The feeling of “you’re too much, your pain is exaggerated, you’re not worth believing” is an imprint on your psyche from being treated as such. For being made to feel like you’re crazy for feeling for what you’re feeling, for knowing what you know, for seeing what you’re see. Made to doubt yourself for every little thing about you. “You’re imagining, you’re making too much of it, you’re sensitive.”
This level of abuse is insidious and isn’t imaginary, it’s real. But because there are no bruises, no concrete events – it can make you look and feel like the crazy one. And abusive people love that. Abusive families in which you are the scapegoat thrive on that. It’s their food. They love plausible deniability because it keeps them looking ‘clean’ with all of it.
You can’t forgive, you can’t let go, you can’t move on, if you don’t know what you’re forgiving. What you’re moving on from, what you’re letting go of. It’s quite simplistic to say forgive, let go and be faced with the fact that you can’t. It’s too premature. Your system hasn’t even digested the original pain, the original hurt. And so to put a bandaid of spirituality on it and call that ‘forgiveness’ is violent, delusional. It doesn’t sink into your bones, it’s not true. It’s surface-level; moving the furniture around. And that’s not what your system is after.
Your system is digesting in its own time, you can’t rush it, you can’t purge it. Be true to where you are, where your system is, slow down to that level of digestion without trying to jump over the hurdles, fast track to getting over it. That’s true kindness, true forgiveness. Forgive yourself for not being able to forgive, allow yourself the luxury of being who and where you are without any violent ‘should’s’. Slow down enough so that you can catch up with yourself.
Let go of all the things you think you should be doing to be somewhere other than where you are. Give yourself that luxury, that kindness. The kindness to notice the insidious internal critic keeping you in check, keeping you feeling limited and boundaried in what you can or can’t feel, say or do. Keeping you in check by making you believe “you’re too much”. Your pain is too much, your voice is too much, your questions are too much, your needs are too much, your life is too much.
Been noticing the self-sabotager in me; the one who is afraid to go beyond old patterns that I’ve inherited and made my own. The one who doesn’t want to evolve – out of fear of the unknown but mainly out of a toxic loyalty to old family patterns and a fear of family members, a loyalty to their suffering and their limitations.
“I’m still included somehow, I’m one of you see, even if you disown me. I’ll sabotage myself to stay close, to prove my loyalty, to show you I love you, the only way I know you’ll receive. I’ll limit myself so that you don’t attack me. I’ll keep myself in check so that you don’t have to.”
This one, the one that unconsciously inflicts self-harm; in small ways and big ways. The one that trips herself up so that she doesn’t go beyond her family’s capacity. Health, money, self-image, career, life expectations. It would be too threatening, too hostile otherwise.
Not wanting to admit that it doesn’t have to be this way, that there’s an easy way out and it’s not that hard. It’s quite simple actually. But something wants to make it hard, to make it so that the hamster wheel never ends and stepping off is not an option. Something wants to make it so that happiness is an elusive and far-reaching dream. So that I can stay close to my family, stay out of the way of their menacing competitiveness, their unconscious harm infliction because I’ve stepped out of bound.
I’m starting to see that stepping off is an option, there is choice somewhere in there. I don’t want to condemn the self-sabotager. It was trying to get love the only way it knew how. I don’t want to stop her either. I know that acknowledging her is the beginning of something new. To recognize when she’s in action. When she’s making herself small and limited to protect herself from the cruelty, competitiveness and harshness – it’s the utmost intelligence. The most loving act of desperation.
Illustration ‘Lost places’ by Raphaëlle Martin, via Behance
As a kid, I was trained to feel bad for my existence, for my needs and desires, for my having, for my doing. The level of scrutiny I received as a child from all my family members – bar none – was insane. I didn’t even realize this was the case. I was in denial or unconscious of most of it. But what is being shown to me through this process of unravelling is opening my eyes to the amount of terror, fear, guilt, shame and horror that my system has imbibed through living with “my family”.
