A Day in the Life of Love - Pt 4
By: Stephen Levine
Posted: October 8, 2010
A DAY IN A LIFE OF FORGIVENESS
What would it be like to wake on a day without anger or remorse, filled with forgiveness?
A day in which you meet the moment with respect for those who cross your path of compassion and awareness.
To peer through the shadow people cast and see the heart behind, even on occasion “ a heart which can not yet see” just as we at times can not see from our true heart.
A day when the still small voice within remembers that to forgive others opens the door to self-forgiveness.
A day of making amends to others by touching those around us with even a bit of the forgiveness we wish for ourselves. A day of true heart treating others as you wish to be treated. Remembering that odd as it may appear they too wish too only to be happy. That they too, no matter how difficult at times it may be to perceive, lament not being loved.
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What might it even be like to wake to a day of being loving even more importantly than being in love?
We can be loving to those we do not love even those we do not like. We can be loving to the whole world but we are rarely in love with more than a few.
Being loving arises from forgiveness and compassion and a bit of grace and strengthens over time. Being in love often peaks prematurely, before love has truly ripened. Though an often delightful, exciting though expectant state in which we momentarily see through the Eye of Beauty it sometimes leads to just its opposite. Indeed in some divorces never is there expressed such vitriolic recriminations, even hatred, as for those once in love. No greater unfinished business in need of forgiveness.
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Part of a day in a life in love is to fully inhabit our life , to complete unfinished business. To become whole with no need to hide parts of ourselves and the injuries from others and to others away in an unusable portion of our heart.
To meet with mindfulness and forgiveness the tendency toward judgment recognizing that the judging mind does not know the difference between you and someone else. “Judge not lest you be judged.”
Forgiveness decomposes the armoring over the heart. It allows an unimagined kindness to seep into the lowest sense of self. Judging ourselves we judge others. Self-forgiveness is not self-indulgent but a service to the world a means of opening our life perhaps as a benefit to others.
If there was some magic “open sesame” for the heart it would make it all so much easier but oddly enough the true magic begins when we quite to our amazement discover that it is attachment to our suffering, identifying with it as who we are, that is one of the greatest hindrances to expanding beyond our seeming smallness into the enormity of who we really are, our true being.
Perhaps we were absent from our third grade compassion class when the teaching about mercy and taking ourselves into our heart was given. Or maybe we were off reading the Sunday comics that promised that Santa Clause or Captain Karma would come to the rescue if we were good enough. And that just proved we weren’t.
As I have previously written, when an early teacher first said, “ Be kind to yourself.” my knees began to buckle and I had to sit down. It had never occurred to me before.
And how is it to wake up on a day when our heart is blocked and kindness seems an absurdity, and the heart has turned to stone?
But how does it feel when we remember and soften the belly?
What would it be like in a day of mindfulness forgiveness rather than getting angry and resentful to not get seduced into the mind-patter that tries to promote that state to the whole of consciousness. And instead reflect on the, refreshingly wordless, sensations of the unique body pattern which accompanies each state. Just as clarity brings with it a loving sense of openness in the body and the mind anger and fear in their turn close the mind and tighten the jaw and belly so there is little room for anything but the closed fist of resentment.
Recognizing that each state of mind has its own body pattern awareness sweeps mindfully through the body to soften and clear the approach to the heart. Loosening identification with the states, even at times able to have such as anger or self-pity pass through the mind without becoming angry or pitiful.
Becoming aware of the road blocks to the heart, the hindrances to happiness, opens the path forward.
When we then discover that joy is our birthright we begin to follow the path toward the heart and become “a lamp unto ourselves”.
During the course of the day reflect on what the word forgiveness might mean as various people come to mind, some invited, some lurking in the shadows waiting for the opportunity, as you notice their presence just as an experiment touch them with forgiveness. Even the loved ones you imagine need no such greeting. As you notice them simply say to them, “ I forgive you” and watch the mind’s response. Note whatever unfinished business begins its spin. Note whatever friends, co-workers, family, old flames, old flame extinguishers come to mind. And don’t be surprised that you are surprised at what occurs when you say I forgive you. Notice if loved ones resist being forgiven, even vociferously deny the need for even suggesting the idea. But emotions are not as rational as all that. A portion of the mind is often hiding in the shadows. Unless someone fulfilled our every ever-changing desire, even the ones below the level of awareness, the mind has reason for opening passed our rationalizations with forgiveness. It is a wonder game if we don’t view it from the judging mind. And when we do turn toward yourself and say, “ I forgive you” to you. It is all harder and easier than you imagine.
It is said that we can’t find satisfaction if we don’t have room for the dissatisfaction, if we can not let go of the little we will not find the big that lies beyond. So it is true that we can not be close to another if we do not have room for the separateness conflicting wishes provide at times. Ironically it is difficult to maintain a lasting relationship if we don’t have room for momentary resentments.
It would be ideal if we could just let go of afflictive states such as resentment, fear, anger and guilt but the considerable momentum of our identification with these feelings is not so easily released. Sometimes before we can just be mindful of them and enter them with a liberating awareness we must clear the way with such skillful means as forgiveness. We need meet our merciless judgment of ourselves and others with mercy. Just as softening the belly initiates a letting go in the mind and body which can be felt in the heart, its equivalent in forgiveness softens the holding in the mind which can be felt in the letting go of the hardness in the belly.
The practice is not to submerge anger or guilt but to bring it to the surface so it is accessible to healing. Not that these qualities will ever be totally absent but that we will not be surprised by them and unable to meet them with mercy and even a sense of humor for the mind which seems to have a mind of its own. Of course the heart closes at times, but even though at times at times it may seem hopeless we are never really helpless. Forgiveness when cultivated is a powerful tool for letting go. Softening the belly, more quickly than the mind can imagine, opens a world of loving possibilities. And as we clear the path of the road blocks that hinder further progress awareness heals.
If at first the practice seems a little awkward, even self-serving when turned toward oneself, that is an indication of how little we have considered the value of this sate of mind. Of how much loving kindness seems a bit foreign.
And for those who ill feel betrayed by the body and have exiled that part of them watch how the body swoons when softened and forgiven. It makes great sense to open the heart to pain and illness. Every part of us is doing the best it can but is sometimes so isolated, so compartmentalized, from the rest it weakens and falls. This is as true of the mind as body. There is strength in numbers and that is why so many speak of becoming whole as the path to completion, to liberation.
Many years ago, during a very difficult time in my life, sitting very alone by a pond in a redwood forest practicing, almost as a last resort, a forgiveness meditation, the practice disappeared and only the quality of forgiveness remained. It was pure grace! And in my mind a voice whispered that I was forgiven for everything. I resisted being forgiven saying, “ Yes, but… but that’s not possible. There has been so much!” To which the heart responded, “ You are completely forgiven, it is all done. If you want to pick it up again that is up to you, but it is all yours from now on!.” How difficult it was to accept such an enormous kindness. And how much it helped me forgive others. If I was going to let myself back into my heart I knew I had to bring those others too who I had denied entrance. I am still working on it but forgiveness has within it the miraculous possibility of a whole, a complete, life.