I M Perfect lady

Category: Books

  • See Who You Really Are!

    In a book called The Presence Process, by Michael Brown, he speaks about bringing your attention back to the present moment.

     

    This book actually is a process, and a friend of mine is in her second week, and asked me to read along. 

     

    In a note before the first week, Michael offers this.

     

    Dear Friend,

     

    I commend you for coming this far, and I encourage you to go all the way.  I have walked this pathway myself – many times.  This pathway was uncovered by walking it, not by talking it, or reading it, or thinking it.  By walking it myself I have ensured that if you follow the simple instructions your journey will be safe, gentle, and full of profound insights and confirmation.  I have paved this journey with my integrity.  Many others have contributed to the efficiency of this experience by successfully walking it themselves.  Many more are walking it right now with you.  All who have succeeded have done so by completing it.  As you enter and commence The Presence Process, please therefore intend to do whatever it takes to complete it.

     

    Please accept that you do not have to resolve everything that is causing imbalance in the quality of your life experience in the short time it takes for you to complete this journey.  You can walk it several times to gain a sure footing upon the pathway that is your life.  In The Presence Process “completion” does not mean “being finished”; it means arriving at a point in your journey where you are ready and equipped to take full responsibility for the quality of your unfolding life experience.

     

    Everything you could possibly require to bring the quality of present moment awareness into every step that you take is between the covers of this book.  Read, apply, and practice it well, and you will deliver yourself to where you really choose to be.

     

    Remember that your life is your divine destiny unfolding deliberately according to a sacred blueprint that in each moment invites you to show up and fulfill your highest potential.  Your life experience is a beautiful gift revealed by your conscious unwrapping of it.  Your point of freedom in it all is accessed by your attitude towards it.  Choose to be aware.  Choose to be present in each moment of it.  Choose to walk with grace and gratitude through every experience.

     

    From the center of my heart to the center of yours I bid you well.  The Presence within me is the same Presence within you.  As such we depart together, we journey together, and we reach completion together.  Thank you for having faith in what we share.  Thank you for your company along this most beautiful way.

     

    Kindest regards,

    Michael

     

    This is a very powerful process of awakening the Presence within you; of bringing you back to the present moment, of placing you in your life.

     

    Lots of self help books claim to change your life, this one doesn’t change your life, it changes how you interact with life.

     

    The focus is on present moments, feelings and learning about past beliefs and their impacts on your responses today.

     

    In Week Two he writes about the difference between responding and reacting.

     

    “A reaction is unconscious behavior in which our energy is directed outwards into the world in an attempt to defend ourselves or to attack another.  A reaction is a drama that is played out in an effort to sedate or control the nature of our experiences.  The theme of all reactive behavior is blame or revenge.

     

    A response is a conscious choice to contain and constructively internalize our energy with the intention of using it to integrate and liberate our unconsciousness.  The theme of all responsive behaviors is responsibility.”

     

    He then goes on to say, From this point onward, as we go about our daily experiences, certain circumstances will unfold that will magnetically attract our attention.  These are the circumstances that we want to pay attention to so that we can work with them internally.  This magnetic pull on our attention occurs because these particular circumstances are energetically connected with our suppressed past.  These specific circumstances will isolate themselves from others that we are experiencing in that we will have a powerful emotional reaction towards them.  Often we will perceive this emotional reaction to be uncomfortable or unpleasant.  Initially, we are going to react unconsciously to these setups until we gain the present moment awareness to behave consciously and responsibly.  Therefore, it is important for us to keep the understanding of how deeply suppressed memories surface in the forefront of our awareness: not as images in our head but as unfolding circumstances and as the way people behave in our outer world experiences.

     

    Our task for this Session is to identify the ‘messengers’ as they appear in our life experience. By being able to accomplish this task, we will be awakening a quality of ‘seeing’ that enables us to begin perceiving what is really happening beneath the surface of the physical circumstances of the world.  Developing this skill of discernment teaches us how to use our mental capabilities to see beneath the surface of our physical experiences and into the emotional currents of our predicament.  This skill is essential because it enables us to differentiate what is really happening from what is reflective memory.  Only when we are able to accomplish the task of efficiently identifying the messengers in our life experience will we be ready and able to exorcise the ghost of our past.  Being able to identify the messengers will enable us to become our own ghost-busters. We can then begin navigating our awareness out of the illusions created by the dream called “time”.

