Hello everyone!
We are 11 days away from the start of fall in the northern hemisphere, and wind blows early showers of reddening leaves to the forest floor. All day and night, the sound of the creek next to my small cabin is punctuated by yellow buckeyes cracking onto a tin roof.
It’s my sixth day of living as a resident at Southern Dharma Retreat Center, and the morning was happily spent preparing the meditation hall for retreatants, folding tablecloths, and chatting with fellow staff before the sacred silence sets in this evening.
It was difficult but necessary for me to step away from Internal Alchemy for a month’s break. I bare myself as openly in this writing, sometimes with difficulty. But, more than for emotional reprieve, I paused because it was a time of transition that deserved full attention.
With both buoyancy and anxiety, I chose to leave my job. I applied for and accepted a position of residency at Southern Dharma, where I’ll be working and writing for my keep for the next six weeks. Before coming here, I vacationed with my partner and family, exploring a corner of the Colorado Rockies. One of my closest friends flew from California for a quick road trip through the southeast, ending with mushroom foraging in the damp forests of Western North Carolina. I seeded foxgloves and Iceland poppies to overwinter and drew a dozen schematics for garden designs and flower plantings to tweak until next spring.
(Speaking of gardening, I’ve just added Jo Thompson’s The Gardening Mind to my Substack recommendations. Seriously inspiring and worth exploring if you’re a green thumb or a black thumb—like me—who’s working on it.)
After taking this pause, I’ve come to the decision to publish posts bi-weekly, on the second and fourth Sundays of each month. For paid subscribers, on fifth Sundays, you all will receive an exclusive post.
August was fun and stressful, in turn. No matter the state I was in, it felt off, not writing to you all. In part because I made no mention of the pause in my last post (it was a tad spontaneous) and as my readers, you deserve a heads up. I ask for your forgiveness, there.
But when I made the decision to take a break, anxiety arose at the thought of having to synthesize the lessons and experiences captured in a whole month. It’s relatively easy to synthesize a week of life at a time, with all the conflicts and lessons and moments and book snippets fresh in mind.
Reflecting on all my writing in my first year of Internal Alchemy, I realize the weekly posts don’t necessarily make for the best writing. I can read back and shake my head at times when I can tell I threw in the towel. I have to forgive myself for that. My hope is for bi-weekly posts to lead to more intentional writing, and hopefully more meaning found in reading it.
So. With housekeeping out of the way, here is my synthesis of summer’s end:
May I forgive myself for any harm I may have caused
In thought, word, or deed; Known or unknown
May I forgive myself
May I allow myself to be a student of life and to make mistakes
May I forgive myself
And if I cannot forgive myself in this moment
May I be able to forgive myself in the future.May you forgive me for any harm I may have caused
In thought, word, or deed; Known or unknown
May you forgive me
May you allow me to be a student of life and to make mistakes
May you forgive me
And if you cannot forgive me in this moment
May you be able to forgive me in the future,May I forgive you for any harm you may have caused
In thought, word, or deed; Known or unknown
May I forgive you
May I allow you to be a student of life and to make mistakes
May I forgive you
And if I cannot forgive you in this moment
May I be able to forgive you in the future.
I was given this forgiveness metta meditation in July when I was on an Insight Dialogue retreat. I had asked my instructor, Phyllis Hicks, how forgiveness functions in the Buddhist framework of dependent origination.
“The first step is to let the injury be felt,” she explained. “The next recognition is that hurt people will hurt people; that is the trap of delusion.”
She gave me this metta practice. I intended to put a picture of my life’s greatest antagonist on my altar, to pray this to him every day. I still might do that, it would help.
After memorizing it, I found its uses everywhere. It’s becoming slowly more ingrained. When someone wrongs me in a small or large way, my brain jumps to the last verse. I say it over, silently or aloud, and then I work my way back up to self-forgiveness. When I inevitably harm someone, the second verse raises its flag and I follow the meditation from there.
Self-forgiveness is called for more often than either of the other verses combined. I make mistakes constantly. I struggle with forgiveness in all its forms: asking, receiving, and offering. When I’m mired in self-pity, doubt, anxiety, or anger over my mistakes or my general human deficiencies, they swell to other people. I am less forgiving of their shortcomings, their humanness.
I’ve practiced this metta forgiveness prayer since that July retreat, but come August I began to feel its effects. It makes it easier to be with myself, to acknowledge and accept myself with all of my idiosyncrasies and shortcomings. And if I’m quick to forgive myself, forgiving others feels second nature.
Some other reflections on forgiveness arose when thinking about forgiveness in the context of dependent origination (which in summary, is the Buddhist version of old adage ‘watch your thoughts, for they become your words.’) One of which was, in cases of big forgiveness work, for repeat offenders so-to-speak, I imagine how they might die. Not in a vengeful way, but with as much objectivity as possible.
How will their current modes of self-destruction might manifest? Will they be alone, in pain, or impoverished? For me, sitting with that visual evokes pity that at least leans toward empathy, if it doesn’t evoke empathy outright.
Another point that Phyllis clarified was that forgiveness does not mean trusting people who are clouded in delusion and liable to cause harm. But our individual reactions to those people or experiences, like anger or frozenness or self-righteousness, must be sat with. Let that self-righteousness arise in the body, let it be felt. What unpleasant sensations emerge from that unwholesome feeling?
In Frank Ostaseski’s book, The Five Invitations, he puts it bluntly:
“We don’t need our bitterness to prove that we have been wronged.”
He seconds Phyllis, acknowledging that we can still say to the abuser, ‘No, I don’t ever want to see you again.’
“But forgiveness,” Ostaseski writes, “Empowers us to let ourselves off the hook. ‘I don’t need to continue to carry all this tightness, rage, anger, and pain within me.’”
My constriction against those who have hurt me is forceful—it’s natural, a heart’s defense that leadens my character. But in the last few weeks, I have begun to grasp how that constriction prevents me from loving fully. It’s as if I’ve just noticed a limp in my gate that I’ve had for years, but become blind to it. I’d like to walk upright again, unburdened by hate.
So, as a first execution of forgiveness, I ask for yours. For how I unceremoniously ‘ghosted’ my readership for a few weeks. But I’m delighted to write to you all again and eager to see what the next few weeks yield.
Be well,
V