here i go, diving into a subject i am a beginner in..... forgiveness for myself. i am sadly an expert in beating myself up, and just becoming a student of for-giv-ing. it's for giving. for giving to myself, in this case. for giving to others is certainly of utmost importance, but all i am looking at now is how to give to myself. i thought about this for most of yesterday afternoon, because i was in a state that usually causes me to take a hammer to my head (awful image, but pretty accurate in terms of how cruelly i can talk to beautiful me when i am fucking up). SO, i was not doing so well meeting the annoying energy of my children, and sometimes when i am in a hard spot, with parenting especially, i think of mother lions. and yesterday i was thinking of all mothers. deer, cats, sheep, horses, whales, chimpanzees. and i kept asking myself what they would do when their babies start bugging. they walk away. they roar and swat. they give a clear signal or message that the annoying baby animal behavior is not liked. and here is what i kept coming back to yesterday.....they don't give it a second thought! i know that the mother horse who keeps walking away from her foal, because the foal is getting all up in her face and acting like a baby (which is fine, cause she is), i know that the mother horse is not thinking to herself what an awful mother she is for not being more patient and tolerant of this headache inducing behavior. i KNOW she isn't. she's just walking away, feeling 100% fine about it. let me repeat..... 100%.
every situation is different, and we are not horses, i know, hehe, but we are animals even under our humanness. so i don't justify to myself that, because the mama lion swats her child that it is okay for me to, altho i have swatted before, truth be told. but the human in me just can't go along with the idea that it's a good idea to hurt my kids as a practice and make them fear me in that way. the roaring, though, i am actually inspired at how the mama lion can give a nice firm roar and her kids hear her loud and clear.
so in some ways, in the case of parenting children who are annoying the hell out of you, i guess i am saying i don't even need to forgive myself. i actually need to feel confident in my instincts that tell me be firm with the little rascals, or that tell me to walk away. i need to feel confident, and know that losing my patience is sometimes a natural animal behavior, just as their childish behavior is natural.
i am not saying that i do not strive to exercise daily my patience muscles...and i can find much inspiration in the animal world for patient mamas too, which i need to do some looking into. anybody have some examples??
but, what does it look like when i come upon a bump in the road that makes all my sane, adult reasoning abilities fly out the window, and i do something pretty horrid, like scream at the TOP of my lungs and scare my children badly, sometimes even scaring myself. or when i have thoughts go through my head that i will not even mention, thoughts that are bad enough to even think, let alone share. that's when i really have to forgive myself. and how do i do it? at this point in my development, it really just looks like moving on, picking myself up, brushing off the dust from the wreck with the tremendous bump, telling myself it is totally normal to fuck up sometimes and hit the bump in the worst way, and breathe through the aftershock.
usually it takes time, like till the next day, before i have stopped beating myself up about the awfulness i committed. but my goal, and i feel like it is pretty realistic, is to begin to sense when something up ahead looks like it might be bumpy, and start taking action then. start some deep breathing way ahead of time. do a yoga pose. pray for guidance. whatever might bring in sanity and support, ask for it, bring it on. and that will hopefully prevent me from doing anything that i need to forgive.
but something i learned yesterday in the SHAPE OF LOVE book, is that the water crystal that formed after being exposed to the energy of the word 'despair', was actually a partially formed, beautiful crystal. it was on its way to becoming complete, just not there yet. and the author, Masaru Emoto, said the crystal is teaching us 'that any despair has hope within it.' so that's another way i worked with myself yesterday, when i was in that place where i tend to beat myself up after having hit a huge bump in the road, i thought about this crystal, and i was actually able to feel the tiny bud of hope that was hanging out in the energy field. that felt like forgiveness. energetic and without much thought associated for sure, but it shifted my state in a pretty cool way. i hope it continues to work that way. according to Emoto, there is about 20% hope in the feeling of despair. always.
now, for anyone who has read this far and is interested in sharing, how do you forgive yourself? what does it look like? i am so so wanting to learn as many ways as i can, cause i have to do this so often. deep inhale. long exhale.
thank you.
No comments:
Post a Comment