     

    This is a book that I would highly recommend if you find you are more reactive then responding to life’s circumstances.

     

    I wish you well my friend as you once again walk the pathway, this journey to see who you really are!

     I M perfect Dance!

     

  • A Powerful Story.

     

    I am reading a book by Donald Miller called “A Million Miles and A Thousand Years.”

     

    He speaks of being a writer.

     

    “If I wanted my character to advance the plot by confronting another character, the character wouldn’t necessarily obey me.  I’d put my fingers on the keyboard, but my character, who was supposed to go to Kansas, would end up in Mexico, sitting on a beach drinking a margarita.  I’d delete whatever dumb thing the character did and start over, only to have him grab the pen again and start talking nonsense to some girl in a bikini.  He’d do this, remember, in a story about a performance artist-turned-ecoterrorist.

     

    And as I worked on the novel, as my character did what he wanted and ruined my story, it reminded me of life in certain ways.  I mean as I sat there in my office feeling like God making my worlds, and as my characters fought to have their own way, their senseless, selfish way of nonstory, I could identify with them.  I fought with my ecoterrorist who wanted a boring life of self indulgence, and yet I was also that character, fighting God and I could see God sitting at his computer, staring blankly at his screen as I asked him to write in some money and some sex and some comfort.

     

    I like the part of the Bible that talks about God speaking the world into existence, as though everything we see and feel were sentences from his mouth, all the wet of the world his spit.

     

    I feel written.  My skin feels written, and my desires feel written.  My sexuality was a word spoken by God, that I would be male, and I would have brown hair and brown eyes and come from a womb.  It feels literary, doesn’t it, as if we are characters in books.

     

    You can call it God or a conscience, or you can dismiss it as intuitive knowing we all have as human beings, as living storytellers; but there is a knowing I feel that guides me toward better stories, toward being a better character.  I believe there is a writer outside ourselves, plotting a better story for us, interacting with us, even, whispering a better story into our consciousness.

     

    As a kid, the only sense I got from God was guilt, something I dismissed as a hypersensitive conscience I got from being raised in a church with a controlling pastor.  But that isn’t the voice I am talking about.  That voice really was the leftover hypersensitive conscience I got from being raised in a church with a controlling pastor.

     

    The real Voice is stiller and smaller and seems to know, without confusion, the difference between right or wrong and the subtle delineation between the beautiful and the profane.  It’s not an agitated Voice, but ever patient as though it approves a million false starts.  The Voice I am talking about is deep water of calming wisdom that says, Hold your tongue: don’t talk about that person that way; forgive the friend you haven’t talked to; don’t look at that woman as a possession; I want to show you a sunset; look and see how short life is and how your troubles are not worth worrying about…..

     

    So as I was writing my novel, and as my characters did what he wanted, I became more and more aware that somebody was writing me.  So I started listening to the Voice, or rather I started calling it the Voice and admitting there was a Writer.  I admitted something other than me was showing a better way. And when I did this, I realized the Voice, the Writer who was not me, was trying to make a better story, a more meaningful series of experiences I could live through. 

     

    At first, even though I could feel God writing something different, I’d play the scene the way I wanted.  This never worked.  It would always have been better to obey the Writer, the one who knows the better story.  I’d talk poorly about somebody and immediately know I’d done it because I was insecure, and I’d know I was a weak character who was jealous and undisciplined.

     

    So I started obeying a little.  I’d feel God wanting me to hold my tongue, and I would.  It didn’t feel natural at first; it felt fake, like I was being a character somebody else wanted me to be and not who I actually was; but if I held my tongue, the scene would play better, and I always felt better when it was done.  I started feeling like a better character, and when you are a better character, your story gets better too.

    Don Miller

     

    I way understand what he is saying, that if we give up our direction we think the character called Me is heading and instead just be written into each moment, you will be surprised how much better the story called ‘your life’ will turn out.

     

    What I also got from his book thus far was that the writer doesn’t know where you are going, but he does know your character and what would make you a better character, and like he said, and a better story called you.

