Forgiveness

Do you have trouble forgiving? Does it become a matter of pride? Have you ever said, “I can’t let her get away with that?” Or, “I should teach him a lesson!” Have you thought, I don’t want to forgive because they will think I’m weak? Or maybe you’ve thought, if I forgive it means that what they did was acceptable. The truth is forgiveness means “I choose not to carry resentment any longer. I don’t want to give my time and energy to something/someone who doesn’t deserve it.” Forgiveness is not about the other person. S/he won’t know that I’ve forgiven. It’s totally an inside job--I release my anger because I no longer benefit from holding onto it. I’m ready for the next stage. I need to be me fully. I want to live with integrity and I can’t do that until I forgive. Forgiving opens spaces inside me which my resentment has closed. Forgiveness frees me. The person I forgive never knows that my outlook has changed. But I know. Forgiveness removes all traces of what isn’t really me and what I don’t need to hold onto. Forgiveness cleans up my personal space. I feel different, more myself. After all, my job is to focus on my lifetime, not on anyone else. Forgiveness opens me to meet life this moment and to be fully present. I can forgive if I will. It’s a choice but it requires determination and perhaps re-affirmation of my intent. Why wouldn’t I forgive? It makes my life better. And in the end that’s my responsibility.

Allowing God

At Mass when I was a kid we said, “I am not worthy. I am not worthy. I am not worthy.” Without realizing it, I learned shame and self-hate. I maintained a low level depression throughout much of my youth. I thought that was what I was supposed to do. Even today at my lowest moments I hear the words, “I am sorry I’m not good enough.”
Immediately, I catch myself and yell “Stop!” I cannot afford to deny myself. It’s not fair to me and it’s not fair to God. When I deny myself I deny God. God needs me. This all powerful omniscient being needs me in order to express on earth. What a kick that is!
I had thought that my life was about pleasing God (or at least trying to earn his approval) but that basically He was ill-tempered and irascible. I thought I was meant to work and strive and suffer until I could squeeze a blessing from Him. I used my brain to devise beneficial deeds that would justify a spot in his good graces.
Now I see that thinking and creating worthwhile projects and doing good works is another way to deny God. When I rely upon my head and make decisions based upon my thoughts, I make my brain God. Whatever is the basis for our decisions is our God.
When I want to know God and hear from God, I maintain silence and I wait. I imagine that God lives inside me in my very center as a tiny flame. I can breathe into that center space and pay attention and listen and, thus, I allow God. God is. When I pay attention I experience God. That experience is momentary. I don’t know in advance what I will find. I say, “I am available” and then I wait and I pay attention and I allow.
God moves in me and through me. God is a verb. In the first part of my life God was a judge and a critic. Now God is creativity and passion and involvement. God moves and I don’t know why or how or when. My job is to pay attention and try to keep up. I follow as I’m led. I sit in the back seat and appreciate the perfection of each moment. I’m not driving the car and I don’t know where I’m going. And isn’t that exciting?!
My spiritual life is an adventure. No one has ever lived my life and no one else ever will. There isn’t a right way to be me. Now, in the second half of life, I allow God to peek through and speak through me. I remember that wherever I am, God is. And I allow.

Hate and Fear

We hate what we fear. It’s more comfortable to feel hate than fear because it seems less vulnerable and we’ve learned that being vulnerable is to be avoided.
We don’t always say we hate, though. We’d rather say, “That’s illogical” (and, thus, not to be considered seriously) or “That’s immature” (and, so, unworthy of attention) or “That’s what they asked for” (and I can’t do anything about their poor choices). We separate ourselves from “them,” having already separated ourselves from what we fear inside ourselves -- vulnerability, pain, sorrow, hopelessness.
Isn’t it some form of hate to talk about another disparagingly or to ridicule someone who chooses another path? Probably what we hate most is our own vulnerability so when we see it mirrored in another, we simply direct the hate we already feel about that part of ourselves towards the other person or group. How often are unsophisticated country folks portrayed as yokels? We have felt humiliated by having an older brother or cousin laugh at our confusion so we don’t admit it anymore. But we’ll laugh at others.
A client this week said, “Life wasn’t supposed to be the way it turned out.” Is there a more controlling statement? Implicitly she was declaring, “I know what reality is and how it should look and what is is not that. And I refuse to feel how scared I am right now.” How better to eliminate vulnerability? We so want to be comfortable that we will cut huge areas of ourselves off rather than own them and heal them. When we dissect ourselves, we dissect the reality we are willing to look at and to know both inside of ourselves and around us in other people.
What happens when we don’t reflect and don’t question our unwillingness to own our vulnerability or to experience our feelings but prefer our intellectualizations and deluded bifurcations? When we get too sure that we know “how life should be,” we may forget that we are here to learn. Not to be comfortable. Not to be right. Not to impose our choices on others.
Wisdom leads us to accept what is if our commitment is to grow and to learn. That’s vulnerability in capital letters -- simply accepting situations we find and people we encounter and feelings which arise with no thought or judgment involved, no resistance. Saying “Yes,” and then allowing ourselves to be flooded with whatever experience (inner or outer) life delivers.
Why don’t we make that choice to learn from life rather than trying to manipulate and control? Our fear. Fear is one of our most basic feelings. We’re not born knowing hate -- we learn that. We know fear when we are infants. Fear stays with us even when we push it out of our awareness and use every means we can to avoid recognizing it -- intimidation, intellectualization, denial. And yet accepting our fear and our vulnerability would heal so much discord in our relationships and within ourselves. Not doing anything, just accepting and allowing and breathing.

