I was talking to my friend today and she said all serious-like, you know if we commit to a forgiveness practice, stuff is most definitely going to come up for healing.
And then we made the crazy eyes at each other.
And then the peals of laughter came…because I have committed and she has committed along with many other friends of ours, and oh yes baby, the stuff is most definitely coming up for healing.
Deeper, tougher stuff. The stubborn kind. I am facing all kinds of stuff I hadn’t expected already. And you know what? I am happier than ever. I feel brighter and deeper and wider than ever before. I am not getting as caught up in the old familiar places. And people aren’t tripping me up like they once did. I am even seeing certain people who will remain nameless as sparks of the Divine just like me. This is such a good thing my friend, it is.
Later, another friend of mine sent me this quote from Carolyn Myss:
“Identifying a wound does not heal the wound. Healing must include getting to the source of why we struggle with forgiveness, why we want to hurt others, or why we want to hold onto our hurts hoping to make others feel guilty. Holding on to past wounds and negative history is more than just an emotional or psychological problem; it drains us of the energy we need to rebuild the present in a healthy and functioning manner.”
It isn’t enough to see your wounding. It isn’t enough to be able to name it. Eventually that alone will imprison us. Eventually that will poison us. We have to take the steps to heal vs identify that wound…and that means we need to address what is hurting inside us and acknowledge the ways we might be holding onto it like treasure.
As long as we are holding onto the old heavy wounding we will need to give it prime real estate.
So yeah, back to that F word. Forgiveness. Cue the googly eyes and the peals of nervous laughter…
You can call forgiveness a sucky practice. You can choose to believe it’s like you’re saying what someone did was ok. You can refuse to do it because you cannot let that someone off the hook. You can say it’s just too damn hard to go there. And you can say it’s too damn hard to admit to what you did. But none of that is going to help us heal. And I want to heal. And I want to help you heal.
What if you could change the word forgiveness to something easier to sit with? What if instead of forgiveness, we use the word RELEASE. And then I asked you to think of yourself like this amazing Spirit Pirate sailing the high seas on an adventure and you want your ‘brig’ to be free of all the prisoners, because you want all the cargo space inside you to be available for treasure.
TREASURE!
SACRED BOOTY!
Would that feel easier?
Yo ho, me hearties, yo ho! We are here to release the prisoners. Which means we are here to release OURSELVES from the prison, because surely we have locked ourselves in that very same brig.
Yo ho, me hearties, we are here to sail those high seas and collect the sacred booty!
Sacred!
Booty!
Yo ho, me hearties, yo ho!
xo
This week’s meditation is perfect for Spirit Pirates 🙂