Forgiveness: sometimes it’s simple, sometimes it’s not. Some say there are situations that are not forgivable. When I first heard that idea, I was skeptical, surely, everything is forgivable, isn’t that what we are taught?

When I feel more deeply into my own heart and body I realize there are people I have not forgiven, even though I thought I had. And to my surprise, I realize I may never forgive them, especially when I am truthful about the depth of the hurt I have experienced.

I’ve learned that the deeper the pain, the harder it is to let it go. And that insight determines our pace of forgiveness. First we have to acknowledge to ourself the pain that we’ve endured.

I want the time and space to notice how things feel in both my psyche and my soma. Reclaiming our agency over our forgiveness process, wherever we may be in it, is healing in itself. Sometimes it’s not that I don’t want to forgive, it’s that I don’t want someone else telling me “I should”! Processes of restorative justice engage this as part of their inquiry. We cannot talk about restoration when we have not acknowledged the damage done.

Ultimately? I think forgiveness is a good thing. I also think approaching it slowly at the pace of our inner guidance is a good thing too, especially for the traumas that can take us years or generations to comprehend. That process needs to be both protected and respected.

Sometimes our rage is our only protection in circumstances where no one else was there for us. Befriending that rage in safety is a way to stop the war within ourselves: it’s a step in a tender process and one that must be navigated with self compassion.

I am slowly discovering that compassion for my limits around whom and what to forgive is a place I can rest. I can have the aspiration to forgive or not but I don’t have to create more suffering for myself.

And you too can move from that place of self compassion.

Having a place to rest within our process can loosen the bitterness that is often a foregone conclusion about not forgiving. And sometimes, just sometimes, giving ourselves a wide berth around such reflection fine tunes our ability to trust our inner guidance.

“There in the deep well of your own psyche you will find what you have always been looking for: protection, purpose, confidence, and clarity.” ~Miles Neale, PsyD

You can listen to an audio version here.

The quote above says it all. We are far better resourced than we imagine ourselves to be and that word “imagine” is key. In practices of applied neuroscience, we explore and acknowledge the images that we associate with our troubling narratives. If we can imagine one set of circumstances, we can imagine another: in other words we can learn!

Changing our mind is not about changing beliefs, it is about changing the processes of our experience. In other words, we can change our relationship to the experience by being curious about it, by allowing its right to exist within us and relate to it as a part of ourselves, which it is!

If I’m angry, I can notice it, be curious about it, sense if I can locate it in my body, I can get to know it. I can change how I relate to the anger. I can change how I orient myself.

As I said in part one of this series, Awareness Heals

Our emotions have everything to do with changing our mind because the self images we have the most difficulty relating to are the most emotionally charged.

Our experiences may be challenging to shift but they are not permanent.

Moshe Feldenkrais physicist and somatic educator when speaking about our fears for example, suggested that we only have two fears that are “hard wired” as humans: the fear of loud noises and the fear of falling. What a curious idea!

If I follow that logic, then where do the other fears come from? We learn them. Perhaps they have traveled through generations but somewhere they were learned and passed along. There are circumstances where a strong fearful response is what saves our lives. Our fears are a form of protection and our fears deserve respect because they make up part of our self image.

All of our fears and difficult emotions deserve our respect.

On the journey to changing our minds we have to be straight up with ourselves about our rage, grief, betrayals, our limitations and the limitations of those around us. This is challenging!

Like any good pilgrimage, and especially the one to our unconscious, all aspects of our selves have to be respected. The result of honoring such parts of ourselves is we offer others an authentic presence.

Throughout this three part post, Nelson Mandela has been present to me. When he left prison on Robben Island in South Africa after 27 years, he forgave those who had wrongly imprisoned him.

Even more subtly, he came to know his internal jailers. He needed to be aware of how the outer jailers still lived within him in order to be free. His commitment to his inner process gave him agency.

To be a free person we have to be willing to change our mind.

Mandela knew he could change his mind. Those of us up to the task can change our minds. It is a courageous act that our world depends upon.

You can listen to an audio version of this blog post here

Awareness Heals.

