7/4/12—Claiming Your Independence

Today's Draw: Strength from the Oracle Tarot by Lisa Chow. Are you in control of your emotions and actions or are they in control of you? What are your experiences with addictive, compulsive or unhealthy behaviors? What really rules over your life?

The third of the Five Lessons to Learn Before You DIE!!! is self control. I've never met anyone in all my 49 years and four months who didn't have some sort of addictive behavior that's dogged them at one time or another in their lives. 

Before I proceed, I should say that I probably have a broader definition of addictive behavior than some people. What I'm talking about here is behavior that's compulsive, excessive, unhealthy and/or causes problems in your life. So while many are thinking "huffing glue", what I'm talking about is perfectionism, anger issues, obsessive thinking, overeating/working/excercising, germaphobia, compulsive cleanliness, hoarding, smoking and, yes, drug dependence of any kind. 

Some of these things like perfectionism, compulsive cleaning, overworking, etc. are, in a way, socially acceptable. We make excuses for them, "her cakes are perfect," "her home is like something from a magazine," "she works hard for her money." But that doesn't make these behaviors any healthier than huffing glue. If you're one of those people, you know the toll those behaviors take. It's hard to say whether it's easier being out of control in a way everyone can see or in a way that's somewhat hidden. 

Personally, I've lived my life as a walking/talking, easy-to-see addictive behavior...haha. I've regained my control over many of those issues. If you're a regular reader, you already know I'm a former smoker. But what you may not realize is that this mild-mannered sweetheart of a blogger used to have some significant anger issues. 

I tell you about that, because having experienced both compulsive anger and nicotine addiction (among other issues I'm still working on...haha), I feel both compulsive behavior and addiction exist on the same spectrum. Both screw with your brain chemistry and your sense of reality. And both exert more control over you than you exert over them. 

BUT, from experience I'll tell you this, addictions are a LOT harder to regain control over and don't bear just an emotional dependence, but a physical and chemical one, too. With addiction, there's also a little monster inside you that, if you ever feed it again, will take back their control. Right now my nicotine monster is asleep. If I ever take a puff of a cigarette again, I will wake it up and it will be hungry. On the other hand, I can be a bitch to the Safeway checker next week and it will be an isolated incident. In short, becoming a mild-mannered blogger is a hell of a lot easier than becoming a non-smoking blogger. But both require Strength to achieve. 

So Strength is about resisting temptation and never saying "yes" in the first place. Strength is about acknowledging there's a monster that exists within you that's just waiting for you to open the door. Strength is about about taming the monster inside you once you've woken it up. Strength is about taking personal responsibility for these behaviors, whether you currently have control over them or not. Strength is about understanding that change and the unlearning of behaviors doesn't happen overnight. Strength is about learning and being gentle with yourself if/when you stumble and fall. And Strength is about seeking help when you want to take control back and can't do so on your own. 

Honestly, this card surprised me when I first chose it, but now I understand why this is one of the five lessons the universe wants us to learn before we die. As long as we allow these kinds of compulstive and addictive behaviors—whether drinking, creating drama, being an adrenaline junkie, compulsive shopping or wallowing in victimhood—we are not free (a fitting message to receive on July 4th.) Something else is making our choices and steering our relationships for us. If nothing else, before we die, we should all seize the crown of control over our actions/emotions and truly be the star of our own lives. 

PS: While we're talking addiction, for tarot junkies, Lisa Chow's Oracle Tarot is available on Etsy. It's a full 78-card deck with no lwb. I JUST got it today and didn't have a chance to look it over before I shuffled and chose, but from what I've seen it's based on RWS meanings, but has non-traditional imagery and some inspired, yet simple, visual interpretations. 

7/3/12—Coming Around to Forgiveness

Today's Draw: Rhodochrosite from the Crystal Guidance oracle deck. How do you define forgiveness? Is there someone in your life you say you've forgiven, but really haven't? Who do you suppose suffers most when you refuse to forgive?

This week's topic is Five Lessons to Learn Before You Die. And I can't imagine any such list being complete without today's topic: Forgiveness. 

Forgiveness is a tough topic, primarily because people have so many different definitions of it. You look in the dictionary and see words like "pardon" and "absolve" and say "hells to the no! I ain't doing THAT!" And I agree. That's tantamount to saying "I wipe your indiscretion clean" in my book. That's not going to happen. 