Our Three Judges

We’re given trials as part of our life journey. An expected good doesn’t materialize. A friendship ends badly. We lose what we thought we’d gain. Surprise disappointments dot our days. What do we do?
For each trial we’re assigned three judges. Our inner Critic has been with us seemingly forever. Characteristically, he responds, “It’s your fault. Just another example of how you are not good enough.” We sigh and hurt and feel ashamed. That’s his job—to shame us and hurt us and leave us further away from our Adult.
The second judge is the Observer we practice when we meditate. The Observer is grounded, has no agenda, and is present to what is at each second. The Observer notices . . . and releases . . . and notices . . . and releases. No matter what is the Observer maintains detachment, never condemning or belittling, just acknowledging.
The third judge is the divine I Am. This judge knows your core is good and deserving of good. Your behavior doesn’t affect this judge’s total unconditional acceptance. Whatever you did in the past is unimportant to this judge for he focuses on the present and the future. He knows you have another choice and chance today and tonight and tomorrow.
His concern is the very long term. He will support you in learning what you need to learn and he doesn’t limit you or pressure you. You may have all the experiences you want. He doesn’t condemn you for your choices or love you less but he does insist that you grow.
The first judge has the loudest voice and the most familiar one. The second judge allows us to look at the first judge without being destroyed. The third judge opens our hearts and allows us to believe in ourselves. Because he knows that we deserve the highest and the best, we can know it, also. We can learn to listen to this judge and to see the world as he sees it and to see ourselves with his gentleness and compassion and trust. Lovingly, he invites us to grow into ourselves.

