Forgiveness

As the Jewish New Year approaches—a time for self-reflection, forgiveness and making amends—I wanted to share with you a poem/prayer by Meredith Cahn that I received in my email today. It touched my heart and I would take it one step further: "Let me not bear guilt on my own account." Let there be no guilt, only atonement/at-one-ment!

Its arrival is most timely, as I have been thinking about some worksheets I have somehow escaped dealing with (nine of them at last count!!!)...so that I may begin again with a clean slate and a light heart.

Whatever your spiritual beliefs or lack thereof...may all be inscribed in the Book of Life for a joyous new year/new you!

For more about these holidays in light of self-inquiry, please see my series of articles "Days of Awe" posted here at the Soul Surgery blog in 2007, beginning with this one.

Love,
Carol

Ribono shel Olam,

I stand before You

and before my community

Pardoning,

Forgiving.

Seeking at least to be open and forgiving

To all those who have hurt or angered me,

Be this hurt of body or soul,

Of honor or property,

Whether the other was forced to hurt me

Or did so willingly;

Whether it was by accident or intent;

Whether I was hurt by word or by deed;

Whether this wound is a new one

Or one that still festers from some earlier world of mine--

I forgive because we are both human.

May no person bear guilt on my account.

—Meredith Cahn

Forgive My Innocence

Today, which was a melancholy day for me, I feel moved to share this poem by the New England writer and Pulitzer prize-winning poet, Robert P. Tristram Coffin. Coffin, who died in 1955, published dozens of books of poetry and prose in his lifetime and was widely anthologized. Though now his work is largely forgotten, I never forgot these powerful words of confession and amends, which I first encountered at age 12; they never fail to bring tears to my eyes.

Whenever I feel irredeemable, I think of Coffin's poem and I just know that anyone who regrets their actions as deeply and sincerely as he did is instantly forgiven in the moment of asking. As he shares his heart, I see not his sin, not his guilt, but his innocence.

Recognizing this in myself is another matter; I'm working on it.



"Forgive My Guilt"
by Robert P. Tristram Coffin

Not always sure what things called sins may be,
I am sure of one sin I have done,
It was years ago, and I was a boy,
I lay in the frostflowers with a gun,
The air ran blue as the flowers, I held my breath,
Two birds on golden legs slim as dream things
Ran like quicksilver on the golden sand,
My gun went off, they ran with broken wings
Into the sea, I ran to fetch them in,
But they swam with their heads high out to sea,
They cried like two sorrowful high flutes,
With jagged ivory bones where wings should be.

For days I heard them when I walked that headland
Crying out to their kind in the blue,
The other plovers were going over south
On silver wings leaving these broken two.
The cries went out one day; but I still hear them
Over all the sounds of sorrow in war or peace
I ever heard, time cannot drown them,
Those slender flutes of sorrow never cease.
Two airy things forever denied the air!
I never knew how their lives at last were spilt,
But I have hoped for years all that is wild,
Airy, and beautiful will forgive my guilt.

Amends After Death

Adapted from Transformational Inquiry: Working on Mothers and Others

(Today I am reminded of my mother, Pearl Skolnick, who passed away ten years ago on April 14, 1998. This post is dedicated to her with love.)

How can you heal a relationship after someone has died? While attending The School for The Work for the second time, I found myself working on my mother issues for most of the week. I was more than a little frustrated; some people I knew were cleaning up their relationships with their mothers, sharing their turnarounds with them, asking their mothers to tell them their truth, and really listening to them without defense. I realized how one-sided my work was; since my mother had died several years before, there was no way for me to do the equivalent. Or was there?

If everyone is our projection, they continue to live where they always lived: between our ears, in our minds and memories. Therefore, it is perfectly appropriate and possible do do The Work on thoughts about someone who has passed away. It is even possible to make amends to that person after their death. Amends are, after all, for us; forgiveness most benefits the one doing the forgiving. It's never comfortable to resent another; in making amends we are letting ourselves off the hatred hook.

