Reflection

There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.
~ Buddha

You simply cannot pay the debts that come along with believing you are unworthy. Unworthiness always puts you in debt to anyone and everyone who shows you the slightest degree of attention or love or energy. Eventually, in this form of bankrupt relationship, your benefactors will demand or expect more than you are able or willing to give. This is the precise moment they will choose to call in the loan.

~Iyanla Vanzant

Commentary on FORGIVENESS from the book, "One Day My Soul Just Opened Up: 40 Days and 40 Nights Toward Spiritual Strength and Personal Growth by Iyanla Vanzant

Most people believe that when you forgive someone, you are doing something for them. The truth is, when you forgive, you are doing it for yourself. As it relates to forgiveness, you must give up what you do not want in order to make room for what you do want. You must give up pain, anger, resentment, and fear in order to experience goodness, joy, peace, and love. For some reason, we believe that if we forgive someone they might get to the good stuff before we do. Offering another the forgiveness they need strengthens the spiritual nature in you. It is this nature and your consciousness of this nature that reaps you the benefits of life. When you withhold forgiveness or love from anyone, for any reason, it diminishes your awareness of the abundance of good in life. You are stuck in so much old stuff, new stuff has no way of getting to you. In essence, the good that you withhold from others will be withheld from you.

As long as you hold on to the belief that anyone on earth can do anything to you, you will be unable to forgive. People cannot change who you are and what you were born to be. They can create obstacles in your path. They can do things that make you believe you are other than what you are, but people cannot change, alter, or in any way hinder the truth of your being. The truth is you are divine. The truth is that the divine source of life made you perfect and complete, and nothing anyone does can change that. The truth is we all forget that we are divine and act out of our human fears, beliefs, and perceptions. In doing so, we offend one another's sensibilities, we ignore one another's boundaries, we lash out, strike out, and in other uncompassionate ways dump our pain on one another. It does not change who we are. It makes us believe we are less than we are. This makes us mad, and in holding on to our madness, we refuse to forgive.

There is no one who does not make mistakes. Mistakes are a way of human life. We mistake what we see for the truth. We do not realize that there is always more to life than we can see and that the truth is not always visible to the naked eye. We mistake what we know for all there is. What we do not realize is, we don't always know the whole story. At any given time in your life, there are characters, plots, and story lines that have not yet been presented. When you do not know the whole story, almost any conclusion you draw will be a mistaken conclusion. We mistake our experiences, particularly bad experiences, to be indications of who we are and what we deserve. Even when we know we deserve better, we mistake our experiences for the obstacles that can keep us from experiencing more. Sometimes, we make the mistake of thinking that other people have the power to control or alter our destiny. It is our beliefs, mistaken and otherwise, that ultimately determine what we will do or be in life, not another person.

If we did not make mistakes we would not learn what works and what does not work. Each time we make a mistake we are provided with an opportunity to be corrected. The divine spirit of life is self-correcting. It will show us our mistakes in the form of the pain and suffering that we endure. It will show us our mistakes through mental unrest and emotional dissatisfaction. Unfortunately, when we encounter the results of our mistaken beliefs, choices, and perceptions, we blame other people. We hold others accountable for what we think, feel, or believe. We believe our experiences make us who we are in life, and then we blame the players in our experiences. The biggest mistake we all make is believing that other people can hurt us. When we believe they have done so, we are unwilling to forgive them.

When being hurt and angry and believing you are less than you are does not get you what you want, it is time to forgive. When you cannot move beyond the memories of what someone else has done to you and those memories keep you hurt, angry, or in any way limited in life, it is time to forgive. When the only thing you remember about someone is what they did to you and not the fact that they are a human being prone to make mistakes, it is time to forgive. When you believe you know the whole story of why someone did what they did and believe that if they had done anything else, you would be different, it is time to forgive. If you don't like yourself, it is time to forgive. If there is anyone, anywhere on the planet you can honestly say that you do not love, it is time to forgive. If you are overweight, underweight, out of cash, in a bad relationship, working in an unfulfilling career, have corns on your little toes, have a cold or a toothache, there is somebody, somewhere you need to forgive. Start with yourself. Forgive yourself for believing that anyone who occupies the flesh form as a human being could in any way alter the truth of your being. Once you've done that it will be easy to forgive anyone for anything, particularly if you are holding them hostage for making human errors.

Copyright © 1998 by Iyanla Vanzant

Fair warning, I'm reading a book by Iyanla Vanzant, "Peace From Broken Pieces: How to Get Through What You're Going Through." Ms. Vanzant has been with me in the past when I was ready for a spiritual growth spurt. Her words resonate in me like no other author I've read. I read eBooks, so here's where imma gonna write down the stuff I want to savor.

EXCERPT:

It is often difficult to identify the exact moment that your life falls apart. In most cases, it is not a one-shot deal. If you ask most people who have had the experience of losing everything they love or believe in, they will probably say it was not one telephone call or one letter, one revelation or realization that caused the collapse of life as they knew it. I now understand that my life fell apart one piece at a time. Piece by piece; one experience, one situation, and one circumstance at a time, until I found myself standing in the midst of a heap of broken promises, splintered relationships, and shattered dreams. It is not a place I ever imagined I would find myself again, after I had gotten through it the first fifty or sixty times.

The breaking down into pieces of a life is a painful thing to watch and even more painful to endure. Even more devastating is that as your life begins to unravel, day by day, piece by piece, there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it. You see what is happening. You know what is happening. And, you want anything other than what is happening to happen. You see, somewhere deep inside, we all know that lives are not built to fall apart. That is just not what lives are meant to do. The lives we are given by God are meant by God to grow, to blossom and flourish. The reality is, however, lives do crumble.

I now realize that lives fall apart when they need to be rebuilt. Lives fall apart when the foundation upon which they were built needs to be re-laid. Lives fall apart, not because God is punishing us for what we have or have not done. Lives fall apart because they need to. They need to because they weren’t built the right way in the first place. I came to this realization one day, after many days, weeks, months, and years of trying to fix the cracks in my foundation. One day, one moment of time, as I sat helplessly surveying the broken pieces of my mind, heart, and life, I recognized that a broken life is a test of faith of the highest order.

....WOW

Y'all know I'm a big believer that we're put here on this planet to learn and perfect ourselves. I'm pretty sure that very few people leave this earth as a perfect human being and I know that even though I work hard to learn how to better myself, I'll never be even close to perfect. Even so, I am willing and able to do the homework.

Part of that homework is to quit fighting the lesson. My spirit becomes so closed off when I'm fighting the lesson, and it's extremely uncomfortable for me. You'd think that at the ripe old age of 51, I'd avoid situations that make my spirit uncomfortable, but some lessons are harder than others.

With that said, here's what I've noticed. It never seems to fail that once I've given in to the lesson and let go of my stubbornness, I'm provided with tools to help me walk through to the other side of the lesson. It almost feels like a graduation gift, because I've learned that when I've come to this point in a lesson, chances are that I won't be presented with this lesson ever again. It's now time to refine and cement the new skill that I've learned.

This week has been such a beautiful week for me and I've been provided with an abundant gift of tools. It's almost like the skies opened and dropped what I've needed into my life. It also feels like I can take a full breath after being under water for a long time. The feeling is amazing. There just aren't enough adjectives to describe what I'm feeling.

I realize that I'm being somewhat vague about what the lesson was, and it'll remain that way. Once I've finished the homework (books that have 'magically' appeared at a time I've really needed them, among other things), I'll share what I've learned here.

I feel energized and confident that I'm in for a HUGE growing spurt. I can't wait.