Transcending Limitations

Working in a men’s prison, I reflect on the experience of being incarcerated. The men can’t walk too far in one direction, can’t stand in groups on the yard, can’t watch cable television or research the internet or choose their meals. What they can’t do outnumbers what they can do by about 1000 to 1.
So many of them say they are angry about being in prison but they admit they were angry before they entered prison. They say it frustrates them that they can’t work for pay but admit they didn’t show up for work when they lived “on the streets.” They say that when they are released they will be happy but confess they never have been happy.
No matter what external changes they crave, their inner worlds seem locked up. Locked up by the anger they first felt when they were powerless children who were mercilessly abused. Locked up by their fear of yet another failure when they attempt to read or learn a trade or complete high school. Locked up by their inability to tolerate their own vulnerability which leads to rigidity, unconsciousness, and violent behavior.
These inmates are afraid of being present to themselves. They are afraid of feeling their longing and their hurt and their sadness. They choose hopelessness as a mask to forestall disappointment. The resulting numbness in their hearts can be tolerated.
Is that so different from how many of us middle class folks live? We’re caught on the success treadmill and fear falling off the conveyor belt. We want to function as well as “everyone else” so we don’t know what to do with our desperation and our emotional isolation. Resentments from decades past haunt us. We’re confused. We do what’s “right” but we don’t feel truly alive.
We can pretend these feelings are not there and hope they disappear. We’re willing to sacrifice hope for security. Maybe we’ll never try to paint or to sail or to live in Fiji or to hike through the West. Our dreams seem expendable. We even feel good about choosing practicality.
But what have we lost? Inmates see the walls which limit them. The rest of us can’t discern our inner walls. We feel restless and frustrated and dissatisfied. Passion seems a luxury. But, we repeat, “I’ve done what was expected.”
By our 50’s life demands more. We must embrace our passion and say Yes to what we don’t understand and can’t see. An invisible level of reality tugs incessantly until we deny it at the risk of losing our souls. It’s a solitary jump by definition. Our focus shifts from outer world and intellectual concerns (a career, mortgage, family) to our shadowy inner world. No one else knows what it’s like inside us. We’re surprised by our sudden intolerance of what has always been OK. We must have more and we must have it now. We may not know what more looks like but we know a change is required.
The inmates who make their inner world jumps move into those dark spaces which have dogged them forever and immerse themselves in their overwhelming fear and rage. But they don’t act out. Now they tolerate their feelings and watch them and own them and, thereby, heal them. Just by being present to themselves they move through their limitations. Thus, they find freedom and peace inside themselves. They accept their feelings and don’t shrink from feeling them. They choose happiness because they acknowledge that they have no good reason to be happy so they must generate their own. Meaning becomes more important than comfort. They can’t waste anymore time with resentment. So they say Yes to life in each moment of each day.
Just as with the inmates, by mid-life those of us who are not incarcerated are challenged to find meaning by delving more deeply into ourselves than we ever have. We risk losing comfort but we acknowledge that we have outgrown the lives we have been living and truly we are not comfortable now. For us, too, meaning becomes more important than comfort. And now we find meaning in the moments of our day. We make the mundane sacred by the attention we give it. We practice presence and availability. We, too, say Yes to life in each moment. We realize that we have been limited inside our heads and our hearts by a false way of acting and being that promised safety but has only delivered compromise.
For both the inmates and for us, the struggles are internal. We all need courage and commitment to face our inner world demons and stand firm and breathe and persist. That’s when real freedom and passion manifest.

