ANGER & the Freedom of FORGIVENESS

[turquoise]

Greetings, 

My name is Turquoise and I am from the state of Washington.  I had one of the most profound, earth-shaking experiences that completely changed my theory of hateful pay backs and thankfully changed my life forever.  

I am so blessed to be included as a member of the Women's Potlatch Circle.  Our mentor/leader is an elder, a Grandmother, of the Tlingit Tribe.  We do community service in any form needed for all Tribes and all people.   On the day I am speaking of, we were at the Tribal Elders Center's lunch room, beading necklaces for the huge Giveaway Ceremony, for the hosts of the Canoe Journey Celebration.

My beloved husband of 37 years made his journey Home in June of 2005 after a 3 year challenge of stage IV stomach cancer.  He was the very breath of my life and I was extremely protective of him as he rose to meet the challenging lessons of cancer head on.  He was a Vietnam Veteran and a member of a couple of Native Warrior associations.  One of his great strengths was his humble heart filled with loving gentleness and his willingness to reach out to hurting Veterans everywhere.  The beauty of his soul touched all he met.  There was a member of one of the Native Veteran associations who treated my husband in the most degrading, disrespectful manner possible.  My husband chose the freedom to release it.  I chose the burden of hateful revenge.  

After my beloved Crossed Over, I vowed to strike this disrespectful perpetrator down and ruin him for what he did to my beloved darling.   This man knew my anger was more potent than an enraged grizzly bear and he made sure to avoid me at any expense.  It used to give me perverse pleasure to see him run from me like a frightened little child…………especially since I am only 5 feet tall and he is close to 6 feet tall.

On the day of my Great Lesson, we, of the Women's Potlatch Circle, were busily and happily beading and sharing a wonderful lunch prepared for us by the kitchen staff of Tribal Elders Center.  The atmosphere was loving warmth, great ease and gentle with laughter.  All of a sudden, I saw the hated perpetrator walk thru the door.  He did not see me.  A massive explosion of vile permeating hatred flooded my entire being.  It was so pervasive; it sucked the love and gentleness from the room and flattened every person there with the heavy weight of ugliness.    I spoke not a word and yet in the complete silence of the room, a roaring, a shrieking, a screaming, from deep inside me could be felt by all.   I got out of my chair with the intention of wreaking terrible havoc on this man.  With each step I took, the rage inside of me multiplied to proportions words cannot even begin to describe.  Standing directly behind him, I called his name.  He turned around, saw me and dropped the tray holding his meal, splattering us both with hot coffee & food.  He stood cowering in desperate fear, looking like a deer caught in the headlights.  In that very instant, I heard, or felt,  the words, "You COULD see peace."   In the blink of an eye, I chose Peace.  Faster than my next breath, I felt the chains of anger and revenge disappear; releasing & freeing me to become whole once again.  I extended my hand to the man and, trembling with fearful hesitation he accepted the token of forgiveness.  As our hands clasped, I looked him in the eye and silently said from my very soul:  "Many Blessings on you.  I release you and set you free."

Together, with tears streaming down our faces,  he and I cleaned up the mess on the floor.  My tears were in humble gratitude for the beauty of the lesson.    The entire scene took less than 5 minutes, no words were spoken out loud and yet lives, hearts and souls were deeply touched.  Wounded chasms were mended and lives healed.  The grace of gentle love returned to all who were present.  In the discussion of this event later that afternoon, others chimed in with the healing they experienced from my lesson and our Tlingit elder said that this was a clear example of how healing is never singular but always shared.

Later, I discussed my experience in depth with my spiritual mentor, my Hopi uncle.  I asked perhaps if maybe I might have said "I forgive you."  He said it didn't matter what I said but what was my intention.  He said to forgive is to bless and to bless is to forgive.    

I learned that the hatred and revenge I had worn like a badge of honor dimmed my ability to see and inhibited my ability to accept the blessings of the lightness of Light!!  The forgiven one and I do not experience friendship but we do share honest respect, courtesy and politeness.

Uyusti!!   (Be Strong)

Turquoise

[Kelly]

Dear Members,

We are excited to mention that we are moving to a more new and improved message boards on MONDAY MORNING AUGUST 9th! The boards will be done for a few hours while we are making the conversation. Remember we posted information about this move a month ago. For some of you this might seem a bit sudden,  but when we were reviewing the site we determined the current message board you are using is out of date and the company that designed it is no longer in existence. The good news is this new message board will have new features that have been requested in the past like more fields we can add to your profiles and a chat room up to 20 people at one time. If we find the chat room is bursting at the seams we will add additional room for extra people. All your old posts, private messages and such will be migrated to the new message board. You might have to put up your profile picture again but not sure. The new company will be doing the migration for us. Here is a short list of some of the new features on the board:

- Custom Profile Fields

- Users can customize their profile pages by selecting a background color or background image, with tiling options.

- Facebook and Twitter Integration

- users can respond to multiple posts at once with "mini-quote"

- Pinned discussion threads - like welcome to our board etc.

- Announcements made across some boards or the entire message board

- Search: Users can easily find all content generated by a particular member, by clicking the 'Find Content' button that appears on the main profile page, or in the Mini Profile Popup which can be accessed throughout the board. The results page allows content to be filtered by application, as well whether the member created it or merely participated in it.

- Privacy: allows users to sign in anonymously, hiding them from the online users list. Users also have the option to disable personal conversations and user-to-user emails, as well as ignore other users if necessary.

The next exciting piece of news about the new message board is it will have a new domain name of www.grieving.com for search engine optimization purposes. It will still be apart of Beyond Indigo and can be found through www.beyondindigo.com. We will be redirecting your current URL's to this new domain name but we might miss a few. If that is the case simply go back to www.grieving.com or www.beyondindigo.com to find your message board thread. We will try to make the transition as seamless as possible.

The bottom line is the new board will give us room to grow our community and more options to interact better with each other.

If you have any questions please direct them to feedback@beyondindigo.com.

Kelly Baltzell, MA

CEO/President

Beyond Indigo Family

[debbie8800]

Wow intense, i lost my mom 6 months ago and miss her to pieces. She ws everything to me.

Did you have a gun when you went up to this person, why was he so scared? I lost you there..

Prayers for you that you did not hurt him and chose peace.

I would like to end the life of a guardian who let my mom die in the hospital but of course i cannot do that either.

Deb

[debbie8800]

Wow intense, i lost my mom 6 months ago and miss her to pieces. She ws everything to me.

Did you have a gun when you went up to this person, why was he so scared? I lost you there..

Prayers for you that you did not hurt him and chose peace.

I would like to end the life of a guardian who let my mom die in the hospital but of course i cannot do that either.

Deb