Category: COVID-19

I’ve been pretty vigilant in watching where I’m putting my attention so that I stay out of fear during these times and focus on what brings me joy and is important in my world. So today after a meditation I went to do my groceries. We have a small grocery store here on Gabe but they have been awesome with wiping things down, controlling the flow of folks in the store, writing happy sayings in chalk on the sidewalk as you come in and out and also putting tape down on the floor indicating the flow of people traffic as well as marking out the 2m distance everywhere.

I’m now in the meat section and a woman comes up and stands right next to me, yes right next to me. Out of my mouth comes ‘Seriously!’ Now this wasn’t the interested ‘Hmmm Seriously?’, or the I can’t believe it that’s so interesting ‘Wow Seriously?’, no this was the ‘What the f__k dic_hea_ ‘Seriously?’, yup a whole lot of anger and incredulity spewed out of my mouth before I had a chance to filter it, all in one word. She looked at me (I’m not sure with shock or not), but I realized I had just sent a whole lot of anger her way, so I tried to reign it back in with ‘Please watch your distance’ in a neutral tone (I think). She was angry and stormed away, oh well shit happens. Also I’m apparently not quite as zenn as I thought!

What happened next was what interests me. As I was driving home, the guilt over sending that much anger her way, when she may have just made a mistake having perhaps been in lala land and not even noticed where she was going, and I had also made a mistake in the grocery isle not seeing the ‘arrows’ on the floor for people flow, and gone the wrong way until I saw them. So mistakes happen. I then started sending her forgiveness and love via the ether, I did it a few times to balance things out. Then I realized I needed to forgive myself, hmmmm not so easy. Much easier to forgive her than myself.

It reminded me that in our shamanic teachings we always forgive ourselves first, as the flogging of ourselves over mistakes has such an impact to every moment. Also when we don’t do our forgiveness work the mistakes and the guilt over them accumulates snowballing into all kinds of nasty consequences in our lives.

So a reminder that mistakes are normal, it’s how we learn and grow.

Self Forgiveness is essential to learning from those mistakes, and getting better at not flogging ourselves over them.

I’ve taken a chill pill figuratively speaking, done my forgiveness work and now all is well in my world again.