Forgiveness

Last week I was feeling terrible that I had failed, or worse, that I was a failure. I was having a hard time forgiving myself. I was saying, “You did the best you could, it was a hard situation, don’t beat yourself up.” I was feeling foolish for having gone ahead with a plan that seemed like a good idea at the time (a great idea, in fact), and it fell far short of the mark, costing me money, instead of making it. The plan was that I would spend money to make bases for my sculptures in an exhibit I was having and then I would sell the bases. The bases would be cool pieces of furniture, and the art would make them even more attractive and saleable⎯I would make money not from my art, but using the art to sell furniture. I felt so clever. When the plan didn’t work, my thoughts went something like this:

“What was I thinking? I had way too much on my plate, there was no time for this plan to work. What kind of fantasy was I having? Especially since I wasn’t allowed to sell anything in the gallery anyway (it was a museum). I am such a fool for going ahead with a plan when I knew there was a big barrier in the way. More fantasy! What is wrong with me? You just buried your head in the sand, and made a bad decision.”

And then my voice says this:

“You did the best you could.”

Well, that certainly didn’t feel any better. It is so patronizing! What I am really saying to myself? It is not like saying it to a fireman that struggled and put his life at risk to save a child in a burning building and he wasn’t able to, or an athlete that runs flat out and finishes last. In these cases, it is really honoring what they did do. When the mayor or the coach says, “You did the best you could”, it feels great, because they are saying something like, “You were in your full power. We honor you for the power that you are. We share your sadness and frustration that there are forces and people stronger than you.”

When I say it to myself, I am not honoring myself. Imagine the fireman who walks up to a fire and says, “Whoa, it’s too hot in there! I could get hurt”, and walks away. Now what does he think when the parent of the child says, “You did the best you could”? What does the parent really want to say? Probably something like “You’re selfish”. No honor.

So what I am saying to myself is, “You are a fool.” Not so nice. I am not just saying that my wisdom fell short (which might be true, just like the athlete that finished last), but that somehow I am less-than, or unworthy. This is the place of judgment. I am diminishing myself.

Why do I start to judge myself? Why don’t I just think that I really needed a bit more wisdom, that I was operating at my capacity, and that was all I had? Because the swirly mucky feeling in my belly tells me something else is going on. When I don’t know what the muck is, I think I am muck. And when I look at someone else, and I see something mucky going on, and I don’t understand it, I think they are the muck I see.

So how do I forgive myself? How do I forgive others?

Forgiveness comes about from understanding. Understanding what? That a person did the best they could? No, not really. What I need to understand is my judgment, and how to see beyond it.

When we judge, here’s what we don’t get: that everything the person we are judging did originated from a positive intent. Everything they did was taking care of someone. Yes, they may have been taking care of themselves, but not in a way that we might call selfish (that’s judgmental). They were truly trying to love and be loved in the midst of all of their fear and pain. So what we really don’t get is that they were in pain.

Compassion arises for anyone we see in pain. If we don’t get that they are in pain, we don’t have any compassion. How can I be compassionate to someone I think is being a jerk? I think that they just are a jerk. And no one is a jerk. Just ask them. I am sure they will tell you that they are not.

Here’s the thing:
Everyone at all times is acting from a positive intent.

The shift is to stop thinking that people do bad things. Try thinking of how they are doing something positive for themselves. Try asking “How are they taking care of themselves?”. It may not work out so well for you or for them, but underneath it all somewhere every action arises from taking care of themselves. And because of this, everyone wants to be honored for everything they do. Not just some things, but everything, because way down inside they see how they are doing a good job. Somewhere deep inside, everyone really believes “I did the best I could”, in the way the fireman that tried to save a child did. Some readers might want to argue that I don’t know what people believe way down inside, positive intent and good jobs and all. That may be true, so let me drop any philosophy and talk about what we experience, something that is hard to argue with. To put it simply, the heart of the matter, the place where judgment falls away and forgiveness begins, is this:

Everyone wants to be loved for everything they do.

