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<blockquote data-quote="Scent of Cedar *" data-source="post: 680469" data-attributes="member: 17461"><p>I suppose this could be. I mean, I could see how it could be some kind of fear or disquiet fueling the need for alliance. But who would ever be afraid of me?</p><p></p><p>I am serious.</p><p></p><p>Fear would not account for my mother drawing back her arm as though to strike me when I was already a grandmother. It is something other than fear I think, Leafy.</p><p></p><p>Something worse, that has to do with our not being destroyed into some mindset that would understand both the win and the game, maybe. Something to do with the sibs, and with a desperate kind of maleablity and with the primary abuser's power.</p><p></p><p>It always comes back to the primary abuser's lust for power over. To her demand that her own children become mirrors reflecting her and nothing else; and no smallest part of themselves.</p><p></p><p>So, for me, the question is how to undo what I was taught before I could think. They say to give them the child, and they will give you the man. That we have such a terrible time undoing the way we were taught who and how to be.</p><p></p><p>Here is an example. Another level has been shattered, for me. Almost automatically now, I work in the chopping onions way. I am aware of really nasty feelings washing up, and I am passing the time of the day with them. And I get it that I will come through this layer too, stronger and more myself.</p><p></p><p>So what I think it is is that we were hurt as toddlers. When we raged and said "NO" we probably "got our blocks knocked off". That could be why everything is so twisted. We not only did not have words, we were only two.</p><p></p><p>We still did not know how to use the bathroom.</p><p></p><p>We did not have the capacity to make fine discriminations regarding right or wrong, self or other.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>There was a time in my life when I wanted people to be ~ not afraid of me, but in awe of me, so they would find me acceptable. I was all about competition then ~ but at the same time, I was afraid to actually risk, to actually believe in myself enough to try. Very messed up, as of course I would have been. So why anyone would be afraid of me.... </p><p></p><p>Okay.</p><p></p><p>So, you are talking about being uncomfortable with self deception.</p><p></p><p>This is also true.</p><p></p><p>So we are back to moral slippage.</p><p></p><p>And my family does seem to think I do not do moral slippage often or well. And my friends in real life do seem to think I'm geeky, but I don't mean to be.</p><p></p><p>Even then, I didn't want to hurt anyone else. I wanted to be enough in myself. And the only way I knew to do that was to be perfect.</p><p></p><p>Except I was not perfect.</p><p></p><p>It has to do with how we were taught to see.</p><p></p><p>I learned to accept that I am just me. Very fine in some ways, but needing concrete challenge to shatter denial like glass. Denial is a funny thing, like that. So transparent you cannot see the distortions.</p><p></p><p>I think my family of origin is not afraid of me. It's all connected, deep down where we cannot see. They say the same in the martial arts.</p><p></p><p>That the opponent is us; that in winning we lose and that in losing, we win.</p><p></p><p>But I am ashamed, when I lose.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I have goosebumps.</p><p></p><p>Wishing you every good fortune, New Leaf. Rejection is the blood and bone of it. Deep enough, there is a place where only your eye will tell you the value of your work. As I understand it, the more within we go, the less perfect we feel and the less what anyone else says or does about what we have done matters.</p><p></p><p>We are doing our work for ourselves.</p><p></p><p>Like chopping onions, in that way.</p><p></p><p>And we may become famous, but by then it doesn't matter because we have grown beyond.</p><p></p><p>A famous cellist of ninety was asked about his talent and drive. I think he was a cellist. His response was that, totally enamored of his work, he was getting better. And this was a famous musician, admired by everyone who knew what they were listening to.</p><p></p><p>And fame was this valueless thing.</p><p></p><p>And if we were famous, our families of origin will still be our families. And they will still have a family's powerful impact.</p><p></p><p>But I think we are doing alright, here.</p><p></p><p>Happy for you, Leafy.</p><p></p><p>I hope you begin, soon.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Maybe, we need a little magic, like Cinderella did, too.</p><p> </p><p>And here we all are.</p><p></p><p>:O)</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Love is the agape feeling represented by the Christ. It is the suffering of The Mary, too. It is something outside of denial. Teilhard de Chardin (I don't know how I found him, but I did) describes love as Fire, and says that when we harness it, for the second time in the history of the world, mankind will have discovered Fire. A moving, living, power; bright, so bright.