     

    When I am in doubt about what I should do, I do nothing right away, instead of projecting myself in to somewhere I am unsure of the outcome, I step back and see if a better idea comes.

     

    I just didn’t know that as a character, I was waiting on the Writer.

     

    Also, if you allow the ‘Writer/God’ to direct you, you will be asked to face conflict, overcome weakness, face challenges, live real and feel, to learn more about the character called self.

     

    Learning about yourself in moments that require your character to participate and not head to the nearest beach for it is much easier.

     

    Your character is an artistic rendition of allowing the Universe to write upon the slate of who you will become.

     

    Be a submissive character to a powerful Writer, and you will become a powerful character and your life a powerful story!

     

     

     

  • My Spirit Experiencing Life Itself!

    Robert Bly also writes, Some old traditions say that no man is adult until he has become opened to the soul and spirit world, and they say that such an opening is done by a wound in the right place, at the right time, in the right company.  A wound allows the spirit or soul to enter.  James Hillman, referring to Hans Castorp in “The Magic Mountain,” and the spot of tuberculosis on Castrop’s lung says, “Through the little hole of his wound, the immense realm of the spirit enters.”

     

    I know this to be true.  It is when you feel so wounded, so forlorn, that you see life from a new angle.

     

    It is was in my darkest moments that I would walk outside, for my grief was more than this house could hold, and I would be overwhelmed by the Spirit of the Universe.

     

    Its immenseness overpowered the weight of the grief.

    In the battle of dark and Light, Light won.

     

    It wasn’t that the grief just magically disappeared, but I had a place to go to feel immense joy, to know my life and its purpose was much larger than I.

     

    It was in the darkest of dark nights, when emotions and feelings overwhelmed me, the feelings of worthlessness, of not mattering, of being so utterly neglected and used, that I found the Spirit in me.

     

    The mightiness of the Spirit and the weight of the wound left me breathless most of the time.  From great heights of joy, love and peace, to the deepness of anxiety and shame/blame and pain, I rode the roller coaster ride of emotions.

     

    To go from unfeeling to feeling so much, it overwhelmed my body, like a tsunami they flowed taking with it all the mind chatter and worry, and all I could do was be with this one moment in time.

     

    Feel this.  Each high wave brought tears either of joy or grief.  Inside of my chest came alive.  I can’t even describe that feeling there. 

     

    It still happens today, a word, a scene in nature, an apple tree bare of all leaves, with just gold apples on display, make me gulp and feel its display, its pureness of being and doing itself.

     

    Reality takes my breath away and feeling feelings and emotions whether they are slight or immense, is my Spirit experiencing life itself!

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  • We see and say, “I M Perfect!”

    This is from the end of “Iron John” by Robert Bly;

     

    A dear friend told me a story.  This man’s father fled the family in shame when the son was five, and the son felt for years shamed himself through this abandonment.  In his twenties the son went to Japan and spent ten years studying the martial arts with a strong mentor.  It was only after learning the art that he was able to return to his own family and take his rightful place there.  To be without a supportive father is for a man an alternative phrase for “to be in shame.”  His support, as the boy’s in our story, came from a substitute father – in his story, a martial mentor, in our story Iron John.  Only when a man’s interior warriors are strong enough can he go into the joy of display.

     

    With this strength he can also enter into the delight of form.  Shapeless clothing, verse that is sloppy, chaotic furnishings; all are linked in secret ways to shame.  The Universe is not ashamed, and delights in form.  The sun rising over the ocean and setting in the ocean, the moon’s lonely shining and hidings, the leaves unfolding and falling are its displays.

     

    Poetry is a form of display.  The poet bird repeats vowels and consonants in order to widen its tail.  Meter and counted syllables make up a peacock tail.  The poem is a dance fro some being in another world. 

     

    The delight of form, then, moves one away from the old duality of hero and enemy, right and wrong, male adversary and female adversary.  When a man or a woman enters ritual space, each takes actions meant to be seen, and the joy of display helps pull energy away that would otherwise be invested in conflict.

     

    This section of the book explained how a boy that didn’t get the support from his father, needs a strong mentor in order for him to ‘display’ himself. 

