Dear Nelson Mandela –

As the world marks your passing, I too want to sing your praises, but mostly I want to thank you –for inspiring me to learn about and practice forgiveness, and share this gift with others. 

I first heard your name back in the 1970s. ‘Free Mandela’ posters were all over my college campus of Indiana University. The posters claimed you were a political prisoner, while the newspapers portrayed you as an evil terrorist. I really didn’t know what to make of it. A decade later, I learned about apartheid, and later still, that the apartheid government ended, but all of this seemed of little consequence to my life.

That started to change when I began co-teaching with John Ford, a South African colleague, in 2002. Through him, I started learning about South Africa, the ending of apartheid and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.  

Inspired to read your autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, I learned that you were born to a royal family, received a good education, and became a lawyer. Through your eyes, I heard the story of the African National Congress and your arrest in 1964, and learned of the harsh conditions of your 27 year prison term at Robben Island:  that you slept on a bare floor in a small cell, with only a bucket for a toilet; that food was paltry at best, that you were forced to do hard labor in a rock quarry, often in the blistering sun; and that you were allowed only one visitor a year for 30 minutes, and one letter every 6 months.

Despite this oppressive treatment, you did not emerge from prison, as one might expect, with bitterness, anger or vengeance. Instead, you stunned the world by befriending and embracing your political enemies. At your inauguration as President of South Africa in 1994, you invited your prison warden as an honored guest. You went on to establish the Truth and Reconciliation Commission with Archbishop Tutu, encouraging all South Africans to forgive and heal.  In short, throughout all that you endured, you kept an open heart.

The way you responded in the face of great personal hardship was hugely inspiring to me and no doubt millions of others.  You illuminated a profound possibility for all of us. You put the lie to our false conditioning that tells us our only choices in conflict are to respond with fear, flight or fight. You showed us that there is always a fourth choice, which is to keep your heart open and stay free. 

I realize now the irony of those college campus posters. Mandela, you always were free, weren’t you? You freed yourself from within.  For me, this is your greatest legacy, teaching us that no matter the circumstances, we can always choose love, forgiveness – and freedom.

Namaste Nelson Mandela.  I bow to the great spirit within you that is the great spirit in all of us.

It’s no secret that the winter holidays are difficult for many people. For some, it’s the stress of family gatherings. For others, the problem is feeling isolated and lonely. Articles abound offering tips for surviving the holidays. They contain some helpful ideas and I’ll give the links below. However, I wonder if we can do more than simply survive the season. What if we can put our discomfort to good use?

From a forgiveness perspective, the fact that the holidays surface our challenging issues is a good thing. When we experience anything other than peace and love, an opportunity for healing awaits us. If you get tense when you think about seeing a certain family member, or think about being alone, this stressful situation can be the doorway to healing.

Finding that doorway, as with any forgiveness process, begins with noticing your story. What is your truth about the holidays? What is your greatest concern? What is hardest for you at this time of year? Write out your answers. Get everything you are thinking and feeling down on paper.

Once you have written this, step back from it. Observe that what you have written is your story about the holidays, what you tell yourself. Observe this without judgment, without making it right or wrong, without making it good or bad. Simply observe that this has been your story about your family or about being alone during the holidays, or whatever it is for you.

When you can observe that you have a story about the holidays, you have found the doorway. Healing occurs when you disengage from the old story with a willingness to see things differently. This is done by realizing that you created the old story and equally have the ability to create a new one.

Perhaps the greatest gift of the season is the opportunity to discover a place within yourself that is ready for healing, ready to experience more love and wholeness than ever before.

Holiday Resources

http://bewell.stanford.edu/surviving-the-family-holiday

http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/surviving-the-holidays

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/stress/MH00030

One of the first steps on the path of forgiveness is to eradicate blame. Why? Because no matter how justified you think it is, blame doesn’t work.

Think of a difficult relationship or situation in your life. Who do you blame, and for what? What is it you really want in that situation? What might be possible if you stopped blaming, and approached the situation in a different way?

I sometimes wonder what would be possible in the world if everyone stopped blaming. This alone would might well be enough to create world peace. Think about it. Yet, we have deeply ingrained patterns of blaming. When something doesn’t go our way, we blame. When we make a mistake, we blame. When we are angry about something, we blame. We blame others. We blame ourselves. We blame God. We blame life.

Blame is a defense mechanism pure and simple. It distracts and deflects. It enables us to avoid difficult feelings, such as hurt, sadness and fear. This may be satisfying in the short term, but in the long run, it is a dead end.

When we are blaming someone else, we make the other person the center of our attention. We give them untold amounts of our precious energy. When we are blaming ourselves, we become sidetracked by guilt or shame. The point is this. Whenever we avoid our pain, we cut off the opportunity for healing and growth. We cut ourselves off from love and happiness.