</p><p></p><p>That seems to have been what was twisted, bent out of shape and proportion for us. For our abusers, too. The flow of it. </p><p></p><p>Also, something to do with time. Time with a capital T.</p><p></p><p>But I don't know what.</p><p></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. </em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Pierre Teilhard de Chardin</em></p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p><em>I will this morning climb up in spirit to the high places, bearing with me the hopes and the miseries of my mother; and ther... upon all that in the world of human flesh is now about to be born or to die beneath the rising sun I will call down the Fire.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin </em></p><p><em>Hymn of the Universe</em></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I am at a loss too where forgiveness is concerned. I think we don't need to worry about it for others. The person I needed most to forgive turned out to e myself. </p><p></p><p>We hold ourselves to such high standards of behavior and outcome that we feel we have failed when really, we what we are really doing is just wholeheartedly living. Passionate hatred is part of that. Once we have it, it falls apart on its own. It has no where to go. Loving someone has somewhere to go. Hatred, no.</p><p></p><p>Still, how do we know how to see ourselves as the (truly) precious incarnations of life, in life, in the middle of the mystery of being alive, when we remember contempt or shame, or when we confront any of the things that are so ugly?</p><p></p><p>I don't know, either.</p><p></p><p>Here is a quote on forgiveness I found somewhere recently. </p><p></p><p><em>"I never knew how strong I was until I had to forgive someone who wasn't sorry and accept an apology I never received."</em></p><p></p><p><em>David Avacado Wolfe</em></p><p></p><p>Probably, this too is one of those things we will be able to let go of altogether once we are through it. I agree that it was that our children were endangered that found us determined to flail through this. We need to remember that, maybe. We actually have lived wonderful lives with our kids, loving them and making that whole miracle happen. </p><p></p><p>We will come through this, too.</p><p></p><p>So now we know. It is not the sister who frightens us, it is the sense of responsibility to her.</p><p></p><p>What is "done" New Leaf? How are we done with our families. Even if I never see them again, here they are in my heart and my dreams and alive and well in regret and like, an appalled sense of injustice.</p><p></p><p>I don't know what to do about that, either.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Oh, wow. </p><p></p><p>I didn't know that, Leafy.</p><p></p><p>Huh.</p><p></p><p>You would think it would be just the opposite.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>So, this is what my Tai Chi instructor says. He is saying it in acceptable English, so the negative fire in the phrases can only be read between the lines. But those invisible hostilities are key to understanding the phrases, and to making the whole piece move. </p><p></p><p>Give a woman a house. (Imagine all the stories you have ever heard about how hard men work. And how they feel about that. And about whether they own us or not. That kind of negativity.) </p><p></p><p>She will make it a home.</p><p></p><p>Give a woman your lust. She will give you a daughter or son.</p><p></p><p>There is one more, but I cannot remember it. It has to do with quenching Fire and raging and hopelessness. With creating in the negative and positive of that; with returning meaning and time and life itself.</p><p></p><p>Yin and Yang.</p><p></p><p>That is who we are really, male and female, alike.</p><p></p><p>Where my mother fits in there ~ well, she must fit in there somewhere.</p><p></p><p>Circle.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>D H and I discussed evolution of internal locus of control last night.</p><p></p><p>He believes internal locus of control is learned, just as external locus of control is learned, but that internal locus of control is natural to us. Think of the willful toddler, certain the world revolves around him.</p><p></p><p>Think about how cute toddlers are (or, puppies or kittens), and how funny and sweet and determined.</p><p></p><p>That is when we were hurt. </p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>When we can cultivate an almost extra-sensory awareness of our mindsets, then we are where we need to be, I think. Which is, when you think about it, what Eckhart Tolle is telling us to do, too. Separate from the emotions of the moment, realizing we are not our feelings. </p><p></p><p>If we have been hurt, as children especially but even as adults, so many of our most familiar feeling states will have to do with contempt, and with deep shame.</p><p></p><p>What else will be in there.</p><p></p><p>We would be like a camera turned toward the other guy instead of us. Our pictures can only tell us about him. This is how we remember our incidents of abuse. From the abuser's perspective.