Apologize

Up early again this morning, I decided to do a guided meditation, and as I looked through the selection in iTunes, my cursor settled over Forgiveness meditation. I didn't have a strong feeling about what needed to be forgiven, but I decided to go with it anyway. Sometimes these meditations are cathartic; sometimes I start to cry the minute he starts talking. This wasn't like that. It was almost as if I kept myself slightly removed from it, because I remember thinking during the meditation about the choice that forgiveness presents us with. We don't have to do it, no one is going to force us to either ask for or extend forgiveness (they could try, but since it has to come from the heart, it can't be forced). But we can choose it. For ourselves.

Almost immediately after the guided meditation ended, I heard, in my head, these lyrics:

It's too late to apologize, it's too late

I said it's too late to apologize, it's too late

Which I found really interesting, because the introduction to the meditation specifically says that it is never too late, as he puts it, to do the work of the heart: forgiveness. But it is work:

I'm holding on your rope
Got me ten feet off the ground
And I'm hearing what you say
But I just can't make a sound

You tell me that you need me
Then you go and cut me down, but wait
You tell me that you're sorry
Didn't think I'd turn around and say

That it's too late to apologize, it's too late
I said it's too late to apologize, it's too late

And maybe the reason our culture suggests, in this song and elsewhere, that sometimes it is too late to apologize, is because that's easier -- it lets us off the hook:

I'd take another chance, take a fall
Take a shot for you
And I need you like a heart needs a beat
But that's nothing new, yeah yeah

I loved you with a fire red, now it's turning blue
And you say sorry like the angel
Heaven let me think was you
But I'm afraid

Awww yeah, there it is, in that last lyric. That's what keeps us from forgiving. Fear.

I remember when I first started to consciously work with my fear. Wise people told me two things that have stuck with me, nuggets that continue to guide me today:

One of them is that the antidote to fear is faith. Faith in something, anything, it doesn't have to be God. For me it is faith in goodness. Faith in the power of love. Faith in the force.

And the other is that we only ever operate from two basic places: fear and love. When we choose one, whether consciously or not, we block the other. I often ask myself, especially when I feel myself harden, "am I operating from fear or am I operating from love?"

Because operating consciously, I'll always choose love...