It has been a nightmare since the beginning. The youngest of 3 brothers and 1 sister. All looking down on me, judging me, criticizing me. My every move was scrutinized. I was not given the permission to discover myself. To explore my existence. I was barely there. They were most comfortable when I was invisible. In the background somewhere. Forgotten. As soon as I’d express anything, I’d be met with their eyes.
Their eyes scared the living day lights out of me. Their eyes were dark. Full of judgment. Full of condemnation. Full of shaming. Full of hate. I was this thing that showed up and I was unwelcome. I could feel it in my guts. It freaked me out. It made me shrink. I was an object from the beginning. Not a human. Not a little girl. An object. A thing in their way. A problem. It almost felt like they were doing me a favor by accommodating me living amongst them. That was the general vibe from all of them.
Parents, siblings, nephews and nieces, aunts and uncles alike. It was devastating to my system. I shrunk in shame. I feared for my life and so I tried to want nothing, to be nothing, to express nothing. When I’d get hurt, nobody was looking out for me. My pain was irrelevant. I was irrelevant. And so to want, to have, to express was not just frowned upon, it was downright hated.
My brothers despised me. They despised my femininity. My sister hated me. She projected onto me endlessly. I was this thing in her way. My mother was burdened by me. I was useful to her sometimes but other than that I was just an object, a burden, something to keep alive – that’s it. My father didn’t know what to do with me. I was this thing that was there that he kept at a safe distance.
I have been feeling bad about myself, about my life from the very beginning. A deep sorrow and despair haunted me as a child and waves of intense grief surrounded me and the connection it had with my family was undeniable. I knew it. They were a nightmare. A nightmare I was supposed to love? And who supposedly loved me? Cared for me? This was love? This was care? Life is not worth living if that’s the case.
Ever since I got married I have had this unsettling feeling in the background. I have never been able to pinpoint it or understand it. Getting married, having someone in my life who genuinely cared for me went against the family MO. They were threatened by it. And I could feel it in my bones. I was unsettled to my core in my “settling down”. I lived everyday in a way where I feared for my life, feared for my safety. They were livid. You don’t get to have this you little shit, is what their eyes screamed.
Breaking away from them has been my dream, even as a kid. But I denied it. I couldn’t admit it. I didn’t trust myself. You’re just imagining. I was gaslit my whole life out of any genuine feeling, out of any instinct. And so it makes sense, I was fucking confused. Unraveling has been mainly diffusing this confusion. Confronting me with it. With the fear and terror and shame and grief at the base of it. These people are horrid my feelings would say. And I felt crazy for even thinking it. It couldn’t be. They fed me. I had a roof over my head – I’m the problem. I must be.
But whenever I stop seeing myself as the problem, everything feels more right, I’m more in tune with myself. I feel my power and inner knowing again. Something I had denied myself my whole life, had been denied, had been trained out of. I don’t know what to do with this information. I don’t know how to break away. The fear, the terror is overwhelming. I’m scared. How the hell am I gonna disentangle from this nightmare once and for all?
It’s ironic to see and realize that all the things ‘you’ did in the past that were upsetting to so many were actually coming from a place of wanting to dance on the edge of life and not knowing how. Being pummeled with “you’re bad, you’re crazy, you’re worthless” for daring to go to the edge and play with the limits of “what’s allowed”.
It’s not about some guy or sex or partying or even fighting with anybody. It was about experimenting on the edge. Trying to break free from the monotony and deadness of conditioning of what’s not true for you but everyone around you was insisting was.
And having to doubt yourself and feel in your bones that there’s more to life than this, there’s more to existence than this, there has to be – that’s the magic. That’s the part of you that believes in and knows magic. Knows endless possibilities and refuses to settle for the given and permitted possibilities.
Fuck that, fuck you is what you said and did. No matter how messy, it was divine. It was to be held in reverence not shame. But you can do that now, not as a convincing of yourself or those parts of you that were battered in the unholy shaming of your heart. But as a holding of your heart to the light of what you know to be true in your bones, in your, breath and to bow to that freedom in you that came up against all the odds and said NO.
