92: But I don't want to forgive. Ah, to be human and stuck, welcome to the LIfe on Earth show

But I don’t want to forgive

Don’t. Until it happens not by decision but by ease.

You have someone bothering you. Oh, well.

Keep playing with question #3 and question #4 (of the Byron Katie work): Who are you and how do you react and how do you feel when you believe and attach to the thought?

(Can almost all the inner agony thoughts be boiled down to a “should” or “shouldn’t” thought? Yes.)

Compare and distinguish who you are and how you feel when you don’t believe the thought, don’t attach to it, don’t “buy into” the “should” or the “shouldn’t” about the other person.

Just go back and forth and realize the choice is yours.

It’s not about “forgiving.”

It’s about choosing where to put our attention: on the “should” or “shouldn’t” we attach to another person, or on the present where we can experience our experience right now.

Without words.

Even if the “bad” other person is right in the room, snarling at us. We can just look. No “they shouldn’t snarl” words.

They can be yelling at us. We can step farther away, so as not to hurt our ears, and watch them go through whatever they are going through.

Obviously something is bothering them.

Maybe we hurt their feelings. Maybe they don’t feel loved. Maybe they have old issues they are acting out.

Doesn’t matter. Just watch, and if it looks like they need a hug, ask if they’d like one. If it looks like they need an enemy, and you don’t feel like being yelled at anymore, bow and walk out and go do something else.

They are who they are.

It’s not forgiveness that matters. It’s the freedom to follow our breathing, and sense ourselves and look at them without demands or complaints, the freedom to be a real human being. This is what matters. Keep up living this way, today.