When I was a kid there was a show on TV called 'Happy Days'.
I liked The Fonz, he was the cool guy of the group and while I liked everything about the most famous show ever to introduce both 'The American Way of Life' and 'The American Dream', I liked him best because everyone was impressed by him and everyone feared him.
It is amazing to look back at the models that shaped who we have become as we have picked and mixed people's characteristics to come up with personalities decent enough to walk on the stage of this world without feeling lessened by our own presence and how much Hollywood worked hard to churn out more and more characters that we could copycat, finding our own 'originality' by piecing together the things that stood out as 'valuable' -to create value for ourselves, never realizing how unoriginal in fact we have all become nor that the people we worshiped where characters too, that outside of the screen they had troubled lives more often than not, lives of which we knew nothing nor cared to know about because we were always and only looking for 'accessories' to add to our 'projected images' so that we may be more than others as we accepted that life is nothing but a competition for survival.
One of the most famous of Fonz quirks was his inability to say 'I'm sorry', understandably so, he was the coolest guy who was always right and when not he could make others so afraid they would be the ones conceding to him that they were wrong infact.
So I associated the word cool with 'never say sorry' and this is one point that came up the other day when I did something I could have avoided, someone around me reacted and said what I said was hurtful and made him feel exposed as if there was no safety in our relationship and then because I couldn't in the moment say I was sorry I went on to list what He had done wrong which was more serious, had more weight, was more reproachable than my joke, all the while entertaining the nagging feeling that I could have just said 'I'm sorry' and stop myself from participating in needless retaliation seeking to be right at all costs when I was not at all.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that saying 'I'm sorry' within intimate relationships is Not Cool and for defining coolness within the behavior of 'never say I am sorry'
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to desire to be cool because being cool meant an extra buffer between me and the rest of the world which I believed I needed for extra safety instead of seeing realizing and understanding that I was just afraid of others because I feared myself and what was going on in my mind about others and I assumed they may have the same stuff going on about me in their mind -and that was frightening
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to, when speaking the words 'I am sorry' within an intimate relationship, to perceive a loss of power, a diminishment in the admission that I was wrong and had made a mistake instead of seeing and realizing that by my saying 'I am sorry' I was in fact correcting the mistake I had realized I made and not in any way diminishing or belittling myself
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to fear saying 'I am sorry' within my intimate relationships in case the other was keeping a black book about me, as I did about them, where they noted all my mistakes so they could call me out any time like my mother did and like I did to others as I copied the pattern of behavior that my mother showed me within a 'close relationship'
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to fear making mistakes in case they would be held against me for the natural duration of my life because I never seemed to do good enough to delete my mistakes from the black book my mother held against me and for believing that it was appropriate and convenient to hold a black book of others' mistakes so I could use them to put them back in their place whenever I saw fit or whenever I felt myself threatened into having to admit I had made a mistake myself but theirs was graver, more serious, they were in fact wrong-er than I ever was
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe that we have to participate in this score keeping about others and our own mistakes, never letting go and within this supporting the construct of the unforgiving nature of this world because what is acceptable for me, what I allow in the small manifests in the big and within this for not seeing realizing and understanding that there is no value in score keeping regarding miss-takes of myself or others but only in the practical application of my correction as I show myself that I am taking response-ability for my words, thoughts and deeds all the way into self correction and as I keep walking my self corrections I accumulate the self trust about my ability to change, my ability to not repeat what has not worked in the past for myself and others equally and within this self trust I can trust others, I can give others the benefit of the doubt so that they too may walk their self correction instead of being held down by my ledger of wrong doings that defines them and me equally as unforgiving and unforgiven
When and as I see myself feeling resistance when I see that I should apologize for something I said or did, I stop, breathe, remind myself that I have seen clearly this point as a desire for value above another and that I no longer want to support my mind's desire to be more than another through my unforgiveness and that I want a forgiving world for myself and others so that we may realign to Life, let go of all our past mistakes and move together to find solutions that work for all
When and as I see myself desiring to take out my little black book where I mark other people's mistakes, I stop, breathe, tell myself that those little black books are the holes that we dig for ourselves individually and collectively and I no longer wish to be part of this system of blackmail of each other through our past mistakes, instead I breathe to let go and make sure I don't file anything about myself or another for later use
When and as I see myself fearing to lose value within a moment in which I can clearly see I should apologize, I stop, breathe, remind myself that there is no value in being right and making someone else wrong, that this values are only values of me as The Mind ans as such not valuable at all, instead I move for the value of supporting another as myself, as Life, within a movement of forgiveness of myself to end the desire of wanting to be right making someone else wrong as I see realize and understand that a forgiving world requires my forgiveness, the absolute forgiveness of myself first so I can extend it to others one and equal
I commit myself to, whenever I see myself being wrong, before I move into the Mind to look for excuses and justifications about why I am entitled to do so, be so, act so, to stop, breathe and ask another the forgiveness that I grant myself in the breathe I take, before I speak to take my responsibility for an interaction that did not work out to what is best for all.
