Forgiveness Law # 18

...It is often the hardest thing we’ll ever do, and sometimes it is the only choice we have. Forgive with your whole heart…this Power does not come from your head.

Cynthia F. Davidson, excerpt from the Wisdom Wheel Forgiveness card

Are you ready to receive a little Forgiveness? Over the next ten days, offer some, and see what happens. Be courageous and take the first step.
Whatever has caused your heart to harden in the past, open up now, allow new growth and move on towards the light. 
Refusing to forgive keeps us locked into what cannot be changed about the past. 
Be generous to yourself when it comes to this Law. Forgiving others is only half of the story. If you can't forgive you, what example do you set for others?  

Bring up the subject of Forgiveness with family and friends this week. Ask them who they've been able to forgive and why it was hard. What made it possible? A change of heart? How long did it take? How did they feel afterwards? 

Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, arrives while you are studying this Law. Explore Jewish Forgiveness concepts, and those of other religious traditions too. 

Whose Forgiveness do you most need to receive? Ask for it during the next ten days. 

Sometimes our Forgiveness work is with those who have passed on. You can still offer Forgiveness, or request it, via your dreams. Everyone has some Forgiveness needs. 

Here's some advice from those who have experience with Forgiveness. 

By forgiveness the universe is held together. Forgiveness is the might of the mighty; forgiveness is quiet of mind. Forgiveness and gentleness are the qualities of the self-possessed, and represent eternal virtue.

Margo Kirtikar Ph.D. author of Flowing with Universal Laws

Four Stages of Forgiveness

1. To forgo - to leave it alone

2. To forbear - to abstain from punishing

3. To forget - to aver from memory, to refuse to dwell

4. To forgive - to abandon the debt

Clarissa Pinkola Estes from her book Women Who Run With the Wolves

On one level: forgiveness means you shouldn’t develop feelings of revenge. Because revenge harms the other person, therefore it is a form of violence. With violence, there is usually counter-violence. This generates even more violence—the problem never goes away. ...on another level: forgiveness means you should try not to develop feelings of anger toward your enemy. Anger doesn’t solve the problem. Anger only brings uncomfortable feelings to yourself. Anger destroys your own peace of mind. Your happy mood never comes, not while anger remains. I think that’s the main reason why we should forgive. With calm mind, more peaceful mind, more healthy body. An agitated mind spoils our health, very harmful for body. This is my feeling.

The Dalai Lama

Offending can lead to a real burst of understanding. You know more about how the other person sees you; you know something more about yourself.  And if that something is somewhat unpalatable, all the better. You have a chance then to transform what you are doing. Or drop it. There is vitality in that, and power in its most attractive forms.

Michael Leunig

If you don’t transform your pain, you will always transmit your pain.

Richard Rohr

Most of us can forgive and forget; we just don't want the other person to forget that we forgave.

Ivern Ball

When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free... Release is a form of forgiveness that we all need to practice often. Emotional release is one of the highest forms of love...   

Catherine Ponder

(also a cure for low self-esteem, low self worth and feelings of helplessness)

There is a hard law... that when a deep injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive.

Alan Paton

When you forgive, some deeper, divine generosity takes you over… When you cannot forgive, you are a prisoner of the hurt done to you.

John O’Donohue in Eternal Echoes

God may forgive your sins, but your nervous system won't.

Alfred Korzyybski

The old energy of ‘an eye for an eye’ keeps the vibrations of a person very low. To forgive, to release old anger, allows the law of grace to intercede... Non-violence is the natural outgrowth of the law of forgiveness and love. All good comes from forgiveness....the continuation of the human species is due to man’s being able to forgive.

Margo Kirtikar Ph.D, Flowing with Universal Laws

We must be quite clear that forgiveness is no easy matter. If the ego has been wronged, the ego cannot forgive just because it ‘should’ not withstanding all the wider context of love and destiny.  The ego is kept vital by its amour-proper, its pride and honor. Even where one wants to forgive, one finds one simply cannot, because forgiveness does not come from the ego. I cannot directly forgive. I can only ask, or pray, that these sins be forgiven. Wanting forgiveness to come and waiting for it may be all that one can do.  

James Hillman

Forgiveness deeply offends the rational mind…it declares ’I will attempt to go on loving the life in you, the divine in you or the soul in you, even when I totally abhor what you have done or what you stand for.  What’s more I will attempt to see you as my equal, and your life as having equal value to my own, even when I despise what you do and everything you stand for.’ 

Stephanie Dowrick, Forgiveness and Other Acts of Love

Forgiveness means acceptance of those who are unacceptable. It is unconditional or it is not forgiveness at all.

Paul Tillich, American theologian, in a famous sermon

To walk as round beings, on a round planet, cognizant of being interwoven in a circular web of connection with all beings, is to understand forgiveness.

From the vantage point of circular relating, forgiveness is simply returning energy: returning and receiving energy until any warp in the circle is healed, balance restored.

