Forgiveness is an Art which is more for the person hurt then the person that has perpetrated the hurt.

I like what Clarissa Pinkola Estes (Women Who Run With the Wolves) had to say about their being Four Stages of Forgiveness

Four Stages of Forgiveness

1. To forego—to leave it alone
2. To forebear—to abstain from punishing/vengeance
3. To forget—to aver from memory, to refuse to dwell
4. To forgive—to abandon the debt

Note. Many people hold on to hurt because they feel that as long as they do the one that hurt them will hurt and be accountable. It is important to remember that forgiveness does not mean that the person that hurt us is no longer accountable.  Holding someone accountable is not the same as punishing or vengeance or even justice. Accountability is an attribute of Love. If you steal from me, I can forgive you – detach my sense of self from the experience – while holding you Accountable by taking back my key.

http://www.stlcw.com/Handouts/Four_Stages_of_Forgiveness.pdf

Essentially as you implied the answer to such questions is always “you”.

You are the answer to the question of Purpose. As such every experience is Purpose and Meaning, even the experience of questioning and seeking purpose.

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” – T. S. Eliot We seek for purpose and meaning out there somewhere, over the rainbow… never noticing that we are it… until we do

Hi Mary

Came across the following and thought about your posts.  I’m of two minds myself, I understand the advice of being in moment and I know its a truth, but sometimes I want to scream when I hear it.. Perhaps your in a similar space as the reference “wherever you go there your stay/are” – its the solution and the problem

It is one of life’s greatest ironies that, no matter how much we want to be different, wherever we go, there we are. There’s just no getting away from ourselves. Go on holiday — there we are. Win the lottery — there we are. Move overseas — there we are. Wherever we look, we are looking out of the same pair of eyes; whatever we do, it’s still the same body doing it.

In the attempt to get away from being with ourselves, we search for something or someone to make us happy; the grass constantly appears greener someplace else. But in every relationship and every situation, there we are again.

Meanwhile, our mind is like a drunken monkey doing its best to distract us by jumping from thought to fear to drama to anything that will keep us trapped in an endless round of worries and concerns… “What if this happens… what if I fail… if only it could be like it was in the past… what will the future be like… I have to to get to a psychic for help…”

We are like a musk deer that has a wonderful smell in its belly yet searches the forest for that smell. Wherever it goes, there’s the smell — but the deer can’t see it, so it has no idea where the smell is to be found. In the same way, we believe happiness is somewhere — anywhere —other than here, and spend all our time looking for it, without realizing it is already with us.

“If you aren’t in the moment, 
you are either looking forward to uncertainty, or back to pain and regret. —Jim Carrey

All we have to do is stop. Just stop. For right now, this very moment, is all there is. Nothing else is going on. Nothing else is happening. There’s nowhere to go. And being right here with ourselves is exactly where we want to be, because when we are fully here, this moment becomes the most precious, delightful, enjoyable and outrageous moment there is.

It is immensely liberating to realize that nothing more is required of us than to just be fully here now. What a relief! Finally, we can really experience this reality just as it is, without expectation, prejudice or longing. Someone once asked Ed if he had ever experienced another dimension. He replied, “Have you experienced this one?” Have you noticed the dew on a spider’s web, the taste of honey or your own heartbeat?

“Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.” —Eckhart Tolle

When we are fully present, the world in which we live becomes extraordinary, as if being seen and heard and touched for the first time, for we are without preconceived ideas or desires. There is just the experience. Like a child making the unknown known, we are simply with what is, while also impelled to know it more intimately, to explore and understand, even to become it.

Such presence defies our limited understanding of the world; it takes us out of the logical, rational mind and into a place of just being, without judgment or idea of what should be. Stepping out of the thinking and conceptual mind, however, doesn’t mean stepping into nowhere or nothing; it doesn’t mean that there is no connection to a worldly reality. We do not become disconnected or cast adrift. Rather, it is stepping into sanity and, more importantly, into even greater connectedness.

As evolution does not go backwards, so life can never be the way it was. Being in the moment means having the courage to know we will never be someone other than who we are and that who we are is absolutely wonderful, just as we are. Simply being still in this moment, without attachment to or thought of before or after, invites a deep sense of completion, that there really is nowhere else we need to go. It is impossible to think of somewhere else as being better — the grass is vividly green exactly where we are. – Ed and Deb Shapiro

One of the challenges of realizing or awaking to the reality that “You” are not your ego, you are not your body, you are not your thinking, you are not your emotions… is a detachment from life. If I am no-thing, no-thing matters and as you mentioned that is the Ego attempting to identify it self with an experience of nothing mattering.  If “I” am no thing “I” am nothing, and things only matter when “I” matter, when I am ego. – I remain my ego even as I “know” I am not my ego and around and around we go.

On one level this is a problem of language. How can we reflect one our experiences, explain them to ourselves and other without referring to “I” even though we know the Self is not “I. The result is more often then not that instead of a healthy detachment to experiences we fall into indifference to our experiences and depression.