Here's an exercise based on one from The School for The Work: once you've done some work on someone who has died--in other words, once you can do this with sincerity--try writing a letter of amends to them, in which you own your part in any misunderstanding between you.

In this letter--which, naturally, you're not going to be able to send--you
can enumerate the things you are sorry for (if you are truly sorry), the things you admired about this person, what you learned from him or her, and what you are grateful to them for. Sign off with love, if that feels genuine.

Once you have written the letter, cross out the person's name and the word "you" and insert your name and "I." Notice how much of your letter remarkably still
applies in this turnaround exercise. Gently take in what you have written and heal your relationship with yourself.

Eight years after my mother's death, I wrote a letter of amends to her
while attending a weekend workshop with Byron Katie. I had done this exercise several times before, but this was the letter I felt most deeply, the one that changed my life, past and present, and gave me back my mother.

Dear Mommy,

Looking back on our relationship, I wish I had been more understanding of you; kinder and more patient. I know you were doing the best you could and I was selfish to expect you to be different.

I am so sorry I tried to force you into parting with your belongings when you were sick and defenseless...to have yelled at you and disrespected you in public. I am sorry for having been so ashamed of you, and I am most sorry for that hesitation I had when the doctor asked if I wanted to put you on life support. I blamed you for not telling me beforehand what you wanted. I realize now that you were not able to discuss these things with me.

Throughout my life, I blamed you for my unhappiness. If you were here today I would make it up to you in whatever way you wanted. Since you are not here now, how can I live my life in a way that honors you for who you truly were?

I see now that you were a courageous woman to raise a child when you were grappling with so many demons. You saw to it that I had what I needed. You let me know I was smart and capable and able to take care of myself...and you gave me that opportunity at an early age. It's a gift that I could not appreciate until now.

Thank you for giving me a life, a home and a strong foundation. You continue to support me even now.

I love you very much, Mommy. You acted as if you didn't like to hear that, and it must be said: I love you.

Your Sputnik


As you might imagine, turning this letter around as if written by me, to me, was most powerful.


©2008 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.

Repairing the Irreparable

My late mother always said that I should have moved heaven and earth to save my relationship with my longtime best friend. I thought that was incredibly insensitive and unsupportive of her, given all that I'd been through. No one who knew and loved me would ever say such a thing, I believed.

Of course, it turns out she was right. (Don't you hate it when your parents are right about you?)

Annie Newman, nee Ann Rachel Berrol, now tells me her father told her the same thing...and that she took his advice in much the same way. Until recently.

What had happened between Annie and me was, in my mind, the most shameful, unforgivable, irreparable thing ever, and everyone we knew, knew it. If ever I stopped believing this, either by blaming myself or getting spiritual, someone (usually a mutual high school friend, or a member of my well-meaning if overprotective therapy group) would set me straight, and I'd fear and resent Annie all over again.

I'll spare you—well, really, I'm sparing myself—the details, but suffice it to say that I had PTSD for years. The end of our friendship was like a nasty, contentious, litigious divorce; I tore up pictures of Annie, badmouthed her to everyone who knew us as well as to those who didn't, felt nauseated at the thought of our final encounter, frightened by the sight of her (and she by me; we glimpsed each other from a distance once during a High Holy Days service. I pretended I hadn't seen her, and Annie never came back with her brother to that synagogue), then all but forgot about her for years, I think because it was too hard for me to continue hating her (I've been known to be very angry and resentful, but it's an unnatural act for me to actually hate anyone), so I put her out of my mind entirely until someone mentioned her. ("You're not still speaking to Ann, are you?" "God, no. You know what happened between us. Why would I ever have anything to do with her again?")

Annie tells me she never forgot about me. I find that incredible, but she has provided proof, one and a half decades of it. Pictures of me and stories I'd published, found with Google searches. Memories of our friendship that I'd tried to forget. She's a lot braver than I am, not to have dismissed me altogether as I tried so hard to dismiss her.

