Spiritual Forum

Are you riding the weight or carrying it?

Deep guilt has distorted the view from reality those abandoned in this way may wear the scars for life — some unable to fully bond with another people again and others develop anxiety disorders or fall into depression. But forgiving yourself is easier said than done,

it’s easier to forgive other than to forgive yourself. After all you have to live with yourself all the time, 24 hours a day.

You cannot go back and change the past. So don't live your life beating yourself up about it. Life is full of paths we take and decisions we make that leads us to where we are today. In life, we will take wrong turns and hit dead ends. But, if you are still living, the journey is not over.

Much has been written about forgiveness, it is considered to be a divine virtue, as far as I know, all religions of the world encourage it. Forgiving is often the most noble gesture, it unburdens you, makes you light. It is not always easy though. Before I share my thoughts, allow me to narrate a story.

In a monastery once, the master was preaching about forgiveness. A few disciples argued that while letting go was the finest act, it was hard. What was the harm in holding onto certain feelings, especially if it did not hinder their meditation, they wondered.

The master listened patiently. He asked them to take a handful of potatoes, engrave the initials of the person they could not or did not want to forgive; one potato per person. He further instructed them to put their potatoes in a bag and bring them to class and take them back to their quarters every day.

The disciples followed the instructions and everyone carried a bag the next day. Some were carrying bags bigger than others. A week went by, the monks felt ludicrous carrying their sacks around. The potatoes started to rot and stink. They asked their master for how long were they supposed to do the exercise, and that it was becoming unbearable to put up with the stench and unnecessary weight.

"So, what have you learned?" the master asked.

"Potatoes are our negative emotions. Holding onto them is carrying burden and stench," they replied.

"Exactly. But, can you carry potatoes without the bag?" the sage spoke, "if potatoes are your negative feelings, what is the bag?"

Pin drop silence ensued. It happens at the dawning of wisdom. They understood the bag was their mind.

Like many such other practices as gratitude, concentration, positivity, forgiveness can be looked upon as a practice too. A conscious act, a reminder that you are not going to put a rotting potato in your sack. Over time, it will become your habit, your second nature.

My focus today is not forgiving others but yourself. When others are out of mind and out of sight, you may eventually forgive them, or forget them, the pain caused by them may subside over a period of time. However, you cannot go away from you, you cannot run away from yourself, you are always in your mind, your acts cannot go unnoticed by you. Consciously or subconsciously, each time you err, you give yourself a potato.

It is human nature to expect a great deal from oneself, such expectations can prompt us to progress, to act, to be, to have, to do and so forth. It is much harder to align our own expectations we have from ourselves. Every time you fail to meet your own expectations, you hand yourself another potato.

A sense of lacking even when you seem to have everything, a feeling of negativity for no apparent reason, a kind of melancholy, an inability to sustain your blissful state are mere signs that you have been a little too hard on yourself, they are symptoms of your own unforgiving nature towards yourself.

The necessity of forgiving others reduces dramatically when you start to forgive yourself. For, the question of forgiveness arises when you believe that wrong has been done against you. If you do not believe what they did was wrong, or if you remain unaffected, there is nothing or no one to forgive. The more you learn to forgive your own actions, the more unaffected you remain at others' actions.

Sit down in peace and make a list of what all you would like to forgive yourself for. Your list should not only include your actions but also your non-achievements, you must also forgive yourself for what all wrong you have been through in life, for untoward incidents you experienced. Forgive yourself. Heal yourself. Allow it to happen. Sometimes honest choices and right intentions can lead you to difficult options and wrong outcomes. You did what you thought was right at the time, you did what made sense to you. Even if you did it with the knowledge it was not right, still you should forgive yourself, especially if you are serious about not repeating it. In fact, you will gain resolve and strength to avoid repetitions by forgiving yourself.

Mourning is the process by which we say goodbye to something that we wanted to hang on to. As hard as that is, it is this goodbye process that sets us free to move on. Mourn the loss of your innocence. Mourn the loss of your perfection. Mourn the loss of your own strength. Saying goodbye to all of this is what sets you free to enjoy the blessings of leaning on God for strength. Sit in those feelings of sadness. Don’t medicate them with addictions, acting out, fantasy, or more lies. Own your deeds, accept who you are and what you’ve done, then mourn the loss of that ideal self and then surrender.