Bring your best self to light - June 2006
We grow by recommendation so if you enjoy this ezine.. I'd love it if you forwarded it to others. When they sign up they get a FREE 10 part e-course called Personal Freedom...
Sorry for the delay this month..
Forgiveness: the Ultimate freedom
Recently I read a piece about Ann McCabe..the widow of Gerry McCabe. (This was a policeman gunned down during an IRA armed robbery. Controversially his killers were freed as part of the Good Friday agreement settlement in Northern Ireland). She described how she still felt so sad every day and still could not move on. I found myself having a few reactions to this. The first one was compassion..particularly as it turns out that he actually knew his killers..they were neighbours. The second was that I felt by her not moving on somehow that really those killers had won. Everyday their actions ruled her life...
Now in my life let me say I've been given plenty of primary school level opportunities to forgive and I've even had a few second-level ones as well. But I've never had to forgive on the scale that Gerry McCabe's murder would require. So perhaps in her situation I would still be simmering and struggling too. But I really hope I wouldn't be. One of the rather selfish motives I've had for really struggling to forgive some of the people and events in my life is that I don't want them taking up space in my head or heart. I don't want to live my life simmering with rage and resentment at perceived wrongdoings and slights. There are times when, to be honest, it would actually feel quite good and be easier to do so ..but another part of me fiercely resists giving them any room in my heart or head or body. So I struggle to forgive for my own sake. Not for theirs.
In my experience of forgiveness, it's unpredictable and has its own timetable. I've struggled for ages to forgive someone only to find it hopping back up at all sorts of odd times. But I found that if I stayed with the struggle and generally if I turned it over to the Universe/Higher Power/Source/God that somehow the forgiveness happened silently and almost unobtrusively. There does actually come a day when I can think of an incident and realise that it doesn't have the same charge in my body that it did...I'm now FREE of it. Please don't think that forgiveness condones what wrong has been done. But it's not helping me by re-hashing and eating it again on a daily basis. And why should I give room in my being to this stuff? The beauty of it too is that it does start to get easier...I also think that you need to go through an initial period of anger/bitterness/rage before you can truly forgive...unless you are a saint, it's unlikely you can go straight from insult to forgiveness without a detour down the rage road
Take action!
- If you have someone/something to forgive in your life, what are you afraid will happen if you let this incident go? Is this a reasonable fear? How could you overcome this?
- If you still feel really angry at this person or incident do you have anywhere where you could safely physically release this anger by whacking something (I mean that in a physical strike sort of way...not a Mafia sort of way!)
- If you forgive this person, what would have you face in your life then?
The Money Mistress
My e-book is still for sale and £1 from every copy goes to a charity in Cameroon.
You can read all about it here...
The Nation - new regular newspaper column.
You can read this quarter's edition here..
LantzQuest
Have been some changes since my last edition...but will give you a further update in the July edition
Articles
No articles this month..
Bits & Pieces - Visit to Romania
Came back on Monday from a visit to Romania (Sibiu...next year's European Capital of Culture). It's a beautiful city but undergoing frantic renovation. Nearly all the older houses are missing a few tiles and bits of plaster but still retain their beauty. The Romanian people are delightfully friendly too. One member of our party got lost and when she asked for directions, two Romanians gave her a lift to the hotel! The food is also highly recommended. I decided to order some crap (as you do) ...which is the Romanian for carp. The fish dishes generally aren't great but the other food is pretty delicious. The New Yorker is particularly good. Many of the Romanians also speak English..putting us monoglots to shame! Interested? Check out Sibiu's official website
Recommended - what I'm reading/seeing
Global Ideas Bank If you like ideas, you will love this website. It has ideas from all over the world on just about everything!
Da Vinci Code: Yep, went to see it. Tom Hanks was miscast. Ian McKellen hammed it up so much I thought he was going to grow a snout. Found it boring and tedious. Paul Bettany brilliant as the mad monk Silas. Found it annoying that there were no semi-decent members of the Catholic hierarchy in it. I mean, they are not ALL bad. It's the equivalent of automatically inserting (fundamentalist terrorist) before the word Muslim. If you want to see it, wait for the DVD.
Camel Club by David Baldacci: Interesting spin on the conspiracy theory...well-written, strong characters. Intriguing plot.