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Brene Brown's imagery of the gladiator pushing himself up from the bloodied sand. Where did he find the integrity to rise, live or die. Why not just lie there and let him kill them. </p><p></p><p>What is he thinking.</p><p></p><p>I don't know the answer to that either, but I do know that is how we think, too.</p><p></p><p>We stand up. We even use that word in our postings. That is a place of integrity for us. When we do what Martin Luther did, too: "Here I stand. I can do no other."</p><p></p><p>That must be why we stand up, why the gladiator rises to fight again, live or die.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>Posting at length as I have been again has pushed me through another level. I wasn't aware of it at first. I am into automatically sitting with feelings now and into work and am even flirting with Germany, in the sense that I am gathering and organizing and planning and holding intentions and finding creativity, again.</p><p></p><p>I had set an intention to monitor my feelings and self talk and defenses (defenses when I can ~ they are not easy for me to recognize).</p><p></p><p>So far, this is working well for me.</p><p></p><p>Defenses feel like denial does, in the sense that something (in this case, a feeling state) is too perfectly packaged. At bottom, denial means something from the past has been keyed by some unrelated thing. The way the light falls through a window, a scent, a snatch of music. It can be, and is, anything at all.</p><p></p><p>A certain way someone looks at us; a way without mercy.</p><p></p><p>Remember Serenity teaching us about complex PTSD.</p><p></p><p>Dread. That sense of being sickly certain. That mortal fear feeling that comes with a spider or heights or wherever it is that is really how we repressed our true fears to keep fear a manageable thing.</p><p></p><p>That is why our startle reactions are so intense. That is why we have phobias.</p><p>We have unimaginable trauma stored in the images we carry of the things we fear. But what we really fear is being dead at the hands of the abusive parent (or sib).</p><p></p><p>So, again, I will say that we are incredibly brave to have come through those levels of fear intact.</p><p></p><p>I admire the way our brains work.</p><p></p><p>Now that we are deciding we will refuse the abuser's truths about us or the world, our brains will work the miracle of healing for us if we hold that intent.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>As we explore the feelings beneath self-contempt (which will be the essence of what the grandiosity addicted abuser ~ parent or spouse or child or sibling ~ will have taught us about how to see ourselves in relation to them) then we can view our confusion or shame, or regret, or guilt, with compassion. We will acknowledge and name the feelings, but we will stay present and accounted for. We will begin to connect situations and feeling states. It is important for us to know what we mean when we reach for steady state. Yoga will help with this (or any form of moving meditation). Tai chi, tango, ballet, line dancing ~ anything we do to music.</p><p></p><p>Painting, Leafy, once you begin to paint again, to music.</p><p></p><p>And that is how we become familiar enough with internal locus of control to teach ourselves how to be present to ourselves and our worlds.</p><p></p><p>Then, we can choose what to believe about our situations.</p><p></p><p>I have been in a circle regarding my appearance lately. I found Copa's "Unfortunately, I am ugly." helpful. Somehow, it breaks the circle of vulnerability created around the issue of appearance.</p><p></p><p>I am angry about what happened to me around the issue of appearance. I don't know for sure what it was, but think how much that imagery of the whore tending herself so tenderly in the Sun has meant to my healing.</p><p></p><p>I never do know what to do with the anger. So, I envision holding myself, my ugliness, my ashamedness ~ or my grandiosity, which is shame turned inside out, with compassion.</p><p></p><p>There are many places where self desertion is so automatic a channel that it isn't even obvious when it happens. You can feel the emptiness beneath "role" though. Then, if we can trace it back, we can find the woundedness, the place we slipped into role, and heal it. I think those of us hurt when we were little are not the only ones who slip into role, or Shakespeare would not have had the response that he did to his observation about all the world being a stage. The difference for us I think is that we stumble into whatever role state helped us survive our childhoods. We grew up with an exquisite awareness of having been targeted. This translates into a kind of psychologic hypervigilance.</p><p></p><p>That's okay.</p><p></p><p>It is what it is.</p><p></p><p>Stay steady state.</p><p></p><p>No one could have survived our upbringings any better than we have.</p><p></p><p>Because of our upbringings, <em>and because of the hurtful, confusing messages still being transmitted by our dysfunctional families of origin, </em>we are at a distinct disadvantage in almost every situation. If we are not comparing ourselves to someone else, then we compare ourselves to ourselves.