The Mastery of Love

I joined a book group last fall and I'm really enjoying it.  It was something I wanted to do for a long time, but no one ever invited me and I didn't make the effort to create my own book group.  Thank goodness someone else took the initiative.  It's kind of a strange little group - we read what I'll call spiritual self-help books.

Six people came to the first meeting, but two of the women quickly decided it wasn't for them and we never saw them again.  We were four strong through the first two books and then a fifth joined us.  She's missed as often as she's made it, so I won't really include her as a member until she comes on strong later on. 

So the four of us ... all divorced.  I'm the only one with no kids.  We started by reading "Practicing the Power of Now."  Yeah, basically the abridged version.  But it worked for us.  Then on to "The Untethered Soul" followed by "The Buddha in your Mirror" and we're just now finishing up "The Mastery of Love."

I've learned a lot from all of the books, and I would love to go back and highlight it all, but that's not going to happen.  So let me just share today's breakthrough with you ...

I had spent the night with The Man and got up early.  Did a bit of reading and was on Chapter 11, Healing the Emotional Body.  There were a number of passages that struck me, but to make a long story short, what started the tears flowing was the section that talked about forgiveness:

"You must forgive those who hurt you, even if whatever they did to you is unforgivable in your mind.  You will forgive them not because they deserve to be forgiven, but because you don't want to suffer and hurt yourself every time you remember what they did to you."

And do you know who I need to forgive first.  Myself.  Oh yeah - been beating myself up forEVER.  The good news is that I turned a corner last year when I finally stopped reading the Ex's email.  I was just never letting the wound heal.  It wasn't that I cared about him any more, it was that I was punishing myself by invading his privacy, somehow thinking that I was superior by being so smart that I knew how to hack his account (which wasn't hard, because he never changed his password which meant he was stupid).  By once and for all letting go of that, I turned the corner.  I have been in a much better place for the past year, but I still need to forgive myself.

I forgive the Ex for whatever he did to hurt me, or whatever I thought he did (or didn't do) to hurt me.  I think I've finally let that go.  But thinking of it brought me to tears - which is a good thing.  It was a good release.  The Man called out to me and I crawled back under the covers and we talked about why tears were streaming down my face.  It was a good thing.

"And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."