I am still taking things slowly, not because I want to, but because my body dictates rest, a lot of rest. I am trying to take it as it is and use my time for reflection. I don’t want to. I want to do lots of things, but not think and feel. I feel a lot of resistance. I could say that I have done enough soul searching, that I want to get some action, but unfortunately I do have more discernment than that, so I go past the resistance and stumble upon anger. Buried under the layers of guilt I released is anger. I would have expected it to be the other way around, but it isn’t. Inside of me is raging anger, directed toward myself. I don’t know how to process anger in a healthy way, all I ever did was suppress it. While I am feeling this all-consuming rage, the word forgiveness pops up. But I don’t know how to forgive myself for the things I feel angry about either. So I do what I always do, I breathe.
I feel the heavy pounding of my heart, the adrenaline pumping, my blood racing, and I breathe in and out, in and out. I feel the anger and accept that this is what is present now. I feel the anger and am as compassionate with myself as I can muster. I feel the anger and know that this anger is not the result of something that is happening now. I stay present and feel the anger I feel toward myself for betraying myself, for letting others abuse and betray me, for seeing who they are and not believeing it the first time, for believing I was somehow special enough for things to be different this time, for believing what the ego wanted me to see, for falling face forward into the illusion, for crawling through the dust in order to be liked or loved, for tolerating behavior that I would not wish on anyone, for allowing the stress to build so far up that I got physically ill, for not walking away earlier from unhealthy situations, for always hoping things would get better when anyone could have seen things were hopeless.
I know that I didn’t know any better. I know that I attracted these experiences because the pain of the past was still present, because these situations still resonated with me. I know it has helped me heal this pain in a cathartic way, I know I have become a more authentic person because of it, a truer version of all that I am. I know that and I know I would applaud anyone else for having lived through it. Yet, I find it hard to tell myself I did well. I find it hard to tell myself that I did what was best at the moment, to love the person I was back then, to say comforting words to her and reassure her. Part of me believes she should be punished, that this is her own doing, that this is justified. I comfort her anyway.
I breathe in, I breathe out. My heart feels like it is going to explode and I just breathe in and breathe out. I feel all there is to be felt and I listen to everything that has been bottled up for too long. I can imagine it is exhausting to carry this load with me all this time. I can imagine that I hid these painful emotions outside of my awareness.
Encapsulated in all this anger I find the pain I inflicted upon myself, the loss of self, the sadness that comes with self-betrayal. Again, I breathe in and I breathe out, I let it happen and feel it as it is. I don’t cry, I just feel. Interestingly, there are no memories attached to this pain, just a deep sense of loss, my heart is cringing. Then, I feel my throat, it feels like I have a lump in my throat and I cannot speak, I let my breath flow from my heart to my throat and back, and the tension gets less and less; I let go of all the times I did not speak my truth. Next, I feel a heavy weight just above my belly button, like someone has put a cannon ball in my stomach. I breathe in and out, in and out, in and out through my heart. Nothing seems to change, it remains as heavy as it was. I breathe from my heart to this mass that is filling my stomach area; I let go of all the times I did not act my truth. It feels solid as if it cannot be moved. I keep breathing until I feel some movement, it feels thick like molasse. I let the energy move between my hands and automatically my breath follows its rhythm, slow and heavy. I trust its wisdom. I let my hands and my breathe move as feels best in the moment. As the cannon ball in my stomach slowly dissolves, the energy between my hands becomes lighter and so does my breath. I intuitively change my mantra to ‘I release all the times I was untrue to myself’ and as if in an elevator, my energy is directed to the area below my navel where I discover another canon ball, much smaller this time, but just as heavy. It is dissolving just as slowly as the other, over several sessions. I am still processing. If I’m right, next I will feel pressure at my sacrum, I will move my energy there and breath to that area. I will keep breathing until all heaviness is gone, until I feel completely peaceful.
Where I am today is the result of years of inauthenticity. This is karma. Karma is the inescapable consequences of the inauthentic choices we made in the past, of the unhealthy contracts we negotiated with ourselves and others, conscious and unconscious. Karma is anything that blocks our true selves from shining. Just as we create karma, we can undo it. Karma is undone when we forgive, ourselves and others. Forgiveness is releasing that which is blocking our true selves from emerging. We forgive by connecting our heart energy to the area where we have stored our pain. Forgiveness happens when we combine our intention to release that which is blocking us with our willingness to stay present through the anger, the sadness and the physical discomfort that come up while we focus our awareness on the pain. When we acknowledge our pain, it will start moving again, when we allow it to move freely, it will dissolve and set us free.
photo by Andy McMillan