</p><p></p><p>It is a beginning to the circle of self sabotage.</p><p></p><p>When we are healed, we will move through with Zen-like simplicity.</p><p></p><p>With kindness, because that was our choice for our go to response before we knew why, and with simple.</p><p></p><p>That is all we need.</p><p></p><p>We will have been taught we are beggars; we will have been taught to self-sabotage to prove the abuser correct. Again, an example of the harm in external locus of control Once you see it, stop doing that.</p><p></p><p>To have taught a child comfort with that level of powerlessness it the technique of a sadist.</p><p></p><p>Don't do that anymore. Label the feelings and do nothing.</p><p></p><p>I am certain there are those who did not survive the chaos and downright crazy in the environment created by people like those in our families of origin. It isn't just the mothers and it isn't just the sisters. It is the dysfunctional system that will have evolved around the mindset of the least stable adult. Though we do need a safe place (an anonymous place) to name what happened to us, our healing will not happen because we have named someone in our family of origin bad. That is a beginning step, and very freeing. Undoing the harm done...we are doing it, but I am not sure how.</p><p></p><p>I think it may be as simple as holding that intention for ourselves and for one another, and for anyone reading along, too.</p><p></p><p>I actually do believe you guys can do this. So, I must be able to believe I can do it and it is only a question of time and intention.</p><p></p><p>And that seems so clear to me now, but remember how scary it was, in the beginning?</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>What did we teach ourselves about life in general, and about our own lives in particular, in those spiritual crucibles we were brought up in.</p><p></p><p>cru·ci·ble</p><p>ˈkro͞osəb(ə)l/</p><p><em>noun</em></p><p>noun: <strong>crucible</strong>; plural noun: <strong>crucibles</strong></p><ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">a ceramic or metal container in which metals or other substances may be melted or subjected to very high temperatures.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">a place or occasion of severe test or trial.<br /> "the crucible of combat"</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">a place or situation in which different elements interact to produce something new.<br /> "the crucible of the new Romantic movement"</li> </ul></li> </ol><p></p><p>We learn that we have been victimized. That is a huge first step. Then, we learn we have been trained to be victims. That we will have been, oddly and unbelievably enough, raised to be some form of masochist. That seems to be the essence of what happened to me. Tricked into believing, with all my heart, that my abuser was correct in teaching and treating me as she did.</p><p></p><p>We never did deserve the physical or the emotional abuse the sadist is required to inflict on his victims. Knowing this beyond question is where we heal, I think. </p><p></p><p>Beyond question of guilt or innocence or blame or ugliness. All these feeling states have to do with the hurt the sadist required to feel pleasure.</p><p></p><p>We wanted our mothers (or whoever is abusing us in our adult lives) to feel happy. I know this seems so sick, but it is in here somewhere. And is key to re-establishing internal locus of control.</p><p></p><p>I did not discuss sadism or masochism with D H.</p><p></p><p>I have my standards.</p><p></p><p>I can only discuss the really sick parts here. However much we may empathize with those we love, there are some experiences that can only be learned through surviving them.</p><p></p><p>We will have some messed up belief about out roles then, because children (or soldiers being brainwashed) have their belief systems all scrambled and bent out of true. If we can remember that as we go deeper, as the healing becomes less and less a thing of words (because we didn't have any), we will be able to reach for compassion, even when the feelings are too intense for us to remember it.</p><p></p><p>That is the place I seem to be now.</p><p></p><p>The feelings are stubbornly insistent, as close to me as breath; difficult to separate out or from. In the heart of the thing, I will recognize contempt. Or I will recognize shame. Or the general feeling of ugly and of all of life being pointless and dark. I am aware that these are not my conscious feelings.</p><p></p><p>But they are so deeply present that at first, I ~ it's like I need to pay attention, and name them as best I can.</p><p></p><p>There is little equanimity here. A knife-edge contempt. Really deep. Like a plunge into cold dark water.</p><p></p><p>A little disorientation.</p><p></p><p>Those are the feelings I am sitting with. Conscious in the moment they are happening. There is a feeling of connecting the dots. Everything comes in for healing. Imagery has to do with a story I read about a man who was so poor that he had never had a family dinner. He had watched from outside, in the cold, while other families spent their evenings together, culminating in ~ guess what, you guys. Family dinner.