              Colin Berg, quoted in Parabola magazine, XII no. 3, www.parabola.org 

In ten days, we'll take up the Law of Clarity. Until then, enjoy Forgiveness in all its forms.

Journey Law # 17

...Your Journey has brought you to this place and these people, your fellow sojourners. Think of their Journeys as well as your own. Don’t miss the opportunities for learning and growth represented by this assembly of fellow souls. 

Cynthia F. Davidson, from Wisdom Wheel Law of the Journey card

(see www.thewisdomwheel.com to order cards, posters or stones)

Now comes the Journey Law, just as we reach the halfway point, on this 'tour' round the Wheel with its 36 Laws. 
What has your Journey meant to you so far? 

During the next ten days, consider the inner Journeys you've made, as well your outer ones, into the larger world. Emotional and spiritual Journeys are every bit as significant as intellectual and physical ones. 

Take the time to describe your life Journey (thus far). Write about in your journal. The word Journey comes from the French word jour for day. It refers to the distance traveled in a single day. Evaluate your Journey as a whole by deciding its value as you add up your years and how they've gone. 

What makes life worth living, in your opinion? How are you spending your precious allotment of days on this Earth? 

Have you chosen the 'safe route'? Or are you taking the road less traveled, as immortalized in Robert Frost's poem? 

Just be sure it's your Journey you are making, not someone else's idea of what's expected. Ask others to share what they've learned, at home and at work, about the Journey and their sense of it, so far. 

Where do you want to go next? By the time you are an Elder, where would you like to be? Destinations are important but not as much as our movements towards them. We don't know when our Journeys will end, but we can aim in a general Direction. Some say, if you take the road toward wholeness, your Journey will always be worth it.

Here's some advice from those who've thought about their Journeys. 

To journey without being changed is to be a nomad.

To change without journeying is to be a chameleon.

To journey and to be transformed by the journey is to be a pilgrim.

Mark Nepo in The Book of Awakening

Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.

Matsuo Basho

 A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it…

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

John Steinbeck, American author, books include The Grapes of Wrath

The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours - it is an amazing journey - and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins.

Bob Moawad, American author, Whatever It Takes: A Journey Into the Heart of Human Achievement

Come dress yourself in love and let the journey begin.

Francesca da Rimini

Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind.

Henri Frederic Amiel

It requires greater courage to preserve inner freedom, to move on in one's inward journey into new realms, than to stand defiantly for outer freedom. It is often easier to play the martyr, as it is to be rash in battle.

Rollo May

I had become, with the approach of night, once more aware of loneliness and time - those two companions without whom no journey can yield us anything.

Lawrence Durrell

Real adventure – self-determined, self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.

Mark Jenkins

Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.

Paul Theroux

He who does not travel knows not the value of men.

Moorish proverb

There are no foreign lands. It is only the traveler who is foreign.

Robert Louis Stevenson

There comes a time in the spiritual journey when you start making choices from a very different place.... And if a choice lines up so that it supports truth, health, happiness, wisdom and love, it’s the right choice.

Angeles Arrien

The spiritual journey does not consist in arriving at a new destination where a person gains what he did not have, or becomes what he is not. It consists in the dissipation of one’s own ignorance concerning one’s self and life, and the gradual growth of that understanding which begins the spiritual awakening. The finding of God is a coming to one’s self.

Aldous Huxley

After one arrives at the summit, after going through the total transformation of being, there is yet one more step to the completion of the journey; the return to the valley below, to the everyday world.  Who it is that returns is not the one who began the climb in the first place.  The being who comes back is quietness itself, is compassion and wisdom, is the truth of the ages.  Whatever humble or elevated position that being holds within the community, he or she becomes a light for others on the way, a statement of freedom that comes from having touched the tip of the mountain.

Ram Dass in the Journey of Awakening

In ten days we’ll move on to the 18th Law of Forgiveness. Until then, enjoy all your Journey has to offer.

Shadow Law # 16

...All the shame, guilt and repressed parts we hide, even from ourselves. These unconscious aspects will sabotage our best efforts in life unless we learn to accept them.

Cynthia F. Davidson, from the Wisdom Wheel Shadow card 

(see www.thewisdomwheel.com to order cards, posters or stones)

'Only the Shadow knows...' intoned the popular American radio program during the 1930s and '40's. What our Shadow sides 'know' is often more obvious to others, than ourselves, unless we do our psychological Shadow work. 

During your next ten days with this 16th Law, make notes or journal about the things that are difficult for you to own, or admit aloud to others. These include secrets, shameful or ugly thoughts, 'unhealthy' motives; everything you are able to see, and judge harshly about others, will be reflected in such a list. 

The Shadow also contains a lot of our Power (Law # 32). It often reveals itself in dreams and nightmares. Everything left out, which we refuse to integrate into our waking minds, tends to show up whenever we are alone, or gone to sleep. 

