By Terri Cole on August 4, 2009
Hello you Gandhi-like group of giving forgivers!!
“Not forgiving someone is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” -Unknown
Can we talk about forgiving? Why is it so hard to do? Forgiveness is a misunderstood notion. When I discuss forgiveness with my clients, there is usually a load of resistance and a need to express to me how I must not REALLY understand what happened or I would be recommending they beat the crap out of the offender, NOT forgive them! Trust me, forgiveness is for “us” not necessarily for “them”.
The most common misconception about forgiveness is that two people are required for it to work. This is not true. We can forgive people who are no longer here or with whom we no longer have contact. Forgiving is all about you. Holding anger or releasing it occurs in your mind. How do you want to feel? What do you want taking up space in your brain/body? It’s your choice. Forgiveness is not condoning the actions of the other party. It is not rolling over and giving up. It is not giving in or losing anything. Forgiveness is the healthy thing to do to free YOU from resentment prison. It may not be easy but its worth the effort.
Gandhi said, “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
Forgiveness will change your life experience.
People hurt us in a zillion ways big and small. Whether you are dealing with being betrayed by your spouse or cut off in traffic, you must decide to ruminate or forgive. I see forgiving as letting go of something toxic or as one of my clients would instruct, “Bless and release”. A very important aspect of being able to forgive is having your feelings understood and witnessed by an empathic other. I teach my clients a burning ritual to release resentment. Think of an unresolved injury in your life and then write an unedited letter to the offending party (living or dead), pouring out how the experience made you feel and the ramifications it had in other areas of your life. You are creating a comprehensive narrative, where the facts and the feelings co-exist, to share with a safe and trusted confidant. The witness should not comment or react (no gasping please). Their job is to be an active and sympathetic listener only. Then go to a safe place and burn the letter releasing it back into the universal energy and out of your body. Affirm I AM FREE…and feel it.
Forgiveness research gives us some scientifically based information about why forgiving is good for you-mind, body and spirit. Elizabeth Scott M.S, from About.com writes about a study done by Behavioral Medicine that found forgiveness to be associated with lower heart rate and blood pressure as well as stress relief. A different study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, found that forgiveness not only restores positive thoughts, feelings and behaviors towards the offending party but the benefits of forgiveness spill over to positive behavior towards others outside of that relationship. It is also associated with more volunteerism, donating to charity and other altruistic behaviors. The converse is true for non-forgiveness. So it is clear that holding onto resentment has far-reaching negative ramifications for life quality.
So now that we have established the why, let’s get down to the how. After your letter writing/burning exercise consider the following condensed version of The 8 Steps of How to Let Go and Forgive courtesy of Leo Babauta from the amazing website www.zenhabits.com.
1. Commit to letting go. You aren’t going to do it in a second or maybe not even in a day. It can take time to get over something. So commit to changing, because you recognize that the pain is hurting you.
2. Think about the pros and cons. What problems does this pain cause you? Does it cause you unhappiness? Think of the benefits of forgiveness — how it will make you happier, free you from the past and the pain, improve things with your relationships and life in general.
3. Realize you have a choice. You cannot control the actions of others, and shouldn’t try. But you can control not only your actions, but also your thoughts. You can stop reliving the hurt, and can choose to move on. You have this power.
4. Empathize. Try this: put yourself in that person’s shoes. Try to understand why the person did what he did. Start from the assumption that the person isn’t a bad person, but just did something wrong.
5. Understand your responsibility. Try to figure out how you could have been partially responsible for what happened. What could you have done to prevent it, and how can you prevent it from happening next time? This isn’t to say you’re taking all the blame, or taking responsibility away from the other person, but to realize that we are not victims but participants in life.
6. Focus on the present. Now that you’ve reflected on the past, realize that the past is over. It isn’t happening anymore, except in your mind. And that causes problems — unhappiness and stress. Instead, bring your focus back to the present moment. What joy can you find in what is happening right now?
7. Allow peace to enter your life. As you focus on the present, try focusing on your breathing. Imagine each breath going out is the pain and the past, being released from your body and mind. And imagine each breath coming in is peace, entering you and filling you up. Release the pain and the past. Let peace enter your life. And go forward, thinking no longer of the past, but of peace and the present.
8. Feel compassion. Finally, forgive the person and realize that in forgiveness, you are allowing yourself to be happy and move on.
Being healthy is not always easy but always worth the effort.
I will close with an Oscar Wilde quote that made me laugh because it is so true.
“Always forgive your enemies-nothing annoys them as much.”
You know I am here to help.
Go make Gandhi proud!
Love Love Love
Your Crazy Sexy Life Coach
Terri
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By Dr. Will Tuttle on June 12, 2009
We live on the road. For fourteen years now Madeleine and I have been plying North America’s highways in our ’86 diesel pick-up that pulls our solar-powered fifth wheel “rolling home” across this beautiful land. Although we only drive about fifteen to twenty thousand miles per year, following the geese in spring and fall, and presenting around 150 lectures, concerts, and workshops annually, we are able to get a pretty good glimpse into what’s happening here. For me, two things especially stand out. One—monoculture agribusiness. Huge fields of corn, soybeans, hay, alfalfa, and other grains and legumes grown primarily to feed our billions of hyperconfined cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and fish. Two—hospitals and medical facilities. They are springing up like mushrooms after the rain—in large part due to the flood of people hyperconsuming the flesh, eggs, and milk of the aforementioned creatures.
