Marrianne Williamson in her book, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles, writes about accepting people as they are. "In the holy relationship, we don't seek to change someone, but rather to see how beautiful they already are. Our prayer becomes 'Dear God, take the scales from in front of my eyes. Help me to see my brother's beauty.' It is our failure to accept people exactly as they are that gives us pain in relationship."

One would think it might be easier to accept something than to expend effort to change it, but that does not seem to be the case in most of our relationships. Why do we want others to be and act a certain way? And what creates our expectations about how they should be? Ego often oversteps its role of differentiation and says: I know what is needed in this situation. I know how others should act. I want them to do what I want them to do because it is the right way to do it. It suits my purposes. And if they act the way I want them to I don't have to  deal with my own emotional response patterns, my own fear, loneliness, or anger. Many of these conversations (and others about safety, familiarity, duty, and security) are beneath our conscious awareness and are more potent for being so. 

It was in the rooms of Alanon that I first recognized how much easier it was for me to focus on someone else's issues than to look at my own. Putting my attention on others gave me the illusion of being right and powerful, or conversely, the self pitying comfort of being a victim. And the key word there is 'illusion', because trying to control or change others is very much like spitting against the wind. Change is an inside job and putting all our energy into to trying to do it outside of ourselves distracts us from our true point of power: our ability to interface with divine forces and change and grow into our full potential as a spiritual being in a physical body.

"It is not for you to judge the journey of another's soul.  It is for you to decide who YOU are, not who another has been or has failed to be."                    Neale Donald Walsch in Conversations With God, Book Two.

I have heard spiritual progress described as a detoxification process: things need to come up before they can be released. A holy relationship is one that grants a safe place to be who we are, to allow our stuff come up and our dark places be seen, knowing we will not be judged, but instead offered compassion and forgiveness. And without the distraction of degradation we are able to learn to change what we can change ... ourselves. Part of that healing change is in response to the supportive environment, and the internalization of that experience leads us to  practice love and forgiveness with ourselves and others. We come to understand relationship as a context for healing through mutual forgiveness. A significant aspect of that healing process is the recognition and appreciation of the divine spark that is in all of us, linking us together as one. 

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One of my clients died this year, after a long illness as they say. During our time of work together we frequently had conversations about forgiveness. She had carried strong  resentments towards a particular family member and believed that she was entitled to her resentments because this person had behaved badly many times. What she had trouble understanding was that she was compounding the injury to herself by carrying anger and hatred towards him. He wasn't suffering from it; she was. And when she came to a point of recognition that she had mistakenly believed that her resentment somehow magically protected her from being hurt by him again, there was an internal release, a sigh of letting go that began a transformational process of forgiveness, not only of him, but of herself. 

Resentments are conversations in our minds that keep us rooted in the victim archetype. If someone did harm to us, we are blameless and therefore absolved from any responsibility... or so some small voice in our head whispers. With resentment comes the belief that other people should be different from the way they are; that they should not have done what they did. Anchored in being right and justified, the ego embraces the delusional belief that we should get to decide how other people, places and things are supposed to be.  One definition of resentment is that it is a lack of acceptance of reality, a resistance to accepting what is because we don't like it. Believing ourselves to be victims tends to create more and more of the same patterns in our life script; more bad things happen because we expect them and make unconscious choices to support that view of ourselves in the world.

This time of year old family resentments are often dusted off and put on display with the rest of the holiday ornaments. Something that happened twenty years ago can be the centerpiece on the dinner table. Start up a conversation for change during this year's holiday celebration. Forgiveness starts with an inner conversation, the decision to become willing to forgive, to become willing to accept others for who they are. And that begins with accepting yourself with the feelings of anger or resentment that you have, acknowledging them without resistance, just accepting them for what they are. They've been with you for a while, they served you somehow, and now they are no longer moving you in the direction you wish to travel. Perhaps, like with my client, they gave the illusion of protection. Or maybe the feeling of righteousness was the only way you knew how to feel good about yourself. Whatever the reason, thank them, bless them, and surrender them up; choose willingness to accept and forgive yourself for having lived this world view, this lifestyle. And then choose something different, one decision, one moment at a time. When you notice yourself reverting to the old way of thinking out of habit, recognize, forgive, and redirect. Let your best present this year be a conversation of forgiveness and goodwill to all. Ask for help when you need it. Use this holiday season to practice and become the peace and love and forgiveness that you want to see in the world.
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The hardest practice of forgiveness is the one we do with ourselves. I tell myself that I should have known, I should have seen it, I should have done better.  But I didn't. Decisions I made in some situations were not the best ones. Sheldon Kopp wrote "All decisions are based on insufficient data". Meaning that we can only choose based on what we know at the moment, that at any time new information can come along that will give new perspective to our decision. And so we just do the best we can with what we know at the time. And we can choose to be OK with ourselves, choose to forgive ourselves over and over for being human or we can choose to not forgive and to punish ourselves in our withholding. So in that sense, suffering is truly optional, truly our choice. 

One of my teachers told me that forgiveness is a process that starts with a decision. It doesn't happen all at once, but is a becoming. Starting with that decision we make small steps to move us closer to our goal and we make that decision be the right decision; no mind changing, no second guessing. We listen to our language and inhibit negative self talk. We make room in our mind for the possibilities of compassion and letting go. We come to understand the freedom in forgiveness.  And in that becoming we move into our higher vibrational self, we choose to be happy and spread joy around in the world and invite others to feel good about themselves too. 


I have come to believe we would all be better off if we could forgive everybody everything, starting with ourselves. And as I write about  this, so I learn about this. 

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