Thoughts with Gayle: Lesson 62

Good morning,

Interesting, a sentence from the text just popped into my mind, “Do you want to be right or happy”.  Hope I didn’t misquote here, if I did, forgive me.

There are all too many times I forget how inextricably forgiveness and happiness are linked.

Given I can be quite unhappy on any given day, it just doesn’t occur to me that I am in a state of unforgiveness, to be sure.  It may well be those thoughts that are not of love are barely on the surface.  I have often likened it to a radio whose volume is so low, I cannot her the lyrics of a song, but I can pick up the beat.  The beat is unhappiness, the lyrics, what I am thinking about another or myself.

I can get so darned mired in grievances that even though I may be robotically practicing the lesson, I am not allowing it to do its cleansing work, that is, the Holy Spirit or Jesus to do it for me.

Ah, cleansing.  This is what we are doing.  Erasing.  Transforming.  Moving toward an empty slate where the Word of God can now be written.

I have been thinking about our Mom a lot lately.  Memories of her being devastated when Dad called her from Taiwan and demanded a divorce.  My twin and I were 28 or 29 at the time.  Trying to live our own lives.  My twin had two children, I had been married a year.  Mom’s “pity party”, that’s what I labeled it as, escalated in intensity and ferocity.

Here was a lovely woman who came from a Southern state, was raised on a farm, loved her parents and seemed to epitomize innocence, trust and a child-like sense of vulnerability.  Highly intelligent, deeply religious and yet, so lost, rejected and demonstrating such helplessness and powerlessness.

Her falling apart was inconvenient, if I am honest with myself.  As she descended into “hell”, that of her own making, our younger sisters married and had kids.  I was the only one without them and worked as a career professional.  It was B. and me who helped her on a financial and emotional basis to the best of our ability.  He was truly wonderful to her, very respectful and nurturing.  Overall until her last 18 months of life, I was too.  But when I lived with her in North Carolina for a month at a time until she died, neither she nor I were in a place of forgiveness and healing.

I was descending into alcoholism, she was still stuck in self-pity and hid behind a wall of heavy armaments, a/k/a defenses, and perhaps, again in the name of honesty, so was I.

It didn’t end well in form.  She died in a rehabilitation facility, convinced I didn’t love her and no one else did either.

It was a heavy-duty guilt trip that was laid upon me and my sisters and none of us yet realized it was an opportunity for forgiveness and healing, none of us.  We remained stuck in with overwhelming guilt for just not knowing what was in her best interests nor ours.  Feeling grossly inadequate and, actually, responsible for her demise and death.  Had we done this differently, she would have been “saved”, etc., which is all ego does.  Ah, and that’s why we stay stuck in the past.

18 years later, I see the power of this lesson.  If I take the time to be still and truly think about what this lesson is saying, I realize forgiveness is my only function.  I do want to be happy which means I forgive the past, worry not about the future and realize I am never alone.  Since mind exists beyond time and space, whatever forgiveness I experience as I practice, is done for the Sonship.

It is done for Mom.  Wherever the mind that was/is Mom, not sure how to state this, this fragment of the mind that was our Mom has derived the benefits of my forgiveness practice when she/that fragment is ready to accept it.

And yes, I can forgive her and myself for illusions about myself and the world are one. (Reference to first sentence in the second paragraph of this lesson.)

Love to all,

Gayle