Yoga Meditation: Strength and Forgiveness

The past few days I have been a mess.  So many things in my past have resurfaced; things that I thought were gone for good.  But when you least expect it, they will pop back up because I guess maybe we didn’t learn the lesson from those experiences.  Whatever the reason, these unresolved things made their way back into my consciousness.

Looking back over the past month, I had some major life changes happen.  Crippling depression, self-isolation and feeling like I’ve been crawling through the dark have become daily occurrences after my father died.

This isn’t a sympathy piece, or even an advice column, but if you find some kind of assurance or inspiration to fan your own flame, then let it burn, baby.

So yesterday, after a few margaritas I found myself 2 pages deep into a letter to an old friend.  A bittersweet and uncensored, no fucks given kind of letter expressing how angry I was about how things had turned out.  Without getting too much into it, I’ll just say that it was a cutting, brutally honest and unapologetic letter expressing how he fucked up.  Later that night I had a text conversation with another old friend, calling them out for ghosting out on our friendship.   Thoughts of those closest to me, not being there in my time of need, overflowed into a verbal explosion of pent up emotions.

I was not playing around, and still am not.  I was unapologetically honest and held no space for their feelings or sugar coating anything.  I referenced that some of my compassion may have died when my father did, and that I would not allow the preservation of others’ feelings guilt me into being unauthentic.  Read: I cut a bitch with words, and no fucks were given.

Today however I really focused on forgiveness and strength.  Because I cannot carry that burden around with me any longer.  And it fucking sucks to face this shit head on, but I suppose that growth will always make us uncomfortable at first.

I decided that I had to deal with these things in a healthier manner than just getting drunk and calling motherfuckers out on their shit.  Still a necessary step, for me anyway.  But how was I going to let go of my death grip to these people and situations?

When Pop died, many people reminded me, to go to God when things got rough.  At the time, I had a few choice words for those people, as in “Where was God when…”

But now that the dust has settled a bit, I decided that I had to get back to my meditation and commune with spirit, or God.  So today I went out to the river and did some yoga, one of my favorite things in the world, that I don’t utilize enough, and these are a few of the things that came up in my meditation:

Forgiveness and Strength

1. Have strength to forgive those who don’t deserve it. There’s the major cliché that forgiveness is not for the other person, it is for you, and there have been many times when even this dirty hippie has called bullshit on that theory. But when we step back far enough out of the picture, it really is the truth. Forgiving another person enables us to take our power back. We no longer give them dominion over our emotions or thoughts. We can recognize, analyze, internalize and finally expel things that no longer serve us. Take the lessons, and let it go. Holding those grudges or animosity do nothing but take up space in our lives, space that we can dedicate to growth, happiness and peace. So choosing to forgive, allows us to make room for better things, and helps us reclaim our independence and reclaim our power. Take it back.
2. Forgive yourself for the times you didn’t have the strength. Forgiveness is often thought of as a one-way street, we forgive others, we forgive the world, and we forgive the demons that try to dim our light. Forgiveness is so powerful, why should we only offer it to others?  If we find ourselves in situations where we let others have so much power over us, we can feel guilty that we let that affect us for so long in such a detrimental way. Personally I tend to hyper focus on a situation and I do whatever I can to address it on every level, from every perspective, but there have been many times that I forget to also realize my own role in life, or in a particular circumstance. We have the ability to empower ourselves through forgiveness to others, but why not offer that same blessing to ourselves? We can and should at least consider forgiving ourselves for the times we didn’t have the strength to “do the right thing.” We are only human, we are all playing the same game, (I just lost the game, sorry!) and we are not separate from this world as our egotistical minds may lead us to believe.

Does this mean that we are now objectively observing our lives, outside of ourselves? Are we observing the world from another perspective than our own existence? If so, and we separate ourselves from our own lives like this, then who is the one observing? Is God in us? Are we, in essence part of this Christ consciousness? Are we part of a much larger being? Just some food for thought.

Before I get too off topic, I’d like to just finalize this by saying, that in forgiveness we find strength, and when we find our inner strength we are more able to forgive, which as stated, allows us to make room in our lives for bliss, happiness and peace. So if you can make the choice, forgive, and just remember that whatever is going on, you already have the strength inside you to do it.

Namaste motherfuckers