Erecting the Barrier

Will you please join me for a few minutes in the presumption that although we say we want a relationship with God, in fact, that is not true. That basically we don’t want to know or be known by God, we don’t want to lose our boundaries and our separateness and our uniqueness, we don’t want to disappear as one drop disappears into the ocean. Our egos are much preferred as our god.
Building our Controller takes time and work and comes out of disappointment or hurt and is designed to insure safety. In the first part of our lives, we all prefer safety. Then we reach our 50's and suddenly safety seems like a coffin and we are not ready for that quite yet. And the balance shifts in the safety vs. the unpredictable-aliveness-that-is-God question.. I have heard many people say that they started their spiritual practice originally out of great pain, with hopes of ending their pain and finding a path that worked to keep them safe from hurt. God was an analegesic. They subscribed to the butterflies and sunshine theory of spirituality: if I am good, life will be easy.
This is a stance most of us outgrow. When we see that we can’t manipulate God into giving us what we want, we may assume an attitude of never-mind-I-will-take-care-of-myself. And by the way, screw you, God, for not being what I wanted. This is a good platform for building a Controller. We can erect an image of ourselves that is hard to see through, that erases vulnerability, and that is generally admired. How long we dally in this stage is related to the success of and the rewards we receive from doing our In Control number. It’s possible to live an entire lifetime here.
For those of us fortunate enough not to be too successful, we move on to, OK, I can’t do it on my own. I need your help, so what do you want? This is said with a sigh and an air of resignation which is not surrender. It is not a total letting go. It’s said on the downward slide when we see that we are losing, hoping to recoup some of our goodies by letting God be the one in front. However, our Controllers haven’t released the strings. We do “spiritual” acts but our hearts are not present. We putter along without experiencing the depth and intensity of our feelings. We’re still relating to ourselves in a superficial way and hoping that that will suffice for God, too. It is only when we have lost all hope, when we know we can’t survive on our own, when we can’t even find the path, much less make our way down it, when we lose hope in everything we have known, when we are shattered beyond apparent repair, that is when we can approach God.
What does God want with our Controllers and our success and our self congratulations? Those are just barriers which keep us from knowing God. When we truly want a relationship with God, when we are finally clear that we can’t live our lives meaningfully and satisfactorily on our own, when we know that there is more we must have but don’t know what it is or how to get it, when we can’t play the game anymore and have released our Controller’s claims to worthiness and safety, only then are we ready to stand naked and undefended, and say, I am here, God.
And then we wait.
For God isn’t far away, but is in the deepest cells of our being. God is deeper in us than our bone marrow and more essential to our being who we are. So after we have spent most of a lifetime getting away from our weakness and vulnerability and sadness, we are thrust right back. Into it.
And that is where God waits for us.
It’s funny, isn’t it, that what we can do for ourselves isn’t of much interest to God. She is not a teacher with rewards for work but a lover who says, Give me your heart. Personally, I would rather do something any day than just be and trust and feel all that ensuing anxiety. Having God say, I am here, let me love you, makes me nuts. I want to say, Yes, I am here, or at least I will be this afternoon after I’ve made some phone calls. And as for loving me, well, I’m still in process, God, and I’m working on this anger thing and I’ve almost got it, so let’s just wait a week and then I will really be ready for your love. Don’t give me too much now. I don’t want to lose my momentum. Not too much joy or prosperity or, heaven forbid, love from another human. I’m not quite ready yet, but I promise you, I’m working on it.
God hears, I’m not available. And accepts that. So we are the ones (entirely) who decide how full a relationship with God we are open to. She is always there. Granted, her terms are harsh and it seems like through the first part of our lives, they get harsher and more demanding. Maybe She tolerated us doing our Controller number out in the world in our 20's and 30's but by our 40's, She is saying, Come on now. What about those parts of you you left behind? You, remember, that sadness from your childhood you never did heal? What about feeling that now?
Because we can’t separate ourselves from any parts of ourselves--uncomfortable feelings, perceived weaknesses, fears, vulnerabilities--without separating ourselves from God. God is not on the altar in a cathedral with a sparkling chandelier. She is in the darkest, most hateful spot in our hearts, waiting, hibernating, but not dying or disappearing. She will be patient for just so long and then she demands that we look where we have avoided looking, that we acknowledge what we have denied and tried to kill inside ourselves. She is not in the shiny facade of the mansion; she is in the closet behind the door, under the clutter, in the dusty corner of the basement.
And that’s where we have to be, also, if we want to be present to God. She waits for us and calls to us softly at first and then increasingly loudly, through our bodies’ aches and our drinking and our tears and our broken relationships. That’s where we find her and where she waits and will always wait. Only when we go back to our messes, can we find God.
God is to be experienced, not talked about. Even though “knowing” is an intellectual word, knowing God is an experience, not an intellect driven endeavor. When we stay in our heads we avoid God and we avoid the deepest parts of ourselves. It is only when we dare to immerse ourselves in our passion and let it carry us that we are open to God. As long as we feel in control, we don’t need God. Allowing ourselves to experience needing God, to know that we are not whole in and of ourselves, is the first step. Realizing that we cannot do what we need to to make our lives complete is terrifying. The further realization that what is required is unknown and out of our grasps is unnerving.
But by the time we have been beaten down so many times and discouraged and totally without hope that we can make things turn out “right,” then surrender doesn’t seem impossible. In fact, it is the only door open. How much more can we hope and try and how long will we bloody our heads against the wall that we are now seeing we have erected? How many heart attacks are enough before we change? How many lost loves before we say, What I need I can’t get from anyone else? What does it take before we are ready to concede that while this ego ride has its moments, it is not a long term satisfying way to live. Only a life based on a strong personal relationship with God offers that and that isn’t something that can be received from outside. It can’t be bought or earned or given in a church. No matter who your teacher is, it doesn’t come from outside. Its strictly an inside job and God awaits. Only not where you want Her to be and not in the way you prefer.
God always chooses what is our least together area, our most unfocused point, and then demands that we live out of that. None of our worldly successes are any help and, in fact, the defenses we have created hinder us in knowing God personally. That is what is required–a commitment to a complete, full, total relationship with God. No holds barred, no escape routes open. Everything is on the line and there is no safety net.
And from that point we say, Your will be done.
And we usually add, But not in this way or not quite yet and don’t let it hurt. Be gentle and I promise I will get it.
But as long as we have that pleading, fearful relationship with God, we’re not ready. Because as our other relationships have matured, so must our relationship with God. We are not pleading and fearful with our friends or our parents or our colleagues or our business partners. We don’t try to manipulate or shield ourselves from other humans. And so must it be with God, also. We stand in front of Her and we can’t impress her and we can’t convince her to love us more or that we are preferable to another human.
We simply stand and we be and we breathe and we wait.
And that’s it. I am here, we say. And we don’t know what to expect and we no longer think of trying to control or limit God.
I am here and I am available. Your will be done.