Intimate relationships are usually the place where our greatest judgmental thoughts rise up. We are not as harsh on anyone as we are with the person we love the most.
So let’s say our partner did something really terrible and we’re struggling with it. We felt s/he has wronged us so we start obsessing about it to our friends. Our healthier friends may say something like “pray for the person” or suggest that we “forgive” the person. This feels particularly hard because we feel the the harm done to us is unforgivable, and every time we think about it we are reminded of that horrible transgression it makes it even more impossible to forgive.
After decades of therapy, serious meditation practice, 12-step recovery and various other healing methodologies, I have come to believe that forgiveness IS the true answer to inner peace. I believe this because my Ego, my self-will … my lower self and … my fears can justify any reason not to forgive someone. The Ego is insidious like that.
However, this perception from the standpoint of the Ego inevitably throws us into an emotional tsunami of chaos and insanity. But there is no order, no structure, no light, no harmony that comes with this insanity and chaos. Just like there is no order or structure in the middle of a hurricane or earthquake. With insanity and chaos there is only the constant reenactment of our craving for meaning … to feel important, to feel good enough … our desperate craving to feel connected. That’s it! So the key to rising above the insanity and chaos is rising above the realm where reality doesn’t make sense.
Let me explain. Think about your last fight with your partner. In the middle of all that chaos did reality make sense to either of you? That’s because nothing makes sense when we are insane. Our brain is hijacked. Further, nothing happens in the middle of chaos except a constant reenactment of the previous chaos and insanity. In other words, nothing happens during the power struggle.
The key is forgiveness. Forgiveness is the way to safety and to peace and here’s why.
If your partner doesn’t feel forgiven by you, s/he will feel the need to defend against you. Your partner will put up a wall. Even if you say, “s/he hurt me first and I was just defending myself!!!” Any kind of defense is an attack. And we usually respond to an attack with a defense. I attack my partner, my partner will defend herself against me. The Buddha says, “Here lies the cycle of violence.”
We are not safe when our partner doesn’t like us.
The Course in Miracles says:”The unforgiving mind is full of fear and offers love no room to be itself and no place to spread its wings and soar above the turmoil of your relationships. The unforgiving mind is sad, without the hope of respite from pain. The unforgiving mind suffers and abides in misery peering about in darkness seeing naught but certain of the danger lurking there.”
This is what we don’t understand on a conscious level, however we need to understand it on a conscious level because an unforgiving mind is always thinking about what others have done to us—always. It’s always thinking, “Well they did this and they did that!” An unforgiving mind is always blaming something or someone for it’s own misery and pain. So it’s like we are sending knives out all over the place … all over our internal mental universe; all over relationships and marriages. And we feel unsafe in our relationship, which are emotional and psychological knives everywhere—we do not realize that those knives are coming from our own head. It’s also like the old adage: “Resentment is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies.”
Therefore, giving up the knives-producing thinking in our head is the only way to get out the f#*king insanity and chaos and come back to sanity, order, harmony and connection.
The Course in Miracles goes on to say, “The unforgiving mind is torn with doubt about all it sees. Afraid and angry, weakened and blustering … afraid to go ahead or afraid to stay, afraid to awaken or afraid to go to sleep. Afraid of every sound, and yet more afraid of stillness. Terrified of the darkness, yet more terrified of the approach of light. What can the unforgiving mind perceive, only it’s damnation. The unforgiving mind perceives damnation, why? Because when we are damning someone else, we are also damning ourselves.” An idea doesn’t leave its source! Meaning if I am projecting anger and resentment onto you I will feel attacked. The unforgiving mind can only believe that all another’s transgressions are real because the unforgiving mind is what creates them.
So, you might be thinking, what if I have trouble forgiving myself? The answer is to go back and atone/make amends for your mistakes and not listen to the voices of the world. Ultimately, forgiving ourselves is no different than forgiving someone else. The same rules apply. The real you is the loving you and the issue is to become a better person now! To become more humble now.
The work in Imago Relationship Therapy helps us dismantle the judgmental fear-based mind (Ego). Our ego does not care who it attacks, shames, blames or criticizes. It can attack me or it can attack someone else. Either way the purpose of the Ego is to keep me suffering in the illusion of separateness and/ disconnectedness. So by not making amends/atoning for our behaviors and wrongdoings is the very thing that keeps us from becoming different people now. This is the point. And this is one of the ways we will feel better.
Forgiveness does not make us weak or doormats. Forgiveness, according to the “Course in Miracles,” is a state of being that has less to do with the person we are relating to and more to do with how we cultivate inner peace within ourselves.”
I have to practice this stuff myself everyday and I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I’m not an Imago guru, a 12-step guru, meditation guru. In fact, I hate those terms; they are just another form of Ego in my opinion. However, my entire career has been a privilege and I feel humbled and very blessed … blessed at a level where I truly believe it is the Divine’s way of calling me to spend the rest of my life helping folks and teaching folks become wise where I have been stupid and unteachable. For those of us who practice Imago, 12-steps or some kind of spirituality in our relationships–it’s all about the doing.
Sure, who doesn’t want a quick fix, instant gratification, a temporary fix or a pill to make it all go away, but that’s light-weight; that’s surface.
There isn’t a meme, a platitude or any number of “Likes” on Facebook that can release us from the emotional nightmare we put ourselves and others through. The dictate of the Ego mind is seek but do not find, which means we are always seeking love, but never finding it … until we realize all the ways we keep love at bay.
And lastly … may there be a great miracle in your life and may you be lifted above your past. Forgive it so completely that light emerges and a new path is paved and may friends and real connections come in.
In love and light,