</p><p></p><p>The little boy grew up and made a zillion dollars. But he could never be happy sitting at his own table. He always felt like that poor little beggar boy.</p><p></p><p>One day, he mounted a beautifully framed mirror in the trees outside the window of his mansion.</p><p></p><p>In that reflection, he could see himself with his family, and know he was happy.</p><p></p><p>He was not a beggar.</p><p></p><p>Because seeing is believing.</p><p></p><p>I think we are doing something like that here.</p><p></p><p>Cedar</p><p></p><p>I think we are healing, but we cannot imagine the way we are, now. We cannot see ourselves and remember and incorporate...something.</p><p></p><p>Wouldn't that be something, if I no longer wished for Family Dinner.</p><p></p><p>I am no longer outside or forlorn. I am inside, with candles. Lots of them, and laughter and warmth, too. And all my people that I do love and we are relaxed and easy. But my FOO are not there, and are neither missed nor reviled. It just is what it is.</p><p></p><p>And everyone understands, about the mirror that shows me who I am.</p><p></p><p>Fortunate.</p><p></p><p>I have remembered that story all of my life.</p><p></p><p>I wonder who wrote it.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Scent of Cedar *, post: 680469, member: 17461"] I suppose this could be. I mean, I could see how it could be some kind of fear or disquiet fueling the need for alliance. But who would ever be afraid of me? I am serious. Fear would not account for my mother drawing back her arm as though to strike me when I was already a grandmother. It is something other than fear I think, Leafy. Something worse, that has to do with our not being destroyed into some mindset that would understand both the win and the game, maybe. Something to do with the sibs, and with a desperate kind of maleablity and with the primary abuser's power. It always comes back to the primary abuser's lust for power over. To her demand that her own children become mirrors reflecting her and nothing else; and no smallest part of themselves. So, for me, the question is how to undo what I was taught before I could think. They say to give them the child, and they will give you the man. That we have such a terrible time undoing the way we were taught who and how to be. Here is an example. Another level has been shattered, for me. Almost automatically now, I work in the chopping onions way. I am aware of really nasty feelings washing up, and I am passing the time of the day with them. And I get it that I will come through this layer too, stronger and more myself. So what I think it is is that we were hurt as toddlers. When we raged and said "NO" we probably "got our blocks knocked off". That could be why everything is so twisted. We not only did not have words, we were only two. We still did not know how to use the bathroom. We did not have the capacity to make fine discriminations regarding right or wrong, self or other. *** There was a time in my life when I wanted people to be ~ not afraid of me, but in awe of me, so they would find me acceptable. I was all about competition then ~ but at the same time, I was afraid to actually risk, to actually believe in myself enough to try. Very messed up, as of course I would have been. So why anyone would be afraid of me.... Okay. So, you are talking about being uncomfortable with self deception. This is also true. So we are back to moral slippage. And my family does seem to think I do not do moral slippage often or well. And my friends in real life do seem to think I'm geeky, but I don't mean to be. Even then, I didn't want to hurt anyone else. I wanted to be enough in myself. And the only way I knew to do that was to be perfect. Except I was not perfect. It has to do with how we were taught to see. I learned to accept that I am just me. Very fine in some ways, but needing concrete challenge to shatter denial like glass. Denial is a funny thing, like that. So transparent you cannot see the distortions. I think my family of origin is not afraid of me. It's all connected, deep down where we cannot see. They say the same in the martial arts. That the opponent is us; that in winning we lose and that in losing, we win. But I am ashamed, when I lose. I have goosebumps. Wishing you every good fortune, New Leaf. Rejection is the blood and bone of it. Deep enough, there is a place where only your eye will tell you the value of your work. As I understand it, the more within we go, the less perfect we feel and the less what anyone else says or does about what we have done matters. We are doing our work for ourselves. Like chopping onions, in that way. And we may become famous, but by then it doesn't matter because we have grown beyond. A famous cellist of ninety was asked about his talent and drive. I think he was a cellist. His response was that, totally enamored of his work, he was getting better. And this was a famous musician, admired by everyone who knew what they were listening to. And fame was this valueless