So what is the truth about what I was doing when I didn’t sell the statue bases? The truth is that I was afraid to fail. Nothing wrong with that, right? Failing can be rather uncomfortable. But what got in my way was the fear that when I failed, I would confirm what I already felt inside: that I am nothing. As long as I avoid failure, I never have to touch the place of nothingness deep inside. A good way to avoid failure is not to try. So I was trying to take care of my inner pain by not following through. Rather than being weak and foolish, I was coming from a place of wisdom and strength: Find ways to not do anything that would poke at my old pain. I figured out a really good way to do that! Sure, it doesn’t end up so good in the end, but I was coming from a place of positive intent. Then I can just say “Oh, Cosmo, I see what you are doing. I see how you were taking care of your pain. I see your wisdom and your strength in protecting that injury.” And it almost worked. I almost escaped feeling like a failure by blaming things like “there was to much to do” and “there were rules that limited me”. But the blame inside still felt yucky, so I didn’t escape. But I can really honor how I was operating at the limits of my wisdom. It may be the wisdom of a 5-year-old, but I was still powerful in it.

And there is so much forgiveness in seeing the truth. I can just say to myself, with a little laugh, “You are still doing that? That old one bit me in the ass again! You don’t need to do that anymore. You know that you are not nothing, you know and can feel the love and light that you are!”. I know the love and light that I am. Yet it’s still old patterns in my body. Ha ha!

So imagine that when someone hurts you, the pain they are experiencing inside must be even greater. See that they just are in pain. There is not judgment in this. There is no beating them up for what they did. It is just the clearest possible description. It is just what is. It is just the closest thing we can get to the truth.

You cannot escape your perfection

In every moment you make a decision that is the best one you can come up with, given all of the information you have, all of your wisdom, all of your love and joy, and all of your pain. It may not work out the way you intended, or expected, or hoped for, and you may wish you had made a “better” decision, or you may think you “should” have made a different choice. When you do that, you diminish yourself for your decision. In looking back in time, you see yourself as less than perfect. And you may think “I could have made a better choice”. Leaving aside the question of “better” or worse choices, let us say what you meant was “I could have made a different choice that would have gotten me the result I wanted”. What I want to tell you is that you couldn’t have, or else you would have. Yes, the possibility of other choices existed, and you were either unaware of them, or chose alternates. Yet in the moment of your making that choice, it seemed like a good idea. Even if you had uncertainty about the outcome, it was still your best shot: you evaluated the limited information in front of you, mixed in your fear, added a dash of your passion, and chose. You are a scale that weighs all that is in you and in front of you, and you cannot be other than you are in that moment. In that is your perfection, and the perfection of your decisions.

Many people reading this will protest, “But it was a terrible decision. People died.” It is essential to separate how you feel about yourself from the results of your actions. You are no more or less lovable when something doesn’t work out than at the moment you made the decision. Your actions may have dire consequences. You may need to be accountable for the results, meaning you take action to repair the damage. Yet you are no less perfect. You do not deserve to be punished. You still deserve to be loved just as much. And that starts with you not punishing yourself, and loving yourself. You can still hold yourself in love and take care of the mess you may have made. It is still possible to love someone and see them in their perfection while you demand they clean up the mess they may have made.

Everyone’s intention in making a decision is to make a good one. Try to make a bad decision right now. A bad decision might be to pull my hair until it hurts. So here I go, pulling my hair as I write, and it hurts. That was a bad idea! But there is a part of me that went on the scale of my decision that thought this is a good idea. Or I wouldn’t have done it. And that is the trap of my perfection. I cannot make a bad decision without thinking it’s a good idea to make that bad decision. I am stuck always making decisions, that on balance, I believe are good decisions. I cannot escape making what I believe are good decisions. I cannot escape my perfection.

By perfection, I do not mean that I am evaluating the merit of your decisions. Our generally accepted meaning of perfection is that ones actions lead to results we want. That is, I set a goal, I make decisions and take actions to reach that goal, and if I reach that goal, then I am (closer to) perfect. The judgment of my perfection is not handed down until the results of everything I have done are in. This leaves me at best in limbo, at worst believing that I am not perfect, that I am undeserving and unworthy, that I am not good enough.

The confusion arises from associating myself with the evaluation of my skill. Skill is the ability to reach a goal. A skilled carpenter can build a house exactly as planned. If the house falls down, then they are not a good carpenter, and would be well-advised to do something else other than build houses. The carpenter stands a good chance of feeling badly⎯not just about how the house didn’t work out and its consequences, but about themselves. It may be hard at the end of the day to accept and receive love. Yet they may have felt great while they were building the house, and been able to receive love. Then this shifts when the house comes down. We may not want to love them either. Thus, our love is conditional.

Yet if we recognize that each person is making the only decision possible for them in that moment, that they are truly trapped in making good decisions, then we can let go of deciding whether or not to love them based on the outcome, and room for unconditional love grows. We cannot escape always being worthy and deserving of unconditional love.