     

    I take that he is unable to stand tall in his own power.  And that all his energy is then invested in conflict, a struggle to make himself right, he has to make another wrong.

     

    It has to be the same for women.  In picking up a relationship that is broken between my sister and I, I can feel the conflict arising. 

     

    How our energy gets invested in conflict, instead of being invested in self- power.

     

    What I want most is for her to test the truth of my words in her reality.

     

    What I want least is a battle between right and wrong, but somehow that is what seems to happen. I see two wounded girls she may only see one.

     

    What I want most is for us to be able to display ourselves with all our wounds, to stand up and say our truths, for the truth will set you free.

     

    It is the courage to accept, that you find the courage to heal.

     

    We truly need to display our wounded ness in order to display our joy.

     

    Hiding in the darkness we are lost, it is only when we take our darkness into the light, do we find our wholeness there.

     

    As we stand in the Light, displaying our brokenness, we see that our imperfections are perfectly perfect.

     

    We see and say, “I M Perfect.”

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  • I refuse to call it love when I feel fear.

    Don't pretend to be what you are not, don't refuse to be what you are. Nisagradatta Maharaj

     

    This seems so easy, like a very honorable and authentic way to be, and why would you want to do you differently?

     

    “Don’t pretend to be what you are not”.  What does that mean?

     

    To me it means to be what you feel, but what happens if you feel frightened of family, then what.

     

    It is an odd place to be in, where others feel comfortable and at home with family, I am uneasy, and feel shaky inside.

     

    And I have the key to stop the fear, to tame the beast called family.  I lie.

     

    I pretend to be what I am not, and then they will not holler at me, say mean things, and pretend to be happy with me.

     

    Does this make sense to you?

     

    If I pretend to go along with the flow of abuse and abusers, if I just quietly get back in line, they will all recede and go back to a false normal.

     

    I become a false me which allows them to be a false them.

    They can then pretend to be interested in me and I can pretend that I agree with them.

     

    We will be a pretend family, pretending to be comfortable with each other.

     

    How often in the past I pretended to go along, while inside I was in total disagreement?  How often did I toss aside who I was and pretended to agree?  Endlessly.

     

    My mother demanded her way or she would scorn her disproval, and we would get left feeling less than.

     

    I didn’t realize how much her way has influenced me in being a people pleaser and how hard it is to face the scorn and the withdrawal of love.

     

    Perhaps the withdrawal of love hurts more.

     

    I have heard rumors that I have two brothers in town, who came up for hunting, and it feels me with dread to happen upon them.

     

    It seems that life requires me to dip back into the waters of that family time and time again.

     

    “Time heals all wounds” is a downright lie.  The wounds in our relationship between sister and brother or sister and sister don’t heal with time.

     

    They are not healed magically after almost 5 years of absence, and my body and soul don’t forget their last words or their actions, it trembles when we face them yet again.

     

    I wonder about that?  I wonder what that means about me?

    Mostly I wonder if I will always respond to them that way?

     

    Wouldn’t it be worse to not tremble?

     

    Shouldn’t my body respond in kind when facing them?  Is it the correct response to someone bringing bad energy?

    It makes me feel better knowing that my body, reality and my knowing are all in agreement.  These folks are not coming to me bringing kindness and love.

     

    Even though it hurts to know that they want to harm me, it makes me feel better to stand firm with the sensations of my body.

     

    Byron Katie in her book “Loving What Is,” speaks of ‘something in me tends to move away from you’.   It is like we are being steered away and we move in agreement.

     

    This is how I feel, but another part of me is apologetic for being repelled by them.

     

    My body and its warning system haven’t failed me yet.

    I have failed it.

     

    I failed to notice its warning lights.

    I failed to move away, to steer clear of bad energy and I caused my body disease.

     

    Now that I have corrected the readings and adjusted or I am attuned to its perfection, I refuse to be what I am not.

     

    I refuse to call it love when I feel fear.

     

  • A letter to them.

    Byron Katie has what she calls, A Judge Your Neighbor Worksheet. (Byron Katie,  thework.com )  And on that sheet you are to be as petty, and judgmental about someone who you feel causes you stressful thoughts.