For more, I recommend a great article written by my friend and colleague Cat Zavis. Cat is a mediator who does great work, using non-violent communication (NVC) to help divorcing or divorced couples become effective co-parents. She recently wrote a great article entitled “Why Blaming Doesn’t Work” which you can find here: http://www.parentingwithyourex.com/why-blaming-doesnt-work/.

See you on the Path!

People often think of conflict as something negative, something to be avoided or overcome.  However, I notice in working with mediation clients that conflict can actually be pathway for enormous spiritual healing.  Conflict surfaces our wounding.  It triggers strong feelings in us.  If we are willing to look within, we can often trace these feelings back to childhood wounds.   Once we discover the core wounding, we have the opportunity for healing, and ultimately, spiritual wholeness.  In this way, conflict can be a profound path for coming home.  Of course, not everyone takes this opportunity.  But just the same, the path is there for those who seek to heal, learn and grow.

Many people are looking for that great love relationship.  You know, the one that is better than the last one and all the ones before it. The one that will really fill your cup.  If you are in this position, I encourage you to do the inner work that will make it possible to have what you desire.

In a book entitled “Triumph,” written shortly before she died, my dear friend and wise woman, Darlene Diehl, talked about how we need to do the emotional healing whenever a relationship ends: 

I’ve noticed throughout my lifetime that when I have not emotionally cleared a relationship the tendency is to take that muddled energy into the next relationship(s).  I call this “painting with a dirty brush.”  The problem grows and grows.  For instance, one might think that one can focus their love on a single person, making that person the center of their universe, while keeping all other unresolved feelings and relationships compartmentalized elsewhere.  I have never once seen this work.  I have, however, noticed how everything and everyone becomes entangled in the old emotional web until it has been swept clean.

In the same spirit, author John Lee writes: “The only healthy way to start a love relationship is to be over your former relationships.  This takes time and work and pain.  And most people are too impatient and needy to wait.”  In his wonderful book “Facing the Fire” he says to be ready to love again, you must do the following:

• Grieve out the sadness of your last relationship and any earlier relationship that cling in your memory.
• Discharge the anger you have concerning those relationships.
• Forgive yourself for any “mistakes” you made in those relationships until you realize you didn’t make any mistakes given who you were then and what you knew then.
• Forgive the other person  This doesn’t mean you have to see or communicate with him or her.  It means that in your own heart and mind you can feel gratitude for the time and love you shared and honestly say:  “I thank you.  I love you.  I forgive you.  I wish you the best.  I let you go.”

If the present loss is tied to a painful experience from earlier in your life — which is very common — then additional work is needed to emotionally clear the trauma and be ready for a healthy new relationship.  Examples of these sorts of issues include childhood abandonment or neglect, childhood loss such as through death or divorce, or a painful rejection earlier in your life. 

All this takes time and hard work, but it is well worth it.  As we rinse our brushes, and the painful experiences of the past flow down the drain, we free ourselves to begin anew.  Finally, we are free to paint with a clean brush and create the love relationship we truly desire.

Over the summer, I’ve been doing forgiveness work with a number of couples who are either contemplating divorce or in the process of getting divorced.  My work has been to guide each person through the forgiveness process as a means of healing. Some couples are using forgiveness to help them get through the transition of divorce with less anger and blame.  Others are using the process to help resolve difficult emotions – such as feelings of betrayal, abandonment, and hopelessness – prior to deciding whether to divorce, or stay together.  The results have been very exciting.  I can see that whatever these couples ultimately decide to do, they are laying groundwork for their lives to unfold with much greater love and peace.  If through forgiveness, they find renewed hope for the marriage, then they have cleared the way for the rebuilding of their relationship.  On the other hand, if the decision is made to divorce, then they have a good foundation for creating an amicable post-divorce relationship and successfully co-parenting their children.

My inspiration this week is Eat Pray Love. I loved the book and in an unexpected way, watching the movie brought me back to the magic of forgiveness.

The story chronicles the journey of Elizabeth Gilbert (played by Julia Roberts) as she rebuilds her life after a divorce and post-marriage affair.  We follow the heroine to Italy, where she fills herself with pasta and pizza, then to India, where she fills with spirit and service, and ultimately to Indonesia (Bali), where she finds balance and true love.

The turning point in the story occurs in India when her compatriot entreats Elizabeth to forgive the past.  And, while some movie reviewers write the film off as “wish fulfillment,” (she does admittedly sail off into the sunset with Javier Bardem at the end of the movie), from a forgiveness perspective, the sequencing is spot on.

In the face of loss and confusion, where do we turn first?  First we eat.  We look to our drug of choice, be it food, work, sex, drink or drug, something outside ourselves that we use in an attempt to numb the pain.  Eventually we realize this strategy is a dead end.  It doesn’t work.  The pain is still there.  So then, often in great despair, we pray.  We look to a power greater than ourselves for true healing.  An essential part of this healing process is, of course, forgiveness.  Forgiveness brings us back into oneness, and it is only from this place of wholeness that we can truly get what we want, which is love.