If we truly understand how all the people around us, especially our parents, are trying to love us while managing not loving themselves, and we can see the perfection in their decisions, not judging them based on how poorly things worked out for us, then our compassion can flow, and then our acceptance, and then our forgiveness. And then we can know and feel that we are loved, that we are loveable, and that simply, we are love.

Have you ever?

Have you ever stopped and sat with yourself when the dark side of the moon comes up?

Have you ever laughed into the abyss?

Have you ever died, shattering into a thousand pieces, only to find yourself alive, more than you had ever thought possible?

Have you ever stood at the top of the mountain and cried out "Fuck you!"?

Have you ever stood at the top of the mountain and said "Yes!"?

Have you ever stood at the top of the mountain and said "Look out world, here i come!"?

Have you ever lost yourself in a blade of grass, or snowflake, or the color orange?

Have you ever found yourself as a little boy or girl, and told him or her that he or she matters? And then found out that you don't matter, that nothing matters, that there is no mattering, that nothing matters any more or any less than anything else, that everything just is, and because of that you are perfect?

Have you ever run naked in the surf?

Have you ever run naked at dawn, screaming and spinning because you are dying and coming alive, all at the same time?

Have you ever looked into the eyes of a dying man and still felt your joy in the midst of your powerlessness and your grief?

Have you ever danced like no one is watching?

Have you ever danced like everyone is watching, and reveled in it?

Have you ever eaten a strawberry as slowly as you can?

Have you ever failed and said "Woohoo!"?

Have you ever had the feeling you are in love, and there is no one there but you?

Have you ever shouted at the full moon "I don't know what i am doing!" and felt her kisses on your face?

Have you ever walked, upright and striding, going nowhere, and let a smile cross your lips?

Have you ever played hooky when it rained?

Have you ever called in sick from work on a sunny day and gone to the beach by yourself?

Have you ever listened to your ancestors say “You must cry for us,” and said “No, I am not your sorrow,” and then cried for them anyway, because you are, in fact, the one they have all been waiting for?

Have you ever drank champagne from someone’s lips?

Have you ever worn two different colored socks, hoping someone would notice, and laugh?

Have you ever said “Thank you”, and meant it?

Have you ever said “No,” and been filled with the light of the sun?

Have you ever looked into the eyes of a child, and thought, “Looking into your eyes, and seeing your light, is my favorite thing to look at in the whole world,” and then told them?

Have you ever let someone love you more than you love yourself, without heading for the hills, beating them back, or crawling under a rock?

What would you do if a butterfly came to die on your doorstep?

I walked out of my house today. At the bottom of the stairs on the grey cement sidewalk lay a butterfly. The butter yellow of its Monarch wings was hard to miss. It wasn’t moving, just sitting there, its wings splayed. I approached the butterfly slowly. At this distance I could see all the details of its wings: yellow panes of stained glass, outlined in black, with a row of vibrant blue dots at the back edge, and two burnt orange O’s at the end of his tail. I lay down with him on the sidewalk. We are shielded from view of the street by my MG. We are huddled behind the old chrome spoke wheel.

“Have you brought me a message?” I ask the butterfly. No answer. I reach out my hand, putting my finger in front of him. He crawls right onto my hand. He sits awhile, then flits of my fingers, hovers in front of me, then flops on the ground, upside down. I help him right himself, and he crawls back onto my hand. I sit on the lowest step, a butterfly on my finger.

He is so magnificent! The colors are so striking, his black body with yellow racing stripes of hair, his wings with swaths of deep color and smatterings like a comet’s tail. And he is dying.
My first impulse is to save him. “What do you need?” I ask him. He is weak. Water? Sugar water? Perhaps I can take him inside and make him some honey water.

Can I take him inside? Will he fly away? Will he get lost in my house? How can I mix his drink and hold him too? Can I save him? It is all so hard.

Then a message comes to me. Let go. Just be. Just love. If this butterfly has come to die, then be with him while he dies. Stop trying to save everything. A warmth spreads through my chest. My stomach relaxes.

Yet am I willing to just sit and let a butterfly die? Oh, how my heart aches just sitting here, my legs ache to move to do something. “You do not have to save me,” the butterfly says. “You have to save you.”

So I sit and love the butterfly and let him die. For a moment, he flops off my finger, tumbling on the sidewalk, heading under the car. “No! Not that way!” I say, and reach out my hand for him. He rests again. “I’ll take you to the garden now.”