     

    While rereading the message my sister wrote, I told my brother that I feel once again all that hurtful energy is like a boomerang and it will go right back to her.

     

    It reminded us of the ‘judge your neighbor worksheet’.

     

    We then decided to replace all the you’s in her letter with I’s.

     

    Any place where she was directing hurtful or seemingly hurtful energy to me, we turned it around.

     

    Here is an example;

     

    You want to replay that sad little tune to keep yourself connected to the sad horrible life that you were given and wow do you sound enlightened!

     

    So, if you take the you and switch it with I, it will read as follows;

     

    I want to replay that sad little tune to keep myself connected to the sad horrible life that I was given and wow do I sound enlightened.

     

    And here is another; Yet the people who truly know you and your "story" don't really see the example that you say you are. I think your lack of involvement speaks volumes in where you really are.

     

    Yet the people who truly know my ‘story’ and me don’t really see the example that I say that I am.  I think my lack of involvement speaks volumes in where I really am.

     

    It is really easier to reinvent who you are to people that don't know you? Sorry but I am not buying the bullshit -you can peddle that to other "enlightened souls".

     

    It is really easier to reinvent who I am to people that don’t know me.  Sorry but you are not buying the bullshit –I can peddle that to other ‘enlightened souls’.

     

    Hateful or angry letters written to another really are about you.

     

    Some may say that this is my way of making it better for me or that I am in denial of my interactions.

     

    In the beginning when the energy systems seemed to be bringing me hate, anger or just plain unhappiness about my actions or the lack thereof, I stopped engaging or even sending anything back.

     

    I simply didn’t have the energy to defend or try to change their minds.  And I guess so hurt that I couldn’t go in to that system trying to explain myself.

     

    So, what I thought was to get other letters written in anger at me and see how they too flip back to the sender, how it shows more of who they are.

     

    Ok, here is another letter that I never responded to.

     

    “you decided WITHOUT talking or discussing anything that I was no longer ‘worthy’ of being your sister.

     

    I decided WITHOUT talking or discussing anything that you were no longer ‘worthy of being my sister.  (Ouch.)

     

    It is easy to LISTEN to and SPEAK to only those who reflect and confirm your beliefs.

     

    It is easy to LISTEN to and SPEAK to only those who reflect and confirm my beliefs.

     

    I think it is comical that you actually believe that your actions are perceived as rational and that those you INTEND to hurt are bothered by your bizarre behavior.

     

    I think it is comical that I actually believe that my actions are perceived as rational and that those I INTEND to hurt are bothered by my bizarre behavior.

     

    You NEVER faced him nor did you speak to him.

     

    I NEVER faced him nor did I speak to him.

     

    Where were you the day he faced the judge?  How dare you act hostile to any of us when you sit in your home and judge.

     

    Where was I the day he faced the judge?  How dare I act hostile to any of you when I sit in my home and judge.

     

    You stopped listening and reaching out when you couldn’t CONTROL the responses. You can die right and alone or you can decide that all of us are worth loving no matter what.

     

    I stopped listening and reaching out when I couldn’t CONTROL the responses. I can die right and alone or I can decide that all of you are worth loving no matter what.

     

    Isn’t it astounding to see the actual turn around that Byron Katie speaks about?

     

    Of course my sisters would have to be willing to question their stressful thoughts about me in order to see that those thoughts are really about themselves.

     

    I do have to do one more turn around on my mother’s latest letter.

     

    “My memories are only mine.  No one can take those from me.  May you find acceptance and peace in the past.  What is is.  No amount of screaming, shouting, crying can change that.  I love you, always have and always will.  You are my beloved daughter I continue to pray you will come to accept me with all my faults and failures.”

     

    My memories are only mine.  No one can take those from me.  May I find acceptance and peace in the past.  What is is. No amount of screaming, shouting, crying can change that.  I love me, always have and always will.  I am my beloved daughter, I continue to pray I will come to accept me with all my faults and failures.

     

    Wow, isn’t it simply amazing in its tragedy?

     

    The volume of the anger that is directed at me, I am the target, there is a bull’s-eye on my back okay, my heart and they are free to lob arrows of anger anytime they feel the impulse.

