Yielding & Forgiveness
There’s a time and a place to yield and forgive. It’s not when someone asks it of you or tries to coerce it out of you. It’s when you’re ready. It’s when you decide. It’s when you’ve given yourself adequate time and space to consider what it is that you are yielding to and forgiving so that you fully understand before you let go and fall into a potential danger zone again. It is crucial to make sure you give yourself time and space to find resolve so that any pain inside of you does not twist and torment you.
To yield is a feminine quality, if we are looking at this from a Tantric perspective. It is not a quality belonging to women per se, however, as women are primarily feminine, their tendency to yield, even before they are ready, is fairly common. We see this unfold when women yield and lower their boundaries for the sake of compassion and care for men as lovers, husbands or family members who denigrate or abuse them or majorly lack deeply loving behaviour towards them. We see this with men who are in relationships with beautiful yet narcissistic women, who continue to take from them what they give without any gratitude or genuine love. Instead of leaving the relationship or presenting firmer boundaries to their partner, they continue to yield to this abusive behaviour and forgive it even though things only become worse with time.
Why do we do it? Usually fear is the culprit. Fear that we won’t get anything better. Fear that the meagre validation, protection and affection we receive in these confining relationships is the best we could hope for. Fear that the world outside of these relationships is more dangerous. Naïvety. An innocent mind that doesn’t yet know better, doesn’t yet know that there are an infinitude of ways of living that are more harmonious and connected to love than the ones they are choosing.
Yielding and forgiving too soon can prevent powerful lessons from being learned and enable the continuation of toxic behaviour from both the victim and the perpetrator. Then painful cycles of spinning around the wheel of hope so seemingly close to being restored only to become shattered again, creating much confusion, frustration and despair, become routine. We become starved of true love, emotional stability and divine power living like this.
Separation from these cycles is necessary to create the time and space required for personal healing and resolution. In sustained separation after conflict or drama overload with a toxic relationship, deeper understanding can follow. Especially when we take time to properly care for ourselves and seek the outside help if we need it, like that from a friend, psychologist or counsellor with supportive yet unbiased, objective perspective. Separation can also help us to see if our visions in the relationship are actually in or out of alignment with each other. If our visions are fundamentally out of alignment with the others we are close to then it’s very difficult to work in harmony or build anything together in the relationship anyway. Walking away would be the wise choice.
Time and space to ourselves gives us the opportunity to look at the bigger picture. It gives us with the opportunity to steer away from sweating the small and toxic stuff with each other. It helps us to see how we may have been blinded by the situations we were in as well as our own shortcomings, which were contributing to problems. It can bring realisations of bigger truths that gift relief or even truths that are hard to swallow and take responsibility for but that are ultimately more rewarding and freeing if we do.
So, when it comes to yielding and forgiveness, before you even think about offering them, take the time and space for yourself and introspect so that you can gain greater clarity on what it is you are yielding to or forgiving. Once you truly understand, yielding and forgiving blossom naturally.
