollen and it can be kind of confusing until I figure that out. Today, the second I started feeling discomfort, I began my breathing mantra. It didn’t get rid of the discomfort, but it brought a clarity to an opportunity I had to stay open in the face of it. I made it through the entire difficulty with a sense of just being open and willing to grow from it. I did not deflect it as annoyance onto anyone or any thing in my environment. The whole episode lasted about two hours and I did not falter.

There was something very purifying about this experience. It was such a palpable success towards a goal that sometimes can feel difficult to quantify or pin down. There is such an opportunity in challenge if we can catch it in time. Every choice we make alters our direction in life ever so slightly and there have been so many missed opportunities. But I’m feeling very positive about this endevour. Today was a success. I wonder what is possible for tomorrow.

Yours,
L

Day 3

Today I really feel like I made some progress. I woke up tired and a little apathetic. Final exams are coming soon and I’m sick of having to work so hard. My mind and my body were heavy and I was wondering how I was ever going to transform myself. I didn’t know what to do so I started doing a breathing exercise. Using “total forgiveness” as a mantra. On the inhale I filled my mind with the word “total”. On the exhale, “forgiveness”. I know it sounds kind of corny, but once those words were the only thing on the screen of my mind, everything became very clear. It actually gave me some distance from my feelings so that I could breathe and regroup myself. It’s amazing to me that most people never get the space they need to put themselves back together when they’re broken. I used this breathing technique throughout my day for all the connecting moments; driving, walking to a class, etc… As the day went on, I became lighter and lighter. And I came to understand the people in my world differently. They all suffer so much, even when nothing is wrong. Even their recreation is built on nervous energy that never really achieves fulfillment.

I also came to see some of the things others have done to me today in a different light. For example, I was given a 9 out of 10 on a paper I wrote. For me this is actually a bad grade considering the effort I put into it. This is the second 9 she has given me without so much as an explanation as to what the paper was missing. Not a single comment. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of life, but it’s always the small stuff that kills us inside isn’t it? But in my practice of forgiveness, I stayed open and just tried to understand what this looked like from her eyes. The first thing i saw was that whether the grade was fair or not, she was doing what she thought she had to do. She was just trying to do this life thing “right”. And so was I. In any interaction between two people, there is always a huge part of the result you just have no control over. And that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give your all. The fact is that your all necessarily has to be tainted with the lives of the other players in the story and that just has to be okay. It is nothing personal. They are just living their story as you’re living yours and there is no way to know for sure what the outcome will be when those two stories mix. Quality ingredients on your end make for a better outcome, but there are too many confounding variables to be able to predict what will come of your efforts. If outcome is the name of your game, you will suffer daily from resentment and the exhaustion that comes from that.

Seeing this is no big deal, I’m sure I could find it in any self help book. The real question is how do I maintain an awareness of it so that its Truth becomes a part of my life? The current plan is to remind myself at the beginning of every major action and right before I receive the outcome of any of those actions. I want those two moments to be steeped in an understanding of exactly how much control I actually have. I want to work in full understanding that the impeccability of the work itself may be the only reward so that I will be grateful for whatever comes on top of that.

And I will continue with the breathing exercise. There were times today where I could feel the most beautiful grace flowing through me. I felt like I was releasing beautiful energy like some fragrant flower.

Until the morrow,
L

Day 2

A lot of today felt like treading water. Similar to yesterday, I was able to refrain from going down the path of resisting my world, but the call to do it arose frequently.

In my forgiveness meditations, I noticed that there seems to be a issue at the core of all this. I am addicted to not being inconveinienced. Anything that threatens to derail even the most momentary of my intentions elicits a visceral response of rejection. As I was examining the difficult people I had known in my life who had done me wrong, I kept seeing other times in my life that carried similar offenses. What they all had in common was that they all threatened to derail some part of my self or my leisure that I did not want taken away.

But who says that leisure is mine to keep? Who says this personality I have fashioned from bits and pieces of people I have come in contact with is even mine to defend? I really think there is an addictive element to this. An addiction to comfort and uncontested volition. I think I am going to have to become a lot more humble if I am going to make any headway in learning absolute forgiveness.

Yours,
L

Day 1

Hi again,

I’ve often noticed in my life that when you finally decide to make a change life instantly kicks into gear to test your resolve. This morning I woke up very uncomfortable. I couldn’t imagine getting out of bed to start my day and I couldn’t imagine staying in bed either. There wasn’t a single direction that looked even remotely pleasant to me. But the night before I had prepared myself to shift my thinking upon awakening. So I opened myself and made my mind available for rearrangement. I simply opened myself to see my day from another angle. This was very effective. Within minutes, I could see things about my day worth getting up for and I was able to move forward without resentment.

