Self forgiveness: Exhaling our Limitations, and Inhaling our Potential
Being in the material plane means being faced with, and buffeted by, forces which are not healthy to our development and some are clearly destructive and malicious. In our world today people do things to other people which cause unintentional harm. There are also people who do things to other people with a malevolent intent to harm. In order to heal and move to a place of wholeness, we first need to limit the harm being done by removing ourselves from a harmful situation or reducing the harm being committed. Next, we need to make an accurate attribution of responsibility. This attribution comes in two parts. First, responsibility needs to be accurately attributed to the person causing the harm, whether intentional or not. In the process of healing by the person harmed, this is what could be called the “victim stage:” a recognition that something was done to us that was harmful and it was at the hands of someone else. Many of us who are healing get stuck in this stage. Some of us who do not even get to this stage often engage in a process that has come to be known as “blaming the victim,” which is inaccurately attributing the responsibility for the harm to the person being harmed. This inaccurate and unhelpful process of blaming the victim gets confused with the next step of healing, which is taking responsibility for the part we played in the harmful dynamic.
Some victims, when the situation or experience is examined, have no responsibility in the harmful dynamic. For example, children who are abused by their caregivers are not responsible for the harmful experience because they are not old enough to be independent actors in the dynamic. On the other hand, most adults who experience relationship wounds even as victims share at least a fraction of the responsibility for the harmful dynamic in which they found themselves. Part of healing is taking the next step: reflecting on what about us provided an opening for the harm to occur. Did we trust too much? Did we expose our vulnerabilities to the wrong type of person? Did we put up with being treated poorly? For example, when we work with domestic violence victims we seek to empower them to leave the abuser. Staying with the abuser, while often understandable from the victim’s perspective, still provides an opportunity for more abuse. Creating a safety plan becomes a part that the victim can play in reducing or stopping the abuse, even if the victim does not feel safe enough to leave the abuser.
Once we have come to see our part (even if it is a fractional part) in the harm occurring, then one of the most difficult steps comes next: forgiving ourselves. Forgiving ourselves comes when we get to the place where we acknowledge and truly believe that we did the best we could during the experience given who we were at that time. We learn to not measure our actions on what we know now or who we are now, but on what we knew then and who we were then. Once we get to the place of believing we did the best we could at the time, then we are on the path to forgiving ourselves and can choose to forgive the other participants in the wounding.
Forgiving the person wounding us requires healing to a place where we have performed alchemy on the harm, transforming something unwanted into a celebrated part of who we are and recognizing that we would not have grown into the fullness of who we have become without those events. This is not to say that the wound was enjoyable at the time or that the person who committed the acts is absolved of responsibility, but it is to say that the wound no longer has power over us. We have successfully turned the wound into a strength.
If we continue to breathe we continue to live. If we continue to heal, we continue to grow. Self forgiveness is an essential element for healing – it helps us to move our wounds and self judgment out of our energetic system. When we heal, we exhale our limitations. As we begin to let go of and release the wounds that bind us to our limitations, we free up more energy to invest in our potentials. The other essential element for healing is inhaling: drawing in divine energy to live into our potential. We cannot fully breathe when we only exhale or when we only inhale. Breathing requires both exhaling and inhaling. Healing requires both exhaling and inhaling.
For healing, inhaling means finding connection to the divine and drawing the divine into our energetic system. Each of us must find our own unique access to the divine. It is the responsibility of each of us to find our inhalation stations – those places and circumstances that fill us up with the divine. For some, it might be church, synagogue or mosque. For some, it might be nature. For some, it might be creative endeavors. For some, it might be solitude. For some, it might be community. For some, it might be inspirational books or music. Finding the places and circumstances where we can inhale divine energy is essential for healing.
For maximum healing, our inhalation stations need to be all around us and integrated into our daily lives. We find them in things we have done since childhood, in the things we have mastered, and in the things in which we lose ourselves. Some of the inhalation stations for me are walking, mowing the lawn, buying fruits and vegetables, washing dishes, and being in nature. Walking and mowing the lawn are activities I have enjoyed since childhood. In my teens, I became a produce manager for a small local grocery, so buying fruits and vegetables is a skill I have mastered. Washing dishes is a daily activity that not only gives me a sense of accomplishment, it gives me a sense of contributing to the household, the people with whom I share space. Being in nature puts my individual thoughts, emotions and challenges back into proper perspective, reminding me that I am part of something bigger and I do not have to do everything.
Finding our inhalation stations provides us the fuel for healing, repatterning our lives to release our limitations and draw in our potentials. In this way, we “re-member” ourselves to the divine, and we come to a place where we “re-cognize” ourselves as divine. As we heal and “re-cognize” the divine within us, we are able to exhale divine energy as well.
Written by: Thomas Capshew, Ph.D., LCSW
As originally published in Devine Warrior Training, Copywright 2009
