I had been in two minds about how to acknowledge the passing of today. There is something I have wanted to write about for some time, and although there are some potential misunderstandings that may arise by attaching it to today, after a deep mediation I have made my decision to speak of what has been the core of my experience this past year.
Today marks what would have been my 5th wedding anniversary, if I had not separated from my husband earlier this year. Although we are still legally married we now live on opposite sides of the world. By navigating through the break up, I have been challenged me to deal with situations I could never have imagined, I have had to confront my inner demons, and deconstruct and discard many of my assumptions and by the same token it given me some of the greatest insights that I have had about myself and guided me on how to now live well.
Along the way, there have been times when I have stumbled in confusion. Along the way, there have been times when I have been granted the foresight and wisdom to act with wellness and heart. All those experiences have brought choices that have shaped and sharpened my awareness. I have not always acted with conventional wisdom, and I know that there are times that I have acted in ways that others, including my husband, do not understand. I have gone deeper emotionally and spiritually than ever before in coming to terms with what will always be a significant time and significant relationship in my life.
My decision to end the relationship came directly from an inescapable need for wellness, to live in an atmosphere of wellness and to act with intent to be well. The relationship was not healthy for either party and was on a collision course with spiritual, emotional, mental and physical disaster for both parties. With the outfall of the decision, I had to make some very specific choices.
At one level in understanding relationships, their emergence and demise, I could come up with plenty of justifications (real and imagined) to feel resentment, pain, hurt, remorse, blame and even hate. In the past, there have been plenty of experiences where for years after the event I have harboured those and similar feelings - although always knowing that carrying those burdens into my present and as a foundation for my future did not serve me well. As life goes, I kept finding myself ultimately in similar situations time and time again. Although the recurrence of those situations always presented as "being better this time", I would come out of the experience in a worse situation, even if I had felt though I had forgiven the offender; had made personal changes and had "learnt my lesson".
I have become increasingly aware over the past years through some very intense emotional experiences that my fundamental belief in the "righteousness" of forgiveness was not enough. Forgiveness is a word that is readily bandied about, it is presented as the only thing that needs to happen in order to let go and move forward. We are socially and often religiously conditioned to believe in the power of forgiveness. I have realized this year that I have actually struggled with forgiveness. I have realized that my filters around forgiveness gave rise to certain expectations. One of those expectations was that in the whole-hearted granting of forgiveness that the slate would be cleared and that the situation of the relationship would "magically" change and improve. When someone asks for forgiveness, they are asking us to give. If anyone has been in a situation where they have been deeply hurt by another emotionally or physically, it can sometimes feel that the onus is on the "victim" to give something else of themselves (in this case forgiveness) to "heal" the situation. In a way, it is based on the assumption that "the victim" has had the capacity to heal the hurt and are able to give again. The "perpetrator" in a sense does not have to do any giving, or make any inner change to ensure that the dynamics of the situation or relationship has shifted at a fundamental level. It is very difficult to truly forgive if you are still hurting, sometimes we still hold resentment, particularly if we grant forgiveness and nothing changes.
At the core, I think forgiveness is predicated on an assumption that blame has been attached to the other person, on their actions or the circumstances. Blame is predicated on a "rightness" and wrongness" of action. In doing so, we miss the point for healing. A dualistic and judgemental view of human behaviour quickly falls apart when we acknowledge the complexity of why a a person does what they do. When we seek to understand and act with empathy, it is far more complicated and sometimes impossible to attach blame. We can never truly know what lies in the heart or mind of another, we can never truly comprehend the logic of another; we can only ever discover what lies in our own hearts and minds. To try and make rational sense of another from within the confines of our personal world view is a futile experience, it is flawed.
So how do we then deal with hurtful or traumatic experiences? There is a choice. We can choose to re-live the memories and feel the pain and the hurt, guilt or shame or whatever emotions the event or relationship sparked inside of us. At a physiological level, at a neural-chemical level the brain cannot distinguish between a real-time experience, the re-living of a memory or an imagined experience. When we re-live past traumas with the same emotions that we experienced when we went through the trauma, we are cementing those neural pathways and allowing the thought of a memory to infiltrate the options and emotions that are available to us in our present moments; we are fuelling our chemical makeup at a cellular level to become "addicted" to those emotions. We are still giving the "perpetrator" power over our todays. Hence the quote that in various forms attributed to various persons which says "Holding onto resentment or anger is like drinking a cup of poison and expecting the other person to die". In doing so, we become the perpetrator harming ourselves; it is only us that are affected by the process. For some people, the feelings of guilt, shame and remorse about an event are so great that it seems honourable to be held within that quagmire of unwellness. As Eckhart Tolle writes, " Your unhappiness ultimately arises not from the circumstances of your life but from the conditioning of your mind."
We could choose to simply pretend that those traumatic experiences never happened to us; promise to ourselves that we will never allow that to happen again and harden our hearts until it becomes a stone. In doing so, we shortchange ourselves of life, by shortchanging our capacity to feel. We start to live life with a greater sense of fear, lack of self esteem or confidence, we avoid situations rather than embracing opportunities. We hide away.
We could choose to find a way to honour those traumatic experiences, become an inner alchemist and turn the lead into gold and give ourselves the permission to receive the gifts from even our darkest experiences. We can choose wellness for and only for ourselves; we cannot expect it from others. For me to honour the moments I shared with my husband within and outside of marriage, I consciously chose to go beyond forgiveness. Time and time again I had forgiven my husband's actions as I had knowledge of some of the contributing factors that created the dynamics of our relationship, but it still did not make sense "why it happened, when .... ". The pain was so great it deserved great honour. Initially, I guess I felt I had paid a handsome price, so that value I wanted to learn from another broken relationship had better be worth it.
At one level, I had to acknowledge, experience and grieve for the hurt and loss; at another level I had to give myself the permission to receive the gifts that had been bestowed from those situations. I had to search deep inside myself to find the value that made sense to me and my inescapable flame for wellness (which had nothing to do with my husband, his state of mind, or his actions). I chose to enter into the realm of appreciation.
When we begin with an open heart to deeply appreciate the things that happen to us in our lives it is simply not possible to attribute blame, to harbour resentment, to feel hate or entertain a desire to wallow in guilt and shame and remorse. From appreciation, we do not seek logical explanations for why things happen; we accept that things have happened, we accept that in those moments we feel certain emotions but we choose to live our moment now fully and not to be coloured or sabotaged by those emotions that are linked to some past event. When we allow ourselves to discover the gifts and to appreciate those gifts (greater wisdom, clarity around our priorities or values, clearer intentions, deeper knowledge about ourselves, whatever it may be), what unfolds is an ever increasing desire to live with compassion, tolerance, to express appreciation and love. I sit far more comfortably in my personal responsibility to create my life. I am far more certain about what my inner state of wellness looks like. Through the act of consciously choosing appreciation, the relationship with myself has improved beyond measure. For me, my view of life and living and the capacity to imagine possibilities has expanded, and not contracted as a result. I have a renewed philosophy for life, one that is bringing me closer to who I am. For that I am eternally grateful, and with that I can experience a greater love and appreciation.
One of my favourite songs of all time : The Beauty of Gray
Flying Solo Tip 093365 : When we live in appreciation it is impossible to attribute blame or to hold on to resentment or anger.