I stand and carry him up the stairs. As I open the front door, he starts to crawl up my arm. By the time I go out the back door, he is on my shoulder. I can just see him out of the corner of my eye. I walk down the stairs to the garden and I sit in a chair. He flaps his wings, and he is so close I can hear it.

I take him in my hand again, and we sit and sit. He is very still. Sometimes I see the lower end of his body pulsate, and I know he is still alive. Or his proboscis, curled under his head, will move, as if he is breathing. He lowers his head, resting it on my finger. His legs are splayed. “Now he is dying,” I think, and I wonder how long it will take. Perhaps when I am truly able to let go, he will pass. His wings flap once and he is still. I think “That was it. He is gone.”

And then my butterfly moves again. He is not dead. And I feel a tinge of disappointment. I wanted that moment. I wanted to be here when he dies. I wanted to be the one to hold him in his passage. I wanted to tell the story of the butterfly that came to die in my hands, and how I did it. I want to tell the story of how he knew this was a good place to die, how he could see how loving I am, and how magical I am that butterflies come to me to die. And if he had lived and I had fed him how I could tell the story how powerful I am that I healed a butterfly. Either way I am not here, but writing the story of my being here, and how amazing I am.

So just be. Just love this butterfly. Let him live or die. And let me be able to walk away at any time without a great ending. I do not matter that much.

My heart is so filled with love for this creature. How wonderful to be sitting here with this beautiful creature in my hand! It is drizzling now, and I see drops of mist bounce off his wings. It is so much easier. Being and loving. To love so fully is to stop doing anything, and trying to matter so much.

I lift him to a small flower potted on the table. It is rich purple, and open like a small orchid. He walks right onto the flower. I think he is going to eat. But he keeps walking, and leaps off the top of the flower. He flies gracefully up and up. He alights on top of the redwood fence at the garden’s end. I imagine he is exhausted again. I miss him. I want to hold him. I reach up to the top of the fence and before I can come near, he flies off, and lands on a tall bush, out of reach. He folds his wings in the rain.

I think of my mother and father. They are coming close to the end of their lives. I watch them struggle, my mother silently, my father louder and louder. Big things have not worked out as planned. I want to struggle with them, to save them. I want them to be the way I want them to be, so I can be loved the way I want to be loved. Now, I just hold them gently on the tips of my fingers. I walk back up the stairs, and close the door.

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Holding On, Letting Go

Have you ever had a relationship end, and the pain of it persists and is pervasive? It can be both excruciating and exhausting. Or have you managed to move on, and then you get an email from them, and it sends you into a tail spin?

What is in the way of moving on? What keeps that wound from closing?

The answer can be quite simple: The pain is how you continue a relationship with them. In every moment when you feel the pain of the relationship, you are in a relationship with them. You are thinking of them, feeling them, experiencing them. You may even have conversations or arguments with them in your head. There is a part of you that hasn’t let go. There is a part of you that is holding them desperately. There may be a part of you that needs something, and is still trying to get it. And that part would rather feel the pain than lose them.

The way to let go is to not let go. Let yourself hold them tightly, for this is what you want to do. Hold onto that pain. Hold it just long enough until you can see that part of yourself that needs them. It will most likely be you as a child. They are hungry for love, and without that relationship, are cut off from their lifeline. They are probably feeling unlovable, and depended on that relationship to avoid feeling this. In unlovable, they have attached themselves to someone else to feel lovable. And the pain of living in a dead relationship is less than the pain of feeling unlovable, for it is an intense, rich feeling. It may be preferable to feeling one’s own emptiness and worthlessness.

When you can see your inner child, find your heart, because you are a loving person, and have given many people in your life love, and love them. Let them have your heart. Bathe them in your love. Talk to them. Try telling them, “I have what you need right here,” and let them feel your heart, swim in the warmth of your love. Tell them what they have been waiting a long time to hear.

Then you will remember the love that you are. Then you can let go.

Giving Respect

Has anyone ever said to you, “You have to earn my respect”? I know when I have heard it it didn’t feel very good. Why not? There is an underlying message. It means that I start out from a place of no respect. It means that I don’t respect you until you prove yourself worthy of my respect. It means I am not worthy. And that doesn’t feel very good.

It further means that there are levels of respect. You may be worth more or less respect. It means you may be worth more or less. Your personhood is being evaluated and deemed worthy. Your personhood is being deemed worthy of consideration. And if you do not earn your respect, you may be unworthy of consideration.

