Faking and Forgiving - Updated from my September, 2009 archive

There is the truth that meets in between reality and consciousness. Your actions, your conscious desire to forgive, are real but the realm of sleep is a playground for that which wants to undermine us from our waking desires and impulses to be good, to do what is right. If we let the realm of sleep overtake our waking time, we end up doubting ourselves. 

I don't speak from theory. I was good because I was taught to be good. And, I believed the world was good. Then I learned it wasn't always good. So, what was the next step in learning how to behave and feel the truth of who I am and how I felt? That was no easy task and I felt like I was faking it.  Yes, faking it.  Interestingly, I still feel sometimes as though I am a fake. For example, I never cried after my mother's death therefore, I didn't really love her. Ergo - I'm faking it. Of course, that's not true but forgiving myself for not crying was a hard place to arrive at.

A solution to middle-of-the-night obsessing was found in prayer. At one time it was very common for me to wake in the middle of the night filled with worries, fears, anger, doubts, and dread. I finally tried prayer; the Hail Mary and Our Father of my youth and adult life became my lifeline in periods of turbulent sleep. They acted, as a meditation, a mantra, a chant, a redirection of thought, and still do. My belief in their power restored my trust, my faith in what I really believe to be true about myself.

I often found myself feeling fake at work and the source was clearly my burn-out, my impatience with the same questions and attitudes I'd dealt with for 21 years. But, self-awareness has taught me to recognize the slide into rudeness and impatience, for the most part.  The extra effort to reach out, do good, help and offer guidance when asked for always, 100% of the time, results in gratitude because someone took the time to listen and to hear. 

Of course, there is always a voice waiting to tell me I'm such a fake. And it's not just about faking forgiveness, either. Learning to trust your own realness, in all things, just leads naturally to believing in your capacity to forgive. To not believe in our self only weakens us.  Of course, the stronger our self-belief is, the stronger the assault from outside will be to undermine our self-belief, our knowledge of who we are.  We find ourselves meeting and learning and coming to know and understand the religious sense we are all born with.  Servant of God, Luigi Giussani, explains that as “that which lies at the very essence and root of human rationality and consciousness. It is that aspect of the human individual which affords Christianity with a reasonable basis, as an instance of the revelation of God as mystery.”

Grasping this idea can lead us to strongly hold on to the reality of who we are and not allowing subconscious dreams to strip us of our knowledge of our true self as God sees and knows us.  Holding on to our true self keeps us free of self-doubt.  But, we are human and can slide into that unhappy playground that feeds our fears and fills us with self-doubt.  It is our human-ness that also has the capacity to lift us up so that we can forgive ourselves for our weakness and hold on to who we truly are.