Self and Forgiveness
The past while I've been teaching a workshop on Self. Yeah. Seven weeks people! Get to know yourselves! Go!
The focus of the work has been Self forgiveness. If we hate ourselves, are mean and derisive toward ourselves and berate ourselves for our imperfections, how do we ever get to healthy Selfhood? Are we poisoning ourselves (drugs, booze, butts, unprotected sex, unhealthy food, to name a few), rather than offering ourselves forgiveness? Are we so afraid we're going to f*** up, we silence, immobilize and incarcerate ourselves? If we cannot trust our own words to ourselves, how can we love ourselves (or anyone else, for that matter)?
In doing this work along with my class, stuff I thought long-resolved has popped up from a variety of unexpected places. These last few weeks have been like a stroll through a funhouse hall of mirrors. Areas that have always felt like gaping blind-spots have come up for review and I am trying to at least map around them so I have a clue where they are. A river of shame running deep as the San Andreas fault line still lurks beneath that place I can't quite see. The lesson is self forgiveness. Other people can forgive me for this blindness but unless I can forgive myself, their words ring hollow, or worse, come across as thinly vieled threats.
I can't afford this anymore. The cost is too high. And didn't Rumi say something about the cost of loving is my life?
And I recall that I am threefold. And there is a part of me which is Flawless. Glorious to behold. Shining even when my physical body is terrified, ashamed, bewildered and running for her life. Right here, the Flower Opens above me and reminds me who I AM. "God is Self. Self is God."
Ya know, Talker might still have a lot to learn. Fetch might still be enticed to squirming in my belly. But that part of me . . . that part of me that sings and writes, that shines . . . and story-talks the Mysteries . . . . ya know, She's allllllllllright.
And s/he's alright in you, too.
Times are hard enough. Try a little tenderness.