If it weren’t for the incredible spiritual strength, and wisdom, of my life partner, Sharon White, I would not have been able to have, what some people call, the following “cathartic event”.
It was on a Thursday morning in February 2018, and I was preparing to go to the Pilates class that Sharon and I attended each Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday at our athletic club. Typically, I wanted to get there a little early, so that we could warm up on an exercise bicycle, with a little aerobic activity that I still enjoyed participating in, since I no longer ran, having retired late last year after a lifetime of enjoyment, and pain.
It was 9:15, and I was fully prepared to leave, while Sharon remained on the telephone, talking with a friend. As it turned 9:19, I spoke to her, in my most innocent of voice, “can we go now?”
Sharon had a series of responses that I won’t repeat here, but three things that she said coincided with me entering a “spell”. I felt the presence of something so basic, so fundamental, so raw, so real, so hurt, that I raged for a couple of minutes, declaring several times:
“There is something fundamental here!”
The trapped energy of a lifetime was released. I became aware of a pain so deep, and so all-encompassing, resulting in an anger from a source that I had never touched before, at least as a verbally conscious human being,
Sharon and I went our separate ways for a few hours, while we both tried to understand what the heck had just transpired. Leading up to this experience, I had been intensely exploring the entirety of my life experience, having written 70 pages about my early childhood, maturation process, addictive and self-destructive cycles, and glimpses into higher possibilities for living. All of this writing had placed me, without me realizing it, into the psychic world of all of my past pain and suffering.
After a meditation, I had a realization. My wounded essence, and the issues stored in my bodily tissues had actually cried out for the first time and I actually listened to it, without my ego repressing it as it had for 61 years. And I also saw, for the first time, the wounding process that I shared with my father. I felt an incredible compassion, love, and acceptance for my father, who had also suffered immensely under the spiritually destructive parenting of his own diseased parents.
I finally had experienced the most basic nameless suffering of an ignored child, or baby, and I have now given it verbal description:
MY VOICE IS WORTHLESS, I HAVE NO VALUE. I MUST BE ALONE IN THIS WORLD.
Sharon paid the price for a couple of hours, while I re-birthed the wounded baby within me. But, I had an insight that still informs me daily.
I saw how we, as humans, keep layering ourselves and our ideas upon what somebody else is saying, rather than meeting the being where they are, and responding according to the dictates of our “heart center”, which in most people, ESPECIALLY MEN, has been scabbed over by our own early spiritual wounding. Men typically inflict their own wounding on everybody else, in subtle, or not so subtle ways. Usually, this manifests in dominating, or being dominated, by others. Philosophies of oppression, and of the monetization of reality, arise out of this wounding. Women are usually victimized, or those with sensitive natures.
When our personalities have been formed by the layering of our egos upon the “unnamed, unrecognized dark energy”, we end up with an energy exchange dynamic where we “project” our dysfunction onto others, and make them wrong for it, not recognizing that we were the source of our misplaced judgement.
We just can’t quiet our minds long enough to listen with our hearts to what is being said, and respond accordingly with our heart. We are much too eager to respond with ego programmed responses, which, typically, are based on incomplete perceptions or someone else’s ‘knowledge’, and it remains our attempt to control another’s experience through linking our own unhealed energy with their own.
In our attempt to be “heard”, we instead try to program people, unconsciously, to behave and react more in accordance with our expectations. When they don’t (they rarely do, unless they are our impressionable young children), we are very disappointed, and feel rejected, and, in the absolute, we feel betrayed by the sum total of exchanges between the parties.
Why do I submit such intensely personal information? I do not want a life that has been lived in vain. I also see a world where the majority of us still suffer from the same, basic issues that I have tried to describe here. Even amongst some people closest to me, denial reigns supreme, and I have only a small measure of hope that the “personal truth” that I am trying to convey here will actually be heard, and applied by others that I care about (which now includes the entirety of our planet Earth).
“There is something fundamental here.”
As a baby, my parents placed a blanket around my baby body, and deposited me in a car in their garage so that my father could get at least 5 hours of sleep a night. My father was “chasing the American Dream”, and worked two jobs at the time.
I don’t need to remind any of my loved ones of the profoundly damaging effects of denying love and interactive time to a developing human being. What I might need to remind myself at times is that others, no matter what their age, or how much that I think that I know them, deserve my undivided attention, as they attempt to reveal who they are in this moment.
It is funny, sometimes when I share some of my creative work (which, incidentally, just started happening in early March), I get the very strong impression that some “important” people in my life just don’t have the time to listen.
Another clue about our own, or another’s listening intention, is when we try to share a profound life event, and are immediately run over by another with more knowledge of the subject. Sometimes we, or the other, either have too much book knowledge, we have the certificate, we already have read about it on the internet, we have memorized something from a class that we already took, or we have a friend who has already “been there, done that!”
Trust me on this one. If I do not want to grow anymore, I will stop listening to what others are really trying to say. If i don’t want to be of service to my fellow-man/woman, I can stop listening to what they are trying to express, and just “layer my own ignorance” and judgement, over somebody else, and not let them reveal to me who they Really Are in this special moment.
Our former President Trump, and many of our politicians, are masters at this. Please don’t inflict this same treatment on the ones you love. It is like putting a blanket around our heart and soul, and putting us into the car, so that those with a dehumanizing or monetizing philosophy can continue to oppress others, while keeping themselves spiritually asleep.
We all deserve to be listened to. I don’t need to remind any of my loved ones of the potential of the damaging impacts to our relationships with others, by merely not taking the time to listen with our hearts, to the other’s deepest meaning. Most of my closest connections already practice this, and do not intentionally ignore the needs of others.
We are all developing human beings, no matter what our age. And, we are all God’s children, and God speaks through us, whether we can hear the “truth”, or not. Sometimes the “truth” is so difficult to hear, that we shut down emotionally, and we either ignore what is said, or substitute our own story for what the “other” is trying to communicate.
Please, listen to others. Please listen to yourself,
Please listen
The greatest trauma to the human soul is the early damage to our sense of self that causes poor self-esteem, and all of the compensating behavior that occurs downstream from the wounding. Without even knowing it, we traumatize others with variations of our own original trauma. If our trauma created a sense of self that is insecure and feeling unloved, or unlovable, our relationships will be held back by just that much, and will not dynamically evolve into the fullest of their innate potential. We remain pilloried to the past, and lost within the unconscious response patterns of a mind trapped in the labyrinth created by that activity..
- Create a visual timeline. Write onto a piece of paper, a long piece of paper, the years of your life. Start with the birth year, and carry it forward to the present moment.
- Listen to music from the eras or time when the wounding first occurred. It will open up emotional vistas, using the wholeness of the self
- Write extensively about the time in question.
- Perform ceremony that indicates finding the wounds, and freeing them from our tissues. Cut the psychic/psychological attachment cords to the past, the place, and the person who brought on the original trauma.
- Listen to the stories from family members, friends of family, and, especially,, friends of the parents who may have witnessed aspects of your upbringing.
- Have an incredibly supportive partner, or a therapist, to watch with you the emotions that arise during the turbulent periods of the introspection.
- Work in conjunction with a therapist trained in traumatic wounding
- Make a decision to make amends to the world for unconsciously wounding events .
