Forgiveness is Not Condoning
Forgiveness is a healing elixir. It is the holistic cure for transforming trapped emotions and toxic patterns. Anger, hate, resentment, regret, guilt, shame- all of these emotions carry an energy that are looking for a temporary home to settle into. Often times, we welcome them into our home as tenants instead of the visitors they are meant to be for the purpose of learning. We forget that these emotions are perfectly content living a gypsy lifestyle as much as they are settling into one home for the rest of this lifetime. We willingly, and often subconsciously, become that permanent home. The longer the tenants stay and continue to pay rent, the more comfortable we become living in that energetic frequency. Thus, attracting more of it.
We may say that we don’t want to carry any of these feelings, because logically speaking, who would? Subconsciously, there must be an equal trade-off for housing these emotions. Otherwise, we wouldn’t continue to accept their rent.
Darker emotions possess an energy that can be used to create in the world. Some people create their entire identity around them. Others use them as an excuse to hold themselves back in life by constantly comparing to and living in the past. You may be ignoring the needs of your inner child who feels that they deserve to be feeling badly about themselves for some unexplainable reason. Some may be using the emotions to create constant chaos in life around them in an attempt to drown out the inner chaos that’s happening within them.
Sometimes shadow work can feel too overwhelming, so we subconsciously develop habits to deflect our sacred work, making ourselves feel temporarily just a little better. Even if it means focusing our attention on fueling the anger, hate, resentment, regret, guilt and shame…creating even more shadow work to sit down with when we’re ready to address all of these feelings. Ignorance is bliss.
Forgiveness is often overlooked as a solution simply because it’s developed a reputation, based on who’s doing the interpreting. I’ve heard rumors that forgiveness is weakness. ::shrugs shoulders:: “Forgiveness means that they’ve won, and I’m not a loser!” (Jeepers, why so defensive?) It’s been said that forgiveness means you have to keep people in your life who you forgive, even if they are not in alignment or they treat you like crud.
Forgiveness does not mean you’re saying “it’s okay for me to be treated poorly.” Forgiveness is not condoning.
Photography by Garth Joseph @ oneteamnodream
Forgiveness means you radically accept that what happened, or how you are being treated is not okay. It means that you have decided to no longer accept rent from the emotionally-draining tenants. It means you’re choosing not to give your power away to energy-vampire feelings that make you feel terrible about yourself.
When we forgive others, we are in turn forgiving ourselves for allowing the darker, emotional tenants to live in our homes for as long as they did in the first place (even if it was a decision made by genuine ignorance.) Forgiveness means you are choosing to detach from those things that do not serve in becoming the highest version of yourself. Forgiveness means you are no longer holding (energetic) space or putting out ads in the paper for new tenants to take their place, knowing and trusting that the energetically aligned tenants will come to you with grace and ease.
Forgiveness is a journey. We have a difficult time forgiving the human wrong doings of others because we often have a difficult time forgiving ourselves. The truth is that holding onto those low-vibration feelings becomes a distraction from doing the real work that needs to be done. We develop the habit of attachment to these feelings to avoid the fact that one of the greatest things we fear is ourselves. We fear facing the parts of us that feel unworthy. The parts of us that believe we are undeserving. The parts of us that don’t believe anyone could possibility still love them after all of the mistakes we’ve made in life.
Forgiveness means you’re saying “it’s not okay for me to be treated poorly, especially by me.” Forgiveness is not condoning.
Once you’ve given the emotionally-draining tenants a 30-days’ notice, taken the occupancy ads out of the paper and released this desperate energy surrounding you to fill the space (simply because it’s what you’re used to), sit in silence with yourself.
What’s really going on inside of you? What have you desperately attached to that is not vibrationally serving? Where is the fear coming from? Take radical inventory of the types of people, experiences and encounters you’ve attracted, your response to them and the unhealthy attachments created over time. I (love) to be the bearer of “bad” news, but it has nothing to do with them, or anything outside of you. It has everything to do with your contribution to it.
Here’s the kicker. Once you’ve radically accepted that you’ve contributed to patterns of the unwanted, don’t take your own actions personally. That’s just another form of deflection keeping you away from doing the real work, keeping you further away from being at peace.
Taking things personally is the ego being triggered, disguising itself as a “new” tenant, pounding on your door and demanding you accept their rent. The ego craves a place to live too.
Welcome scared Ego in for tea, have an open and honest conversation and then set your boundary. “This is no longer your home, but feel free to visit anytime.”
Ego will disguise itself as another “new” tenant over and over again in hopes that you’ll accept their rent. Welcome Ego in, offer tea and a conversation, set your boundary. You’ll find that over time, Ego will become less aggressive and defensive.
Ego will realize that you are always warm and welcoming to have them as a visitor (regardless of the disguise they show up in). Ego will realize that you’ve become too self-aware at that point to be fooled by their disguises because you are no longer blind to the unhealthy attachments you once held. Ego will realize that you hold space for only that which is highest serving for inner peace. In response, Ego will eventually drop its defensiveness because Ego will realize there is nothing to fear.
You have done the real work, released the attachment to taking things personally and are now able to radically forgive Ego, over and over again, for being defensive. You will see the truth. Rough-and-tuff Ego is really just scared. People who are ruthless and angry are scared. You, who chose to accept rent from energy-vampire tenants for so long, were scared. We often fall into unhealthy patterns of behavior out of fear.
When you find yourself being able to readily forgive others for their mistakes, it’s a direct reflection of how radically you are now able to forgive yourself for yours.
In Love and Light,
➵ Katherine