*sigh* where does one begin when you feel you’ve hit that “steal wall”…I woke up with an intensely heavy heart. My partner and I have been going through a lot of things, mistrust, silly fights mood changes ndibala ntoni na. With breaks after breaks and to be honest I don’t know if we are coming or going I wish I knew or it was that easy to ascertain.
Well he says I’m bullying him want things my way and its all about me kinda crap and I say he has 2nd rated me he used to want to spend every day with me, now I get to ask if he is coming over or if he needs to be picked up (he does not like to drive) and I would get maybe’s or I will confirm later as answers…I mean what answer is that?I would go ballistic at such!…Anywho we kinda not on the same page and I opted to be pro-active in this case by revisiting the notes I made on forgiveness I hope you can relate…
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What is forgiveness?:
Giving yourself forgiveness is a powerful activity and is often an emotion we forget about when we are processing our life’s issues. It is an energy of attraction that brings about change in your life and creates opportunities to become more of you really are. Forgiveness is a state between the new and past that changes your expectations, imagination allowing you to move forward. When genuine experiences of forgiveness occur, the connection to the pains and nagging memories is cut and the behaviours (or and thoughts) fall away.
The capacity to forgive others can only be considered when SELF-FORGIVENESS is completed. The divine is the power of love in some form and forgiveness is always there, so it is the lack of self forgiveness that stops this love from being fully experienced.
When you are going through forgiveness thoughts you need to be VERY CLEAR about what you are forgiving in yourself and(or) in another person. You may not forgive yourself or person for what you did but with understanding you can see why you did what you did. Forgiveness can be used as a tool to process our emotional and mental lifes experiences, when in that process you need to understand fully where you come from so that you can start by forgiving the WHY’s of an issue and then the next step will be the HOW you allowed this to impact you (your-life). As a start you can forgive yourself for not seeing or understanding things sooner.
So I spent the most part of my day trying to get my head around this forgiveness business and I thought to myself I might have pushed him away for being too straight forward for planning things ahead without consulting him. For planning activities around his “schedule”…as if asitshintshi…
Taking blame is not easy and it does not mean you are a weakling or you are making excuses for you heart to, it simply means you are dumb enough to see the bigger picture, the sooner you shed off the better for you and the other person. Because lack of forgiveness keeps certain states “in play” in your mind and these acts as prisons which don’t allow you to grow and heal. Lack of self forgiveness keeps the various pains and wounds in place which depletes your personal power and keeps you from finding fulfilment of your life’s dreams. It keeps the rage, failure thoughts, loss of your power and the shame in place so that you feel wronged and never feel deserving or good enough.
It keeps the judgement you have made about yourself and others in place so that you can never reach your potential. It maintains humuliation, betreyal and rejection so that you can never release your fears and anxieties. It keeps you in a state of sorrow never feeling a true sense of remorse also keeping the self protective feeling of narcissism in place so you can never find the love you seek. Without self forgiveness you stay disempowered (if there is such a word) in your life, that your dreams and visions only remain just that, and I wasn’t about to let that happen to me, right? RIGHT! And so should you 
What is this Self-Forgiveness thingy?
Well self forgiveness is the ability to “let go” of a negative emotional state such as blame, revenge, hurt, anger, resentment, bitterness, humuliation, betrayal, rejection, jealousy, envy (the bad kind), punishment, shame, guilt so that the state no longer influences your life…and here are self forgiveness stages:
1. DENIAL – The state when we don’t even know that we have to forgive or haven’t moved to a fuller understanding of the issue. I know I have to forgive myself for imposing too much to the ”poor” Shangaan “boy”
2. BLAME – when we begin to understand and project all the blame onto another person or to our selves.
3. PITY – where we begin to understand what has happened to us and we have GENUINE feelings about the experience and move to understand the sorrow that sits under RE:PAIN
4. INDIGNATION – often this is the righteous anger that arises when we experience the GENUINE sorrow that sits under the pain. Many will stop here and cycle back to the BLAME and PITY stages.
5. CONSCIOUSNESS – this is the step towards accepting that we allowed or created some aspect of this, whether it was not taking action earlier (or in the case of something from child hood). This is the empowerment stage and leads us to the point of forgiveness. This is me saying I consumed the boy with too much of me, I didn’t stop but pushed on and on to stages of him having to come up with stories to because he felt he was losing himself, everything (if not most things) were about what I planned/need/wanted. *hides*
6. FREEDOM – To act and bring about the change in our life that the act of forgiveness brings.
7. INTERGRATION – The final stage of understanding which allows the situation to be seen as a whole as part the past which is no longer in the present aspect of self.
