On Forgiveness

NOTE: This is a repost of a February 2009 post.

Forgiveness is a big thing both in discussing as well as in practice. Someone asked me what I thought so I figured I'd post some of my opinion here.

First, I think that too many people connect forgiveness with excusing and I want to separate the two. I feel like forgiving someone for something they did which negatively affected you does not excuse the action they may have committed upon you. I also think that too many people connect forgiveness with allowing the person who hurt you to remain in a position in your life where they could hurt you again. I think that to let a person remain in a position to hurt you again is you sending a message to yourself and the other people around you of what you feel your true worth is with regards to how much respect you think you deserve.

Why forgive? Here is a perfect link the folks at Radical Forgiveness have provided for us all to learn from & of course they say it much better than I do. Scientifically lack of forgiveness has been linked to many many health issues. The biggest one that comes to mind is Cancer. Some other things lack of forgiveness does to the body are that it raises blood pressure, depletes immune function, makes you more easily depressed and causes enormous stress to the body. It also causes people to hold weight.

I believe that we first must forgive ourselves for having expectations that were unrealistic or that weren't based on the truth about the person we expected these things from. Secondly, we must forgive ourselves for not seeing the truth of the situation that caused us to allow ourselves to be put in such a position in the first place. In general I think that the reason we get mad or hurt or upset with people and have need to forgive them in the first place is because we had an expectation of them that they did not live up to. This expectation was obviously wrong or we wouldn't be disappointed and in a place of having to forgive them. This is the reason I believe we must forgive ourselves. I REALLY feel like it is the foremost thing that we must put on the list in order for us to move forward through the pain of being hurt by someone else.

Additionally, I think it is important to remember that forgiving a person who commited some negative act upon you does not mean you must keep them around. The beauty of forgiveness is that the person does not have to be present for you to forgive them. I believe it has to be done (forgiving) but that does not mean that person should be permitted to have free access to doing the same thing again. Think about it, if a dog bites you and you look at the dog in your heart and understand that he only did what was in his nature to do (or that he didn't have good training) that does not mean you go in the fence with the dog again right? If you do you will be bitten once more. So to me it is a matter of understanding the other person and their nature and moving on, either by keeping them in your life or not depending on WHAT IS TRULY BEST FOR YOU.

Also, letting your ego go out of the process of forgiveness is important. Where does ego come into the subject of forgiveness? Besides admitting you had a part in your own disappointment, there is also the ego you have attached to the other person. You have an expectation of how the other person should be and they have not lived up to it, so now your first urge is to school them on how they have done you wrong and then put another expectation on them by expecting them to change to match what you expected from them in the first place. This may or may not be possible for them and I think ego has something to do with you expecting them to be different than who they really are to some extent. Of course you may feel you have to make it clear to the person how what they did made you feel and that you don't want them to do it again, but after explaining this to them I believe you cannot put expectations on them. The place to put the expectations are with yourself in my opinion. If this person commits the same sort of infraction once again it is your decision to stay or to go, to put up with it or not, you can leave if you don't like something and the other person will have to deal with the consequences of their actions on their own without you. You cannot control someone other than yourself so all you can do is STICK TO WHAT IS BEST FOR YOURSELF even when it makes you bend over with pain to do it. Sometimes I believe that painful release is much better than going through years of slow growing pain of never being treated with the respect you deserve.

When it is all over remember that neither of you is better than the other no matter how everything happened or ended. You are not less than they are just because they AND you allowed this to happen and you are not better than they are because you don't treat people the same way they obviously do. We each have our gifts to give the world and it is not our job to judge the gifts of others no matter how easy it is to go straight to that place. One great example of that fact is our last President. George Bush did a lot of negative things and managed to screw up a lot of our lives and guess what..... I'm thankful for that because if he hadn't done all that we would not have seen the light and begun to move toward change for the better. Now we have a President who speaks the same language as Spirit when he says "we are all one" and this could not have happened without the failures of George Bush and others like him to shine light on what we did not have. The natural urge is to want to kick George Bush in the nuts when you see him but I say fight that urge and just leave the room instead because he was the bottom we had to hit in order to realize we needed to climb out of the pit we have dug for ourselves.