That’s a complete sentence: awareness heals.

How does that happen?

It happens when we understand that the human nervous system is an open system, an interface between what we know as “our self” and the world around us. Because we are engaging with an open system we also have the capacity to direct our awareness and make new choices for ourself. Awareness is our true nature. Knowing how to use that awareness with intention is a powerful tool.

I’m devoting this and the next 2-3 blog posts to the simple fact that our mind, brain, body and emotional heart are part of an open system and that our mind, our brain, our body and our emotional heart are here to change. And by the way, mind and brain are not the same thing. Our brain is a tool of the mind. As I’ve said in other places, the mind perceives, the brain receives, the body responds. So what does this have to do with you and your healing potential?

Everything.

Neurological & Biological Optimism

“The dance of perception shaped by our continuous interpretation of our life experiences is central to what’s known as “neuroplasticity”. We are not “fixed”. The beliefs about our bodymind are not “fixed” nor do we need to be “fixed”. Neuroplasticity is at the heart of discovering our inherent resilience. We are built for resilience, for bouncing back. Knowing how to access our inherent resilience is key to living a contented life.” (From ‘The Terrain of Somatics’/Revised 5/22)

Knowing how to access our inherent resilience is a process, a practice and it provides us with the support to meet the anxieties that are a natural part of life and change. When we wholeheartedly engage this process the result is we are more capable of meeting life as it is. Life becomes more expansive and workable.

I’ll get into more of the methodology and philosophy of my work that shapes this process in the next post.

At the center of our being, is wholeness. This truth is present across all wisdom traditions. Whatever name you choose to call it, our True Nature, Awakened Heart, Self, Essential Self, etc. This wholeness dwells within us.

It is present and ever-shining.

That “Self” cannot be harmed, stained, erased, injured, or taken away.

Even in the most profoundly confused human being, the Self continues to shine its light. We can have the experience of being separate from it but it doesn’t go anywhere. Wholeness is not something we have to gain or lose. We cannot add it to our experience or subtract it from our experience.

The Sufi poet Rumi says: “Our task is not to seek for love but to seek the barriers to love and embrace them.” He points to the fact that we are not our barriers to love, contentment or inner strength.

The path of transformational work is to learn to “embrace the barriers” to our peace of mind, to love, to our fierce compassion, to clarity, to ease. It offers an opportunity to relate to ourselves and our difficulties from the place of wholeness rather than from brokenness.

The fruition of transformational work is knowing how to be in the world but not “tossed away” by it.

So the ground of transformational work is wholeness, the path is embracing our barriers to love, contentment and ease and the fruition is to be in the world and not be “tossed away by it” as Zen teacher Suzuki Roshi would say.

In this season of expressing thanks, there are few words to describe my appreciation for knowing in my bones that my barriers to love are gateways to waking up and the amazing good fortune that I get to hold that space for you.

I bow deeply to all those with whom I engage whether through these blog posts, through audio sessions, or in person. We are woven together in a field of invisible grace and connection: a kind of sacred reciprocity that is the essence of all giving thanks.

Be Well, Meg

A Curious Question: Is it a habit or a choice?

Choice is when we can discern between a preference and a compulsion.

Somatic movement pioneer, engineer and scientist Moshe Feldenkrais made some keen observations about human behavior based on how we organize our bodymind for movement. And to be clear, how we organize for movement is how we organize for life. The same thought patterns, perceptions, and beliefs color everything we do.

He suggested that when we have only one way of doing something, it’s a compulsion, if we have two ways, then it’s a dilemma and three ways… we are opening to freedom. When I use the word “freedom” here I mean the capacity to maintain our autonomy even when we are constrained by either inner or outer limits: that is an extremely important life skill!

Discerning between “choice or habit” comes down to curiosity and awareness: curiosity and awareness about the function of the defenses that keep our habits in place and curiosity and awareness about how to choose again.

Change is hard for us “homo sapiens”. We are threatened by change even when it’s for our own good which defies what “homo sapiens” means: “wise or astute humans”.

The birth of wisdom is when we are humble enough to admit we need to change our habits and trust the process enough to know we can.