Fuck that, fuck you is what you said and did. No matter how messy, it was divine. It was to be held in reverence not shame.
No to this. No to you. No to trying to limit me. This isn’t true. This isn’t real. Because it closes the heart. It closes love. It closes freedom. And their “righteousness” the righteousness of the “holier than thou” was and is bullshit, is a lie. You know it and you can call it. Enough doubting. Enough second-guessing. Enough playing small for the sake of their fragile egos.
They SUCKED the living life out of life. And you couldn’t bear it. Why would you? Why would anyone? Amen to that, to calling it, to naming it, to standing in your power and knowing and not letting anyone stir that doubt in you with their cunningness. Being cunning is a symptom of stupidity. Not an accolade. And you don’t have to bow to that false God any longer.
Name it, recognize it, call it. False god. Where cunningness is seen as wisdom and truth is seen as the enemy, that’s not a world you want to live in and rightly so. Because that is a world where the heart goes to die. And to protect yourself from that world, to protect your heart, to protect your knowing, your clarity from that is the the ultimate act of love from love.
A protection and reverence for your heart to grow and be nurtured in truth. To protect that fiercely is the act of a true warrior and to have the feeling that you would die for it is a testament to your devotion. Devotion isn’t making namaste hands and becoming a “spiritual person”. Devotion is being willing to die for truth as a way of life. And you have that. And it is a testament to your power, to your strength, to your LOVE of LIFE. To your love of GOD. To your love of TRUTH.
When we’re operating from fear, we can make our worlds really small with self-imposed limitations. Not allowing ourselves to make mistakes is one of the ways we do this. Once we can acknowledge that we are here to learn and to experiment and try then we can remove all the harsh repercussions that we make up for ourselves. Even if they don’t “look” good.
Good things to know:
We will waste, there will be waste, there will be moments to clear the decks and start from scratch. That’s natural. Without thought, that’s a natural process. Clearing up, clearing out. The freedom to scratch everything and start over is a freedom we have been conditioned out of because we think everything needs to be preserved, not wasted – it’s a fear of being emptied. A hoarding of things, thoughts, processes, ways of doing things which in themselves become limiting and restricting to us.
We lose the ability, ease and simplicity of stepping out of the box we made. We lose the ability to even see that we can. Throwing out the box completely is a necessary and basic life option that needs to be available and visible to us in all circumstances. The ability to start afresh is so liberating; holding on to things, ideas, creations, even holding on to momentum needs to be seen through for the limitation that it is. There’s great freedom in that.
We lose the ability, ease and simplicity of stepping out of the box we made. We lose the ability to even see that we can.
We will try new things and they will have to come up against the conditioning to always be in ‘clear the decks’ mode. We will get messy and hoard again, maybe less so, maybe more so, but the freedom to allow that to happen is also something to come up against.
To not be limited by any way of doing things, of living, of being, to have no concept of good and bad is to live from a place of freshness and true freedom without self-imposed limitation. The freedom to get messy, to not be on top of it, to let things die, dissolve, disintegrate is also a necessary option that we sometimes lose sight of. To let go of the idea that it’s up to you to keep things alive, to keep things afloat is so liberating.
Trying to reach an end point is another self-imposed limitation that sometimes stifles us out of being true and free and truly creative. Trying to finish the article, or finish the game, or have something wrapped up in a bow – all done. That’s the conditioned behavior of schooling. Where nothing is about the process, the validity of the process and the creativity of the process for itself, in itself without the end result being the holy god we worship.
Working out is something that really falls into this conditioning too. When we’re trying to achieve a certain look and a certain routine or a certain consistency of how to do things; we’re operating from a desired future image. As opposed to being open to and sensitive to and listening to what the body needs, wants, enjoys at any given moment which is so different, varying and unpredictable.