Reexamine your fears and phobias now. Look for evidence of how you respond to what is Unknown about yourself, and about life in general. Reconsider what is behind your decision-making and your Choices (Law #20).

The Law of the Shadow sits next to Trust (Law #10) on the Wisdom Wheel. Take a moment to reflect upon this. These two have a deep and abiding relationship throughout our lives. Whenever we give our Trust, we risk having it broken. It hurts so much when someone betrays the Trust we have put in them, or when we betray someone else's. More often than not, the Shadow side (of one or both of you) is responsible when Trust is not honored.    

Unless we examine our Shadow sides, we will hurt others, and be hurt by them, and fail to comprehend why. Before we can wisely place our Trust in others, we have to fully Trust ourselves. And we won’t know ourselves, well enough, unless we've probed our own Shadows. And we won't be prepared to handle the truth about the Shadow's workings in other people either.

This is not an easy Law to take on, so be kind to yourself during the next 10 days. As you explore the Shadow, and discuss it with others, be prepared for push back and denials. People are quite sensitive about this subject and there is a great tendency to project ones' Shadows upon Other(s). 

As the great psychologist, who popularized the Shadow, Carl Jung said, 'Would you rather be whole or be good?'   

Here's some wisdom from others about the Law of the Shadow.

The shadow is simply the whole unconscious… The individual who wishes to have an answer to the problem of evil has need, first and foremost, of self-knowledge, that is, the utmost knowledge of his own wholeness. He must know relentlessly how much good he can do, and what crimes he is capable of, and must beware of regarding the one as real and the other as illusion.  Both are elements within his nature, and both are bound to come to light in him, should he wish – as he ought to – to live without self-deception or self-delusion.

Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist, discovered most people deal with the challenges of the Shadow in four ways: denial, projection, integration and/or transmutation.    

The person we choose to be automatically creates a dark double--the person we choose not to be.

Thomas Moore in Owning Your Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche by Robert A. Johnson

A good way of learning to detect one’s shadow is to notice what qualities in others make us angry or irritated.

Irene Clarmont de Castillejo author of Knowing Woman

…each person must take responsibility for the dark side of humankind…

Lauren Artress in Walking a Sacred Path

The shadow consists of the unexplored, feared and unwanted aspects of our personalities – whatever doesn’t fit into the ego ideal of the good self.

Christina Baldwin American author, books include Calling the Circle

Whereas the ego weaves together the worlds, the shadow unravels the world. Whereas the ego acts as a catalyst of creation in the world, the shadow acts as a catalyst of destruction. Whereas the ego supports the status quo, the shadow is an agent of transformation.

Connie Zweig & Steve Wolf, psychologists and authors of Romancing the Shadow

                                             Between the idea

And the reality

Between the emotion

And the act

Falls the Shadow.

T. S. Eliot, English poet, works include The Hollow Men

What has no shadow has no strength in life.

Czeslaw Milosz, Nobel prize-winning poet

If any help was going to arrive, to lift me out of my misery, it would come from the dark side of my personality.  

Robert Bly, who calls the Shadow, 'that long bag we drag behind us,' heavy with the parts of ourselves our parents or community didn’t approve of.

The Shadow, of course never dies; we always cast a shadow. But how we relate to it, and it to us, depends on whether it is known. Once known, we have inevitably lost an innocence that can never be recovered. What replaces it is knowledge about the complexity of our nature. Sometimes we are fortunate, and this knowledge elicits a kindness and tolerance in us for others — even, perhaps for ourselves.

Deena Metzger, American author, books include Looking for the Faces of God and Writing For Your Life

To honor and accept one's own shadow is a profound spiritual discipline.

Robert A. Johnson in Owning Your Own Shadow

Furthermore, it is important to point out that every Divine Quality has its shadow side. It is precisely because of our fear of falling into the shadow that we have difficulty developing a particular quality. The shadow side of mastery, for instance, would be ruthlessness or selfish manipulation.

Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan in Awakening: A Sufi Experience

…No matter how fast you run, your shadow

keeps up. Sometimes it's in front!

Only full overhead sun diminishes your shadow.

But that shadow has been serving you.

What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is

your candle. Your boundaries are your quest.

I could explain this, but it will break the

glass cover on your heart, and there's no

fixing that.

You must have shadow and light source both.

Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe.

When from that tree feathers and wings sprout on you,

be quieter than a dove. Don't even open your mouth to coo.

Mevlana Rumi (1207 – 1273)

To battle a demon is to embrace it, to face it with clarity of vision and humility of the heart. To run from a demon is as effective as running from a rabid dog, for surely this only beckons the chase. Whatever we resist — persists. These demons, these parts of us that haunt us, torture us and reduce us, are the agents of change.... Without our demons we would grow spiritually flabby.

Stephanie Ericsson in Companion Through the Darkness

 Ten days from now, we'll take up the 17th Law of the Journey. Until then, have some fun getting to know your demons.