thing. And if we were famous, our families of origin will still be our families. And they will still have a family's powerful impact. But I think we are doing alright, here. Happy for you, Leafy. I hope you begin, soon. Maybe, we need a little magic, like Cinderella did, too. And here we all are. :O) Love is the agape feeling represented by the Christ. It is the suffering of The Mary, too. It is something outside of denial. Teilhard de Chardin (I don't know how I found him, but I did) describes love as Fire, and says that when we harness it, for the second time in the history of the world, mankind will have discovered Fire. A moving, living, power; bright, so bright. That seems to have been what was twisted, bent out of shape and proportion for us. For our abusers, too. The flow of it. Also, something to do with time. Time with a capital T. But I don't know what. [I] Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin[/I] *** [I]I will this morning climb up in spirit to the high places, bearing with me the hopes and the miseries of my mother; and ther... upon all that in the world of human flesh is now about to be born or to die beneath the rising sun I will call down the Fire. - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Hymn of the Universe[/I] [I][/I] I am at a loss too where forgiveness is concerned. I think we don't need to worry about it for others. The person I needed most to forgive turned out to e myself. We hold ourselves to such high standards of behavior and outcome that we feel we have failed when really, we what we are really doing is just wholeheartedly living. Passionate hatred is part of that. Once we have it, it falls apart on its own. It has no where to go. Loving someone has somewhere to go. Hatred, no. Still, how do we know how to see ourselves as the (truly) precious incarnations of life, in life, in the middle of the mystery of being alive, when we remember contempt or shame, or when we confront any of the things that are so ugly? I don't know, either. Here is a quote on forgiveness I found somewhere recently. [I]"I never knew how strong I was until I had to forgive someone who wasn't sorry and accept an apology I never received."[/I] [I]David Avacado Wolfe[/I] Probably, this too is one of those things we will be able to let go of altogether once we are through it. I agree that it was that our children were endangered that found us determined to flail through this. We need to remember that, maybe. We actually have lived wonderful lives with our kids, loving them and making that whole miracle happen. We will come through this, too. So now we know. It is not the sister who frightens us, it is the sense of responsibility to her. What is "done" New Leaf? How are we done with our families. Even if I never see them again, here they are in my heart and my dreams and alive and well in regret and like, an appalled sense of injustice. I don't know what to do about that, either. Oh, wow. I didn't know that, Leafy. Huh. You would think it would be just the opposite. *** So, this is what my Tai Chi instructor says. He is saying it in acceptable English, so the negative fire in the phrases can only be read between the lines. But those invisible hostilities are key to understanding the phrases, and to making the whole piece move. Give a woman a house. (Imagine all the stories you have ever heard about how hard men work. And how they feel about that. And about whether they own us or not. That kind of negativity.) She will make it a home. Give a woman your lust. She will give you a daughter or son. There is one more, but I cannot remember it. It has to do with quenching Fire and raging and hopelessness. With creating in the negative and positive of that; with returning meaning and time and life itself. Yin and Yang. That is who we are really, male and female, alike. Where my mother fits in there ~ well, she must fit in there somewhere. Circle. *** D H and I discussed evolution of internal locus of control last night. He believes internal locus of control is learned, just as external locus of control is learned, but that internal locus of control is natural to us. Think of the willful toddler, certain the world revolves around him. Think about how cute toddlers are (or, puppies or kittens), and how funny and sweet and determined. That is when we were hurt. *** When we can cultivate an almost extra-sensory awareness of our mindsets, then we are where we need to be, I think. Which is, when you think about it, what Eckhart Tolle is telling us to do, too. Separate from the emotions of the moment, realizing we are not our feelings. If we have been hurt, as children especially but even as adults, so many of our most familiar feeling states will have to do with contempt, and with deep shame. What else will be in there. We would be like a camera turned toward the other guy instead of us. Our pictures can only tell us about him. This is how we remember our incidents of abuse. From the abuser's perspective. Brene Brown's imagery of the gladiator pushing himself up from the bloodied sand. Where did he find the integrity to rise, live or die. Why not just lie there and let him