Truth be told, I never forgot her either. Though I ripped up many photographs and damned her to hell in my mind for years, I secretly kept all the lovely things she ever wrote about or for me—poems, song parodies, fantasy plays about our lives in high school, some letters. I didn't look at them, but I didn't throw them out.

Annie—then called Ann—was one of my three best friends in high school. We remained close through our early 30s, seeing each other through all the major lifequakes: first hirings and firings, first lovers and lost loves, college, studies abroad, my graduate degree, her marriage, my father's death, the birth of her only daughter, our respective and seemingly endless therapies, my years as a pseudo-yogini on an exotic spiritual journey, the gradual decay of her marriage, our mutual and largely unsuccessful efforts to lose weight, get in shape, and stave off deep depression, our various betrayals of each other, and our grateful, tearful reunions.

I can't convey to you how deep was this loss of my friend. No one ever "got" me the way she did. I never had to explain myself to Ann; she knew. In the early days of our friendship, we were so relieved to find a fellow alien, and quickly we retreated to our own planet, a veritable Berrol-and-Skolnickland of humorous obtuseness. We had this way of talking in code, in bursts of song from Broadway musicals, or quoting things that we—and only we—found hilarious. We signed out letters to each other, "YBFITWWW." (Your Best Friend in the Whole Wide World. Sappy but true.)

No one who knows our history would believe this was possible, but after about 15 years, we are friends again. This, Meesees Onna, I believe to be entirely your fault. (That's one of those "hilarious only to Carol and Annie" jokes, paraphrased from The King and I. My pal is probably spewing her Starbucks upon reading this, and you, most likely, are not.)

How did it happen? Well, Annie's not the only one who Googles me. I look myself up every now and again to see who is quoting from, "borrowing," or critiquing my articles, and to check on my website rankings.

A few months ago, I saw a Google entry that said, "For Carol L. Skolnick, Wherever You Are." Source: annienewman.typepad.com.

Deep breath. Click.

There it was; Annie's blog. With a jokey but wistful King and I reference that no one would get but me. Someone posted a comment pretending to be me, saying "I don't get it," and Annie responded, "If you really were Carol, you would."

I got more than the reference.

Was this a shout-out? What did I want to do about it? I had attempted no more than one Worksheet on Annie over the years, and quickly abandoned it because it was too uncomfortable; I wasn't ready to face my part in our rift. However, worksheets are a microcosm of mind. Cross out "Annie" and insert Mother, Father, God, Boyfriend, Body, Hitler, Former Employer, Noisy Upstairs Neighbor...not much difference, same old stories. They all betrayed me, didn't love me, wished me harm, ruined my life, deserved to be punished, disturbed my peace, needed to change, cooperate, grovel and enslave themselves to me in order for me to be happy...that was my former religion and I had already converted to TrueDayOh-ThisIAmIt-y. I may continue to "act as if" sometimes, but I'm a jerk with awareness; I haven't really believed my thoughts for several years. You work with the heavy-duty, universal ones, and the others gradually collapse like a house of cards.

Did I need anything from Annie? I checked in. Nope. There was nothing I wanted or needed from her anymore. If anything, I wanted to be able to apologize for my part in what happened between us (I haven't done The Work for all these years for nothing). That left me free to say hello, and it left me okay if in fact she wanted nothing further to do with me.

In her response, unasked for, Annie gave me everything I no longer needed from her, everything I thought I wanted from her all those years ago.

And so, as if no time had passed, last week I walked off my much-delayed plane from Amsterdam into the loving embrace of someone who had waited hours—and years—for me. What a beautiful sight. Within minutes, it was as if no time had passed at all. True, we're a bit grayer, a lot rounder, quite a bit smarter and I hope a tad less self-involved than we were in our teens, twenties and thirties. But we've stll got our legs. (That's another one of those jokes, don't even try to get it.) And I look forward to our sharing sushi together when we're on the same coast (she tells me it's all my fault she's addicted to the stuff), and sharing laughter and tears on the telephone when we're not. I look forward to seeing her daughter Tracy, who in my mind is still a toddler even though she's 17. I love that she has, once again, an Aunt Carol. I very much look forward to Annie and me being able to disagree with each other, even vehemently, and this not becoming the end of the world. (In the past, we were too sensitive to deal with much disagreement; one or the other of us would shut down and isolate until it blew over, until we hit the one that never blew over.)

