Compassionate Self Forgiveness

“You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and                                                                                           affection.”                                                                                     ~Buddha   

                               

     A little girl has been waiting all day for her dad to come home from a his day at work. When dad finally arrives the little girl is beaming with excitement, dad walks in exhausted from working long hours and just needs a break. The father walks over to the T.V. and plops down to zone out and is not available for her. She then concludes that something is wrong with her or that her dad doesn’t love her or that she isn’t loveable…and the list can go on.

     This little girl grows up believing these conclusions are true and projects this same belief into other relationships. We can see this was an innocent misunderstanding and yet until she stops to investigate the truth of this original assumption she will continue to believe there’s something wrong with her.

     We make interpretations based on our experiences in life; usually taking things personally and making them mean something about ourselves. A lot of the time these core misunderstandings were formed when we were younger and then we see life from this illusion, like a set of glasses through which we view the world.

So how do we go about addressing the misunderstandings we may be living out of?

     How about we start by just looking at the facts in our example.  What actually happened without the interpretations from a personal perspective: dad came home, plopped on the couch, little girl reached out and dad was watching TV… simple.  The mind makes so much meaning out of the simplicity of life.

     One process, which supports coming to peace with some of these misunderstanding, is called compassionate self-forgiveness. It is one of the most powerful healing tools and is an internal action where we give loving compassion to the parts of ourselves that were confused. It points us to that which is within us that recognizes who we are as much larger than our thoughts, behaviors and feelings. As we connect more fully with the compassion that is already and always here, it directly meets any part that is still holding on to those outdated beliefs. As these misunderstanding are seen through, forgiveness naturally occurs, bridging the separation that judgments create.

     One way I like to work with compassionate self-forgiveness is to focus attention in the heart; you can put your hand over your heart if it helps to anchor awareness there. (If this is hard, you can also remember a time when you felt so completely loved and accepted and connect with that essence.) Forgiveness is about offering compassion to the parts of yourself that made any conclusions or judgments based off of a behavior or circumstance:

For example:


“I forgive myself for judging my father as unloving.” “I forgive myself for judging myself as not good enough.”

You can also phrase the forgiveness as:


            “I forgive myself for having bought into the misunderstanding that my worth and lovability is dependent upon what I say or do.”

     When we realize we are all doing the best we can (given our life experiences conditioning, family and biological make up) we may let go of the misunderstanding that anything should have been different. In that, we rest more deeply in the truth of what actually happened and peace is experienced more fully. We become grateful for the illusions that have caused our suffering, because they are gateways into a deeper reality of who we truly are.