11/10/2021
A man in a steel armor, riding a black horse stops at a narrow opening of a cave. He gets down and enters the cave. Suddenly a beam of light enters his heart; he falls on the ground as if struck by lightning. When the beam disappears the man struggles to get back on his feet. just then he finds himself surrounded by many men. He takes out his sword and gathers all his strength and comes down on his enemies as their worst nightmare. He kills each and every person that comes in his way. After a while he looks around and he sees bodies all around him. He has managed to save himself by killing everyone else. But he knows killing isn’t over yet.
Few years down the road, as he lies on the bank of a river, tiered of all the killing, thinking that may be some of his victims didn’t deserve to die. Just then an amazingly beautiful woman, or perhaps a goddess, rises from the water. He looks at her and for a moment gets lost in her beauty. She doesn’t seem to be aware of his presence but he can see her smile. It’s the most beautiful and innocent smile that he has seen in a long time. In fact, it is the only smile he has seen in a very long time. The inner peace and innocence of the woman brings a smile on his face. But he remains unaware of his smile. She looks at him, but unlike others she doesn’t get scared of him and tries to come near him. But he is not used to such gestures and gets suspicious. With lightning fast speed he reaches for his sword and stops only after taking her life. It then strikes to him that may be she didn’t mean harm and was just approaching him because he was smiling. In that moment he realized that what started as a self defense has turned into mindless killings of innocent people. As he stood there holding the lifeless body of the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, tears running down his face as if all his anger melted into pain and stared flowing from his eyes. But no, he is still angry. Not at others now, but with himself.
Suddenly someone’s palm touches the forehead and a sweet voice says, ‘ let all these images go from your consciousness and relax”. You are back in present now. The whole story was a dream, a past life or some weird creation of your imagination. Whatever it was, the bottom line is that you are extremely angry with yourself. The psychologist suggests you forgive your self. Even gives you affirmations to repeat for 21 days. Its basically repeatedly telling yourself that I forgive myself for killing those people till you start believing it.
My problem however is who am I to forgive myself? I did what seemed right to me, with the information and wisdom available to me, at that time. I feel guilty now, because with my new awareness I can see how unfair I was to those people. I had no right to take their lives. So, wouldn’t my forgiveness be incomplete if those people, whom I killed, don’t forgive me? How can I be at peace with myself when there might be people who still are not at peace with what had happened. If it really was a past life and I am carrying the anger since then, then its probable that my victims are also carrying some baggage because of me.
“So what do you want to do about it”, asks my therapist. I didn’t have an answer. “You could go back in the past life and make amends by seeking forgiveness” was her suggestion. I thought for a while and said “wouldn’t it be in my mind only, how would they know that I apologized?”. She laughed and said that I had a lot of resistance and require more time to heal.
I don’t disagree. But when I look at my life, I cant remember any person against whom I still carry anger. It’s not that people have not hurt or caused immense pain to me. Still, somehow I have always managed to forgive their actions and make peace with them. So why is it so hard to do with myself? Perhaps I think that there is no need for me to be still angry at them because just like me they will also not be able to forgive themselves and no one can hate you worst than yourself.
Writing the above lines makes me think that may be the reason why I am not angry with them is not that I have forgiven them but that they are already suffering. This makes me sound so sadistic. So does it mean that if I let go of my belief that ‘I can’t forgive myself or forgiving self is harder that forgiving others’ then all the people that hurt me will also get off the hook? They will not continue to suffer with self hatred?
Now I see, that my subconscious mind already knows that I am not angry because someone hurt me or I hurt them, but because I continue to hurt them in my mind with this belief. So I am not able to forgive myself because I take pleasure at the thought that the ones who hurt me are still getting hurt by themselves.
With this new insight I forgive everyone who has ever hurt me and I forgive myself for hurting others and as they say ITS OK IT HAPPEND.IT HAPPENED IN THE PAST.
I am grateful to all the people who ever hurt me as they helped me in learning important lessons of my life.
