Life's Stories

STORIES ABOUT OURSELVES and about the world continually arise in our minds and shape our beliefs about reality. There are stories we take from our culture and there are stories based on our personal history. Some of these stories lock us in limiting beliefs and others move us toward freedom.

Although we share human desires, feelings, fears, and pain, our individual stories are uniquely different. Each of us experiences loss and gain, honor and dishonor, success and failure, love and loveless ness. Even the most deprived person knows moments of ecstasy; even the most successful person knows moments of despair.

Most of us grow up with a damaging story that something is wrong with us, and the conditioning is very strong to keep generating self-demeaning stories. It was the experience of losing everything and being imprisoned and the resulting pain that gave me such a deep resolve to embrace myself. I knew there was no freedom unless I could love this life without holding back. This did not mean I was going to ignore my flaws and stop seeking to improve what I could. But in the deepest way, I was not going to fixate on the conclusion that something was wrong with me.

Self-judgment continues to arise - it's a strong habit - but the fact that I made a conscious commitment to recognize it has helped me to stop feeding the story of being unworthy. It is all about skillfully regarding our stories and not getting caught in them, in recognizing when we get caught in our mental dramas.

Because we have such a deeply-grooved habit of rejecting and condemning ourselves, I find that emphasis on the word "acceptance" is central in healing. It brings our attention to the possibility of saying yes to what we are experiencing in the moment.

In a basic way, acceptance is seeing clearly what is happening and holding it with kindness. This is a radical antidote to the suffering of a judging mind. Ultimately, our life story is about discovering the freedom of being without anxiety about imperfection and living a life of greater joy and integrity.

Focus On Love and Let the Rest Go

Forgiveness means renouncing the suffering of anger and resentment. Abiding in a place where we no longer hold on to old grudges or hurts, we live in the present moment, undisturbed by memories or projections.

Asking for and offering forgiveness deepens our healing. It retrieves parts long buried and abandoned and brings more of ourselves to the table. What it retrieves is the heart and it is like sandblasting away our armor.

Forgiveness does not mean we condone the injustices of the past or excuse behavior. It looks beyond this to a greater truth. It means that we do not put another person out of our heart and the result of this is the blessing of a reunion with life.

This process may include speaking out and seeking justice, but in the end it is also a compassionate letting go, for our sake as much as for others. It is like the meeting of two ex-prisoners of war; when one asked, "Have you forgiven your captors?" the other replied, "No, never!" The first ex-prisoner looked with kindness at his friend and said, "Well, they still have you in prison, don't they?"

Sometimes I think life unfolds as if we were being shown a slide show and each slide is a test. We are asked, "Can you forgive this?" If the answer is no, the slide is simply moved back for us to view again later.

We have judged ourselves and others for so long, carrying on our battle with the burdens of the past, with life itself. With forgiveness, though, we experience the heart's mercy that our hurt and fear have long withheld. We learn how to recognize in ourselves and others that being of pure awareness lost beneath a tangle of conflicting conditioning. We recognize that we are each doing the best that we can within the limits of our current beliefs and capacities.

Ultimately, we find that forgiveness is "selective remembering," a conscious decision to focus on love and let the rest go.

© 2001-07, Tom Brown

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Charles "Tom" Brown was a successful investor who did very well in real estate, oil, and the stock market. Friends began asking him to invest for them, too. And he did. Things went well, and more people heard about his abilities and wanted to be included in the investment strategies he had devised. All went well until there was a dramatic change in the market. All that went up turned down, and Tom wanted everyone to still have a profit - his big mistake - as he wanted to be well thought of. Tom was accused of defrauding investors. Although it was shown that he had never diverted any money for himself other than a modest commission, through unbelievable mishandling by an incompetent or dishonest attorney, what should have been a one-year sentence became a 17-year sentence. At the time of judgment, Tom was 62 years of age.

The purpose of Tom's blog is not to dwell on the injustice, but rather, to show the incredible unfoldment of consciousness in a man who has taken this sentence and created a workshop of Soul and Spirit out of it. His words are designed to help us see into life and do better with what we've been given. Tom's Beyond the Wall blog is located at www.Beyondthewall.blogs.com.  If you would like to write to Tom, he appreciates correspondence.  He does not have access to a computer but can be reached via Charles "Tom" Brown, # 140237, ASPC - Lewis, Barchey Blue - D2 - E5, P.O.Box 3200, Buckeye, AZ, 85326.