I was talking with a dear friend about his experience taking a workshop on forgiveness. The thing he walked away with was the idea that everything that had ever happened to him up to this point in his life was perfect. All of the difficulties, traumas, successes, failures and patterns were perfect.
The idea of that can seem preposterous at first glance but from an observational viewpoint it is profound. One of the aspects of being human we battle with most is feeling out of control of our own circumstances. Things don’t go our way, disaster strikes, someone we love dies or abandons us or a relationship we’ve invested so much of ourselves in falls apart. What’s so perfect about that?
An important healer in my life used to say to me “The slower you go, the faster you get there.” We can only heal at the pace that our body and mind are ready for. Trying to plow through our biggest issues can only lead to a chasm too wide and deep to cross. We are taught in this culture that “doing” is necessary above all else, being productive and “making things happen” will bring satisfaction. Healing cannot work within this paradigm. Healing is about letting each moment inform you of the next step to take, which can sometimes be very different than where you think you were headed.
Everything Happens for a Reason? Yuck…
I’m not harping this sense of perfection on the back of “everything happens for a reason”. Often that phrase is used to avoid a painful state of being, while trying to take refuge in new age rhetoric. This serves no one well. Rather, we have choices in how to heal what seems “imperfect” so that we can understand ourselves better and have compassion for our situation. We can use practical, intuitive methods to relieve ourselves of the emotional charge and disabling qualities that we feel as a result of difficult circumstances and past hurts.
To honor that state of perfection is about coming to terms with the fact that you are fallible, you are human and therefore limited in certain ways. This is not a bad thing, you are not wrong somehow because of it. In a culture that promises us security and prosperity through material wealth, we must question our motivations to find peace through external means.
Being in that state of perfection is about accepting all of the challenges and hardships you’ve had up until this point in your existence. You can commit to shift your perspective so that you aren’t bound by the negative implications of past situations.
Back to Forgiveness
Seeing our imperfect perfection allows us to forgive ourselves first. We start with our own inability to forgive ourselves and simply give ourselves a break. As we slowly release the burdens we carry, we are able to see why others have a hard time letting go and a natural sense of understanding the human condition can develop. We can bask in the knowledge that we are powerful creators who have a tremendous capacity to heal ourselves at our own unique pace. Nothing to prove, nothing to do, just being is enough.
What’s Next?
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