Resistance and Reluctance, there are many reasons we give to ourselves as to why we don’t want to forgive all of which are barriers that keep us locked in steps 1-4 of the forgiveness process…
• Our belief that forgiveness is not possible or is complicated to do
• Our belief that it has to be done for us not by us.
• Our belief about Love and Compassion
• A lack of depth and understanding of our pain, where we are not conscious of the root causes of our pain so we don’t know where to start.
• A lack of understanding in how to respond to being hurt or wronged and to the feeling of being hurt and wronged.
• A lack of willingness to Love, Care and to believe we can have a positive future.
• Seeing forgiveness as weak, arrogant shallow and only for losers.
• Wanting to inflict pain, revenge, punishment on self and others as payment.
• Fear of opening a Pandaras box and experiencing what might lie underneath…More pain to endure maybe
• Fear that you might be required to be perfect and never make any mistakes again.
• Fear that you are not good enough for the Love, Intimacy and Caring that you seek to find and fearing being hurt in the future.
• Afraid that if the pain and negative emotions are gone then what is your identity, who will you be, what will be the motivations for your life?
A. The Process of Forgiveness:
Think about what needs to be forgiven and be clear about what you want to forgive. This is where you need to examine an issue and take responsibility for causing (or allowing) the situation to be. This is not about you taking responsibility for what happened to you. You need to be very specific in answering the following questions to process you reason(s) for forgiveness…
• WHO – is it another person or a part of yourself the you need to forgive.
• WHAT – what do you specifically want to forgive? Something that you did to another, that you did to yourself, that you allowed to continue, that you did not understand continued to allow or support that you have avoided addressing?
• WHERE – rather than absolute of space, this is about emotional space. Where I failed to protect myself, I failed to do what was right, I believed my negative ego, I listened to others, I blamed others or I didn’t examine all the facts.
• WHEN – rather an absolute in time, this is about the emotional response. When I felt threatened in order to stay safe as a child maybe usemncinci or when I felt humiliated ebudaleni.
• HOW – how did you allow this to take you power…
• WHY – what was the “prison” you wanted to maintain.
B. Feel the feeling you have about what you have written. How do you feel about this for example are any of the statements giving you the feeling of guilt or not good enough? If so, go back and re-examine your statement for their GENUINENESS.
C. What is the lesson to be learned from processing this situation. Are there times when I give my power away, what are the real sorrows or anger in this situation ?
D. Do flowers of forgiveness visualisation (which I never grasp…its something about getting flowers that represent the colours of the rainbow tossing them I’m the sky for some light yada-yada…to white for me ) so I opt to write a letter stating my side of the story of all the thing that I think I did wrong and all the things I expected from him (or them) and that I think wronged me. Upon completion I burned the letter, as the smoke went up I started to re-iterate what I have written on the letter. And I felt eased as the forgiveness turned to love and Peace.
E. Make a list of actions that you can now give up…like what i don’t have to do is… (Be afraid, pretend, act like a child, pretend to know it all, be defensive, be anxious)…then the answer to “What can I become”… (Confident, empowered, trusting, not afraid of the world, Self loving open to my parents)
F. How do I feel now? Check with all the inner selves if you have a sense of that all is not well, go back to STEP 2 and re-process looking for the RE:depth of understanding. If you then believe that all is now in harmony continue to step G.
G. Implementation, what is the strategy for holding the new thinking and doing patterns? What are you going to do differently. Examples…new beliefs, starting new activities that will build as your strength, write a story, move on to another level of healing around this issue.
H. Self forgiveness is an incredible process that brings new level of freedom to your life that so many seek and never seem to find. It is the final step to bring closure to these many issues that seem to remain long after you believe you have dealt with them. In self forgiveness you find peace.
Most people see forgiveness as a sign of being weak especially guys, but its not its actually taking your power back and giving the others person(s) theirs back too.
After I went through this I had the guts to text him and ask for us to chat (when he comes to pick-up his things from my house… in his time ofcourse), not asking for him back or anything but to try and part kahle nje without feelings of resentment so that we can invite each other to parties and baby showers etc…hehehe .
Notes were written under the supervision of Lollita and Claudine Schaerer from Spiritual Teacher, Life Guide and Healer.
By Zeeba (c)
@Zolaniwasebhayi