Trying to stick to a routine is one of these things that really stifles our ability to be open and in tune with the moment. The same can be said about food, we can get so in our heads about how we’re eating, what we’re eating, when we’re eating. There’s such an overwhelming amount of contradictory information out there which can paralyze us from being able to tune in to our own body’s needs and unique ways of doing things which may be completely new and undiscovered, unknown to us.
The ability to step outside the box is the essence of freedom. To not be confined to any way, to any structure no matter how holy that structure is. To not be confined by conditioning, by gender, by other people’s opinions, by possibilities that are seen but instead to be open to the unseen, the dark, the abyss outside the box.
The abyss is freedom. When we can see that no amount of security is worth losing our freedom for, that no amount of security is even real, then our sense of self is free to expand beyond what we thought was possible. Beyond the ideas we have about life, about ourselves, about where we’re going, and how we’re going there.
It’s good to question everything. Every habit, every “way of doing things”, every template given to you, it’s good to be on the edge of life in this way, to not be confined to the self-imposed limitations society, culture, and religion have pummeled us with. To live on that edge means to be alone and to root in our own sovereignty. To not be defined by anything outside of us.
Our own existence, our own life, is our direct teacher and to be directed to that and by that is the utmost gift and privilege of life. To know in our bones that our life, our existence, our birthright is our own sovereignty which is independent, truly sovereign, truly free of anything outside of us.
And to have the strength and the power and the willingness to grow feet under our sovereign hearts, our sovereign being is the privilege of a lifetime. To come against all the self-imposed limitations in our own psyche and to reckon with that is not for the faint of heart. To admire ourselves, our heart and to acknowledge our courage and sacrifice for following our heart is more than okay.
We need to be your own hero. Our own guide, our own best friend, our own lover, our own cheerleader. Not in the superficial immature way but in the real, true, to the core of us, in our guts way.
How fast are you expecting things to fall away? You can’t rush this. Whatever this process is, it can’t be rushed. For you are not in charge here. And the momentum you’ve been running on is something that also has to die into this process.
Everything old is operating from pain, hurt, panic. From a tight knot of ‘I can’t be here like this. It’s unbearable to be here like this. If only I can tweak or do something to momentarily not feel like this‘. Rushing renewal, rushing rebirth, grasping onto new me. Not allowing the unknown seeming abyss between this and that. Whatever that is. If that ever will be or ever was.
Everything has to lose its meaning for it to mean anything at all. Everything has to die for you to stand a chance of being able to be here without the push and pull of momentum. Otherwise, you’re running endlessly.
The mind thinks listening to this heartbeat is a very, very stupid idea. It thinks it surely will be the demise of everything we have ever known. It murmurs that our salvation depends upon keeping this mind-created world together and running so we can at some point get to that place the culture has promised where it ’s all wonderful. It’s not going to happen.
I used to think it was a curse to be in a place where there were no “spiritual” people, a community of sorts. But I now realize it’s a blessing. It’s extremely seductive and easy to get lured into a sense of safety and “spiritual elevation” because of the fact of being in a group or being part of a community.
The rhetoric and lingo used can become a sort of lifestyle, facade and diversion from being with what’s actually true. If there’s anything I have learned is that anything can be bastardized, everything and anything can become untrue if it stays in the hands of the false self that wants to be someone.
Let alone someone spiritual, that’s a whole other level of bullshit which can be even more insidious and impenetrable.
The challenge of not succumbing to the appearance of goodness.
Image by CDD20
Holiness is not doing what’s ‘right’ according to ‘morality’. Holiness is following your truth no matter what it looks like. Morality is sometimes a showcasing of ‘goodness’. It may look holy but be far from. Not adhering to the looks of things may trigger a lot of fear in you. And it may piss off a lot of people in the process.
In many ways, we are conditioned be ‘good’ for the appearance of ‘goodness’. But the appearance of goodness and actual goodness are two sometimes very different things and at times diametrically opposed. When you can no longer follow or do for the sake of the appearance of good, you will have to face in yourself the false shame and guilt for ‘not being good’.