     

    Confused people feel that by changing the actions of others ‘outside’ of them that then their lives will be better. 

     

    If they can only manipulate us by screaming and belittling us, then their worlds would be better.  It is all about them.  It literally has nothing to do with me.

     

    They are not caring one iota what I need, feel or want, who I am, sincerely ‘not interested.

     

    Even though the letter was sent to me, it was a letter to them.

     

     

     

     

  • I will never call you home again.

    I just finished watching the webcast, Say You're One of Them with author Uwem Akpan's on Oprah.com  The book has short stories from the view of the child. 

     

    At the end of the webcast is a young man from Rwanda, Corneille, who survived the genocide who was 17 when his whole family was murdered.

     

    He mentions a song, “I will never call you home again’, that he wrote.

     

    I then went to youtube to hear it. 

     

    I understand the sentiment, of how it can not be called or even felt as home, for home depicts a place of warmth, comfort and familiarity, and the last time he saw Rwanda it was mass murder scene, it took from him all his family and every thing he owned.

     

    In the song he sings,  ‘the last time I saw you….and that is how I remember you……Please forgive me I if I never call you home again.”

     

    As I reflect on his lines, I can’t help but replay mine.

     

    The last time I saw my parents, they were not parents, and I can only carry forward my last memory. 

     

    Don’t they say that about restaurants, that they’re only as good as their last meal?

     

    It is so crucial to always remember that we are judge upon our last action, and in the case of my parents, it is his trial, the way he acted, the way she acted.

     

    The last time I saw you, you were in an orange jumpsuit on the front page of the paper, with the words, Criminal Sexual Conduct.  That is how I remember you.

     

    The last time I saw her she was adamant about her rightness about his wrongness, so very right at being so very wrong.  That is how I remember you.

     

    Please forgive me, if I never call you dad again.

    Please forgive me, if I never call you mom again.

    Please forgive me, if I never call you home again.

     

    I will never call you home again.

  • Writing the Story of You.

    Yesterday I heard Don Miller who wrote a book called, “A Million Miles, a Thousand Hours. He speaks about what would the world miss if you were to die?  He also stated we grow from places of conflict and that there are times when we have to lose greatly in order to gain.

     

    As I look back, I can see where my greatest gains came with my greatest losses, and where I grew up.

     

    The question of what would the world lose if you were to leave now, intrigues me.

     

    What dreams or aspirations would be left undone?

    Who would not be helped if you were to leave now?

     

    He relates our lives to stories, and how we are the main character, and it is up to us to keep the story interesting or at least keep our character interesting.

     

    What draws you into a good story?  Maybe the same type of character is who you desire to be.

     

    As the story of me continues, who will become, what lessons are still to be learned, what places of fear or weakness do I still have to conquer?

     

    What can I do today to make my life more interesting, to affect others, to add something that is needed?

     

    There are certain things or avenues we can pursue that will have great changes on us as the main character.  Don’t you love to read about a person who stretches of the box, who takes a leap of faith, who even if afraid jumps anyway!

     

    Overcoming the blocks that keep us in a humdrum existence, to expand yourself by adding a new skill or maybe even by doing something unusual for you.

     

    How to be a great main character…..imagine it, dream of it, and then dare to take the first step!

     

    Who would you be if you were pushing the pen writing the story of you? 

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  • What a Grateful Sound.

    Iron John, by Robert Bly.

     

    Gaining a Four-Legged Horse

     

    A remarkable detail that leaps out of this scene and demands some interpretation is the three-legged horse that the boy finds in the stable.  This three-legged horse doesn’t feel like good news when we see it standing there, and it obviously feels worse when one rides it.  We might look at what a horse could be in such a story as this, and what the difference might be between three legs and four.

     

    “Four” is complete in that it stands for the four-gated city, the four directions, the four rivers of Paradise, the four seasons, the four letters of the Holy Name, the four horses of the sun carriage, and the four strings of the sistrum.  The old rhyme goes:

     

    One for sorrow,

    Two for mirth,

    Three for wedding,

    Four for birth.

