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The Healing Power of Understanding and Forgiveness

(Without help from the power of understanding and forgiveness, how can we turn fear, anger, or hate into love? Is love and understanding the light and the way?)

When I was four years old my biological father died. My mother married my stepfather a year later. Many of us have volatile childhood relationships; mine was no exception. I felt ignored, misunderstood and bullied at home and in school. Starting with Catholic school I was told: “you’re bad (Original Sin) and you can’t trust your body because it will always betray you.” Several days later, in public school, I was telling my new teacher and classmates about how the local catholic school treated its students. When I asked my new teacher how public schools treat their students, his face turned red in anger and he yelled at me: “Sit down, shut up and do as I tell you. I’m the teacher, and I know what’s best for you!” So much for being asked to stand up and introduce myself to the class, right? Well, I guess, from his point of view, I was a little cheeky.

In my senior year of high school (1959-1960), as soon as I turned seventeen, I quit and joined the Air Force to get away from home and school. I was angry with the world. However, I was even more angry with myself for not being able to understand and overcome the challenges that were afflicting me in life.

After being discharged, I returned home to finish high school and attend college. Little had changed. Whenever we had a family gathering and started drinking, Dad and I would open up old wounds and start arguing over who was right or wrong, good or bad. Once, he became so aggressive I had to grip both sides of his white dress shirt to hold him off. Without warning, he surged forward even more aggressively, and his shirt tore apart in my hands. Both shocked by our behavior, we stopped arguing in embarrassment.

One day in the mid-1980’s, a decade or so after my family and I had moved from Maine to California, I sat quietly in meditation. As usual, random thoughts and feelings were bubbling up to the surface of my mind to quietly disappear. After a short while one area of thought took center stage. Without knowing how I had arrived there, I found myself reviewing life with my parents.

Instead of recalling all the things I didn’t like about my life with them, I could now see all the things I did like about life with them. As a husband and father  myself now, I could see how challenging life is for all parents with children. Heck, it’s hard enough to take care of ourselves, let alone others in this busy, demanding world. How did mom and dad measure up to Sandra and I as parents? Pretty damn good, I thought!

My stepfather married my mother with four young boys. At the time, my oldest brother, Rudy, was a teenager. My youngest brother, Tom, was a baby and Dicky and I were seven and five in that order. Together, my parents managed to feed us and keep a roof over our heads, despite the challenges they each faced in life. As you can imagine, after I had become an adult and could see how challenging life as an adult was for me, I had new appreciation for my parents.

Here is a list of most of the ideas that flowed through my mind during meditation. From the time my mother married my stepfather, we had a large garden every year. When he first married my mother, he had one racehorse. Several years later, we had three; we went to races and fairs every year. When I turned twelve, dad sold his horses and bought a thirty-foot boat that was rumored to have been used by Joe Kennedy, former president Jack Kennedy’s dad. As rumor had it, during Prohibition, Joe Kennedy, former president Jack Kennedy’s dad, and others ran rum and guns up from Cuba through the Florida Keys to Florida.

During the summer we cruised Casco Bay from Yarmouth and Portland, Maine. We fished, swam, water skied and had picnics on Basket Island. At home, over the years, we had chickens, goats, cats, dogs, rabbits, rhubarb and even flowers in our lives. As kids, we were able to ice skate, run free in the woods, climb trees and make maple syrup.

I also began to think about what life was like for my parents outside of our time together. Until this moment, all of my thoughts about them were limited to our relationship. Like me, they had parents, friends, and relatives before we were born and formed a relationship. What kind of experiences did they have in these other relationships that shaped them into the people I knew and lived with? For example, I saw an old photo of my mother as a young woman, standing on a dock at some lake wearing a dress with an open, square mesh panel revealing her bare breasts. If  her parents, grandparents, siblings, friends and relatives were aware of it, how did they react at the time? I ask this because, for all the years I knew her, my mother was super shy about anyone seeing her body, especially us boys.

What more could anyone ask of their parents, I thought? Weren’t they doing the best they could with what they knew and trying to learn more to do better? Absolutely! Don’t we all try to do the best we can with what we know and learn more to do better? Yes! In that moment of insightful clarity, I couldn’t help but forgive my parents and myself for our real and imagined sins. Still in meditation, I reached out with my mind and asked them to forgive me for being so distant, angry, and less than grateful for so many years. There may have been larger reasons for why we felt and experienced the things we did but that didn’t lessen the pain we must all have felt during our active moments of conflict.

The tension and negativity that had existed between us for so many years suddenly melted away in a flood of tears, replaced by a profound sense of understanding and forgiveness. If we’re all doing the best we can with what we know and learning more to do better, what more can we ask of ourselves? If we’re sincerely trying to learn from our experiences, what is there to forgive?

From the moment I forgave my parents and asked for their forgiveness in return, our relationship changed dramatically. During later visits to Maine, my parents and I treated each other in new and loving ways. We hugged each other, which is something we seldom did before. More than that, we hugged each other with love and joy.

Strangely, even though my parents didn’t physically experience the revelation I did during my meditation in California, my experience seemed to affect them just as much as it did me. Did they pick up the energy of my shift in consciousness telepathically or in dreams? All I know is that our relationship no longer contains judgment or stress. There is also no more heavy drinking or arguing.

This experience also led to improvements in my relationship with Sandra, my wife. Our entire family, including new spouses and grandchildren have benefited from my change in perspective. For our entire family, it’s no longer about judgments of right and wrong, good and bad, I win, you lose; it’s about paying attention to our experiences and learning from them. It’s about  learning the difference between what we like and don’t like, what works for us and what doesn’t, what makes us happy and what doesn’t in our oneness with and separation from All That Is, as both products of creation and creation itself.

For years, I was unhappy with many of the people and things in my life, including me. Why? Because I blinded myself to the goodness that is within all of us, even though part of me knew it was there. Therefore, my current challenge is to expand my boundaries of  love and understanding far enough out to include everyone and everything, even though I suspect that it’s going to be a huge lift.

If we’re all doing the best we can with what we know and learning more to do better, instead of judging ourselves, why don’t we support each other in becoming the selves we love to be? On common issues, instead of debating to see who wins or loses, why not collaborate to figure out what works best and makes us happiest, individually and collectively. To change the world for the better isn’t it easier and less costly to change ourselves for the better?

*****

If you like The Healing Power of Understanding and Forgiveness, you will like: My Encounter with the Energy of Unconditional Love. It clearly describes what it’s like to be loved unconditionally. It is an absolutely transformative experience and I would recommend it for anyone.

Roger Peterson (Pete) – https://realtalkworld.com

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having (creating) a human experience.” – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

In life and business, how often do we ask: is what I’m doing worthy of my ideals? Do my actions improve the quality of life or undermine it? Do they improve humanity’s chances for survival or threaten it?

How we define ourselves and All That Is forms our intent, which, in turn, forms our reality, whether we know it or not.

If we don’t consciously choose our beliefs, we unconsciously absorb them from our surroundings.

If this is so, how can we afford not to question them?

What do we want most for our children, ourselves, and the world?

What can we do today for the selves we’ll be tomorrow?

What works best and makes us happiest in our oneness with and separation from All That Is, as both products of creation and creation itself?

The secrets of the universe lie hidden in the shadows of our experience. Look for them!

Start your own Story Room with ideas from The LifeSong Store!

What works best and makes you happiest in your oneness with and separation from All That Is, as both a product of creation and creation itself?

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