I wrote an unedited version of this recently to the egroup of an ongoing group and realised it might resonate for some of you…All names have been changed.
Some fundamental themes which are core to this Joyful loving exploration we are engaged in have arisen recently.
For all of you it might be rich to consider for your own life and relating what the courageous souls who have shared here have brought.
The first theme has been around the need for healing deep core patterns from the past. The most fundamental ‘work’, process, healing, an individuated human being must face is that of healing wounding that arises from early childhood. This can be at different times, in life & relationship, blindingly obvious, extremely painful, very subtle or, later in life perhaps when all (in an ‘ideal‘ scenario) seems peaceful, brought about by changes in your or their life circumstances.
Do this ‘work’ of healing for you, not for them. Above all DO IT!!!!! Now. your life will be positively and irrevocably transformed in ways you may not even imagine beforehand
It can appear to some of you as though love can be painful. Actually what is painful is the conditioned should, the energetic tangles, the pacts that happen in relationships where one or both parties carry unresolved material from their early childhoods. This is no one else’s responsibility or fault. Simply a work of unravelling and undoing that feels at times frightening. It is richly rewarded ultimately by living a life that is yours only. Beyond robotic set patterns and others’ expectations.
This work of self-healing is not throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Nor is it unloving. Nor does it mean you are less than good enough already. Only the wisest intuit the value of this kind of deep work which the journey of fully realised human embodiment demands. When you come to a clear seeing of and acceptance of someone’s (eg a parent’s) way of making themselves and others unhappy or small, it grows your heart, deepens your compassion, empties you so that there can be more availability for love.
Another emerging universal theme is ambivalence…thank you for bringing this here at last. This is simply a truth of relating….where there is someone who feels they exist and can be threatened, they will be ambivalent. The threat that is put out to those around as a result –consciously expressed or simply acted out in unconscious ways-is ‘I may not stay with this’ ‘Im not fully here’. ‘I cant give myself totally’.
This inability to be total in relationship is one of the most painful things in human relating and the tricky part with many couples (or it can happen of course in friendship, between parents & children, in committed training circles even, is that it can be complex to really see clearly who is doing what to whom. This takes consciousness and true deep commitment. The work cannot happen without the true and genuine commitment to stay with an ALIVE (not compromised) process until it is clear what needs to happen next. Most often, the unconscious mechanisms of defence simply stay in place and don’t allow the opening that feels so dangerous. This half life can go on for many years either in one compromised relationship or a series of half-hearted connections where the barriers to being love can stay intact!
Why wait to heal these limits to the deepest intimacy?
Intimacy is not romance. It isn’t a question of being in relationship because it gives me what I want to hear in order to feel good, feel worthy, feel valid. Intimacy is to a large degree created by being willing to show up as you are, without considering what the other will feel. Otherwise there is simply a suffocating pact and painful resistance to the other for ‘making you’ isolate yourself in the less ‘acceptable’ feelings. Only the bravest discover this. Gradually all movement is seen as innocent, as light expressing. And apparent freedom and fluidity of choice arises.
This next sentence was addressed to a woman who was -to summarise briefly-distressed by feeling trapped and exhausted by her man). ”Susannah, I dare you -because it will cost you all your blame and safety- to take all you have spoken in this egroup and with infinite LOVE & TENDERNESS look into (his) eyes and without blame say it all again.
You have sounded so tight around your experience, so ‘wrong’ for feeling it all. Yet what is being asked for at your deepest is ‘this is how it is for me….. please love me’ you wont receive or create that loving holding in your relationship unless you can speak softly and tenderly of this pain (which is nothing to do with (him) at all even though he seems like such a convincing dream of it) as your own pain only, and with love”.
(to the man) ”And David, I feel sorry you haven’t felt able to respond to Susannah here, for whatever good reason that was. In doing so you will receive love and support from this whole circle (I suspect you have that anyway but how beautiful if you were to truly know it)”
The third theme I wish to touch on briefly since some of your posts have touched on it recently, is that of aloneness ‘versus’ relationship. it is hilarious (and tragic) what humanity does with this.
There can be no true intimacy unless one has understood, accepted and come to celebrate one’s utter aloneness. Aloneness is mostly something a personality will do anything to avoid. Aloneness is not the same as isolation. It is not the same as withholding. Or hiding or keeping away from other people’s mess. Or rejecting or judging others.
Unless you know your aloneness you are constantly considering others, weighing things up, manipulating, making yourself smaller as a result.
I wish you happy reflection and exploring
See you in a circle soon I hope.
Meanwhile you might wish to explore The Aliveness Moving, Stillness Listening Meditation
The reason I mention this is that above all things is that the ONE thing that can most deeply serve this journey of Joyful Loving is your willingness to sit still, do nothing, be with your aloneness and be in deep meditation. This stretching, unexpected, demanding, gorgeous, rich ongoing journey cannot be something you enjoy unless you are engaged in this MOST INTIMATE exploration….being you
I love you all and thank you all
Joy
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