     

    Three, on the other hand, falls a little short.  A three-gated city is not impressive as a four gated city, and a planet with only three directions would seem odd to us.  Dawn, noon and sunset add up to three parts of a good day, but night is left out.  Fall, winter, and summer would not be acceptable to farmers, for they need spring. So we have to think that something important is gone.

     

    As for the horse, its associations range over heaven and earth. The horse has reminded human beings of ocean waves, of the dead, of thunder, of sexual energy, particularly sexual energy of men, of the Great Mother, for Lady Godiva rode on a horse, of glory and kinship, and of divine energies, such as the four horse of the Apocalypse.

     

    The horse, when contrasted with its rider, reminds men and women of the animal side of human beings, and of the body.  The rider stands for the intelligence or intellect or mind, and the horse stands for the animal desires and instincts and energies that have their home there.

     

    I am going to consider the fourth leg as a shamed leg.  I assume that the boy’s animal body has been crippled by shame, his hobbledehoy walks so because it has a shamed leg.

     

    We have already spoken of shame and its power.  Shame can come in from many sources; from parents who deliberately shame us in order to make us more controllable, from addicted parents who shame us as a side affect of their own addiction, or from peers who shame us to get rid of some of their shame.  Asking a parent for a response and not receiving it cause enough for shame; we can ingest a shame-bound parent, and receive shame by inheritance; every invasion, whether sexual abuse or physical abuse, produces in five minutes shame that lasts for thirty years.  Simply making up a false personality to please our parents can generate shame for a lifetime.  The shaming we receive from irritable school teachers, manic Catholic priests, or our own internalized perfectionist increases the store of shame that gets poured into our hollow leg, and each drop of shame increases our commitment to isolation.  We attend secret meetings of apology, submission, resentment, and collaboration.

     

    When we were very tiny, our horse had all four legs, and it joyfully lived in whatever sensualities it could gallop to.  By the time a child in our culture is twelve, one of the legs at least will be crippled by shame, whether it lives in a ‘dysfunctional’ household or not.

     

    None of us knows at twelve how to heal our horse of shame.  The story suggest that a boy’s horse needs to be brought to an older man or mentor, or, lifting a scene to the imaginative level, it needs to be brought to the Wild Man. We take the nag out of the barn, where “the older boys” have left it for us; we ride to the edge of the forest; and then we ask the Wild Man for a better horse.  We know we have to return it, but just to experience what it would be like to ride a horse without a crippled leg even for a few minutes, is worth it all.

     

               Robert Bly

     

    I love how he shows how our damaged psyche is like riding a cripple horse, how shame damages the leg of our body, how we then are crippled.

     

    Imagine the impact we can wield to another human?

    The power of words and how we use them, the way shame is for controlling the other.

     

    I know that my words and my tactics as a ‘crippled mother’ myself, crippled my kids.

     

    As I heal my shame-crippled leg, I will no longer damage my children, and hopefully work at healing theirs.

     

    To hear the sound of a healthy horse galloping away as  your child leaves home, what a grateful sound.

     

  • Keeper of the Door.

    The Warrior Inside – Iron Man by Robert Bly

     

    The warriors inside American men have been weak in recent years, and their weakness contributes to the lack of boundaries, a condition which earlier in this book we spoke of as naiveté.  A man six feet tall will allow another person to cross his boundaries, enter his psychic house, verbally abuse him, carry away his treasures, and slam the door behind; the invaded man will stand there with an ingratiating, confused smile on his face.

     

    When a boy grows up in a ‘dysfunctional’ family (perhaps there is no other kind of family), his interior warriors will be killed off early.  Warriors, mythologically, lift their swords to defend the king.  The King in a child stands for and stands up for a child’s mood.  But when we are children our mood gets easily overrun and swept over in the messed up family by the more powerful, more dominant, more terrifying mood of the parent.  We can say that when the warrior inside cannot protect our mood from being disintegrated, or defend our body from invasion, the warriors collapse, or go into a trance, or die.

     

    The inner warriors I speak of do not cross the boundary aggressively; they exist to defend the boundary. The Fianna, that famous band of warriors who defended Ireland’s borders, would be a model.  The Fianna stayed out all spring and summer watching the boundaries, and during the winter came in.

