"Fool me once ...

"Fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me twice, shame on me."

Old Proverb

Living my life with compassion, loving kindness, and an open heart is not always easy.  My down fall has always been seeing people at soul level, not as they really are in human form.  Illusions generally fall away, rendering a cost to my unsuspecting heart.

Forgiveness comes easily to me as I truly believe we are all doing the very best we can do at any given moment.  When faced with choice, we don't always make the best decisions.  Believing we are here for the human experience, of course we are going to face numerous challenges and we will not always be proud of them.

So with my open heart I forgive as I am very aware that beneath all actions resides a fellow spiritual being.  We learn through our conflicted decisions and I choose to see the forgivable/unforgivable situation as an opportunity for personal and spiritual growth.  And by forgiving I do not mean condoning. 

So this is where I get stuck.  Processing brings me this far and then I falter.  First, I struggle with the genuine disappointment that the person chose not to do better. Secondly, although I have forgiven, the heaviness of my personal loss remains.  I ask myself what the lesson was for all involved, but primarily search for the application to myself.   And lastly, I find myself dwelling on the situation rather than simply letting it go.

I accept that our perspective is frequently limited leaving us incapable of seeing the big picture.  Only as time passes do we begin to truly view how all of the pieces fit together.  With a little distance, we can turn back and see how we ignored information that could have helped minimize the entire experience. 

It is easy to sit back and count the wrongs of others as it is a distraction from listing our own.  We may even find ourselves in denial saying, "Oh, but what they did was ten times worse."  Point being, we are not the ones to judge.  We must use all of our efforts to keep our own house in order.

All people carry love, energy and light within them.  There are different ways to utilize this power:

well wishes, blessings, prayer, energy work, or meditation to name a few.   Whatever method

we use to touch the hearts of others, we must be mindful to apply it to ourselves as well.  Restoring

our inner self with the love of God, Universal energy, and light of Christ/Buddha or simply the Divine will help us heal.  Letting go of what is heavy in our heart, enables us to make room for new, moving forward hopefully a little wiser.