Individual relationships can be the same way. The people you feel may have wronged you have drug you through the mire so that you could recognize who YOU really are and not fall into this position of being abused again. In the end I feel it is important to remember that we are all one in this together working for the good of the whole just like the cells of the body work together to keep the body running healthily we must do the same. This is the big reason we have to forgive ourselves. We are all a part of the bigger picture and need to stay focused on the importance and specialness of who we are as individuals in order to make up that whole. In 1 Corinthians 12 of the Christian Bible Paul speaks on this concept making it clear that no one person is more important than another. It is not for us to attach our egos to what we do for the greater good or we will lose site of our goal. Consider the cells of the body - the heart cells obviously get more resources than most others while others work quite hard at keeping things together at great sacrifice to themselves such as skin cells for example. Do the skin cells judge the heart cells? No, because if they did they wouldn't have time to do their job. As Paul says in his sermon in 1 Cor. 12:16-20 "And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body." The same goes for us as humans in the world we must forgive ourselves and accept who we are as individuals as well as accepting others in their positions within the whole in order to move into this new age of being the change we want to see in the world. Remember you can't have world peace without inner peace.

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Liverpool Woman Rips Boyfriend's Testicle Off In Anger

A woman at a party with her ex-boyfriend was angry that she was rejected when making sexual advances toward her ex. What pops in her mind to do about it? Not crying, not screaming, not leaving the scene but instead ripping his testicle completely off through his underpants. The force of the jerk ripped his underpants off and left him in excruciating pain before he could even realize what had happened. To top it off she decided to attempt to swallow the testicle after ripping it off the man. She could be a winner in the prison version of Fear Factor I suppose. After she gagged and spit out the testicle a friend grabbed it from her and handed it to the man saying "that's yours". Amazing!!! That is all I have to say. I don't know what the woman is going to do to her "prison butch daddy" when she gets pissed off. Look out prison boobies causes this woman is "gay for the stay".

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MIT Dean of Admissions Resigns After the Discovery of her 28 Year Lie

Wow!? I think this story is interesting in all sorts of areas. Marilee Jones was well known for urging stressed out students competing for elite colleges to calm down. I guess she knew what she was talking about. No need to stress it's not nearly as hard as it seems to get into MIT. She did it with basically no credentials at all. Apparently, she fabricated her resume to get her job at MIT back in the 70's and then never corrected it when applying to other positions within the institution. Because they had all known her for so long and had known that she was capable of upstanding work they didn't check into her resume. Had it not been for the fact that she had written a book which included sections about integrity she'd likely still have a job. The whole situation kinda sucks because apparently she was doing a good job. It really sucks that an institution that works its best to keep up the whole lie that you need a degree in order to do good work and qualify for a job ended up proving the opposite. I'm assuming they gave her a choice between quitting and getting fired. Either way it sucks for all involved. This is what happens when you lie but it just goes to show you that you don't have to have letters behind your name to take care of business. It's just too bad that the rest of the world doesn't realize that fact.

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Pet Spa My Ass!

Watch this video. It is a "pet spa" allegedly. I don't know about you but when I go to the spa no one traps me in a washing machine without my knowledge and tries to drown me. I am exaggerating of course but this is not the machine to put your cat in. Please visit the website and protest this thing. What ever pet supplies store has this in it is in need of a little protest as well.

The video shows a cat being placed in the "spa" and then washed while it jumps and begs to be free from the whole event. The cat survives uninjured but I believe the machine is cruel. If you are too lazy to wash your animal then pay for a professional to do it please either that or deal with your animal the way he/she is stinky and all.

