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.

Power & Love

So many people are working to shift our collective trajectory at this time.  The movement, as Paul Hawken writes, is a "blessed unrest" - a myriad of individuals, groups and movements seeking to restore balance to the world.  What are the challenges that undermine this work?  How can we become better, more conscious, more loving, and more powerful agents of positive change?

In his new book Power and Love, Adam Kahane explores our two fundamental human drives: power, which he defines as the focused pursuit to achieve one's solitary purpose, and love, the drive towards unity.  When we fall into either extreme, we are not as effective as we need to be.  We either escalate conflict by pushing for our own agenda at all costs, or we avoid conflict to keep a false peace and harmony.  Either approach taken without a respect for the other lands us into trouble.  Kahane quotes Martin Luther King: “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.”


We are challenged to hold the paradox of both.  Yet this is not as easy as it sounds, as I think we have all been imprinted by the toxic power drives that have so imbalanced our world.  Power has ruled without love in our world for a long time, and we are dealing with the consequences today. Without a conscious effort to healing that split within ourselves, we are vulnerable to falling into either side of the abyss.  Where do victim and victimizer find peace?

Somewhere in our minds and hearts are the answers, I think - pulsing with vitality and clarity, yet vulnerable enough to yearn and reach for what we long for in the deepest corners of our being.

Can we trust ourselves enough to use our power with conscious, loving intent?  Do we love fiercely enough to move us into our true power? 

Can we join together, empowered in our love, to do what needs to be done to ensure a better future?

The Power of Projection

Have you ever found yourself at the centre of a vicious storm of projection and betrayal?  The wounding of being so devalued and delegitimized to the point of dehumanization results from the confrontation with the raw, brutal energy that has been split off from feeling or empathy.  It's something that one never forgets if one has experienced it.  It is part of the collective memory that lives in the bodies and psyches of those who have experienced genocides (at the collective level), and serious bullying (at the personal level). If you are a woman, it is often experienced as the energetic equivalent of being perceived as "the witch."

Owning our projections is the difficult work of a humanity seeking to embody soul values rather than keeping them out of life on a perfectionistic pedastal.  Reclaiming our capacity for deep love is the healing journey that leads us into our frailties and wounds, and the ways in which these wounds prevent us from trusting new dimensions of life and love to flow through our bodies and psyches.  It is not an easy journey, and it takes us right into the centre of our own fear and the tender bruises of our heart's frustrated efforts to connect and be received.  It reminds us that our vocal chords may be 'choking' on the repressed expression of the truth of our experience, and our eyes are fearful of recognizing what they see as plainly as posssible.

While projections have real power when they are unleashed, they are equally powerful when they are reclaimed.  Instead of that energy being placed out there on the "enemy", it can instead flow into creative possibilities and connections.  With new eyes, we can see others in a fresh light.

In the reclaiming, we remember who we really are - and are humbled and healed by our own perfectly imperfect story, and our ability to honour it in the other.