“Not adhering to the looks of things may trigger a lot of fear in you. And it may piss off a lot of people in the process.”
What’s true for you may not look very ‘good’. May not be pleasing to the eyes of society, family, culture and the values of ‘goodness’ they uphold. Fear and terror of going against the grain of ‘agreed upon goodness’ is a very real thing. Because the animal of the body suddenly doesn’t feel safe and for good reason.
It’s opposing the tribe, going against unspoken rules (and sometimes spoken rules) to follow its heart – all the while not knowing where all this will lead, not knowing if it’s supported by something unseen or whether it’s gone mad. To live on this edge of leaning away from the upheld ‘good’, the upheld norm is a challenge to the nervous system.
What’s true for you may not look very ‘good’. May not be pleasing to the eyes of society, family, culture and the values of ‘goodness’ they uphold.
So much fear is fired up and a discomfort of not knowing whether you’re safe or not at all times is taxing. Leaning into safety and relaxation becomes that much more challenging. Because something wants to be on the frontlines in defense mode in case there’s an attack. To be able to recognize that this is happening in you and acknowledge the terrified one inside is no small feat by any means.
It requires real courage, a real shot in the dark kind of willingness to be able to live on this edge. And it’s painful and hard and uncomfortable. It’s not something to sneeze at and it’s not something to throw spirituality at. Because the threat is real in a sense, you are provoking a lot of folks and it would be naive or a kind of denial to be nonchalant about it.
Trusting your gut is key here because when you’re outnumbered, it’s so easy to start doubting yourself and to feel insane. Especially with the added magic trick of the appearance of goodness being showcased by Tom, Dick and Harry. And here you are being a no good Sally.
When dreams and nightmares are coming to the surface to be examined and you’re choice-less in that this is happening. You’re bitching and screaming and yelling – cursing the gods along the way. Everything theoretical that you thought you understood ‘spiritually’ becomes a reality introducing itself in the moment from the unknown. Not from the mental idea of what you thought it would be.
“Ancestral trauma” is an idea, but in reality, you have no idea how it’s going to present itself in your experience as a living, breathing thing. The words and labels are referring to this living thing and somehow along the way the worlds got reversed. The idea became primary as an abstract thing you think you’re experiencing. But the actual experiencing comes out of nowhere, sometimes blindsiding you, leaving you floored by what you thought you knew.
There is nothing ‘fancy’ about spirituality. Nothing obtainable. It’s not a luxury and it’s not a side gig. Not for long anyway. Because life comes and slaps you sideways. And all that you thought you knew about life goes out the window pretty fast. And so there is nothing to learning vocabulary and getting ideas about what life is.
“There is nothing ‘fancy’ about spirituality. Nothing obtainable. It’s not a luxury and it’s not a side gig. Not for long anyway.”
There is nothing more valuable than your actual experience. Not the potential of it and not the ideal of it. The actual, unadulterated, ground-level experience no matter how ‘unfancy’. Theories and hypotheticals won’t get you anywhere. But your actual experience of where you’re hitting walls and falling flat on your face is the bootcamp – spiritual bootcamp.
If the word ‘spiritual’ means anything to you, throw it in the garbage. If it’s anything like the idea of ‘ancestral trauma’ then it’s just an abstraction. Some vague understanding or notion which means nothing. The living, breathing thing of what you call ‘spiritual’ is an inquiry, somewhere to start.
If the word ‘spiritual’ means anything to you, throw it in the garbage.
What is ‘spiritual’? What does that word even mean to you? It’s tossed around left and right, but what does it actually mean to you? What is your experience of of what is ‘spiritual’?
Reaching a dead-end. Hitting a wall. Falling flat on your face. Having all meaning stripped from “your life”. Searching but not knowing what you’re searching for. Searching but not finding. Deep listening. Recognizing when you’re hearing truth but not knowing what truth is.
