145: Thoughts on About Forgiveness by Mark Nepo
Fear of being a flawed person lay at the root of my trance, and I had sacrificed many moments over the years in trying to prove my worth.
Tara Brach
Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha
A friend introduced me to the book, The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo, back in February.
It can be a bit campy at times, but it is beautifully written. On more than one occasion it had given me something positive and meaningful to grasp onto in the hundreds of difficult days where loneliness and pain fueled insomnia leaving me adrift in the night.
Today’s reading is especially meaningful to me because I’m struggling with self-forgiveness for the betrayal of my Love, my Life, and my Passion.
I’m hoping someday the women I betrayed will get here too. –>
About forgiveness
The pain was necessary to know the truth but we don’t have to keep the pain alive to keep the truth Alive.
This is what has kept me from forgiveness: the feeling that all I’ve been through will evaporate if I don’t relive it; that if those who have hurt me don’t see what they’ve done, my suffering will have been for nothing. In this, the stone I throw in the lake knows more than I. Its ripples vanish.
What it really comes down to is the clearness of heart to stop defining Who I Am by those who have hurt me and to take up the risk to love myself, to validate my own existence, pain and all, from the center out.
As anyone who has been wrong can attest, in order to keep the fire for justice burning, we need to keep burning our wounds open as Perpetual evidence. Living like this, it is impossible to heal. Living like this, we become our own version of Prometheus having our innards eaten daily buy some large bird woundedness.
Forgiveness has deeper Rewards than excusing someone for how they hurt us. The deeper healing comes in the exchange of our resentments for inner Freedom. At Last, the wound, even if never acknowledged by the other person, can heal, and our life can continue.
It is useful to realize that the word forgive originally meant both to give and receive – to “gift for.” In keeping with the original meaning, we can see that the inner award for forgiveness is the exchange of Life, the give-and-take between our soul and the universe.
It is hard to comprehend how this works, yet the mystery of true forgiveness waits in letting go of our Ledger’s of Injustice and retribution in order to regain the feeling in our heart. We can only hope to begin the exchange today, now, by forgiving was broken in each other and imagining who love how these holy pieces go together.
I think I’ll get that book, sounds very positive and insightful xo
It’s been incredibly helpful SSA. I have a daily call with the friend and we read it together and then We discuss where we are in relationship to it. On more than one occasion we’ve decided Mark Nepo elves sneak into the book and write exactly what I need to hear…
Isn’t it funny how that happens? Law of Attraction 😉