Imagining Forgiveness

A Cherokee Prayer for the Coming Year:

May the warm winds and heaven

Blow softly upon your house

May the great spirits bless

All who enter there

May your moccasins make

Happy tracks in many snows

And may the rainbow

Always touch your shoulder

In fact all three CDs, Feel Welcome Now, Feel Forgiveness Now, and Chakra Mountain are available at http://www.cdbaby.com/Search/RHlulEp1bGlldCBSb2hkZS1Ccm93bg%3d%3d/O

           There is growing evidence that when an elder is welcomed to share his or her story, there are measurable healing effects. This is referred to as Reminiscence Therapy and it is gaining ground for helping with healing depression and building a sense of meaning and purpose for our elders. While most of the studies assert that this type of therapy is best used with elderly individuals suffering from dementia or other brain conditions, I believe that it does not need to be as confined to these groups as it currently is.

          Once at a Rehab hospital, I was sitting with an elderly woman who had lost most of her motor functioning due to a stroke. For a moment, I saw that she was distracted and looking off to her right. I turned and saw an individual who had obviously suffered a stroke or some kind of brain injury that left him stooped over, drooling, and seemingly unaware of who or where he was. She turned to me with great empathy for the man. With tears in her eyes, she struggled to form her lips into words. She was just beginning to gain back some of her ability to speak with the help of a speech therapist. Sitting in her wheelchair facing me, it took her several moments to form her mouth into the words she wanted to speak and I could tell that this took quite some effort. What she felt compelled to communicate to me after observing the other person’s plight, was “There but for the grace of God go I!”

             This woman, after having lost her ability to walk or speak easily, was not focusing on herself in a despairing manner. She was experiencing great compassion for a fellow human being and she was counting her blessings. I was moved to tears. She is yet another example of an elder who can teach us much about how to live.

            The late psychologist, Erik Erikson, in his model of psychosocial development, spoke about the last years of life as years that can lead to either despair or wisdom, depending on how one directs their attention.  There is much to learn from those who have lived long lives, with all of the sufferings and joys that a life contains.

          In families, the intergenerational bond grows stronger when we take time to share stories. My personal experience of having sat with my own parents during their final days and having received the gift of my father’s autobiography leads me to reflect on the power of stories to open the heart and to heal intergenerational wounds within families. I am often saddened by the lack of time and respect our culture as a whole gives to the elderly and their stories, when it is clear that throughout history, in all of the tribes, villages, and households of our ancestry, the sharing of elder’s stories has been a rich and valuable tradition.

          I believe that the sharing of stories can open the pathway to self-forgiveness and the forgiveness of others.  As a writer and researcher on forgiveness, I am considering elder storytelling as a particular type of forgiveness process within families, particularly when sacred time is set aside in a deliberate and formal way for this endeavor and when it is done in the natural environment.       

1)  A recent edition of the journal American Psychologist (May-June 2009, vol. 64, no.4) has an article entitled Can Imagined Interactions Produce Positive Perceptions? Reducing Prejudice Through Simulated Social Contact by R. J. Crisp & R. N. Turner.

2) A recent edition of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Vol. 95, No. 5) has an article entitled Open Hearts Build Lives: Positive Emotions, Induced Through Lovingkindness Meditation Build Consequential Personal Resources.

 3) A recent edition of the jounal The Humanistic Psychologist (Volume 37, No. 2) has an article entitled Mindful Awareness, Mindsight, and Neural Integration written by one of my favorites, Daniel Siegel.

3) For more on imagination, see my youngest brother’s website www.the-future.com and an article entitled The Past and the Future of the Universe.

          I am typically not one to boast, but people have been encouraging me to post a little something about a recent award that Shantha Sri and I received for our CD, Feel Forgiveness Now. We were pleased to receive news that we had been included in the list of final nominees for the Just Plain Folks Music Awards in the Self-Help category. Then, we were absolutely delighted to hear that we had won 2^nd place. We learned that there were over 42,000 entries from around the world for the various categories and only about nine or ten were chosen as actual nominees in each category. The awards ceremony took place in late August in Nashville, Tennessee.

          It is quite meaningful that we were selected for this honor, particularly by “just plain folk” who have no vested interest in the commercial aspect or in marketing strategies, but just for the simple fact that they acknowledged a sense of enjoyment and healing from our work.

