Inspired by Richard Rohr and Tami Simon from a “Sounds True” podcast:
”Gratuitous goodness in an age of outrage”
My shadow side is cynical and unforgiving. I don’t do well when I get hurt by someone, the wound runs very deep within me and it takes a long time for me to feel okay again.
I think it’s my fragile self-worth, I seem to need so much validation, but how can I expect people to validate me when I don’t validate myself.
It’s a slow creep for me into bitterness, one minute I’m feeling kind of secure within myself, the next I’m mouthing off about something or someone.
Many of my friends have said to walk away from lower vibrations, people whose mindsets don’t blend with mine and yes that’s the easy way out. I have chosen it many times just to be able to survive, but unforgiveness still lingers in me for a long time. So, I don’t actually deal with it.
I’ve heard it said that I must forgive, but that I can forgive from another location, and I’ve done that too. It works well as long as that person is not in my proximity and I can almost forget that they ever existed.
I have had to forgive my father for not believing in me and making me feel less than worthless, hence my fragile self-worth. It wasn’t easy for me to forgive him, I had to thrash out so much of the pain within me, but him being dead and gone has helped. He was such an angry man. On listening to the wise words of Richard Rohr a Franciscan priest who took men’s initiation groups I had an epiphany. He said anger is often-times sadness in disguise and that definitely resonates with me. It helps me forgive more easily knowing that my father might have carried around a deep sadness. It was something he never verbalized properly and because I was a disappointment to him it came out as rejection.
I have carried around a lot of shame, and it has tainted such a huge part of my life, that at times I completely shut-down and retreat into my self constructed hiding place.
It's mostly the shame that I never really succeeded in life, but by saying that I mean I never got a university degree or became rich or famous. Okay, fame is not off the table just yet. My failure in life is really that I haven’t met-up to the requirements of a materialistic world where what one acquires or what one achieves is more important than one’s soul’s journey. My shame has been such a poisonous sting for me.
I often fall into the trap of watching the world go up in smoke around me on the news and scrolling too much on my phone. It takes me into dark places where I completely loose hope in both myself and our planet. I get envious when people go away on holiday and live “so called” carefree lives, while we just scrape by. It’s like a big old pity party that I have and I make up a whole lot of unhelpful stories in my head.
I love the mystics and they say so much to me about the hope of humanity in spite of the terrible suffering and brutality all around us. They also see the soul’s journey as more important than the temporal scrap offerings of this world.
So, when I can’t stand being alive anymore, I run to them for help. I’ve been in deep dark pits in my life where I found the mystics and they became a calming influence that breathes life back into me.
Of course my first entry into their enclave requires me to look at my shadow self, the part of me that weighs so heavy and calls me out, actually screams me out, that thing I keep forgetting. It’s part of my soul’s journey to understand myself, to observe the darker parts. I may never be able to fix them but I can get a handle on them and constantly remind myself that they need attention.
I think forgiveness is ongoing though, and I say this partly because you can forgive one minute and the next minute the person you forgave may need forgiveness again. Just like me we are all flawed human beings in need of supernatural intervention. I could blame my father for the rest of my life for me having such a fragile self-worth, but maybe it requires me at this ripe old age to see that my worthiness doesn’t lie within material possessions or achievements. The bigger picture for me is that we go on and our souls need to evolve. It’s my life’s work to become a better person, forever teachable, living in gratitude…letting love, joy, peace, patience, kindness and goodness be my anthem.
I’m also trying to see the people that cross my path as my teachers, whether they be friend or foe, sometimes pointing out the flaws that I am unaware of, reminding me that grace is within my grasp.
So, I’m working on becoming a less bitter and more forgiving person. I can’t promise to never be cynical or bitter, but I promise to hear you if you remind me that you can see bitterness creeping up on me again.
Moving, Ally xx