Day 15

Blargh. Day 15, which came right after day 14. It's after midnight and I have not been wanting to blog or write or look inside myself at all whatsoever. I talk to coworkers, surf the web, obsessively check my email, anything to avoid looking into myself. I'm not immune just because I've committed to doing this work. I feel like crawling back up into my mother's womb and just staying there forever.

This morning during yoga class I received another piece to the betrayal/forgiveness puzzle. I was lying on the floor in a relaxation pose and my mind wandered to the man I currently love (secretly and unrequitedly). As the sound of his name resonated in my mind, I felt this turbulence, this sexual, emotional charge over my heart--and then became painfully aware of the presence of something else underneath it.

I saw that my feelings of love, all those delicious and ecstatic emotions, had been swirling around for months distracting me from a piece of inner work I had been neglecting--that of forgiving this other person who betrayed me so deeply. I saw that unless I forgave that person, I would keep drawing the experience of betrayal into my life over and over again through my beloved. In fact, that is exactly what I have been doing for eight months.

And then I saw that there was nothing to forgive. The person who I thought betrayed me--he actually did no such thing. He actually did a beautiful thing for me. When this person came into my life, my soul was very dark and negative, self-destructive and full of hate and envy--almost pure evil. And I acted that evil out--on him and others--for a long time. After several years, I woke up one day and found myself actually wanting to be good and to do good for others. And then, almost immediately afterwards, this person disappeared from my life and took all my evil with him.

I hope God has been good to him.