          To learn more about our series of guided visualization CDs, please press the icon above that says Guided Visualization CDs. It will take you go to the website for Energi Music (www.energimusic.com), where you will learn about some of Energi’s other endeavors. For instance, Shantha Sri has a Samma series with titles such as Right Mindfulness and Right Intention. I just received his new CD entitled Music for Yoga: Volume 1. It is absolutely beautiful! I highly recommend it! He uses Tibetan and Nepalese singing bowls in many of the pieces along with other traditional drone instruments and the tones and frequencies are specifically chosen for heart beat regulation and healing. We have collaborated on another CD as well. It is entitled Chakra Mountain and it is due to be released very soon.

 If you are interested in how imagery can help with cancer and other medical issues, take a look at this brief u-tube piece with Dr. Martin Rossman. http://www.you-tube.com/watch?v=PHPz1l_TaPY&feature=related

Check out the following websites for conferences and information as well:

 www.imageryinternational.org 

 www.stillpointfoundation.com 

www.healthjourneys.com 

www.nicbm.com

www.pacifica.edu

Sometimes people find themselves in the position of being the only available caretaker for a dying family member who has been the perpetrator of either emotional or physical abuse. Sonja was a woman who had given her entire life to the upbringing of her children and grandchildren and she was loved for her candidness and open-heartedness. She came from a time, culture, and religious background that shunned divorce, so she stayed married to a man who was a philanderer and who physically and emotionally abused her.

Sonja was employed at the same job as an administrative assistant for many years and she was finally able to retire in her elder years. She had kept herself busy all through the years caring for her offspring and with work, so that she only had to face her husband in the evenings as he sat on the sofa watching television. Typically, she would drive home from work, cook dinner for the two of them and they would watch television or she would go into the other room and do some sewing or knitting. Although she never did seek a divorce, she was looking forward to taking the time to travel to see her children and grandchildren and to engage in some art courses and hobbies away from home and perhaps volunteering at the local hospital. She now had the free time to plan her days as she desired and she hoped to spend as much time away from her husband as possible. As often occurs in life, just as she was transitioning into a hopeful phase, the unexpected happened. Her husband was diagnosed with a terminal disease.

Sonja was the only caretaker available to him, as her children and grandchildren lived in other states and countries. As her husband, Frank, was being discharged from the hospital, frail, incontinent, and unable to clothe or feed himself, the hospital staff and physician needed to secure that she would, indeed, be his caretaker, and they gave her directions for oxygen use, changing of diapers, and so forth. The hospital staff wheeled Frank to Sonja’s car and the rest was up to Sonja.

Frank was no longer abusive at this point of his life. Although he never formally apologized for this past actions, he did express gratitude for her support. As Sonja spent her days, tired and weak herself with age, attending to Frank’s care, she was unable to lift herself up from under a heavy veil of regret and resentment. She found herself snapping at Frank and feeling like she wanted to treat him the way that he had treated her all those years, now that he was vulnerable. This frightened Sonja, as she had spent her entire life as a devout Catholic, and she was ashamed at herself for having these feelings. She sought counsel with her local priest and with a mental health professional.

Now, many of us hearing this story would ask why she stayed with him in the first place. We also might ask why Sonja was so uncomfortable with her own, legitimate, feelings, when she accepted the role of caretaker to her husband and previous abuser? If we explore this story from a systemic point of view, we can explore the different systems that impact Sonja’s experience, such as culture, socioeconomic status, religion, age, able-bodied-ness and so forth. Next, we must understand the nuances and entrapments of abuse. There is much literature to support that these types of relationships are extremely difficult to change and/or to leave without substantial psychological and social support.

Under different circumstances with a different kind of support system, she would have had the guidance and courage to leave a toxic and abusive situation, yet here she was, accepting her role, but overridden with strong feelings of anger and resentment for which she did not know how to address.

So Sonja was trapped, in a sense, but not by her situation. She was trapped by the ruminations of her own mind regarding her own memories. Should she forgive her husband? Should she forgive herself for treating herself so badly by staying in a toxic environment for so many years and for having angry and resentful thoughts and feelings? I would say that the answer is a resounding YES!

