One of the great gifts I get from reading the same spiritual books daily, year by year, comes when I read and remember the occasion for the notes I have written in them. When a biggie...good or ill...happens, I note it with the year beside it. A biggie does not happen every day, of course, but over the years there is something on every page.
The majority of my biggies bear the names of friends, co-workers, relatives...the people in my world who were either "doing it wrong" or had, out of the blue, graced me with their love. All these years later I get to see the end result, and the "doing it wrong" crowd invariably wind up as a gift. It is easy to see that is the natural result once we learn to recognize the source of all our woes...namely, our own self.
It is true, we can forgive any insult, any put down, any slight if we so choose. That's all it takes, to choose. Ah, but we know there's a catch. Isn't there always to so-called easy-peasy stuff? The catch in all that it takes is choosing is we cannot make that choice stick all on our own.
Doing it on our own keeps resentment's eternal flame burning. Let a friend or foe, parent or second cousin thrice removed make a snide one at our expense, we either must respond in kind or.... We rarely finish the thought since we've already responded and lit payback's fire ablaze.
It is through spiritual growth that we learn, slowly, slowly, that those remarks do not need to be addressed. They can and must be transmuted...made impersonal to us. They are not ours. They're akin to misaddressed mail or a wrong number...we need not accept delivery no matter how much we want to.
And there it is. The nut of our woes...our want to. We go to shrinks, shrines and sponsors trying to justify our wants. The hard lesson a-learning is, we personalize our wants...we see them as our own self.
Loose them and let them go. Or forgive. Or love and laugh. With the grace of God and a little help from our friends, we can do any or all of those. Without, we can't. Plain and simple.
Thank you.
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