Yearning, longing, aching. Being turned inside out. Pain. Fear. Terror. Truth confronting lies. In you and outside of you. Lies confronting truth. In you and outside of you. Recognizing untruth. Recognizing the unbearability of it. Feeling desperate, shaky and achey. Trembling at wonder. Dumbfounded by the ‘mystery’.
Being pissed at the teacher. Mad at the world. Wanting to jump out of your own skin. Intense awareness of mortality. Not belonging anywhere. Not for long anyway. Being repulsive to and repulsed by. Discomfort is your only friend. Becoming your shadow. A skinned animal. A deeply wounded ancient child.
So wounded your face is contorted into a shape no one was meant to ever see. Not having the will to hide or the ability to mask. All masks falling off. Wandering in darkness. Losing hope and hopelessness. Bone deep rawness. Gut-wrenching authenticity. Despicable truth telling.
Losing linearity. Shifting perception. Beauty not in things. Wholeness that does not comfort. Symphony, harmony, infinity. Infinitesimal smallness. Bag of meat – ness. Heartbreak. Zero tolerance for bullshit and bullshitters. Corpse-style rest. Soul-level exhaustion. Monsters in rank closets gasping for air.
The end of the world. That is ‘spirituality’ to me.
The pressure has been mounting for years to re-integrate into the world as it was and as it is for our families. Their stance is like a thinly veiled threat; a hatred toward our audacity to go against their wishes, expectations, desires, demands and fantasies. To be true to ourselves.
Their saccharine smiles fail to cover their deep sense of disdain and repulsion toward all that is true, all that is straight-forward. They would rather we all lived a lie; happy in our monotony, with dead eyes and dirty tricks up our sleeves. They’d rather we used them for their money, their prestige, their power.
Their saccharine smiles fail to cover their deep sense of disdain and repulsion toward all that is true, all that is straight-forward. They would rather we all lived a lie; happy in our monotony, with dead eyes and dirty tricks up our sleeves.
The fact that we don’t enrages them. Belittles them. Makes them feel powerless. Powerless over their children. For all they really want is power over. To coerce. To blackmail. To corner. That, they call sanity, “normal life”. That, they worship, on both knees, they’re bowing to this God.
“Love me or else, motherfucker!“
The God they worship is a God they use to guilt-trip, to manipulate, to instill fear. To get what they want without having to do it themselves. Believe it themselves. Their words are empty. Their indifference – ghastly. Their persistence something akin to a nightmare.
“We miss you”, they say, but what they “miss” is their ability to have control over. To get you to fall in line, be an extension of their agendas, pristine masks, glittery cars and socially mummified personas.
Scratch a little beneath the surface and the real deviousness reveals itself. Say “no” a few times and you’ll see a whole other side, a whole other face. You’ll see a plethora of strategies unfold before your eyes. Love-bombing, gaslighting, bombarding, blackmailing, guilt-tripping, silent-treatment, hostility, re-writing history, outright threatening, competing, flying monkeys, sabotaging – all of it.
Scratch a little beneath the surface and the real deviousness reveals itself. Say “no” a few times and you’ll see a whole other side, a whole other face. You’ll see a plethora of strategies unfold before your eyes.
There is something to be said about keeping your eyes open for all of it. Not turning away. Not denying what you see. But seeing all of it, in it’s nasty, shitty, fucked up, nauseating, repulsive, soul-irking, heart-breaking, messy, vile truth of it. That’s a feat.
They’d rather you died than be real. They’d rather you fake for the rest of your god forsaken life than say a word of truth. God forbid any truth slips out into the room, you’ll see fucking 80 year old’s doing jumping jacks, handstands and cartwheels just to divert the attention and cover whatever truth managed to leak into their dense bomb shelter lives. A real wild performance.
God forbid any truth slips out into the room, you’ll see fucking 80 year old’s doing jumping jacks, handstands and cartwheels just to divert the attention and cover whatever truth managed to leak into their dense bomb shelter lives. A real wild performance.
If you want to see respectable, ‘by the book’ people turn into circus freaks in the blink of an eye, just breathe truth.
