Or walking through the character weakness I created through cheating in relationships and turning it into a current self-committed strength.
In this same process of doing a bit of a ‘looking back’ in my life and the things that I’ve been most ashamed of and regret and have in essence kept as stuff that had ‘haunt’ me as my past was cheating in relationships. As I write this I look away from the screen for a moment because a part of me would not want to expose this side of myself, would prefer to keep things ‘to myself’ but I also see the benefit of not only sharing about this to ‘expose’ myself in the past, but more so to share what I considered as a very personal process that ‘I should keep to myself’, but this was mostly because of existing in shame towards it and judging that ‘tendency’ of myself as something really bad, unforgivable, that caused pain and sorrow in others.
This has been something that I have immediately linked to reviewing shame as it’s been opened up in the awesome audio support here: Facing and Forgiving Real Shame (Part 1) – Demons in the Afterlife and Facing and Forgiving Real Shame (Part 2) – Demons in the Afterlife and through having such support as well as looking at and opening up the word ‘reconciliation’ within me, I saw that I had not made peace with this aspect of myself, mostly also because of keeping it as something that I should never speak of or admit about myself.
I have worked with this for myself, and even if I knew what I was doing at the time, I simply didn’t want to change my ways and would like to ‘keep my possibilities open’ which I only managed to change in the past relationship I had and I’m quite glad about that with myself in how through walking this process and from the very beginning of the relationship, I made a decision to no longer allow myself to ‘waver’ in my decision to be with that person even if we weren’t physically together right away, I made that decision to for once live that commitment to myself, to show to me that I could in fact stop having ‘affairs’ in thought, word or deed when it comes to personal relationships, and I am grateful to myself that I did this even if yes, there were surely moments that I could have defined as ‘openings’ or ‘temptations’ if you will, which surely are never ‘gone’ as such because I realize I have the ability to decide what I define as a ‘temptation’ to begin with which in a way it’s a whole word in itself to open up, which already implies a form of weakness from my perspective, where I believe that ‘I cannot help myself/cannot control/cannot direct’ myself in something and thus ‘fall’ into it, which surely I did experience in relation to cheating as such, which is why I had to yes, of course, let go of that ability within me to make it quite simple to act out on what I saw as an opportunity or potential.
To me the source of shame was more in relation to knowing what I caused in others, the consequences when this happened to be known. Shame and regret emerged within the realization that I was the cause of a lot of turmoil, depression, sadness in in someone’s life, and also how ‘shameless’ I was at the same time in doing it, with without their awareness in my past relationships, which I have by now become aware all were motivated as with many other things in our lives, by the idea of something better, new, more exciting, or simply doing it because ‘the opportunity was here’ and taking it as an ‘innocent’ moment which was of course not living the word innocence in a supportive manner, but more through an experience to veil my responsibility at the time and the actual fear of the potential consequences, like it is explained in this other awesome supportive audio Using Innocence to Defend Fear – Quantum Physical, which I recommend to understand how this ‘misuse’ of the word innocence takes place within ourselves, that was quite helpful for me to also open up this point recently.
I could also say, yes it still was someone else’s decision to dive into such depressive experience upon becoming aware of what I had done, but my part in the whole point is having been dishonest and creating a consequence that in normal terms of course it is not something that is received in stability by most people. So, I have beaten myself up – figuratively speaking – quite a few times for this kind of situations that yes I caused and contributed to creating, while at the same time over time and over some more years after that, I still would do it and not really make a decision to change, until I did after deciding to actually change this ‘tendency’ and pattern within me that I had veiled myself off by seeing it as something that is ‘just here’ and ‘just happened’ while being fully aware that of course it always takes one’s decision to do or not do something.
I’ve also learned through communicating about this point to in a way see that we all cheat ourselves in different ways and levels. Some of us have acted on it, some others tend to only fantasize about doing it, but don’t get to actually live it. That’s how I’ve also seen that cheating as such is always a point of self-deception, where yes one is not living fidelity towards another being and instead is seeking for ‘something else’ with another person, not only at a physical level, but also at a mind level or in the form of ‘mental affairs’ too, because I saw how the sheer acceptance of ‘thinking about another’ in those partnership terms or fantasizing about having a relationship with them or having sex with another person while being in a committed relationship constitutes in essence already an act of ‘cheating’ to oneself, where one is only entertaining an idea of ‘someone else’ in our minds, while one is having an actual, physical, tangible relationship to develop, nurture and commit to, which is what I have decided to do and live from now on in my life.
I’ve been looking at what ‘led me’ to make it so easy for me to not measure consequences, to make it so easy to make a single decision in one moment and for a moment just throw out of the window any commitment to another person because ‘the opportunity presented itself’ and ‘I simply took it’ and how ‘feeble’ in a way I was when it comes to this, being very much moved by desire, lust, an idea of ‘something/someone better’ or simply because ‘it was here’ and so I moved to just do it.
Now, the details of how, when and where I did this all are not relevant to share here, but to me it’s sufficient to share how the kind of laxity towards it is what was a source of shame, which I then also walked through to create an understanding, to understand ‘who I was’ at the time so as to not just see through the eyes of morality but through seeing me and who I was at the time.
At the time I had not created any point of self-awareness or ‘barely’ creating it and developing it within myself, where I would talk to myself to create a point of ‘innocence’ about the moment, as a way to – as the previously mentioned Eqafe audio explains – it was a way for me to make things ‘alright’ within me and not truly have a blunt look at what I was accepting and allowing in having this ‘laxity’ about my commitment to my relationships and how I made it very normal to have ‘open potentials’ to other relationships while being in committed relationships or ‘somewhat’ committed relationships at the time, because they were what they were in the context that I was in at the time in my life as well, where I wasn’t really into developing a relationship of self support or self-respect yet.
