The whole focus on forgiveness in regular religions always baffled me. Why are we so inherently awful that we need constant forgiving from God just to be OK? Blech.
Then I think something twigged inside me the other week that made me understand it a little bit better and how it might relate to my kind of spirituality.
Sometimes we have a really tough time forgiving ourselves, by which I mean letting go of hurt, blame and shame. And it’s not just for stereotypically bad things, like stealing your best friend’s boyfriend in high school or cheating money from the government. It’s for little things that we specialise in beating ourself up about constantly: I didn’t work hard enough last week. I did 45 minutes of exercise instead of the hour I promised myself. I missed that application deadline because I was putting it off. I forgot to meditate yesterday. I didn;t send that birthday card.
I know new-age guru types put a lot of store by forgiving others, but I know at least in my case the person I am least forgiving with is myself. If my friend did 45 mins of exercise instead of an hour, that’d be fine, but to me, it’s a huge thing and I strongly feel I do not deserve to be forgiven for my laziness/lack of focus/crapness. A lot of the times it turns into knock-on hatred – I failed to do small-thing-X therefore I do not deserve big-thing-Y.
This is where the forgiveness thing comes in. By passing it over to Goddess and asking her if she forgives us for this thing we did (even though I’m telling you it feels really weird asking forgiveness from Goddess), and of course She forgives us because she loves us, it takes the edge off us forgiving ourselves. We see it from another perspective. We can see it from the perspective that Goddess sees – that we are good people worthy of love and happiness.
If Goddess can forgive us for X, then maybe we can forgive ourselves.
And then it becomes easier to release something that feels horrible and toxic.
So perhaps asking for forgiveness has a place in Goddess Spirituality too.