Lack of forgiveness as the breadcrumbs to self-knowledge
Are there aspects of yourself that you struggle to forgive? Perhaps there was an occasion when you caused another person great pain. Perhaps there has been an occasion in which you let yourself down. Perhaps it is a characteristic of your body, your heart, your mind, your personality, that you just cannot accept.
Whatever your pattern of non-acceptance of yourself, know that it is unique to you, as singular as your fingerprint. This pattern is your unique creation, borne of each occasion in your life in which you have disowned a dimension of your Unique Self.
In this pattern, then, is a key to your life's Unique Path. Each subtle dimension of this pattern is a breadcrumb, marking the way to a realization of Unique Self, for this reason: you reject aspects of yourself to precisely the same degree that you do not fully see yourself. If you could and would see all of who you are … every twist and turn of your journey from inside and out, all of your choices, moments of glory and stumbling, everything … you could not possibly hold a resentment against yourself. Your deep understanding of who you are and how you got here would render moot any judgment you might harbor against yourself.
Thus, one practice is to notice this pattern, take a strand of it, and follow the clues back to the underlying ignorance of yourself that lies beneath the self-rejection. Ask, "what is it about my path here that, if I knew it more deeply, would render this self-rejection meaningless?"
As you know yourself more deeply and fully, almost ironically, a miracle happens -- your preoccupation with your self falls away. No longer do you worry about how others see you, or whether you have value, or whether somebody has snubbed you. Instead, with your view unobstructed by self-absorption, you live fully from your Unique Self, sharing your innate wisdom and compassion with those around you, living into the fullness of your Unique Obligation.
It is to this that the great Zen teacher, Dogen Zenji (c. 1200-1253) spoke when he uttered perhaps the most famous Zen teaching, "To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things of the universe."
Thus, this unique pattern by which you refuse to forgive or accept yourself offers the precious gift of showing the way to your Unique Self, that precious expression of creative emergence that only you can bring. Your self-rejection offers you the gift of awakening itself.
Will you accept this gift?
[The photograph of the sunrise as viewed 12/19/2011 from the author's front porch, is by the author.]
[The Unique Self enlightenment teaching originates with Dr. Marc Gafni. It appears originally in his 2001 book Soul Prints. It appears in numerous recordings of his Oral teachings found on iEvolve.org and marcgafni.com. It then appears in a scholarly journal edited by Marc Gafni, JITP 6:1 Suny Press, 2010, and in Marc Gafni, Radical Kabbalah, Unique Self and Non Dual Humanism, The Teaching of Mordechai Lainer of Izbica, {forthcoming 2012 Integral Publishers} and in its most complete form in the classic text of Unique Self, Marc Gafni Your Unique Self, The Democratization of Enlightenment {Forthcoming 2012 Integral Publishers}.]
Submitted by Tom Goddard on December 19, 2011.
