Living in the Spirit of WWJD and WWBD

Today's Draw: Forgiveness from the William Blake Tarot. Do you think Christ's/Buddha's lessons are a good ideal for us to live up to? Are they ideals you consciously pursue in your own life? How good of a job do you think you do at it?

Any tarot reader will tell you that the tarot can seem to take on a personality of its own. It can be funny, stubborn, frank, kind...you name it. So I go to choose lesson five of Five Lessons to Learn Before You DIE!!! and I come up with Forgiveness, which we discussed on Tuesday. Traditionally that card is Temperance in the tarot, which is about balance, which hearkens back to Wednesday's lesson. So I throw it back into the deck, shuffle again and get the 10 of Music which basically says to raise your life to that of a sublime art. Which is pretty much what we discussed yesterday. It also speaks of peace, which was our entire last week!

*throws hands up in exasperation*

So I grab the Forgiveness card back and give it another look. And from that look, I came up with today's lesson, which is living in the spirit of Christ. Yeah, I know. Not what some of you would expect from me. But the thing is, whether or not you take Bible stories literally or have a Christian, Semitic or non-Christian take on Jesus, the lessons attached to his name hold value. In fact, if it makes you more comfortable, consider instead what Buddha would do. Or Allah. Or whatever ideal of love and acceptance you believe in.

So, Christ embodies forgiveness, which we've already discussed. That lesson, by the way, stirred up a lot in people and resulted in a great conversation on my Facebook page. But here are few other things Christ would do that we seem to lose sight of:

     •  Live in acceptance and non-judgment

     •  Love your enemies

     •  Heal with/through your heart

     •  Give to those less fortunate

     •  Be humble

     •  Walk in faith and grace

     •  Live genuinely and not in hypocrisy

In essence, living as Christ would requires living in love. If you had to boil it down to one thing, love would be it. So that brings yesterday's message of service and living life as a sacred act to mind. Love is how you do it. Did you just drive to work in love? Did you cook dinner in love? Did you interact with that stranger in love? 

This is the second card I chose for today.

Chances are, somewhere in word, thought or deed, you fell short of the mark somewhere along the line. We all do. But the more we try, the closer we get to another part of Monday's lesson of the Hermit. (Bet you were wondering how Monday escaped being covered by this card.) Part of the Hermit's pursuit is to find a way align and blend with source...to evolve into a divine state of consciousness known as Christ Consciousness. 

You don't have to believe in Christ to live your life in Christ Consciousness. It's just a term for that place that everyone on a spiritual path journeys to reach....the state of enlightenment that Buddha found...a union of oneness with your god...ultimate surrender. 

Let's face it. Many of us will never achieve this state permanently here on earth. But we can all catch glimpses of it in our own lives. And we can make those glimpses last longer and longer, along with the joy and freedom they bring. So while the WWJD thing has long become trite and eye-roll worthy, the spirit behind it is really the ultimate lesson we should all learn before we die—a master lesson that encompasses all others. Best thing is, you can start today.

PS: For those who are only marginally familiar with tarot, this week's draws give a good idea of how tarot can examine and answer a question. I think all five draws revealed lessons that any spiritual teacher would agree are not just worthy of learning in this lifetime, but also key to our spiritual evolution.So while many consider tarot to be woo-woo or fortune telling, it's more of way of gaining unique and revealing insights into our personal situations—insights we and our friends are too close to the situation to see ourselves.

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.