For you there will be no more crying
For you the sun will be shining.
These two lines from a song just came to me, as I have been thinking about both my parents on the other side a lot today.. Lately I love to imagine them very close caring about me, as I have read spirits of parents do after passing even as they recognise they could not, during their lifetime, give us the love we need due to their own problems with love, need and longing, often so buried.
This morning too I was thinking about the thorny issue of forgiveness after a fellow blogger told me they can never forgive a parent and will be so glad when they die. I have to be honest and say two things, one I understand, but two, these words cut through me like a knife and made me question my own forgiving.. I had a dialogue in the bath then with my higher power and here is what he/she/it said to me.
Deborah, humans are full of flaws and fallible, it is often only God who can forgive unconditionally and souls often only recognize this after they die, but there is a saying that to err is human, and to forgive is divine, so when you decided to forgive you decided to see as God sees and there may be many hidden nuances to pain, abuse and trials any soul faces within a lifetime, there is no wrong or right as all humans have the power of choice.
In a way part of me admires this person for being able to hold onto the level of his hurt and not gloss over his authentic feelings and God knows not everyone can forgive, or may even be meant to forgive.. In the end we can only make the right decisions for us.. And often those take time. Another part feels it is maturity to understand real as the pain is, holding onto it is only going to make us unwell as many humans are so deeply wounded the result is way out of our control.
For me forgiving my father for things he did that cut off my potentials is hard, I still carry the frustration and hurt on some level. Maybe every single male partner got some of this at times and may be behind fears I had or times I avoided, but also often I chose those who knew nothing of this past and only chose to judge me.. And God knows I have done the same at times with others..
There is a saying that Jungian therapist Marion Woodman quotes a lot in her wonderful book Addiction to Perfection, it comes from a W H Auden poem and the saying goes
to love my own crooked neighbor with my own crooked heart.
But are we willing to own our own crookedness or lack of insight and perspective at times?. The worst thing without a doubt is to blame ourselves for traumas that happened to us we were not allowed to know about.. Then the outer and inner critic functions to try and keep us safe by warding off love and connection and even valid expressions of anger and protest. But we need these, just as to mature we have to own everyone has some kind of flaw and often we get hurt in ways that seem almost insurmountable.
That said when I contemplate horrendous acts like Boko Haram slitting the throats of 43 innocent people I wonder if pure evil actually does exist in this world. I do not know the answer and we have to say some acts seem unforgiveable and leave such a legacy of inner turmoil pain and damage in the recipient. There are no easy answers, only a lot of questions but for what it is worth this is where my mental process is at today.. For my friend who struggles so I just wish him peace, at the same time as I empathise with the burden of trials his body carries even now, so many years after the perpetrator of all of that abuse is out of his life.
Emerging From The Dark Night 