You had the realization that “taking things personal does not make sense” a kind of detachment that isn’t. What you are describing of your experience is not detachment but indifference. If you (the “I”) don’t care (indifference) about an outcome why bother working towards any goal – your ego asks.

It’s a challenge. The Art of Detachment is to be fully engaged in life, working towards goals that match your truths (as you know then to be in the moment), while not attaching your sense self and identity to the actions or outcomes. i.e. I am a good or bad person because I do this, I am a good person because I hit what I was aiming at, a bad person because I missed.

You can and get to care about the action and outcomes; however, the outcomes or actions do not define you. In this way you open yourself to play. Sure, what you understand as your truths today may change and with them the direction of your actions – learn better, do better – you get to laugh.

In the problem of opposites, which we must come to terms with, is how we measure, judge, divide and doings so make conscious (awaken) is that reality that the opposites don’t exist. Opposites are not independent sides of a coin that can be separated. As we become conscious of detachment we become conscious of attachment. Awaking to the light is also an awakening to the darkness. True Light will always defeat the darkness however light requires energy – movement. Keep moving. The intention of a practice is to not practice, the intention of seeking is finding (yet how many “seekers” would ever label themselves finders).

Once you ask a question you cannot unasked it. Ignorance is bliss but you can’t go back. Frankly life is easier when we identify with our ego and suffer. Righteous anger and taking everything personal can really get the juices flowing. Sure, in the end its exhausting and unhealthy but it can feel so good in the moment. You awakened to the realization that you are not your ego and can’t go back. It’s a loss, even if it leads to becoming more authentic, every loss needs to properly mourned.

Did any of that make sense?

I enjoy your posts.

When I was 17 there was a moment when I thought I was hip and cool. (I know those words age me) Anyway one day I mentioned to someone just how cool I was… that was the end of my coolness. It seems if you think your cool you’re not. My thinking on the idea of “Enlightenment’ is the same, if you think, let alone say you are, your probably not.

After the Gautama achieved enlightenment he had a choice to make, end his cycle of “rebirth” and remain in nirvana or return as a Buddha and teach what he knew cannot be taught (only pointed towards). I took from that story that, as you suggest, enlightenment as being in a state of nirvana is not possible as a persistent state of being in life.  Perhaps a monk who lives as a hermit meditating 24/7 might come close to this state of enlightened being but only because life is avoided. (It is un likely that Gautama would have become Buddha had he not left his family)

Its always interesting watching someone who says they are enlightened step in dog crap.

“All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.” Buddha

“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.” Buddha

Yes I very much relate and find it normal that when we think we are putting on a face and are not good enough we are going to lose energy

But trying to put on a face with every person I talk to, trying to understand people’s emotions, replaying past hurts and other people’s words in my head, being upset over not being good enough, it’s all too much.

Its sounds like you’re an introvert, if so its normal that engaging with others would take more energy.

In Buddhism part of the idea of the middle way is that you enter the flow instead of resisting the flow. It is in when you’re in the flow that you have access to all the energy you need.  It is at the extremes that we feel the loss of energy, or expending more energy then we are creating.

Part of the loss of energy your feeling comes from the labels your attaching to the experience – putting on a face, trying to understand other emotions, replaying the past. I’m exhausted just thinking about it. The good news is you identified the area you need to work on to find a middle way. Is it possible to interact with others without thinking your putting on a face? Do you always have to understand others feelings? Does replaying conversations over and over again help you? Is judging yourself as not being good enough helpful or a mass energy suck?

hi Rye

In my opinion there is nothing more we can ask of others and ourselves is that when we learn better we do better.

The reality of consciousness is that we become conscious in moments of tension – we don’t become conscious of cold until we experience the tension between the experience of cold and hot. Meaning we tend to learn things the hard way.

I know today there is a tendency to judge people base on a single moment, even if that moment happened years ago when we did not know what we know now. But we are more then a single experience, we are more then the sum of our parts. That you could learn and correct your behavior, and your concern with becoming that person again says great deal about you. That to is a part of the whole

Forgiveness is a concept that it more often then not misunderstood, let alone self forgiveness. Its important to remember that forgiveness does not remove responsibility or accountability.  A part of forgiveness is making amends when required and this may or may not evolve those that you harmed.  Having made the commitment to learn from your past and do better counts. Self forgiveness also involves amends to the self. Just as your experience likely opened you to compassion towards others you need to have compassion for yourself.

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a memory that fills them with shame when something triggers it. Its not a great feeling yet it keeps us aware and asking the question of who we are and wish to be and if we are living up to those values.

Hi Christy

I don’t think I would have been strong enough to experience the type of ego death you had.

My journey tends to be through books and I misunderstood the process and instead of healthy detachment ended up in indifference and depression. It’s a subtle difference learning how to fully enter life experience without attaching one’s sense of identity as being the experience.

Today I would say that for me its not so much an ego death but about establishing a relationship with the ego. Noticing when an attachment of the ego to an experience is taking me for a ride.