As I went about my day I stayed vigilant for thoughts and judgements that would pull me down. It’s amazing how we are never really aware of what a mess we are until we choose to take a part of ourselves off automatic pilot. I watched my mind to notice when it got triggered into feelings of resentment and I was surprised at what I found.

I had assumed that most of my past resentments had been worked out and I was just dealing with the difficulties of a really busy present. What I found instead was that the difficulties in the present and the images of my past were intimately linked. The feelings of unfairness of my present were a part of the feelings of unfairness in my past. I kept catching images of the job I lost because some of the workers were homophobic, or the Spiritual Teacher I had for a decade that lost her way and began asking me to do unethical things and who stripped me of all my duties when I was unwilling to do them. In my mind I kept catching the faces of teaching assistants who gave my bad grades simply so they could keep the class average at a level that would make the professor think they were doing their job properly. And all these images were somehow a part of the car that was cutting me off this morning, or the cashier who sent me away with the wrong salad dressing. It was a whole history of feeling that existed all at once in the present moment; a big mess of stories bleeding into eachother until it’s almost impossible to even know the origin of the feeling itself.

I managed to intercept them each time they came up, but i was surprised how often they arose. At the end of today, I feel okay. The constant arising of images kept me busy, but I didn’t spend my energy going down any of their paths and I feel a lot more peaceful than I usually do at this time of day. My hope is that if I keep neglecting to feed those stories, they will starve and die. At the same time I feel the need to at least get clear in my forgiveness of the people involved, so tonight before bed, I am going to create a safe place and some time to reconnect with those stories consciously and explore some of the dynamics at play when they were happening. Who knows what I’ll learn.

Yours,
L

Total Forgiveness

Hi Everyone,

Have you ever noticed how no matter how kind your actions are, or how long you meditate or pray or whatever it is that you do to find peace and balance, that inwardly you are still trying to control every little thing in your world? I have.

I’ve spent over 15 years working with various Spiritual Teachers. I have mastered the ability to quiet my mind and taught others how to do the same. I can make amazing beautiful things happen. I lead a busy, service oriented life filled with discipline and success. The visible result of my life would appear to be very loving and productive. And yet, in my heart, I know that at a personality level, I still struggle with the world around me.

I feel upset when the efforts I make to do my part and move forward in life are thwarted by the inadequacies of others. And on some level this happens every day, whether I am unfairly graded on an exam, or stuck in traffic, or my phone is ringing off the hook and I can’t get my work done. In a word, I am human and being human seems to carry an inordinate amount of suffering.

So I have an idea.

I would like to stop all this struggling; stop resisting every little thing that happens to me and let go in a way that leaves nothing left to defend. I want to master total forgiveness on a moment to moment basis, until forgiveness is a part of every breath I take. I want to truly forgive every single person who has ever done me wrong. I want to forgive the morning for making me get out of bed. I want to forgive pollen for inflaming my sinuses. I want to forgive boring people for making me listen to them. I want my presence to be free of rejection in every moment, to be able to move freely towards my goals without resisting the work involved in attaining them. I believe this is possible.

I am going to devote my every moment to the mastery of total forgiveness and I am committed to blogging about my efforts for the next 365 days. I think this is a worthy battle and I hope I am successful enough to inspire others to challenge themselves in a similar fashion. Feel free to start your own blogs entitled totalforgiveness2, totalforgiveness3, totalforgiveness4 etc… and we will cross link. Lets create a community of people working towards a better life.

Here is my plan, which will be adapted as needed as I learn more about myself:

• I will continue to meditate in silence every day to keep my head clear and focused. The basic practice is to focus on the inhale and exhale until the mind falls silent and then simply abide in that state in full awareness.
• I will then spend ten minutes every day allowing images of people from my past who have wronged me to come forward. I will open myself up to trying to understand where they were coming from, to recognize that they were just trying to be happy themselves, and I will pray for their happiness.
• I will take certain “hotspots” in my life and turn them into practices of maintaining forgiveness. (eg. any time I’m driving, or about to receive a test score, or speaking with people that I know ahead of time drive me crazy)
• I will make a daily assessment of how well I did in the form of a blog so as to provide a sense of accountability and keep me on track.

I hope you will follow along with me in this. We never know where are limits are until we test them. I really look forward to seeing what our lives can become.

Yours,

L