Forgiving My Father

Hi, how you doing? I just wanted to add a little supplement to this newsletter that kind of puts a little color, adds a little color to it, and in a more concise way. So forgiveness and my father and what happened with the whole process for me is that I tended to compartmentalize. the experiences with my father and put them in one category, but never cross-referenced them to the other things in my life that I was struggling with. Um, what I've come to realize is that I always had this belief that I didn't belong, and I would Create situations that backed us up and would give me proof that I didn't belong. I grew up in a family where I didn't feel like I belonged in any on either side, and that went on to school, you know, to elementary school, junior high school, high school. I was always the outsider, and I never felt like. I was accepted. And the thing is, is that what I've come to realize is that that's what I've come here to learn. That's why I incarnated on this planet, was to learn self-acceptance. And that's my big lesson, my overall lesson, um, for this lifetime. And in order for God to help you learn lessons, you have to be put in situations that hurt and situations that cause you to learn those lessons. So in order for me to learn self-acceptance, I had to be put in situations where I wasn't accepted. Mm-hmm. Um, and the thing is, is that until you learn, you're going to continue the cycle and the pattern, and you're going to continue to be put in situations Well, you're not accepted in my case. Um, so in trying to find out and search in my childhood kind of where this came from, there was a lot of situations. And I, um, believe that we energetically pull in everything into our life, as I said in the newsletter, in case you didn't read it. But we— everything in our life is for us and by us. And so that means that I pulled in every situation, um, to help me learn. And some of them were very painful and embedded into my brain and in my energy field. And so one in particular was with my father. And, um, the reason that it hurts so much goes even deeper. I won't go into that now. Um, there was some, uh, situations earlier in my childhood anyway, so I held him in a different, um, regard. And, um, so the story goes that He promised my brother and I a camping trip, and, um, he hardly ever did anything with just us. He had to involve other people. Um, my uncle, his brother, which was my age, who was my age, uh, was always invited, and there were always comments that he would make about how his brother must have been his real son because he's more like his son than me, those kind of things. Whatever. So he promised a camping trip, and, you know, it was like 2 weeks looking forward to this camping trip. And so my brother and I got in the back of the truck because back then, you know, we just rode in the back of a pickup truck and got in the back of the truck, took off. He never told us that he was picking his brother up, not the brother my age, another brother. Stopped and picked him up. He got in, and I sat there just crushed, hurt, upset, mad. And I remember this instant, I looked at him through the back sliding glass doors or window of the truck bed, and he looked back and just glared at me. And that look just burnt into me. And I remember him pulling off, and I'm looking into the wind blowing in my face, and I'm looking out, and I, I pledged to myself that I will never be like him, and that from that point on, I was never going to have anything to do with him. Uh, that was kind of like my pledge to hate him, and it got worse from there. Um, so in forgiving that situation, first I went back to it and I relived it, and I observed the emotions that came up and the thoughts that came up. And I might get emotional, but Because it's, you know, it's still affecting me. But the first thoughts that come up were, what did I do? What did I do that you're doing this to me? That you lied to me? That you can't be around us? You know, and then the camping trip was terrible. They got so drunk, and he had my brother on his lap, and he was singing this You know, really nasty song, and I had to get my brother out of his arms and take my brother to the tent and put him to bed and all this kind of stuff. But why me? And what did I do? And so those— I, I— you meditate and you observe and you consider those thoughts and you consider that emotion, and the emotion that came from that was An emotion of abandonment, of isolation, rejection. And, um, you observe these things, you relive it. And the first time I was just bawling, right? And then the second time wasn't so bad. And then the third time I relived it. The fourth time, I'm there in the truck. And I'm talking to myself. And when that happens, I tell my younger self, you didn't do anything. You didn't do anything. Because what I noticed was that as an adult, as recently as just a few months ago, I would get what I felt like rejection. from someone, even if it was as small as, I don't know, not texting me back or being interested in connecting with me as a friend or romantic or professional and then stop being interested in me, or not choosing me to be on a podcast or something stupid like that. Not stupid, but something like that. And I, I noticed the first thing I would ask myself is, what did I do? What did I do? I was instantly that 7-year-old boy again, because the brain does not classify by linear time. The brain classifies By emotion. So when I had that same— when the brain sensed that I was in danger of being isolated again and rejected again, went into the same spiral. What did I do? So those thoughts of what did I do became beliefs that I did something. That I can't be myself, that there's something wrong with me. Those beliefs became emotions. Those emotions were there to protect me from feeling that again. And those emotions put my nervous system out of balance. And then those emotions created my actions, and my actions were juvenile. They were exaggerated. They were out of place. And, um, not only that, is I kept attracting that same situation over and over. So you think you're forgiving for a certain instance, but what happens is when you unpack all of this You understand that forgiving is not for him. Forgiving is unlocking an instance, a 3-minute instance that created a lifetime of patterns, a lifetime of pain. A lifetime of viewing the world as a victim. 3 minutes. And here's the thing, he was just a pawn in my lesson. If it hadn't have been him, it would have been someone else. I had to take The person out of the situation. I had to realize that he was attracted into this situation to help me learn self-acceptance. He was also caught up in his own addiction, in his own trauma, in his own everything. Who knows what kind of situations he had as a child? I know his dad. And what his childhood was like. Who knows what kind of layers he was fighting, what demons he was fighting. So here's the thing, is when you take the person out of the instance and you realize that all things are for your good, all things are working for your highest good, and all things are brought to you, for you, and by you. All of a sudden, decades of resentment and hate and pain and fear and anger collapses in an instant. The whole story and the whole timeline of how horrible my father is disappeared. I'm taking responsibility, not fault. I'm taking responsibility for my lessons and my life, and I stand in gratitude. That happened for my good. That happened to get me to where I am today. That happened so I could see my father in a different light. And then once that anger and resentment melted away, It made space for good things. It made space for growth. It made space for perspective and a newfound love, not only for me but for my father, but for everyone, everyone else. When I started thinking back to my past, I'm like, it all just disappears. So forgiveness goes so far beyond what we think, and I hope that you get something from this. I hope that I've made some sense, and, um, I hope that you'll reach out to me if you have any questions. Thank you.