A Sinner's Soul
"Embracing my WHO I AM"
©2012.
Erin Adams-Phillips. Erin’s Echo. All rights reserved.
I
can be pretty damn convincing if I must say so myself. I’m a forced to be
reckoned with. I laugh because I know many people don’t know the meaning of
that idiom; therefore, they will NOT get the symbolism of its verbiage in this
paragraph. Confused? Confused not; it is fairly simple. We, as humans, spend so
much time trying to convince other people who we are…who we are not…what we
believe…what we believe not…what we fear…what we fear not…what we love…what we
love not…that it becomes a phase…a game. Who are we really trying to convince;
others or self?
I
am no angel. I am no saint. I am an ordinary person living in an everyday world
full of temptation and sin. I fall short. I fail. I hurt people. I hurt. I
heal. I forget. I forgive…yet; my greatest challenge is forgiving myself!
I
have beliefs…really; I do. That is no joke. I believe in being loyal. Being
loyal is essential for me…it is not a choice…I am either with you or I am not.
Sunday through Saturday. No certain days of the week. No special days…no
holidays. There is no in between with me. I like you or I do NOT! I love you or
I do NOT! I care or I care NOT! I’m loyal or I’m your worst enemy. Point blank.
Period. Once I am betrayed, I find it easier to forgive the betrayer than to
forgive myself for allowing myself to feel…love…be a friend…a mentor…whatever
position it may be…forgiving me is my greatest challenge.
How
many of you can relate to this? We give more to others (time, money, attention,
support) than we do to self. We treat strangers better than we do family and
self. We allow others to take (money, time, dignity, pride) more than they
refuse to give and at the end of the day, we try to humble ourselves and tell
ourselves “it isn’t their fault”…we forgive them. We own their errors and we
bring upon ourselves unnecessary conflict. Emotional distress. Second-guessing
self. Taking on burdens that don’t belong to self! Contradiction or conflict?
Revolution or revelation? All of the above?
Complicated
simplicity…painfully beautiful!
Why
is it so easy to forgive others and not me?
Why
am I so hard on me?
Does
the lack of self-forgiving mean that I believe that there is no such thing as a
mistake; that in any event, I am a willing participant and deserve whatever hurt…whatever
harm…whatever treatment comes my way? No matter how rude the awakening…regardless how
unpleasant the hurt may be; that I must learn from my faults and suffer... “I made my
own bed”; right?
Wrong!
Absolutely,
positively WRONG! It means I’m a sinner with a soul. A sinner with a conscious.
A sinner with a heart. I’m destined to bring hurt upon myself. It is natural to
set goals I will not accomplish. It is a human-conditioned thought that I can
always be a better me. It is NATURAL.
So
why is it such a challenge to forgive myself if all of this is “natural”?
“Self
forgiveness is the process of restoring your directive will and to understand
how you participate in reality and what you allow reality to become due to your
participation and the patterns you allow” ~Bernard Poolman~
Self-forgiveness
is a selfless act. It is the art of self-awareness…self-acceptance…self-love.
It is very anti-egotistical.
Really,
Erin, just write it so everyone can understand it!
It
is so hard for me to forgive myself because forgiving myself means that I must
accept EVERYTHING about me…my past…my flaws…my strengths…my weaknesses. I must
become emotionally intimate with myself…it is acknowledging all the things I do
not want to be true in my life! It is a rare form of self-spiritual intimacy.
Taking the good with the bad; self-revelation.
Accepting that what I do does not make me who I am, but who I am makes
me abstain from things I should not do…in essence, self-forgiveness is cleaning
the soul of a sinner or remaining selfish in a fool’s paradise.
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