Sonja was fortunate enough to have some professional support that assisted her in coming to the realization that she is the only one who can heal herself. She was guided into accepting her anger as a normal part of her experience and then letting it dissolve and become a small and managed piece in the mosaic of all of the other aspects of herself.

 First she asked herself “Who am I, really? Is “abused wife” my identity, or am I so much more than that? What is my actual suffering about here? Is my issue “him” or is my issue how I am relating to my feelings? How can I shift the way that I am relating to my feelings? What is the larger scenario here?

Sonja realized that the first thing she needed to do was to take responsibility for her own life and her own actions. She had lived most of her life believing that she had no power or control over her abuse or her situation. She realized now that she had done the best that she could, given her knowledge, level of awareness at the time, and resources. Just as she would give to one of her children if they were suffering with self-criticism, she offered love and acceptance to herself. Once she began to practice offering unconditional love to herself and saying “I love you” as she would to a child, things began to shift for her. As she was able to experience forgiveness for that part of herself that should have protected the more vulnerable part, her heart opened in a way that she had never experienced before. This was not an easy process. It took some time. Sonja would “catch” herself in her negative ruminations, witness what was happening in her thoughts and emotions, softly give these experiences a label, such as “aversion,” and notice how that particular piece passed once it was mindfully noticed and accepted as a thought or emotion and not as her identity.

Sonja actually began to feel gratitude for her current life situation. Had it not been for her current circumstances, she may not have found this window of opportunity for changing her own relationship to herself. She began to experience her husband as a fellow human being who was suffering, not as the abusive brute she once saw him as. Her memories and rumination regarding past events could have strangled her own vitality. Instead, a certain grace was present in her day to day interactions with Frank and with herself and others.

As it turned out, Frank lived longer than his prognosis predicted, although he still needed 24 hour care. As Sonja found acceptance and healing of herself, it was much easier to go through this process with Frank and to help him regain and die with the dignity that he had long forgotten in his troubled youth.

Tags: care taking, forgiveness and abuse, heart centeredness, Relationships, self-forgiveness

As you reflect on any situations that come to mind from your life, take a moment to ask yourself the following questions:

v     Have I said something sarcastic to a friend or loved one recently?

v     What did I really want from our relationship in that moment?

v     What did I want the person to know about me? About my feelings or thoughts regarding something they said or did?

v     Did I want to express that I was disappointed about something or that I was feeling sad about something?

            With these considerations, can you imagine an alternative way that you might have behaved toward that person? How might you have behaved? What might you have said instead of the sarcastic comment? Write this out.

            You may want to keep certain reflections in a specially chosen box. Give this reflection a name. For instance, you can refer to this piece as “Sarcasm Check-In,” with the suggestion to yourself that the next time you feel the impulse toward a sarcastic remark toward a friend or loved one (or anyone, for that matter), remember this reflection and check in with yourself before reacting with a hurtful comment.

            Know that it is natural to have these different “shadow” voices within, so don’t judge yourself harshly. This reflective exercise and personal check in, is an example of treating yourself with a forgiving attitude. It is easy to see how, by extending an accepting yet forgiving attitude toward yourself by checking in with your innermost feelings, this attitude naturally begins to translate to your treatment of others as well. That is the beauty of how forgiveness works in the world.

Tags: forgiveness practices, Relationships

Needless to say, you will face challenges that strain your tranquility. A few small steps can help you weather these storms.

• Watch and accept the activity as it emerges into your field of awareness, and do so without judgment.

• Name it.

• Take a deep breath.

• Allow the activity to naturally pass from your field of awareness, just as quickly as it emerged.

• Notice what else enters your field of awareness.

           In her work with people who are literally in the last stages of life, Kathleen Dowling Singh has observed that self-forgiveness is important in creating an essential level of peace in those who are dying. As people look back over their lives they gradually come to recognize that they will no longer have the time or ability to change things. Things must stand as they are. The illusion of control is abandoned. The dreams of making amends slip away. And the next thing that emerges is forgiveness of themselves. Singh speaks of it with great respect, when she says that, in these people who find self-forgiveness,

 ”a new capacity for compassion arises, for others and for our self, as well as a growing clarity, deepened experience of pure existence, and an increased capacity to intuit the truth.”

            Others who work in hospice care have observed the same, remarkable healing process in those who are faced with the end of their lives. It may be that the intensity of the final weeks of dying accelerates the process of forgiveness.