Blog entry for:

the longer i harbor resentments, the more bitter they become, eventually poisoning me.
after having completed listing my resentments as part of my current fourth step work, i find the reading this morning this reading is especially poignant. the resentments that i stumbled across are trickier than i ever imagined and as the days go by, i find the poison seeping into my current interactions with the people who are the center of those resentments. not that i have acted-out in any harmful manner yet, but i find myself judging their behaviors, actions, words and deeds, through the poisonous filter of my resentments. so here i am wallowing in the misery of ongoing resentments and this reading pops into my inbox this morning.
although i am also at the start of a long process that i agreed to do as part of an amend, and feeling things that i medicated away over fifteen years ago, it is these "little" resentments that keep rolling around my big empty head. so the action suggested by the reading was to practice forgiveness. since the largest part of the harm done was to me, by me, forgiving those people entails forgiving myself for my part in these whole affairs. kind of ironic that it is me that needs to be forgiven more than anyone else but in order to forgive myself, i need to forgive them first. so the nature of my meditation this morning was listening for the strength to forgive those who have sinned against me, and a great deal of calm was restored to my life in those brief moments. do not misread what i am writing, i have yet to forgive anyone today, but i am at least willing to let myself move into the process of forgiveness. after all the last impression i want to leave anyone with, is that somehow ten minutes of quiet contemplation made me some sort of saint, that day has yet to come. but i am more saint like than i was when i woke up this morning and any progress in that direction is a good thing.

∞ DT ∞