Forgiveness is the treatment and the conditioning that helps loosen habits and patterns. When we fa1l foul of old ways, when we fail to get beyond our "stuff," despite all our good intentions, we have to forgive ourselves and try again. We have to act as compassionately toward ourselves as we would toward a child we were teaching a new skill. Forgiveness allows the process of transformation to continue by removing the obstacles that can check the flow.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber
along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing
their colored clothes; caps and bells.
And then
once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the throng's clamor
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void: and that, O Lord,
Creator, Hallowed one, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.