     

    But a typical child has no such protection.  If a grown-up moves to hit a child, or stuff food into the child’s mouth, there is no defense, – it happens.  If the grown-up decides to shout, and penetrate the child’s auditory boundaries by sheer violence, it happens.  Most parents invade the child’s territory whenever they wish, and the child, trying to maintain his mood by crying, is simply carried away, mood included.

     

    Each child lives deep inside his or her own psychic house, or soul castle, and the child deserves the right of sovereignty inside the house.  Whenever a parent ignores the child’s sovereignty, and invades, the child feels not only anger, but shame.  The child concludes that if it has no sovereignty, it must be worthless.  Sham is the name we give to the sense that we are unworthy and inadequate as human beings.  Gershen Kauffman describes that feeling brilliantly in his book, Shame, and Merle Fossum and Marilyn Mason in their book, Facing Shame, extend Kauffman’s work into the area of family shame systems and how they work.

     

    When our parents do not respect our territory at all, their disrespect seems overflowing proof of our inadequacy.  The slap across the face pierces deeply, for the face is the actual boundary of our soul, and we have been penetrated.  If a grown-up decides to cross our sexual boundaries and touch us, there is nothing that we as child can do about it.  Our warriors die. The child, so full of expectation of blessing whenever he or she is around an adult, stiffens with shock, and falls into the timeless fossilized confusion of shame.  What is worse, one sexual invasion, or one beating, usually leads to another, and the warriors, if revived, die again.

     

    When a boy grows up in an alcoholic family, his warriors get swept in the river by a vast wave of water, and they struggle there, carried downriver.  The child, boy or girl, unprotected, gets isolated, and has more in common with snow geese than with people.

     

    The snow geese, treading, blowing Dakotah snows,

    Over the fence stairs of the small farms come,

    Slipping through cries flung up into the night,

    And setting, ah, between them, shifting wings,

    Light down at last in bare snowy fields.

     

    The drunken father pulls the boy inside.

    The boy breaks free, turns and leaves the house.

    He spends that night out eating with the geese.

    Where, alert and balancing on wide feet,

    Crossing rows, they walk through the broken stalks.

     

    Robert Bly

     

    It is no wonder that such a child, when a teenager, looks for single rooms, maternal women, gurus, systems, withdrawals, “nonattachment.”  When he is older, thirty or thirty-five, he will still feel unprotected, and be unable to defend himself from other people enraged at their own unprotection.

     

    Every Adult or older sibling who wants to enter the child’s psychic room does so, because it is as if there is no doorknob at all on the inside of the door.  The door moves freely in, opening us to improper intimacies that the mother may insist on, to improper belittling the father may insist on, to sexual fondling any older child or baby-sitter may insist on, to incest, physical or psychic.  The door moves freely, we could say, because the doorknob is on the outside.

     

    I think it’s likely that the early death of a man’s warriors keeps the boy in him from growing up.  It’s possible that it also prevents the female in the boy from developing.  We know that Dickens for example, endured a horrendous childhood, and we also notice that his female characters tend to be sentimental and girlish. It’s possible that these girlish beings are projections of his stunted interior woman, whom his warriors could not protect from the violence all around him.

     

    The inner boy in a messed-up family may keep on being shamed, invaded, disappointed, and paralyzed for years and years.  “I am a victim,” he says, over and over; and he is.  But that very identification with victimhood keeps the soul house open and available for still more invasions.  Most

    American men today do not have enough awakened or living warriors inside to defend their soul houses.  And most people, men or women, do not know what genuine outward or inward warriors look like, or feel like.

               Robert Bly

     

    This is wonderful for me to read, especially when I now have a doorknob on the inside, that I revived my inner warriors, that by having boundaries it means you have a warrior manning the line.

     

    As I wrote the word ‘line’ it came to me that my husband accused me of drawing a line in cement, not in the sand, that once that line was there, I was adamant about it, there was no moving that line.

     

    Guess my inner warriors stood guard.

     

    Imagine I have a knob on the inside, and I can ask ‘who is there and what do you want?’

     

     My warrior is front and center as my sister ambles up to the door.  I am comforted knowing I have warriors once again.

    A door on my inner psychic room, or my soul’s castle, how awesome to be the keeper of the door!