I liked The Fonz, he was the cool guy of the group and while I liked everything about the most famous show ever to introduce both 'The American Way of Life' and 'The American Dream', I liked him best because everyone was impressed by him and everyone feared him.
It is amazing to look back at the models that shaped who we have become as we have picked and mixed people's characteristics to come up with personalities decent enough to walk on the stage of this world without feeling lessened by our own presence and how much Hollywood worked hard to churn out more and more characters that we could copycat, finding our own 'originality' by piecing together the things that stood out as 'valuable' -to create value for ourselves, never realizing how unoriginal in fact we have all become nor that the people we worshiped where characters too, that outside of the screen they had troubled lives more often than not, lives of which we knew nothing nor cared to know about because we were always and only looking for 'accessories' to add to our 'projected images' so that we may be more than others as we accepted that life is nothing but a competition for survival.
One of the most famous of Fonz quirks was his inability to say 'I'm sorry', understandably so, he was the coolest guy who was always right and when not he could make others so afraid they would be the ones conceding to him that they were wrong infact.
So I associated the word cool with 'never say sorry' and this is one point that came up the other day when I did something I could have avoided, someone around me reacted and said what I said was hurtful and made him feel exposed as if there was no safety in our relationship and then because I couldn't in the moment say I was sorry I went on to list what He had done wrong which was more serious, had more weight, was more reproachable than my joke, all the while entertaining the nagging feeling that I could have just said 'I'm sorry' and stop myself from participating in needless retaliation seeking to be right at all costs when I was not at all.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that saying 'I'm sorry' within intimate relationships is Not Cool and for defining coolness within the behavior of 'never say I am sorry'
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to desire to be cool because being cool meant an extra buffer between me and the rest of the world which I believed I needed for extra safety instead of seeing realizing and understanding that I was just afraid of others because I feared myself and what was going on in my mind about others and I assumed they may have the same stuff going on about me in their mind -and that was frightening
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to, when speaking the words 'I am sorry' within an intimate relationship, to perceive a loss of power, a diminishment in the admission that I was wrong and had made a mistake instead of seeing and realizing that by my saying 'I am sorry' I was in fact correcting the mistake I had realized I made and not in any way diminishing or belittling myself
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to fear saying 'I am sorry' within my intimate relationships in case the other was keeping a black book about me, as I did about them, where they noted all my mistakes so they could call me out any time like my mother did and like I did to others as I copied the pattern of behavior that my mother showed me within a 'close relationship'
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to fear making mistakes in case they would be held against me for the natural duration of my life because I never seemed to do good enough to delete my mistakes from the black book my mother held against me and for believing that it was appropriate and convenient to hold a black book of others' mistakes so I could use them to put them back in their place whenever I saw fit or whenever I felt myself threatened into having to admit I had made a mistake myself but theirs was graver, more serious, they were in fact wrong-er than I ever was
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe that we have to participate in this score keeping about others and our own mistakes, never letting go and within this supporting the construct of the unforgiving nature of this world because what is acceptable for me, what I allow in the small manifests in the big and within this for not seeing realizing and understanding that there is no value in score keeping regarding miss-takes of myself or others but only in the practical application of my correction as I show myself that I am taking response-ability for my words, thoughts and deeds all the way into self correction and as I keep walking my self corrections I accumulate the self trust about my ability to change, my ability to not repeat what has not worked in the past for myself and others equally and within this self trust I can trust others, I can give others the benefit of the doubt so that they too may walk their self correction instead of being held down by my ledger of wrong doings that defines them and me equally as unforgiving and unforgiven
When and as I see myself feeling resistance when I see that I should apologize for something I said or did, I stop, breathe, remind myself that I have seen clearly this point as a desire for value above another and that I no longer want to support my mind's desire to be more than another through my unforgiveness and that I want a forgiving world for myself and others so that we may realign to Life, let go of all our past mistakes and move together to find solutions that work for all
When and as I see myself desiring to take out my little black book where I mark other people's mistakes, I stop, breathe, tell myself that those little black books are the holes that we dig for ourselves individually and collectively and I no longer wish to be part of this system of blackmail of each other through our past mistakes, instead I breathe to let go and make sure I don't file anything about myself or another for later use
When and as I see myself fearing to lose value within a moment in which I can clearly see I should apologize, I stop, breathe, remind myself that there is no value in being right and making someone else wrong, that this values are only values of me as The Mind ans as such not valuable at all, instead I move for the value of supporting another as myself, as Life, within a movement of forgiveness of myself to end the desire of wanting to be right making someone else wrong as I see realize and understand that a forgiving world requires my forgiveness, the absolute forgiveness of myself first so I can extend it to others one and equal
I commit myself to, whenever I see myself being wrong, before I move into the Mind to look for excuses and justifications about why I am entitled to do so, be so, act so, to stop, breathe and ask another the forgiveness that I grant myself in the breathe I take, before I speak to take my responsibility for an interaction that did not work out to what is best for all.