I am willing and I look forward to the world telling me I am completely insane. They could be right. It doesn't matter. What matters to me is that in healing this old wound, I have more of myself back, plus a bonus.

Thank you for your courage, Annie. I love you.


©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.

More about The Secret, Post-Oprah...and The Work of Byron Katie

Yesterday's Oprah show, "Discovering The Secret," featured Rhonda Byrne, creator of The Secret DVD, with a panel of personalities from the film. If you've been reading this blog you know I'm no fan of The Secret. However, I respect Oprah and with so many people excited about this film, I wanted to see how she would position it on her show.

Oprah's producers are brilliant; they know that, after all these years of offering good, solid information, their audience won't buy half-baked spiritual junk. So I wasn't that surprised to see how beautifully The Secret was presented on the February 8th show. In fact, this Oprah segment was a lot more substantial than The Secret film itself. With the exception of Byrne and Jack "Chicken Soup for the Soul" Canfield, who both spouted the usual Law of Attraction platitudes, the panelists came off as deeply aware and grounded. They filled in some of the blanks I felt were missing in The Secret DVD around gratitude, opening the mind and present-moment awareness.

Still, "Workie" that I am, I can't help but compare Byron Katie's approach to abundance and happiness to that of The Secret.

From the Oprah website: "Gratitude is one example of the magnetic force of the universe. 'Basically, nothing new can come into your life unless you open yourself up to being grateful [for what you already have],' Michael [Beckwith] says."

Beautifully put...and we already know this. Won't someone please tell us how to tap into gratitude?

Byron Katie says that as a result of inquiry, what you are left with is gratitude. She doesn't say "Be grateful or you won't get what you want." Being gratitude is not an automatic function of the opinionated, unexamined mind. If we are told, "Be grateful" and we find we are not, why aren't we? It's because we have not questioned the stressful beliefs that keep us from recognizing the bounty which is already and always freely given.

From the Oprah website: "Lisa [Nichols] says...too many people who want to make things better focus on what's wrong with the present. 'Instead of wanting to change it, appreciate what's there,' Lisa says. 'Find the things about it that work...and by doing that, you create a space for it to get better.'"

So how do we find out what there is to love about what's there? Again, if it were automatically obvious, wouldn't we just do it?

"For example, Lisa says she would like to lose some weight. But instead of focusing on the negative—that she hasn't dropped the pounds yet—she loves and appreciates the present moment. "I accept it. I love it. I embrace every inch, every pound," she says. In this way, Lisa is creating the space to 'celebrate the now' and then invite better things into her life."

Again, we are not told how to "celebrate the now," only that it's a "positive" experience when we do. Duh. This is why I say of Katie's Work, it's "The Tao. The Now. And finally, the How."

Byron Katie says of "loving what is": "Just when you think it can't possibly get better, it does. It's a law." And she doesn't leave us hanging with that. The way to love what is, is to first realize what is not. As long as we think "I haven't dropped the pounds" is a "negative," we are not truly celebrating the pounds...or the $100 as opposed to $1,000,000...or the spouse we have (or lack thereof) versus the spouse we think we should have.

From the Oprah website: "True forgiveness, James [Ray] says, is when you can say the following to the person who hurt you: 'Thank you for giving me that experience.'"

Byron Katie says, "Forgiveness is when you realize that what you thought happened, didn't." How can we know it did not happen? Through questioning thoughts like, "She hurt me." Is it true? Are we wounded, damaged, destroyed, the worse for wear? "Nobody can hurt me," Katie is famous for saying, "That's my job. I do that."