kill them. What is he thinking. I don't know the answer to that either, but I do know that is how we think, too. We stand up. We even use that word in our postings. That is a place of integrity for us. When we do what Martin Luther did, too: "Here I stand. I can do no other." That must be why we stand up, why the gladiator rises to fight again, live or die. *** Posting at length as I have been again has pushed me through another level. I wasn't aware of it at first. I am into automatically sitting with feelings now and into work and am even flirting with Germany, in the sense that I am gathering and organizing and planning and holding intentions and finding creativity, again. I had set an intention to monitor my feelings and self talk and defenses (defenses when I can ~ they are not easy for me to recognize). So far, this is working well for me. Defenses feel like denial does, in the sense that something (in this case, a feeling state) is too perfectly packaged. At bottom, denial means something from the past has been keyed by some unrelated thing. The way the light falls through a window, a scent, a snatch of music. It can be, and is, anything at all. A certain way someone looks at us; a way without mercy. Remember Serenity teaching us about complex PTSD. Dread. That sense of being sickly certain. That mortal fear feeling that comes with a spider or heights or wherever it is that is really how we repressed our true fears to keep fear a manageable thing. That is why our startle reactions are so intense. That is why we have phobias. We have unimaginable trauma stored in the images we carry of the things we fear. But what we really fear is being dead at the hands of the abusive parent (or sib). So, again, I will say that we are incredibly brave to have come through those levels of fear intact. I admire the way our brains work. Now that we are deciding we will refuse the abuser's truths about us or the world, our brains will work the miracle of healing for us if we hold that intent. *** As we explore the feelings beneath self-contempt (which will be the essence of what the grandiosity addicted abuser ~ parent or spouse or child or sibling ~ will have taught us about how to see ourselves in relation to them) then we can view our confusion or shame, or regret, or guilt, with compassion. We will acknowledge and name the feelings, but we will stay present and accounted for. We will begin to connect situations and feeling states. It is important for us to know what we mean when we reach for steady state. Yoga will help with this (or any form of moving meditation). Tai chi, tango, ballet, line dancing ~ anything we do to music. Painting, Leafy, once you begin to paint again, to music. And that is how we become familiar enough with internal locus of control to teach ourselves how to be present to ourselves and our worlds. Then, we can choose what to believe about our situations. I have been in a circle regarding my appearance lately. I found Copa's "Unfortunately, I am ugly." helpful. Somehow, it breaks the circle of vulnerability created around the issue of appearance. I am angry about what happened to me around the issue of appearance. I don't know for sure what it was, but think how much that imagery of the whore tending herself so tenderly in the Sun has meant to my healing. I never do know what to do with the anger. So, I envision holding myself, my ugliness, my ashamedness ~ or my grandiosity, which is shame turned inside out, with compassion. There are many places where self desertion is so automatic a channel that it isn't even obvious when it happens. You can feel the emptiness beneath "role" though. Then, if we can trace it back, we can find the woundedness, the place we slipped into role, and heal it. I think those of us hurt when we were little are not the only ones who slip into role, or Shakespeare would not have had the response that he did to his observation about all the world being a stage. The difference for us I think is that we stumble into whatever role state helped us survive our childhoods. We grew up with an exquisite awareness of having been targeted. This translates into a kind of psychologic hypervigilance. That's okay. It is what it is. Stay steady state. No one could have survived our upbringings any better than we have. Because of our upbringings, [I]and because of the hurtful, confusing messages still being transmitted by our dysfunctional families of origin, [/I]we are at a distinct disadvantage in almost every situation. If we are not comparing ourselves to someone else, then we compare ourselves to ourselves. It is a beginning to the circle of self sabotage. When we are healed, we will move through with Zen-like simplicity. With kindness, because that was our choice for our go to response before we knew why, and with simple. That is all we need. We will have been taught we are beggars; we will have been taught to self-sabotage to prove the abuser correct. Again, an example of the harm in external locus of control Once you see it, stop doing that. To have taught a child comfort with that level of powerlessness it the technique of a sadist. Don't do that