This is conditional respect. It is no different than conditional love. It means you are not seen in your perfection at all times and fully accepted for who you are. It means you are only accepted for what you do, not who you are.

The confusion arises with our need to evaluate a person’s skills. Here, respect means our regard for a quality or skill a person possesses. I do want to evaluate a plumber before he takes apart my sink. I need to know his skill level. If he is a true craftsman, than I will admire him. But this is about what he does, not who he is. He is always worthy of my consideration for his personhood, independent of his skills. My love is separate from my admiration. I may not admire everyone, but I can love everyone.

We have become so obsessed with doing as a culture, that we may forget to see the person doing it. Just as they do to themselves, we think that they are the things that they do. They are as loveable and respectable as the things they do. Admiration is about the doing. Respect can also be about the doing. But it also has the sense of love.

What if I said, “You have all of my respect from the start. You are going to have to work really hard to lose it”? How would that change your life? And the world?

How could you lose my respect? If you push hard enough, you will find some place inside me where I don’t respect myself. If you manage to burrow down to the bottom of that hole with me, then in that dark place you will lose my respect. Because there is none there. For me or for you. There is no love there, either. And if you have pushed me that far, I will assume it is because you are not respecting⎯or loving⎯yourself. So there we will be, two people with no love or respect for ourselves sitting in the dark at the bottom of a hole. Pretty bleak. No way out.

How do we get out of there? It takes someone to come along who respects themselves deeply⎯meaning more than us⎯to bring some light to that place so we can begin to see ourselves again. With that glimmer of light, we can start to see again, and find our way out of the hole.

So bring on your respect. Show up with your respect full-on. There are a lot of people around us who do not respect themselves as much you do. Let them see themselves reflected in your respect for them. And may that moment be a turning point for them, when they caught a peek at themselves beyond their doubt. Let it be a moment when the lie dies, the lie that they are not worthy, for a lie cannot sustain itself once it has cracked. And let that be the start to all of us finding our way back to our full love and respect for ourselves.

Back Pain: Testing My Joy

It was a few days before my back surgery. I could stand for maybe 30 seconds before the pain hit. Maybe a minute. It would start in my hip and spread down through my thigh, down my calf, and into my foot. But it was breakfast time, and I was home alone, and I was hungry.

I made it to the kitchen. I really wanted some eggs. Scrambled would be fast, I thought. Standing at the stove, I can feel time running out, and the eggs are not cooking fast enough. “Come on!”, I actually said aloud. The pain is here. I get the eggs on a plate. The table isn’t far. I turn, walk a few feet, and it is too much. I can’t make it. I go down. The eggs don’t matter. The pain is all there is.

I am lying on the kitchen floor and I am screaming. It helps the pain to scream. I am screaming at the top of my lungs. My hip and my leg are consumed with ripping fire. If I can scream loud enough, I can match the pain, and I can almost bear it. Not that I have a choice.

And then in the middle of this agony, I realize, “Huh, you’re not actually unhappy”. Sure, I am in an insane amount of pain, but I am not unhappy. Rather, I have this odd sense of joy. Or rather, I still have my joy. Yes, I want this to be over, want to be out of the pain, but it is just pain. It is probably the most intense pain I have ever felt. I am thinking “God, this fucking hurts! But I am so alive! What a ride! Wow! Jesus, this is intense, I didn’t know I could feel this! FUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!”.

But I am not making up the stories I used to in these moments. I am not making up the story that I won’t have a job, or that I won’t have a family, or that I won’t be loved. I do not tell myself, “See. This proves it. Here you are, not good enough.” I do not go “woe is me.”

It is just a sensation. Well, not just a sensation. A big god dammed horrible sensation. But here’s the thing: The pain is independent of who I am. I am here to experience it and there is not meaning to it beyond just the pain. There is no meaning to it about who I am. The pain I used to create⎯the real suffering⎯was the pain of how I diminished myself. The deeper truth is that I was already feeling unworthy⎯the pain was already there: the stories of woe I made up arose out of my deepest core pain of believing I was nothing.

So in that moment on the kitchen floor, I felt like I had passed a test: Had I really transformed? Did I really believe and know my own perfection and the love that I am? Yes, my deep joy in life comes from feeling the love that I am, and nothing, not even this excruciating pain, can change that. Love and joy are independent of the landscape of my life, independent of the feelings I have in the moment. I can still have my joy when I am sad, afraid, or angry. Or happy.