Reflection
No one is duty bound to forgive. If you are religious and believe this is the right thing to do, it doesn’t mean you will find it more or less easy to do than someone who is spiritual, agnostic or an atheist. Practising a faith doesn’t imply that the journey you take from A to Z can be trodden without a full emotional toolkit intact. Emotions may appear in different intensities and some may be diffused or disregarded more quickly than others. Some emotions remain suppressed in order to cope with the bugbears that are associated with forgiving and probably accompany you in the forest too! This may question if you truly forgive. Maybe you need to feel ‘whole’ first so that the formula doesn’t fall apart.
Honesty
At all times, be honest with yourself. Are you forgiving another person in order to bring about closure for you? Do you need to forgive yourself for feeling unable to forgive?! Telling someone you forgive them is likely to make them feel better; this is great. Telling someone you forgive them may not make you feel better. So why would you take the time to do this? Ask yourself if you are ready to forgive and listen to the answer that speaks the truth.
If someone asks for your forgiveness, it sounds likely that they have accepted the blame and Blame needs to be released from duty now. Where does that leave you? It may depend upon what the consequences were to their actions and not everything can be forgiven easily. We approach such matters very differently. There are different acts of injustice to take into account and what one person is able to forgive will be unforgivable to someone else.
Testing your methodology
Playing the martyr isn’t an attractive quality; yet, I can understand that giving ‘forgiving’ a go may seem a first step – if only for experimental reasons or to gauge if you are actually ready to forgive. You may have already experimented a little with this idea and been in what you thought was a healthy place emotionally to forgive, only to find out later on that you weren’t really ready or you just didn’t want to forgive… yet.
If you get to the end of a journey and decide that forgiveness is an unrealistic proposition, for now, then it is not unreasonable to ask yourself to accept that some things just aren’t forgivable – choosing simply to forget instead. And, even if you don’t entirely forget, then peace may have already collected you from those dark corridors, drawn back the curtains and shown you that life still has more to offer from a room with a better view.
Forgive is a natural source of light and we all have the power to tap into its infinite wisdom and look for answers. Physicists will tell you what light is, and how it behaves, and the dictionaries will, in turn, provide you with clarity – in their usual succinct fashion – about what light itself can mean. Forgive also stimulates sight within each of you, allowing things previously unseen to be seen.
All journeys allow you an opportunity to consider different perspectives. Maybe yours will allow you a chance to look at things from a different angle whilst taking the time to have those ‘internal conversations’. Perhaps you see something about yourself now that you didn’t see before. It is quite possible not to like the things you see but shedding light on them allows for healing to take place.
All this time, the alien visitor had been shadowing Forgive on its journey through the forest. It wasn’t stalking and had only returned to see how emotional conflict can be approached using inner strength. It was also interested to see how our emotions can keep us in the dark when they are not given an opportunity to be released safely.
It observed and decided that F-O-R-G-I-V-E stood for: Finding Our Resilience Gives Inner Vision Emancipation. It wanted to use the ‘E’ for ‘Elbow Room’ until it realised it was made up of two words – though that could be workable if you happened to be a ‘forgiver’. There you ‘R’! In other words: it suggests that if you can find your own ability to recover quickly from difficult situations this will allow you to look deeper within and give your inner vision the freedom to see more than it could see before.
As an aspiring mathematician, Forgive knew that it has to be about living your truth. Sometimes it is simply about forgiving yourself for putting the decimal point in the wrong place…
H*U*M*B*L*E
Making a Connection
As the egos walked through the door, Humble greeted them all in turn and kindly asked them to take off their hats and leave them outside. It spoke with a softness that was kind and respectful, using a tone of voice that could only be described as one which belonged to an old soul who had been sent back to the here and now, to enrich those of us who are still finding our feet.
The egos turned to one another and looked inquiringly. Whilst they didn’t question the instruction given to them in that moment, they all huddled together later to discuss how vulnerable they felt; it was as if they had removed a layer of protection.
All egos behave differently. Whilst some of them can be grouped together because they display similar signs of behaviour, behind the scenes their stories tend to be quite different. They each have their own history which influences their shape and size. Humble couldn’t take a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach in the workshop it was about to deliver. It would most likely look at a few different scenarios which could resonate, in one way or another, with the delegates and then they could share their own experiences.
The workshop was set up in an outdoor marquee that felt warm and smelt of damp grass which complemented the earthy vapours that snuck out of any space where they could find a hole and be released. It happened to be a sunny day so the egos couldn’t complain of being cold. They seemed a little cold towards one another at first. This is likely to be a side effect of walking into an unnatural environment which could stir up emotions. However, the space soon became their new comfort zone as the icebreaker melted the barriers which, for some of them, had been up since they arrived.