Oprah's favorite definition of forgiveness is "giving up the hope that the past could ever be different." That makes a lot of sense. Because that's what we push up against...we want things a) to be made right or b) to have never happened in the first place. Neither of those things will ever happen. So when we let go of the desire for the past to be different, the bad feelings we hold go with it. I get that and it all sounds really reasonable and nice, but it's a little soft for what I'm really feeling in the moment of anger.

So I came up with a different definition befitting the drama I feel at the time, and that is: "I will no longer stew in toxins over what you did". I personally believe I was born uniquely qualified to stew in toxins, so forgiveness means setting aside my playtime with my "special gift". Most of the time forgiveness also means that I "get" it...I get why you did whatever you did and while I don't agree with it, I do get it. In short, I come to peace with what happened.

That doesn't mean, however, I'll ever talk to you again. It just means that I'll stop ramming pins into the poppet I made in your likeness and I'll move my anger down to a simmer. And then I'll let it cool and evaporate. Some people, like family, will remain in my life and our relationship will carry on. Others, depending upon the crime and the amount of personal responsibility acknowledged, may not. 

For me, forgiveness also does not include forgetting. I will never forget. Come crawling back five or ten years later thinking I forgot, and you will find that I have not. I will likely be kind to you because I am a kind person. But I will not forget. I will not invite you in for tea. We will not laugh about "old times". I will not inquire about your pet rabbit. And I will not encourage our conversation to linger. Remembering is my prize in the Cracker Jack box of forgiveness. You can make me eat the sugary, stale brown popcorn of letting go, but the prize is mine to keep, dammit!

Forgiveness isn't something you do for anyone other than yourself. I've been making light of this to a certain degree, but forgiveness really is something you do to release the toxic effects of anger, pain and hurt from your body, mind and soul. 

Carrying stuff like that gives you cancer. It keeps you chained to the past. It keeps you from creating better situations in your life. And it closes off your heart to others. This deck's creator linked forgiveness to the heart chakra for precisely those reasons. Forgiveness reopens your heart to others—maybe not to the offender, but to yourself and others you care about. The energy of bitterness toward one person pervades every other relationship you have as long as you hold on to it. Don't fool yourself that it doesn't.

Every one of us will be in two positions in our lives—we will be the forgiver, as I've already discussed. And we will be the one who needs to be forgiven. The crime we committed may be one perpetrated against someone else or against ourselves. In each case, we will not find forgiveness anywhere outside of ourselves. 

"What?" you say? Yeah, you heard me. No one can forgive you but yourself. You don't need anyone else's forgiveness to be forgiven. Their forgiveness is for them, remember? So all that time you spend thinking, "I really wish Tommy would forgive me" is really just you saying "I wish I could get to a place where I forgive myself for what I did to Tommy". Tommy's forgiveness means nothing if you can't forgive yourself. And if you forgive yourself, you don't really need Tommy's forgiveness to move forward. Do the math and you'll see Tommy's forgiveness is irrelevant. Sure, it would be nice to know he "gets it", but you don't need it. 

On a final note, I have never, to my recollection, ever purposely done anything to anyone to get revenge. If that's your thing, you're just creating bad karma for yourself. The universe makes all scores even and, from my observation, is much better at it than I am. It's actually possible that whatever was done to you was something you had coming from some "crime" you committed years ago against someone else. So get off your high horse and stop thinking you get to be god because someone "done you wrong". It's not your job to judge, convict and sentence others. Do that and you'll just continue the cycle of nastiness in your life. Because all scores are made even, including the ones you commit against the natural order. 

Listen, in the end, we all screw up. And sometimes the offending act is actually a gift waking us up to a relationship that's gone past its sell-by date. Sometimes its waking us up to something that needs to change in a treasured dynamic. Sometimes it's telling us something we didn't previously know or acknowledge about someone we care about, thereby giving us the opportunity to know them deeper, whether we continue with the relationship or not. And sometimes it's telling us something we didn't know about ourselves and our choices in life. 

The gifts of these situations can be lost in the anger. So always remember to ask yourself, "what did this betrayal (or whatever) come here to show me?" While forgiveness truly is a gift you give yourself, many times that gift is just the cherry on top of a much bigger one. Don't let your anger blind you to that.