May I see that my preoccupation with the faults of others is really a smokescreen
to keep me from taking a hard look at my own,
as well as a way to bolster my own failing ego.
May I check out the “why’s” of my blaming.
(from A Day at a Time, a Hazeldon Foundation book)
I notice when my own energy is low, I start finding faults with others. I have a couple people in my life I use as my emotional litmus test. If my heart is feeling gracious, they are OK, if not, the list of their faults (in my mind) is very long.
Blame is Being Lazy About My Energy….
Fortunately, we are not helpless and things are not hopeless. We can become aware of dynamics that affect our energy, like diet and exercise, rest and relaxation, music and aroma. Too much time in some activities—or too little time in others—takes a toll. We can become fluent in energy medicine as self care.
Many of you know about Self Full Body Connection. If not, check out the free handout showing the positions from the Healing with Energy tab. The earlier version of this was called Chakra Connection, by Brugh Joy, and it gave me back quality of life and inspired me to learn Healing Touch™ to share with others.
Jin Shin Jyutsu has some very simple technique that work wonders to move you out of the blame game. Here is a short video about Safety Lock # 13(located at the breastbone) which rids your thoughts of those inner child wounds! And remember if you forget everything else you saw in the video (or did not watch it), you can hold your middle finger!
Linda Beushausen shared this most incredible true storyof forgiveness when she spoke at Pilgrim Congregational Church on Sunday, August 17. It was posted on February 10, 2013 by Geoff Heggadon. As Linda said, she will probably never have any where near what this woman has to forgive, but when she does face the things in her life that feel too big to forgive, we can all remember what is possible….
The scene is a courtroom trial in South Africa.
A frail black woman rises slowly to her feet. She is something over 70 years of age.
Facing across the room are several white security police officers, one of whom, Mr. van der Broek, has just been tried and found implicated in the murders of both the woman’s son and her husband some years before. He had come to the woman’s home, taken her son, shot him at point blank range and then set the young man’s body on fire while he and his officers partied nearby.
Several years later, van der Broek and his cohorts had returned to take away her husband as well. For many months she heard nothing of his whereabouts. Then almost two years after her husband’s disappearance, van de Broek came back to fetch the woman herself.
How vividly she remembers that evening, going to a place beside a river where she was shown her husband, bound and beaten, but still strong in spirit, lying on a pile of wood. The last words heard from his lips as the officers poured gasoline over his body and set him aflame were, “Father forgive them…”
Now the woman stands in the courtroom and listens to the confessions offered by Mr. van de Broek. A member of the South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission turns to her and asks, “So what do you want? How should justice be done to this man who has so brutally destroyed your family?”
“I want three things,” begins the old woman calmly, but confidently. “I want first to be taken to the place where my husband’s body was burned so that I can gather up the dust and give his remains a decent burial.”
She pauses, then continues, “My husband and son were my only family, I want secondly, therefore, for Mr. van der Broek to become my son. I would like him to come twice a month to the ghetto and spend a day with me so that I can pour out on him whatever love I still have remaining in me.”
“And finally,” she says, “I want a third thing. This is also the wish of my husband. And so, I would kindly ask someone to come to my side and lead me across the courtroom so that I can take Mr. van der Broek in my arms and embrace him and let him know that he is truly forgiven.”
As the court assistants come to lead the elderly woman across the room, Mr. van der Broek, overwhelmed by what he has just heard, faints. As he does, those in the courtroom, family, friends neighbours—all victims of decades of oppression and injustice—begin to sing, softly but assuredly: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.” (From J.John & Mark Stibbe)