They attended voluntarily. It wasn’t mandatory to sign up for an outing in the countryside and undergo a bout of self-development that could cause them to feel vulnerable. Putting yourself in a vulnerable situation within a learning environment is a rather brave thing to do. Who knows what to expect at first. Assumptions and nerves can get the better of you, and the key is to overturn any negative feelings that surface and approach the experience with an open mind sprinkled with humility.
Everyone was intrigued to find out what Humble was going to teach. A couple of scenarios to help the egos explore their own potential and evaluate past behaviours through open discussion was on the agenda. As they looked for nuggets of fresh ideas, during their conversations with new people, they could look forward to making self-improvement as knowledge became accessible. They may not have been directly involved in the types of examples Humble planned to use but knew someone else who had been affected.
Humble was most certainly deserving of a place among the ‘Fillings that educated the taste buds’. Attending its workshop with a view to trying out a new flavour, even if you didn’t like it, was all part of the fun. Just being open to new ideas can give Humble the impression that your learning shutters are up. What you choose to do with those learnings is really up to you and will depend upon whether you perceive them to be useful in your own reality of the world or not. The first scenario focused very much on how, as individuals, we approach a learning opportunity.
Learning can be fun if you can find the courage to laugh at yourself a little while you learn – especially when your brain hasn’t yet managed to understand a thing! You look at the subject matter through glazed eyes and with the word confusion imprinted across the forehead. This is usually supported by a frown which only disappears once the penny drops.
It is easy to focus too much on how your ego is feeling during the process and you convincingly tell yourself why you can’t learn rather than how you can! Drumming up excuses to hide a number of these reasons is understandable. Although, unfortunately, a delay in facing them now, head on, only magnifies their discomfort for yo
u when they do eventually surface having lost their disguise and run out of excuses of their own.
Facing up to your barriers to learning isn’t something to be ashamed about. It can be a humbling experience which will often be interrupted by your own defensive messages trying to get through and throwing your emotions into turmoil! That’s the ego taking you on a rollercoaster. Your darker emotions tend to appear as silhouettes on a bright background. Having the humility to work your way through your emotions, to overcome a barrier, allows humbleness to shine in the background to support them. Simply cut out a softer-shaped silhouette, enjoy the process and turn the learning outcome into a work of art. You have artistic licence. Didn’t you learn to do that in your art exam, earlier on, as you engaged with Patience? Go on, tell me you took the maths exam instead to catch me out!
When you find yourself in any new situation, be that in a classroom or out and about on your travels in life, the experience can take you by surprise. It is possible that you feel unprepared and didn’t expect to react the way that you did or anticipate the reactions you received from other people. We can only mind read for so long, before our predictions may lead us into trouble or we wade further into the unknown and out of our depth. Return to base, clear your mind and take a different perspective.
If you haven’t studied for a long time or you are a mature student who has found yourself amidst a youthful bunch of technological whiz kids (or those that sit somewhere in between) then it isn’t surprising that you may feel open to the elements. You walk into the class with an open mind and then find that the very same mind closes straight back down, all too quickly; just like a blind that rolls back down as the result of a broken cord. You find yourself in unfamiliar territory that can make you feel intimidated.
Does a situation make you feel that way? The situation just exists. You walked into the situation and felt a certain way. Something about the situation will resonate with something inside of you and act as the trigger. A situation is made up of hundreds of tangible and non-tangible components. What are you going to do: blame every one of them for the way you feel? Suppose you do go ahead and sign up for a new course; if you took away a couple of the components would you feel less intimidated? If you could activate your smartphone, in advance, in order to change the colour of the walls, delete a few delegates, swap the smartboard for a flipchart and reprogram the teacher… would this be helpful? It is highly unlikely that if you changed any of these things you would feel any less intimidated and only appear less teachable.
The truth may be that you haven’t studied since you had the children; or your IT skills are below average; or everyone seems to know more than you, when in reality they may be feeling much the same as you. They may simply be hiding their pre-course nerves extremely well or have learned to laugh at their insecurities without taking them personally.
All the egos in the marquee had put themselves in the same situation for the day. They all had the same teacher (Humble); they all had something to bring to the workshop (life experience); they all enjoyed the outdoors. Good! The environment was conducive to learning, supported by pockets of freedom to explore their ideas in exchange for Humble’s gifts of wisdom.
It would be interesting to see which egos denied any involvement in the scenarios altogether, categorically stating they couldn’t relate to any of them. It wasn’t unknown for some of the egos to forget to take off their hat as they got caught up in the excitement of meeting new egos at the entrance, earlier that morning, and chose to practise selective hearing. Other times they simply snuck a spare hat in their backpack, squashed up against their emotions, so they could put a hat back on as a defensive measure during activities. These usually appeared crumpled, so Humble had a good idea which ego was feeling vulnerable. If the ego chose to keep its hat on, the hat would probably serve as a useful resource during some of the exercises and even then, when that did happen, Humble wouldn’t need to do anything. It wasn’t necessary to cause any further embarrassment. Passing on its experience and suggesting better ways of behaving or approaching a situation that required an element of humbleness was sufficient. The egos had to learn in their own way, through experience. Learnings would unravel as they were meant to, and end up forming part of the overall lesson.