One thing I noticed is that I of course suppressed a lot of these things because it was at a time in my life when I was using weed on a regular basis and it was my way to also ‘wipe out’ any immediate inner conflict and ‘shift’ within me to an ‘everything is alright’ state of mind, which I only can know of because I would write about what I was in fact experiencing, and that’s the only remembrance I have of it, because at a conscious level to me it seemed as if there was no conflict at all, but this is how I made myself ‘think’ that ‘I am perfectly fine with it, I know what I’m doing, there’s no problem at all in me, no one’s getting hurt’ as a way to create a false sense of innocence within it all to not have to have a clear view of what I was participating in.
Working on this point has become one of those examples that something that I saw as a weakness in me, I’ve worked on developing it and turning it into a strength within me for the past couple of years.
Though before going into the ‘developing it as a strength,’ I want to share about the process of walking through shame itself and in our group chat at Desteni we had a very cool discussion that led to open up this point about ‘shame’ which can be read here: You cannot see that which you are – 12 July 2017 which opened the door along with looking at the word ‘reconciliation’ for me to do this for once and for all, to identify where and how I’ve experienced that kind of shame in my life and it has been definitely linked to cheating – and it was actually quite a gift in the way that it is explained in this audio support I mentioned at the beginning of this blog about shame, in the sense that I would probably not have gotten to see my reality this way if I had not become aware of how my actions affected another’s life, which at the time I suppressed and just felt bad about it, guilty, remorseful. But I had not taken that step of acknowledging the profound shame I felt in relation to it and it’s probably one of those things that have ‘marked me’ in my life, yet it is and will continue to be there as a reminder of what I’ve done, what I caused when allowing myself to be moved by desire, attraction, the idea of ‘something better’ or something ‘more exciting’ or ‘new’ and all of these experiences I linked to the act of cheating, which were in fact me seeking an experience that eventually of course led to ending relationships due to not establishing that self-commitment, self-honor and self-respect for myself first of all.
In retrospect it is ‘easier’ for me to see how I could have decided to change myself in those moments when facing this ‘temptation’, yet at the time I had not made a clear decision to change, because I still wanted to have these ‘options’ available to me. I wasn’t living a commitment to myself nor towards another. So this is to me an example where many times we make things ‘difficult’ to do or believe that ‘it’s beyond me’ to change, but in self-honesty, the reality is that I was not wanting to change or give up something that I wanted to have, experience or indulge into in my life.
The perceived benefits of ‘going for it’ are only that, a perception, a momentary experience if anything because over time, I see how every time that I ‘gave into it’ became that kind of scars that won’t go away from your mind, and one can self-forgive it, surely, to recognize the point and ensure one doesn’t repeat it again, but as it has been recently explained: self forgiveness wont’ ‘erase’ the memories. Memories will remain as part of who we are, as reminder, as a gift, a ‘cautionary tale’ as I’d like to call them of what I could put myself and others through If I give into this kind of ‘desires’ or ‘fleeting sensations’ that seemed to just ‘open up’ as ‘opportunities’ in my life – which is how I used to define them, see them.
It also had to do with how I approached life back then, where I had placed my life, my destiny in the hands of something ‘else separate from me’ where I thought that people, things, situations would ‘happen for a reason’ and so I would create an innocence point within it as well, which is of course innocence lived as deception, deliberate self-deception just to not have to see the truth and reality of myself in it. Innocence to me now as a living word has a very much different meaning that doesn’t relate at all to ‘pretending to be delusional’ and not realize what I am doing lol, I mean, I know I can only ever deceive myself in fact and that’s where this whole point of cheating is at, not only ‘towards others’ but towards myself, my self-commitment and self-agreement that I am busy living for myself and those whose lives I am directly related to now.
Have these apparent ‘temptations’ gone away? Nope. If I would decide to see a moment, a person, a situation as such and accept it and allow it to exist in me, it would not be so much of a ‘difficult thing’ to do because it’s just like anything else when one ‘goes for it’ without questioning ‘who am I’ within doing something. And yes it can be a bit scary to think of the potentials on this which applies for anything else that we see ourselves having a propensity or tendency to do – and have done in the past – but that’s how I decide to instead of giving any attention to these ‘potentials’ rather create a solid foundation for me to walk through it and as I mentioned earlier, turn it into a strength.
So this is another aspect of our minds, our lives and process where no amount of self-forgiveness will actually remove the potential ‘triggers’ or ‘stimuli’ that we can still decide to react to or ‘act upon’ in our minds – this is why walking through our minds is a moment by moment application, daily thing, every moment thing whenever it is required.
So, how am I living this relationship to this past tendency to ‘cheat’ in relationships? Well, I can wholly say to myself that it’s been quite cool to build that decision of living self-honor, self-respect, self-commitment and consideration – not only for me but to others – when it comes to remaining committed to someone and be able to practically test myself in various times and situations to see ‘who am I’ within it all, and so far I’ve seen how every single time it’s a constant decision to ‘stick’ to my decision to live fidelity and loyalty, simply because that’s the person that I decide to be for myself and another in my life.
Thanks for reading and thanks to the beings that share their experiences at eqafe.com which surely set the example for me to open this up for myself too.
Have a listen yourself too!
Facing and Forgiving Real Shame (Part 1) – Demons in the Afterlife – …
Facing and Forgiving Real Shame (Part 2) – Demons in the Afterlife – …
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