anymore. Label the feelings and do nothing. I am certain there are those who did not survive the chaos and downright crazy in the environment created by people like those in our families of origin. It isn't just the mothers and it isn't just the sisters. It is the dysfunctional system that will have evolved around the mindset of the least stable adult. Though we do need a safe place (an anonymous place) to name what happened to us, our healing will not happen because we have named someone in our family of origin bad. That is a beginning step, and very freeing. Undoing the harm done...we are doing it, but I am not sure how. I think it may be as simple as holding that intention for ourselves and for one another, and for anyone reading along, too. I actually do believe you guys can do this. So, I must be able to believe I can do it and it is only a question of time and intention. And that seems so clear to me now, but remember how scary it was, in the beginning? *** What did we teach ourselves about life in general, and about our own lives in particular, in those spiritual crucibles we were brought up in. cru·ci·ble ˈkro͞osəb(ə)l/ [I]noun[/I] noun: [B]crucible[/B]; plural noun: [B]crucibles[/B] [LIST=1] [*]a ceramic or metal container in which metals or other substances may be melted or subjected to very high temperatures. [LIST] [*]a place or occasion of severe test or trial. "the crucible of combat" [*]a place or situation in which different elements interact to produce something new. "the crucible of the new Romantic movement" [/LIST] [/LIST] We learn that we have been victimized. That is a huge first step. Then, we learn we have been trained to be victims. That we will have been, oddly and unbelievably enough, raised to be some form of masochist. That seems to be the essence of what happened to me. Tricked into believing, with all my heart, that my abuser was correct in teaching and treating me as she did. We never did deserve the physical or the emotional abuse the sadist is required to inflict on his victims. Knowing this beyond question is where we heal, I think. Beyond question of guilt or innocence or blame or ugliness. All these feeling states have to do with the hurt the sadist required to feel pleasure. We wanted our mothers (or whoever is abusing us in our adult lives) to feel happy. I know this seems so sick, but it is in here somewhere. And is key to re-establishing internal locus of control. I did not discuss sadism or masochism with D H. I have my standards. I can only discuss the really sick parts here. However much we may empathize with those we love, there are some experiences that can only be learned through surviving them. We will have some messed up belief about out roles then, because children (or soldiers being brainwashed) have their belief systems all scrambled and bent out of true. If we can remember that as we go deeper, as the healing becomes less and less a thing of words (because we didn't have any), we will be able to reach for compassion, even when the feelings are too intense for us to remember it. That is the place I seem to be now. The feelings are stubbornly insistent, as close to me as breath; difficult to separate out or from. In the heart of the thing, I will recognize contempt. Or I will recognize shame. Or the general feeling of ugly and of all of life being pointless and dark. I am aware that these are not my conscious feelings. But they are so deeply present that at first, I ~ it's like I need to pay attention, and name them as best I can. There is little equanimity here. A knife-edge contempt. Really deep. Like a plunge into cold dark water. A little disorientation. Those are the feelings I am sitting with. Conscious in the moment they are happening. There is a feeling of connecting the dots. Everything comes in for healing. Imagery has to do with a story I read about a man who was so poor that he had never had a family dinner. He had watched from outside, in the cold, while other families spent their evenings together, culminating in ~ guess what, you guys. Family dinner. The little boy grew up and made a zillion dollars. But he could never be happy sitting at his own table. He always felt like that poor little beggar boy. One day, he mounted a beautifully framed mirror in the trees outside the window of his mansion. In that reflection, he could see himself with his family, and know he was happy. He was not a beggar. Because seeing is believing. I think we are doing something like that here. Cedar I think we are healing, but we cannot imagine the way we are, now. We cannot see ourselves and remember and incorporate...something. Wouldn't that be something, if I no longer wished for Family Dinner. I am no longer outside or forlorn. I am inside, with candles. Lots of them, and laughter and warmth, too. And all my people that I do love and we are relaxed and easy. But my FOO are not there, and are neither missed nor reviled. It just is what it is. And everyone understands, about the mirror that shows me who I am. Fortunate. I have remembered that story all of my life. I wonder who wrote it. [/QUOTE]
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