From the Oprah site: "But how can you forgive when something truly tragic or terrible happens? James [Ray] says you should grieve, but eventually you need to look for a hidden gift. 'Here's what I encourage people to ask themselves: How does this serve me?...If you're really willing to dig, there's a lesson in there,' James says. "And secondly, what can I learn from this situation?'"

Katie says, "Nothing terrible has ever happened," and "The worst that could happen is the best that could happen, but only always." Very reassuring; however, she doesn't expect us to believe this simply because she says so. That is how The Work's four questions and turnaround were born, to give people a way to replicate the "enlightenment" experience for ourselves. And even then, we don't stop with questioning our beliefs and turning them around; we delve deeply: how. specifically, is the worst that could happen actually for our highest good? Without the education of self-inquiry that The Work's four questions provide, we are merely jumping to the turnarounds, which can leave us feeling disconnected. If enlightenment could be experienced through a New Age version of Pollyanna's "glad game," we'd all be self-realized by now.

From Oprah: "In chronic situations with no end in sight, Michael says you should ask yourself another important question: 'If this were to last forever, what quality would I have to grow to have peace of mind? Now, as my attention goes to the quality I have to grow, that quality starts to emerge,' Michael says. 'The issue that I'm resisting and fighting against becomes less and less intense...it begins to dissolve because it doesn't have your attention any longer.'"

Sounds awfully complicated to me.

From Katie: "Who would you be without this thought?" That is a way into what Michael Beckwith hints at. Here's another hint: you don't have to "grow" any qualities. If you can answer Question Four of The Work, those qualities are already yours. The issue may continue to have your attention but you no longer give it any credence. That's when the issue dissolves. Resistance is born of (stressful) belief.

From the Oprah website:"'I'm the first example of how the world is supposed to love me and I have to give them the best example ever,' [Lisa Nichols] says. 'We expect someone to show us our greatness when [instead] I'm supposed to show up understanding my greatness and allowing you to celebrate it with me.'"

Katie says, "Your turnarounds are your prescription for happiness." How will you show up knowing who you are? By questioning what you are not. That leaves the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Willing ourselves to have great self-esteem has never worked.

From the Oprah site: "You can start living the The Secret today by following three simple steps: Ask. Believe. Receive."

Katie asks: "Do you believe everything you think?" If you do, then you believe you are a manifester, more powerful than God. Then if you get what you want, you say "I did it." If you don't get what you want, then "I" did it wrong.

From James Ray on the Oprah site: "'It's not, 'If you build it, they will come,' necessarily. It's, 'If you build it and it provides value, they will come,'...'It's that heart space. Not 'What can I get?' but 'What can I give and how can I serve?' And when you're in that moment, the universe lines up behind you and it's at your command.'"

Katie: "On my knees is my favorite position." Maybe that's the same thing in essence...without the marketing-tinged angle of "adding value." For me it feels more natural and true when I'm the grateful servant rather than to arrogantly dictate to reality that I'm the one in charge. A sense of entitlement implies there is a lack; is that true? Service with motive to gain is not service at all. Serving others as the service to oneself contains everything. I don't expect the universe to line up behind me. Can I line up behind the universe, God, what is? Can I do what I am asking the universe to do? Alignment is not a getting or a doing, it's a being. It is grace. Can I stop wanting, wanting, wanting for a moment and just notice that alignment is here?

So from where I sit, The Secret has not been revealed through this movie, or through the Oprah segment on it...yet. It can be revealed when we ask ourselves to clue us in to what we truly want. I know of only one way to do that which works for me and, thanks to Byron Katie, it is no secret at all. That's my story until it isn't; and I'm open to being proven wrong.

(Read the comments to see some work I did on this at the behest of a reader named Patty. Thanks, Patty!)

©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick. All rights reserved.

"Why Don't I Feel Better? Mastering the Basics of The Work of Byron Katie" is a three-week teleclass beginning on February 13 and facilitated by yours truly. For more information and to register, visit the Events pages at ClearLifeSolutions.com