First Teaspoon - Healing – Freedom from Poison
Danny is my Maine Coon cat. What can I say, my lover in life is a furry purr machine. I normally clip Danny’s claws when they get long, and of course, neglected to do so recently. Like a lover does, Danny gently paws at me to wake me up in the morning. However, this particular morning, his pawing led to piercing my skin! Whoaaa – I’m up! I could see how badly he felt for drawing blood from me. I immediately got up and went to the sink to wash the wound. If you are not familiar, cat scratches can be very nasty. They can turn into Bartonella henselae, in other words, cat scratch fever. Rather than get poisoned by the inadvertent scratch Danny gave me, I tended to my wound to begin the healing process.
I’m sorry if you have been hurt in life. Just like I had to tend to the wound that Danny inflicted, so you need to tend to your wound. Your healing process is your responsibility; otherwise, you may be poisoned by the hurt you experienced. If this happens, you will inadvertently hurt others with your hurt. And the cycle continues.
It is not easy to take responsibility when you have been slighted, moderately, or deeply hurt by another. The victim mentality mode is enticing as it gives the illusion of control, as if to say that your anger and resentment towards the person that hurt you is the way to empowerment. Sadly, it is a dead end, and only sets you up to be re-victimized. The hurt that was originally done to you has now poisoned you to lead a life of emotional pain and suffering.
There is a way out. It’s called forgiveness. Now pause for a quick moment to let me explain what forgiveness is because most of our society has this backwards. First of all, to say “I forgive you” is a form of reconciliation. Reconciliation is not forgiveness. Reconciliation falls under the umbrella of forgiveness, should you choose to reconcile. So, then what is forgiveness? It is a personal process of letting go. It is as if to say, “I choose to not let your actions be part of who I am anymore.” Don’t get me wrong, the habitual pattern of victim mentality is strong, and others will feed into this mentality. In yoga, it is called samskaras, habitual patterns of the mind. It is much to easy to go back to the behavior of victim mentality. If you said that you are working on forgiveness, some people may say, “How can you forgive them!” or “They don’t deserve your forgiveness!” or “How can you ever approve of what they did?!” They do not understand what forgiveness is. What they are saying is not forgiveness. They are saying that you should hold onto resentment. I am sure you have heard that resentment is like giving yourself poison, and hoping the other person dies. It doesn’t work. Forgiveness is not about this. Again, it is about accepting what has happened (*note – I said “accepting” not “approving”) and choosing to let it go. To free yourself from the burden that is weighing you down, and poisoning the pure nature of who you are. It is deciding to let go of the “human story” of who you are, and be the essence of who you are, in other words, your “spiritual story.”
With this said, you cannot rush the process of when you been hurt. Forgiveness comes when you are worn out enough to no longer carry it, which brings me to my next teaspoon….