Blessed be the full moon with its illuminating wisdom.
Truth. The last one standing, as Oriah Mountain Dreamer once wrote. I love those lines. Truth is in our hearts. We want to come clean.
It is often hard to tell the truth. It could be us coming clean about wrongdoings toward another – us confessing something to someone we love or care about, apologizing for a deed that we committed, a phrase that slipped our mouth. Or even for having shown carelessness, that we did not pay attention, that we weren‘t being mindful. Sometimes we figure it out ourselves, and we sense the truth wanting to be expressed and come forward. Sometimes we need to be reminded. We‘re asked by another to listen to what‘s truth to that person. We can‘t neglect that. We need to honor that. When there are hurt feelings, the feelings are always real, there is truth in those feelings, no matter the cause. The cause is always debatable.
We live in such a diverse world, with war, peace, illness, health, politics and religions, different views, values and virtues, that the cause for hurt, sadness or anger will always be something different to different people. It will always be something the conditioned mind may want to debate about. But the hurt itself should always be honored. Showing emotions is the soul telling its truth. Emotion is language. It is one way for the soul to express itself. There are many more, but sensing emotions is a clear sign that the soul is expressing its truth to us.
“I'm sorry if I hurt you”, was part of a reply I once got from a friend I felt hurt by. Those seven words cut me even deeper. The fourth word was the dagger. If.
I was hurting, there was no doubt about that. And hurting because of specific actions my friend had done. So, no "if" about that. Whether my hurt was justifiable or not, remains a question. Whether I was being too dramatic, too sensitive, overly fragile or even whether I was misunderstanding the whole thing or not is also debatable. But I felt hurt by my friend. That was my truth. That was my soul expressing herself through my hurt feelings. Therefore, receiving the "if" made me wonder. It made me doubt myself. Doubt my feelings. Doubt my soul. Doubt my truth. I don't want to doubt myself like that ever again. I was heartbroken. That was the truth. My truth.
At that time, I felt it could have been so easy for my friend to just say, “I’m sorry that you are hurting”, or, “I’m sorry what I did hurt you” no matter whether she felt she had hurt me or not. I know that sounds a bit presumptuous of me, and I also know this is a play of words - including the "if" is often used in this phrase. Maybe today she wouldn't have used the "if". Who knows. We live and we learn. Nevertheless, at that time the energy of resistance was potent in the reply, and the "if" only highlighted it. My friend wasn’t ready to hear the truth that what she had done had hurt me. Whether what she did was done intentionally or not. That didn’t matter.
I've often wondered about my own use of the "if" word in the "I'm sorry" sentence, in the past, whether I've used it as to protect myself against my own faults, or the other person's. At least, I'm elated to be able to report that today I'm extremely mindful of my "I'm sorry" sentences. I treat them with massive respect. We live and we learn.
My point ~ Simply acknowledging another person’s hurt, and skipping the "if", opens doorways for two hearts to communicate and share feelings. To skip it is a compassionate and gentle approach, akin to saying “I do care about your feelings”, “Please tell me more" - "You matter a lot to me”. Furthermore, it is also such a beautiful, open, and humble approach to resolving family issues and drama between friends, to say to oneself “I don’t know exactly if I’m to blame or not, and I certainly didn’t intend to hurt someone, but despite that I really want to heal that hurt by meeting the person whos hurting heart to heart”.
To acknowledge that someone is hurting because of something we did, no matter how insignificant or trivial it may seem to us, invites higher vibrational energy into the circle, benevolent frequencies, angelic beings of compassion and grace. They assist in the resolution and healing. The angels of Grace.
Whether it’s us confessing to another that we feel hurt by that person, or if it’s us apologizing to another for our wrongdoings, we can never be sure of the outcome - the consequences of us coming clean. We are daring the unknown by baring our truth. But one thing is for sure, we will feel lighter. We will have opened our hearts. We will have surrendered to the mighty flow of sincerity.
You may be wondering about my old friend, whether we made up or not. The truth is, we did and we didn’t. So it is. Sometimes it is so hard to reveal one's innermost feelings. And for me, that is no exception. I'm reflecting and learning, and the naked truth is, I unintentionally hurt people too. And I want to use the opportunity and say from the bottom of my heart to anyone who may be reading this who I hurt once upon a time or I will hurt in the future ~ I am so sorry I hurt you 🦋
And so it is with all inner truths, not just the truths behind hurts, it's also a matter of us thinking, fearing, that our truth, our authenticity will be rejected. Our honesty. So we ask ourselves why speak our truth if our truth might not be accepted, let alone simply heard by another? So we guard it, the truth, with our lives. But in the end, the truth will come out. It always comes to light. In one way, shape or form. If not in our lifetime it may surface further down the family or ancestral line. Both honest beautiful truths about our essences, and the deeper darker varieties.
I love Angeles Arrien's "Tell the truth without blame or judgment" sentence. That's the energy of the Visionary. Authenticity. To just be honest. Simply telling one's truth. No blame or judgment involved.
It can be pretty normal for us humans to have to weed our way toward the truth that resides in our hearts. It's because whatever it is we don't want to face, whether it's something rather trivial or something very serious, whatever that specific truth may be, it will reveal something about us we would rather keep in the dark - as revealing it will make us vulnerable. Vulnerable to criticism, to blame, to anger, even to loss. We may have locked the truth up in a little box in our hearts, and then we grew rose bushes around it to protect it even further. Both beauty and thorns are its protectors. And that’s alright. It’s OK. Sometimes we are not ready to tell it. Tell it as it is. Time is also a factor here.
At a time in our life, we may fear we may not be able to handle it. We fear we might even hurt those around us by telling our truth, and that we may face opposition from our circles. That we may lose what we have if we reveal our truth. Friends. Family. Harmony. Therefore what we are afraid of losing is often peace and community. We don’t want to wake the Beast of Truth whose sleeping potion is the silence that keeps the peace. We know if we are clumsy, we may lose our friends. We may even lose our family comfort. Light truths. Dark truths. We keep a lot locked away in our hearts. Both our secrets and authenticity.
So I urge us all, also myself, to heed Angeles' words, and be more brave and talk from our hearts, our cores. "Telling the truth without blame or judgment - is the visionary’s way of giving voice to what we see, and bringing our creative fire and our authenticity and truth to the world."
In Iceland, we often quote our beloved poet, Einar Ben or Einar Benediktsson, with his words "Aðgát skal höfð í nærveru sálar", and we say it with much heart every time. It means that when we are with another soul we should be mindful in our communication, that we should take care not to hurt another with our words or deeds. I think that goes beautifully together with telling the truth without blame or judgment.
In Love and Grace
Yours Sóley ✨