By the way cats don't need baths they wash themselves. Dogs are a different story all together-with them you have to pay attention to the breed or you'll cause all sorts of skin problems. For example Airdale Terriers should not be washed as often as some other dogs and so on.

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What to do, What to do-Basic Journal Entry Vent

Hello all. I am at my clients house snuggling and playing with the fuzzy ones and now that they are eating I am taking a moment to blog before play time begins. Usually it takes them a while to eat and then they give themselves a bath and walk around a bit before wanting to play so I figure I have time.
Any way I am trying to decide what I should do about my work and I figure it can't hurt to vent about it here. I have worked there about a year now. I was doing one job and doing quite a good job at it and all was fine. I did however get the feeling that the owner did not particularly like me. He did and said a few things to indicate this and each time a problem occurred that required him to get involved it seemed he was holding it against me even though it was usually something out of every one's control or that he himself had caused.
After working at the job I had for nearly six months they decided to give me an additional job along with me still doing the one that I had. This was fine with me because it increased my hours therefore my pay and it had more potential for growth within the company. As I was being trained to do the job I was told by the person training me that it was a bad job to have because the bosses were constantly undermining each other and therefore you and that they were never satisfied and didn't see what issues they caused themselves as they would always find ways to blame it on you. I have now come to find this to be true.
As I worked at this job doing it just as I was trained yet asking for more training and not getting it I found that each boss would come to me and tell me something different to do. With my direct boss being out of town for months at a time it was difficult to determine who I should listen to but it only made sense from my military background that I listen to the highest ranking one of them all. That is what I did. He told me over and again not to do the old job and to only do the new one. Eventually all of the bosses told me that and that I should only complete the tasks of my old job when there was an emergency request. This is what I did.
Eventually because my bosses are the type to want what they want right then regardless of future consequence they were always wanting me to rob Peter to pay Paul. In the end this screwed them as eventually Peter ran out of money and Paul never had any to begin with. Of course they saw that as my issue and when I explained to them what the situation was they accused me of lying and then fired me. I suggested to them that they just demote me instead of firing me and they listened to their egos instead of their brains and screwed themselves once again.
Two or three weeks later they called me back to work because the work in the demotion I requested needed to be completed for an upcoming audit. I thought about it for a day or so and called them agreeing to take the job. I explained to them that I had increased my clients in order to compensate for the loss of the job so I would have to work weird hours around my clients schedules. They agreed and here I am back at work. All went well and then I became sick with a pretty bad cold. I have been out two days now going on 3 and they are becoming irritated because the audit is quickly approaching. This is of course the audit they would already be prepared for had they demoted me instead of hiring me but of course somehow this is my fault. I am sick and even when I am sick I rarely take days off for it. As a matter of fact in the last year I have only had a total of about 4 days off including these day due to sickness. Of course they are the types to twist everything so that it looks like it is all my fault so I can see it is just a matter of time before I am back into the land of the jobless. With all this in mind it is a question as to whether or not I should even go back at all. I know there is money to be made elsewhere and I have no doubt I can find an immediate job to pay the bills though it would be for less money. I know of a night job that I can work for 4 hours nightly and make about 1200 a month so that would pay the bills along with my clients. If I worked that job I could clean out my house within a month and move my girlfriend in with me which would reduce the bills in half and save me money and then spend another month looking for a good day job and still have time to meditate-pray and exercise. It is tempting to leave the stress for less pay and tempting to sell myself out for more pay. In the end it is a choice of what stress would I rather have 1- Stress of assholes at my job micromanaging me and causing things to go wrong and eventually finding a way to blame it all on me and firing me when I least expect it or 2 - Stress of less pay but still having the bills covered and working less hours therefore reducing stress in half the other parts of my life in general. I am leaning toward the less pay option. Just because it reduces stress almost everywhere else but money and money is easy to find if you just work at it. We'll see what my girlfriend says.

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