Learning just goes on and on; it doesn’t stop. You stop learning if you think you are always right. You stop developing if you feel you have developed enough. If you stop learning and developing then you are no more humble than you are wise. Wisdom appears as tiny droplets of instinct, surfacing once they have had the luxury of rolling around in knowledge first. Wisdom doesn’t have to exist in any particular quantity to be considered useful; it expands its own horizons because it is willing to learn.
Humble is slightly transparent, wearing just enough to cover up its modesty. It isn’t dressed in attire you’d imagine for something considered to be quite healing and is found clothed in nothing which resembles a white coat or flowing robe. It doesn’t swan around as royalty or appear as a godly being that has any desire (or ego) to emulate any other powerful being. It doesn’t expect to lead or be followed intentionally and has simply learnt to be the leader in its own life, choosing to pass on its knowledge, when it can. This may be why during everyday life, when you look closely at what is going on around you, you can see Humble gently moving around, attaching itself to situations and supporting the people in them to cope better. It radiates and you get the feeling that it knows something about life that you don’t and it would be foolish not to consider its advice, when offered. That is being humble, isn’t it?
Humble started that day with an introductory presentation. It was made up of imagery and text which required further explanation in order to be understood in context, rather than a list of dos and don’ts. It was there to guide rather than prescribe. The day ahead was heavily reliant on exchanging points of view and it wasn’t all about Humble standing on stage and doing a monologue which focused on its own self-importance. What kind of example would that set for the other egos listening?
When Humble attended a recent conference on control issues, the James Bond lookalike, who held the presentation, had everyone filling up on a portion of humbleness for breakfast. His icebreakers were thought to have the potential to melt the North Pole! The ploy worked; everyone appeared to behave less egocentrically and looked thoughtful and engaged as they listened intently. The North Pole, however, remained frozen. Well, it certainly hadn’t melted any further because of his presentation. Humble wanted to have a similar effect, while working with its own audience, but without feeling as though it had inadvertently hypnotised everyone in the process. It was setting out to teach and not preach; and anyway, it wasn’t a conference – it was an interactive self-development session.
The challenge Humble was now facing with ‘the audience of today’s world’ was that it struggled to keep up with technology and discovered that the way the world absorbs information was beginning to change. So, it thought that by displaying 3D images, instead, which rotated and flashed prematurely during its profound introduction, would help to convey its messages more effectively. But it didn’t. This advancement in information technology didn’t help Humble tune into its higher self or enable it to linger longer on the poignant moments. It preferred the good old-fashioned methods of teaching using chalk and a board without choking the delegates and bringing on a series of asthma attacks. There were always one or two waiting for an excuse to surface, and Humble trusted that those who did suffer were clued up on what to do, should one happen. Such an excuse could exist to mask an ego’s sudden urge to evacuate the marquee when the lessons became too intense as a result of having an aversion to learning after all.
Who knows? Maybe by the end of the workshop Humble could demonstrate a little humility itself by agreeing to be mentored by one of the egos. There was bound to be one that was heavily into IT, who could offer to teach Humble how to use an interactive smartboard in its future
sessions without exposing the egos to dust particles in the process and without compromising the all-important tuning-in process.
Humble is always an undergraduate; it continually studies humility and has seen humbleness practised both naturally and also with great effort! On both counts, humbleness will be considered for the value that it adds in any given situation, no matter how much effort was involved. A person may learn something from being humble as will the person who is on the receiving end of an act of humbleness, if they choose to notice.
The egos had been listening for the best part of the morning, while watching Humble collect its thoughts and skilfully present them back to the group in a highly intuitive and surreal manner. They eventually demonstrated signs of becoming receptive. Humble knew, by their faces during break, that they were ready to start engaging with each other and strike up a healthy debate. This led Humble rather nicely into its next session and went about splitting the egos into groups. Time for them to do some work now.
One group decided that an act of humbleness can take place right under their noses and none of them would be aware! Maybe you can be so natural at being humble that it can pass unnoticed. Sadly, on other occasions it is quite possible that the other person has seen Humble perform, lapping it up and mistaking its appearance as a sign of subservience that can be exploited.
The second group came up with the idea that when you seek to learn from someone else and ask for their support and point of view, then this can be a humbling experience and Humble is working to its strengths. It focuses less on itself and more on the person who is giving you that support. Sometimes people find it difficult to ask for help and see that as their weakness.
Emotional Sandwiches Page 23