Forgiving the Past

Not all relationships are easy. Often times challenging relationships come into our lives to help us understand who we are. We come to experience ourselves by relating to these relationships. In regards to a challenging relationship, if we work hard enough (and if it is right) we move further into our own essence when we accept and forgive those who may have troubled us.  When we enable ourselves to integrate the understanding of another into our own sense of awareness we gain perspective.  With this gained perceptive we are then given the choice to have empathy for those who do challenge us.

I am only beginning to realize how much I have stagnated emotionally because I have allowed myself to stay identified with a particular set of emotions.  I felt they were justified given my past...but I question myself...how long do I want to stay tethered to the past?

I come to this post in a time in my life were I feel I am starting to forgive someone in my life, who at times, released his anger on me in ways that I found unforgivable. This person is my father. And as I work with the past lately, really work with it, and allow it to be felt...I found that I can actually come to an understanding as to why my father acted in such a way while I grew up. This has enabled me to feel a sense of forgiveness for him and has given me the courage to talk with my father in a way that I never felt I could have. Yes, we are extremely different people, yet we love, and we love passionately. We express this love in very very different ways.

I have seen that his anger has resulted from a deep fear he had.  Simply put, he just wants us all to be "ok." To him that is his way of loving.  And sometimes securing what he needed in order to have his family be "ok" meant that he became full of stress and anger.  I may not agree with everything he has done, but he did it in the only way he knew how too. The actions that I deemed, even as a young child, as very damaging, I am finally allowing myself see that they occurred as they only would because of who he was and how he dealt with his emotions.

I am now beginning to see how this all has related to my emotional development and self-worth. I realize I am only peering beneath the surface of a very deep matrix of emotions, yet I allow myself to stand humble and be here now. Not judging were I stand, only observing it and accepting it.  I am far from perfect in my own trails of self-development.  But here I am, humbly accepting my faults, my prejudices, bouts of anger, sadness, anxiety, and frustration. At least I feel courageous enough to believe I am accepting things as they are...

It seems though, that as I work through my stuff it allows me to open up to people, in this case my father, in a way that is not only healing for myself, but also for others. Maybe we can humble ourselves too see that the world is not necessarily attacking us, but merely that the world is afraid...afraid to loose its foundation, its security, and its glimmering experience of love...