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Opening to the moment when everything changes
Step 1- Forgive your greatest offender
"Whether you believe in these universal principles or not, they are going to work. But should you decide to tune into them, you may find yourself living at an entirely new level and enjoying a higher kind of awareness- an awakening, if you will." – Wayne Dyer
My greatest offender revealed himself on the evening of June 20, 2006. He was a horrible monster that had the power to take away everything I have worked so hard to create: a loving wife, a precious child, my work, and my dignity. He created bone-chilling fear in me and it took me a long time to forgive him for the suffering he had caused me. Before I tell you who is my greatest offender, I’d like to share with you the transformative power of forgiveness through the words of our friend with no personal email address to be found- Wayne Dyer.
Excerpts from You’ll See It When You Believe It by Wayne Dyer. HarperCollins. 1989 p. 3-9
“I never imagined myself needing to change. I did not have a plan to change my old ways, or a set of goals to improve anything in my life. I felt confident that I had my life running the way I wanted it to. I was extremely successful professionally and nothing seemed to be missing. Yet I have undergone a major transformation that has added a luster to each of my days that I never even contemplated a few years ago.
I spent many of my early years in foster homes, where my mother visited me whenever possible. All I knew of my father was what I heard from others, particular my two brothers. I pictured an abusive, non-caring person who wanted nothing to do with me and my brothers. The more I heard, the more I hated. The more I hated, the angrier I became. My anger turned to curiosity, and I dreamed constantly about meeting my father and confronting him directly. I became fixated on my hatred and on my desire to meet this man and get the answers firsthand.”
“In 1970 I received a call from a cousin I had never met, who had heard a rumor that my father had died in New Orleans. But I was in no position to investigate it. At the time, I was completing my doctoral studies, moving to New York to become an associate professor at St. John’s University, going through a painful divorce, “and stuck in place” when it came to my writing. In the next few years, I co-authored several texts on counseling and psychotherapy. I knew that I did not want to continue writing for strictly professional audiences, and yet nothing else would come to me. I was stuck personally (divorce), physically (overweight and out of shape), and spiritually (a pure pragmatist with no thoughts about metaphysics). My dreams about my father intensified. I would awaken in a fit of anger, having been dreaming about beating my father while he smiled back at me. Then came the turning point in my life.”
“In 1974 a colleague of mine at the university invited me to take an assignment in the South. She was a coordinator of a Federally financed program that was looking into the compliance rate of Southern colleges to the civil rights legislation of the 1960’s. She wanted me to make a visit to the Mississippi State College for Women in Columbus, Mississippi. When I decided to go, I telephoned the infirmary in New Orleans where my cousin had reported my father to have been, and learned that Melvin Lyle Dyer had died there ten years earlier of cirrhosis of the liver and other complications, and that his body had been shipped to Biloxi, Mississippi. Columbus, Mississippi, is about two hundred miles from Biloxi. I decided that this was it-when I finished my visit at the college, I was going to complete my journey and do whatever it took to close out this chapter in my life.
“When I finally stood looking at the marker on the grass, MELVIN LYLE DYER, I was transfixed. During the next two and a half hours I conversed with my father for the very first time. I cried out loud, oblivious to my surroundings. And I talked out loud, demanding answers from the grave. As the hours passed, I began to feel a deep sense of relief, and I became very quiet. The calmness was overwhelming. I was almost certain that my father was right there with me. I was no longer talking to a gravestone, but was somehow in the presence of something which I could not, and still cannot explain.
In one pure honest moment I experienced feeling forgiveness for the man who was my father and for the child I had been who wanted to know and love him. I felt a kind of peace and cleansing that was entirely new for me. Though I was unaware of it at the time, that simple act of forgiveness was the beginning of an entirely new level of experiencing life for me. I was on the threshold of a stage of my life that was to encompass worlds I could not even imagine in those days.
When I went back to New York, miracles began to appear everywhere. I wrote Your Erroneous Zones with ease. An agent arrived in my life through a series of ‘strange’ circumstances at exactly the right moment. I had a meeting with an executive of T.Y. Crowell Publishers, and a few days later he called to tell me that Crowell was going to publish my book.”
“Today, I am convinced that my experience of forgiveness, while emotionally draining at the moment it was occurring, was the beginning of my transformation. It was my first encounter with the power of my own mind to go beyond what I previously considered the constraints of the physical world and my physical body.”-
Excerpts from You’ll See It When You Believe It by Wayne Dyer. HarperCollins. 1989 p. 3-9
When I first read this story while doing research for my book, I was struck by the rawness and nakedness of Wayne’s words to his father. Forgiveness can only come out of an honest and hard look at our feelings about our offender. No sugar coating when you confront him or her. Let him have it if you must, but then realize that holding on to your anger is only hurting one person: That is you. I realized something even more profound. My attachment to my role as the victim was keeping me from believing that I deserved joy, freedom and love.
So who was my greatest offender? Who wronged me so terribly that holding on to my anger kept me from living a life of fulfillment, confidence and passion? On June 20, 2006, I reached a turning point when after weeks of binge drinking to numb my feeling of unworthiness; I was finally stopped by the police for drinking and driving. I had eight beers that night and was sure to be arrested. The time it took for the cop to check out my driver’s license seemed to last an eternity. During this time, my thoughts were of how disappointed and ashamed my family would be. How I would have to call my wife from the precinct and she would have to dress my two year old daughter to come and get me or let me sit in jail for the usual three days. For a man who has always seen himself as ultra-responsible and committed to his family, this notion was nothing short of a living hell. The cop reached my car and railed on me. I was too drunk to now remember exactly what expletives he used but in the end, he looked over at the baby car seat in the back and had mercy on me. He let me go with just a verbal warning. All I could think was what a bullet I had dodged. I then heard a voice inside my head as clear as any I have ever heard say to me “This is your last chance”. I went upstairs and read “Good Night Moon” to my daughter. I went to bed trembling for what could have been. I did not tell my wife until a year later and I hated myself for having come so close to ruining a blessed life through my selfishness. Well I have not touched alcohol since. After coming clean to my wife and having a forgiving moment like Wayne’s with myself, I now can say that I have freed myself from this demon. Having done so has provided the space to accelerate my quest for the moment when everything changes. Forgive your greatest offender. Especially if that offender is yourself.
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