North and south, east and west, monocultures and hospitals. Drugged and poisoned land with all its inevitable results. According to recent statistics from the Department of Agriculture, a whopping 86 percent of U.S. agricultural land is devoted to just four crops— corn, soy, hay, and wheat—the main crops used to feed and fatten confined animals. By contrast, growing all the vegetables in the U.S. requires only 1.5 percent of our agricultural land! And for all the orchards and vineyards that provide our nuts, berries, and fruits, it’s just 1.6 percent! Just three percent of our farmland produces all our fruits, veggies, and nuts! Talk about small footprint! Last fall, for example, as we were driving through Iowa, and I was delivering lectures promoting veganism in cities and towns throughout Iowa (whew!!), we traveled through countless thousands of acres of soybean fields. We found out that only one small field in the entire state grew soybeans that were used for tofu and soymilk for humans; virtually the entire vast Iowa soy crop was squandered to fatten cows, pigs, and other enslaved animals who were hidden away in their stinking sheds and feedlots far from the major roads. In contrast to this, Russia has been encouraging small-scale family gardens (“dachas”), and these dachas have been an amazing success, now supplying 93 percent of Russia’s potatoes, and 80 percent of all vegetables and fruits! This could be our future as well! If we understand and act.
By reducing vast expanses of our precious forests and prairies to toxic monocultures, where only one species is allowed to grow in order to feed the mistreated animals whose flesh and secretions we are all pressured into eating, we create the ongoing conditions of psychological, ethical, ecological, cultural, and spiritual disconnectedness. These prevent us, as a society, from understanding the roots of our unyielding dilemmas. The violence on our plates reverberates through our bodies, our minds, our culture, and throughout our world. How can we or our elected representatives act wisely while the blood that is running through our veins and brains is polluted with hormone, drug, and pesticide residues, cholesterol, and the fear, panic, and psychotic depression lived by the animals we eat?
By Madeleine Tuttle
It is way beyond time for all of us in our culture to look behind the curtain of institutional denial and bring the light of compassion and awareness to our meals and what our meals require.
Everyone in our culture feels it, I think. The existential doubt, visceral and haunting, about our future. The future of our species. Of the Earth. Our way of living. We feel it, but it’s just too much—so we turn away and focus on the familiar distractions, turning up the volume to drown out the inner knowing.
Yet our sanity longs for truth. More than anything else, veganism is truth. The truth of awareness—of what we’re actually eating! Of what it takes to get it on our plates! Of all the implications of our routine actions. The truth of our interconnectedness with all beings. The truth of our radiant essential nature, free, awake, loving, merciful, and wise. The truth of the ramifications of our meals: of our devastation of oceans for fish to feed chickens and cows whose bodies, babies, and yearnings we steal. The truth of our repressed and deadened horror. The truth of our inability to make some pretty obvious connections. Eating violence and terror, we long to avoid the truth.
Everywhere, though, the truth is popping up! It’s increasingly difficult to avoid hearing and seeing the obvious. Eating animal foods destroys the Earth. Drives global climate breakdown. Drives species extinction. Drives ocean depletion and forest devastation, drug addiction, disease, soil loss, water pollution, acidification, toxification, despair, and the mentality of exploitation and elitism and war.
Like the rising sun, the truth is shining brighter every day, revealing the interconnections. Bringing healing, insight, and understanding. And we are awakening. Veganism is the stark and liberating solution to the omnivore’s dilemma, the cultural conundrum bearing down ever more relentlessly as our massive violence toward animals and the Earth and future generations ripens before our eyes.
Happiness, peace, and freedom flow from nonviolence. We are all connected, and our joy is in blessing others. I don’t know how it will happen, but this I know in my bones: our future is veganism. Our future selves are vegans – delightedly and powerfully aware of the ancient truth of our magnificence. We are not shrinking, reducing, commodifying, cruel and numb people who heartlessly destroy the Earth and the sacred web of life—who have no future and have lost our purpose by stealing the purposes of others. We are consciousness, grace, kindness, creative inspiration, joy, and understanding. When light shines, darkness simply disappears without a trace. No fight is required. Letting the light shine through, breathing deeply and fully, we partake of the infinite, moment after moment.
This, then, is the situation in a nutshell:
We are all beings of light and awareness and love, born into a culture of violence, ignorance, and exclusion. We take on its darkness and fear, and the core ritual used by our culture to effect this is our daily meals, where we are forced to participate in routine killing by eating and buying the flesh and secretions of imprisoned, terrified animals. Our path to freedom lies in freeing these animals. Veganism is the feminine wisdom of interconnectedness, the spiritual and practical key to happiness and peace for all. She is our future. She is beckoning to us.
We all live on the road—the road to vegan living and to the harmony, sustainability, freedom, and co-creative celebration shining within.
Will Tuttle, Ph.D., composer, pianist, and Zen priest, is author of The World Peace Diet and is cofounder of Karuna Music & Art and the Prayer Circle for Animals.
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