Why ‘forgive and forget’ really needs an update
A dear friend of mine recently shared a hurtful story about one of her buddy’s. While I was sympathetic, I made it clear that I didn’t want to hear the full details of the latest explosion between them both.
You see, the same theme had occurred between them several times over the last few years, and I no longer had the bandwidth to listen to the latest installment.
Sound harsh? Nah. She’s a good enough friend for me to be able to speak honestly, and given that I had devoted HOURS of my life offering my sympathetic ear and heart felt advice, I’d reached the point where:
a. I didn’t want to hear the same themed story again
b. Their friendship had reached a point of no return
c. Rehashing it was only causing her more unnecessary pain
And this friend is very dear to me. In many ways we’re total opposites as she’s a devout Christian living in Dublin and I’m a free spirited yogi living in Sydney.
On paper, we couldn’t be more opposite. She likes to run where I prefer to walk. She’d prefer to box or play squash where you’d find me practicing yoga or meditating.
We went travelling to Bali a few years ago and she proudly told our new friends that I taught ‘cannelloni yoga’ and I simply didn’t have the heart to correct her and tell her it’s actually ‘kundalini’ yoga.
After years of mispronouncing concepts such as ‘reiki’ and the ‘chakras’, ‘cannelloni yoga’ was close enough for me and I was proud as punch.
When this driven Aries and dreamy Pisces get together, it just works between us. In spite of how different our connection to our spirituality is, what connects us both is our respect and deep reverence for one another.
FORGIVE THE SOUL OF THE PERSON
So when we talked about her recent fall out, one of the concepts that came up was the importance of ‘forgiving and forgetting’. “After all,” said my friend, “I’m Catholic, and so this whole thing about turning the other cheek and forgiving and forgetting is really important to me.”
And I get it. I really do.
In the same week, an article from Danielle La Porte popped up on my newsfeed. She was relaying the emotional upheaval that she felt soon after her divorce, and one of the concepts that came up and triggered her, was when her healer told her that it was time to forgive her husband.
The next 3 paragraphs are an excerpt from her article:
“I’m sorry,” I broke the silence. “But I just can’t do it.” Long pause. “I can’t forgive if it means letting him back into my heart. I’ve come too far.” Silence. What I was thinking was, I know you think I’m a loser, but I really have no choice. Thank you for working with me; you can break up with me now.
I wanted to be spiritually respectable, but I just couldn’t care about “evolving” anymore. For once, I was only exactly where I was. No aspiration, all acceptance. My knowing was coursing through my body; it felt impossibly wrong to abandon it. So there I stood, with my inconvenient Truth. I don’t think I’ve ever been as human as I was in that moment.
And then Lady Light burst out laughing her oh, honey-child kind of laugh. “Oh, God no! You do not have to give him the time of day. Ever again. Noooo. Just forgive his SOUL!” She laughed some more. “It’s actually the hardest work to do — because that’s what’s real.”
DON’T FORGET. INSTEAD REMEMBER HOW YOU WANT TO FEEL
Forgive and forget should get updated to forgive and remember how you want to FEEL.
I see this often in my practice with my clients, many who have been emotionally and spiritually jolted by the pain of hurt, betrayal, disconnection or disempowerment.
It’s a natural human reaction to never want to feel THAT way again.
I mean none of us work hard all day counting down the hours til we get home so that we can start the process of pain and suffering, do we?
By nature, we humans move towards pleasure and away from pain, this is why we can get addicted to short term pleasure highs such as alcohol, food addictions or drugs.
Part of our ability to process our emotions, is to reflect on past incidents and contemplate our own actions, but when we constantly plug into the memory of how badly we felt, we are prepping our neurotransmitters to experience similar levels of pain and discomfort.
There comes a time when our soul yearns for love and our cellular memory is ready to be programmed to receive it — this is what we do in my 8 session SOUL ALIGNMENT program!
DON’T FORGET. IF YOU DO CONNECT, RECONNECT IN A DIFFERENT WAY
I was once close to some University friends who I travelled with when I was in my 20’s. Between the 3 of us, there was always some drama with at least 2 of us at one given time.
I no longer wanted a connection based on the sort of dynamic where there periods where you would be speaking to them versus times when you wouldn’t, so I decided to break away from our group altogether.
When I recently bumped into one of them, we exchanged pleasantries and had a lovely chat and a quick catch up for about ten minutes. It involved sincere hugs, endless showings of new family members from our IPhone pics and deep belly laughs.
We were both pleasantly surprised at how pleased we were to see each other and at how easily conversation flowed between us.
Towards the end, she said something like “this was so nice, lets catch up again and invite so-and-so as well!”
My heart immediately sank.
Hindsight has taught me to honour this knee jerk reaction instead of judging myself for feeling like this in the first place, so I paused, took a few breaths and politely declined, straight from the heart.
I didn’t want to succumb to this false sense of duty that would have taken over me in previous years. I wanted to listen to my soul who was begging me not to relent to this feeling of obligation that was stemming from my head.
Besides, this way I have something to look forward to if our paths ever collide in another 10 years..
Til next time, I’m sending you so much love,
Patty Kikos
