Self-Forgiveness

It's often easier to forgive others than to forgive ourselves for the mistakes we make along the way.  As human beings, we are bound to make missteps - sometimes big ones.  If we are committed to birthing our ideals in the world, we can be very hard on ourselves when confronting our own contradications. Can we forgive ourselves? 

More often than not, our intentions are good.  Unfortunately, we can be inexperienced, naive, overly idealistic, and even triggered by our past wounds.  We can override our intuition and find ourselves in a shark pit.  We trust where we really shouldn't. We can say too much, and be too honest, when we should learn to be more careful and circumspect.  We can have too much blind hope in our ideals, and not be willing to face the way things work "in the real world" to disasterous ends.  We get jealous, frustrated, and angry. We can be so driven by our vision, that we lose sight of the here and now - forgetting that it is in the intimacy of the everyday that the world is transformed, moment by moment.

I've always loved that Gandhi's autobiography is called My Experiments with Truth.  That is what a conscious, committed journey really is - an experiment.  When we surrender to that which is weaving us, we glimpse the implicate order, the larger pattern of our lives...the larger story that weaves the pieces into a whole.  This quilt includes all the themes on the journey - big mistakes and all.  When we poke behind the mask of our mistakes and the faces of our adversaries, we find our greatest teachers and life lessons. 

In my life, Kuan Yin (the goddess of compassion) has often been hidden behind what Bill Taggart refers to as the 'blessed betrayers" - the people and experiences that have caused the most grief, hurt and pain.   If I can seek and find compassion for the other who has deeply hurt me, then I must be worthy of extending it to myself as well.