Self Forgiveness: One of the Missing Pieces

March 30th, 2009

Self Forgiveness: One of the Missing Pieces
©by Nick Grimshawe

God keeps a 1,000 page book on every person who has ever lived.
You see your name on the cover of one of the books and open it –
Wrongs Done by You One page and the page is blank.
Wrongs Done to You One page and the page is blank.
My Love for You Nine hundred ninety-eight pages in small print.

Laura Teresa Marquez

I don’t write from the point of view of a guru to his followers. I am way too imperfect to pull that off. Instead I write about my journey along the way, in the hope that what I experience will help you in some small way.

I am a firm believer that there are no accidents, so if you are reading this today, it is because you need to understand a very important concept in healing your life.

This weekend I suffered through some pretty heavy self-double, self-criticism, and anger at myself for flaws in my nature. For two days the battle ranged unabated. Inside I seethed with doubt, fear, and a crumbling of my own hard won self esteem.

I kept asking what was wrong with me, which is always the wrong question to ask, since it is posed in the negative.

Finally I started asking better questions like: Why was I beating myself up when I felt a real sense of achievement at my current level of awareness?

A little more thinking and I hit the palm of my hand on my forehead.

I actually got around to asking the most important question.

What lesson did I need to learn from my current situation?

As soon as I asked that question, the turmoil subsided followed quickly by a sudden realization about an inner truth.

I had not forgiven myself for my moments of weakness. Not ever.

I remembered the previous year when I went on a forgiveness marathon. I discovered that I needed to forgive real or imagine transgressions against me. I found a lot of people I needed to forgive for the hurts they had inflicted on me.

After a few months of this, and many joyful moments of forgiveness, I thought I was running dry. Yet peoples’ names kept popping into consciousness. The amount of buried hurt surprised me. Some things were deeply buried. I felt like an archaeologist at a dig, uncovering layer after layer and exposing it to the bright air of day.

I came to feel pretty good about my capacity to forgive. I felt purged of wounds that kept calling me back to yesterday where I could display my pain and rile against the injustice of it all.

In my orgy of forgiveness I had forgotten the most important person I needed to forgive. Myself.

Forgiveness is like love: If you cannot love yourself how can you love another? The same applies to forgiveness. If you can`t forgive yourself, then how can you really forgive another?

Irony is a bittersweet instructor. Once you see your lesson you can’t help but chuckle dryly at your own expensive.

I have a new journaling project: To write out all those times I have transgressed, seen by error but not found the heart to forgive my actions.

This doesn’t abnegate responsibility; instead, self-forgiveness makes taking responsibility possible.

Right now before another moment passes, forgive yourself for the things you have bottled up inside, the shame of actions taken against another, the hurt you purposely inflected on a friend, the lies you told a lover.

Journal about it too: write it out of your head onto paper where you can at last transmute the pain.

You will feel the weight lifting. You will find a new, deeper peace within yourself.

Your will be happy to know that you have deemed yourself worth of forgiveness.

Watch the video for more on forgiveness: