Letting Go and Forgiveness

I continue on my journey of exploring self due to challenges in my personal life and with the business I’m involved. I had a breakthrough a few months back with a better connection to the physical. But in spite of making this connection I felt unplugged from the spiritual. I had a feeling of dead space and being unsure of the positive flow. And I could not find a way to plug back in using meditation or writing. I felt lost and uncertain of which way to go.

This continued for a few weeks with it coming to a peak in the last week of August. It was also a low time as we were trying to find another buyer for our house we are selling and it looked like we might not be able to get the house we were interested in buying. We were also looking at letting an employee go at work due to slow business so there were many ways that I felt unplugged in. And yet I did make one breakthrough even though it didn’t plug me back in. And it had to do with loving myself. The breakthrough came while I was feeling depressed. I felt like I had screwed up, again, and was beating myself up, again. During this time I was searching for solutions and started thinking about the people around me who care about me. I realized that they care about me, perhaps even love me in spite of who I am and not just because what I do and how I act. I started thinking, if these other people could like me, why couldn’t I like myself?

So I did a visualization where I pictured me viewing myself and seeing that me as others might see me. Instead of turning away and thinking I was a screw up, by viewing myself separately I could see there was something there that I could like and even love. I also saw that I needed to let go and let this love in. I could tell this had broken through when I did my morning meditation. There is a point where I open up my heart to let others love come in and to let my love go out. Before this I could feel this love in my heart, my chest and my arms but no further. After this I could feel the love spreading to other parts of my body and feel the energy I share with others and which they share with me. I haven’t been able to completely fill my body yet, I still need to do some more work, but this was a break through for me. Yet I still couldn’t plug in, I could feel the flow and felt lost. So I continued thinking and I went on a hike to a place that seems to have a connection to the sacred. It is a place where I find it easier to connect, to talk with my spirit guides, angels and other teachers.

It has helped me find the ways to heal myself over this last year and I found healing again. On the way there I started thinking about another visualization and I had this feeling that I also needed to forgive myself. There is one time in my life that I had not felt able to forgive myself for because of pain that I caused others during that time. I had also said that I had forgiven myself for other mistakes in my life and had no regrets. But as I started thinking about this I found that I didn’t forgive myself fully, that I was paying lip service to the idea because I felt I should. When I started thinking this way I then started picturing myself seeing me as another person might. I could see that inexperience and fear drove some of those decisions that I regretted. Mostly I could see the fear that drove me and still lies under the surface, waiting to take control, if it can.

When I saw that, as if I were seeing another person, my heart softened and I felt the start of forgiveness. But then I had to let go of all of that regret and pain. This was the hard part, the letting go. I believe that there is one thing we have in this life and that is our time. So when it comes time to let something like this go it becomes hard for me because it feels like I am giving away a part of myself, the investment in time in all of that regret. There is also the part where I have to admit I made a mistake into holding onto that regret for so long. I could see this blob of scars and blood dripping that no matter how ugly I did not want to let go. I started the process on that hike but I did not complete it. I have not completed it yet but starting the process succeeded in plugging me back in. I was holding myself back, again. I seem to repeat myself, again. 🙂

This was another lesson, that I need to let go and move on, even if it seems to be admitting defeat and mistakes in my choices. Even if it seems to show that there is no logic or reason and that I can’t always fix things so they work. A hard lesson that I suspect I will revisit. But it feels like I have started and that I can move to other things. Thank you to my friend for suggesting that I try visualization in reviewing the problem. While I describe things in very visual terms, I am translation what I feel into visual to help others understand. But visualization does help me, perhaps by translating the world into that which I feel. It is good to move on to the next step of this journey.