There’s an imbalance here that is revealing itself to you and wants to set be straight. Wants to come into balance. Into coherency. Into clarity and truth.
And it’s showing up as this fear. This trauma. The fear is the trauma. The trauma of the terror of feeling unsafe in your own family. Feeling like living your life is an abomination to them.
In the past, the expression of your own autonomy, sovereignty was severely punished. You were punished for speaking your truth, living your truth, for doing whatever it is you needed to do to cope. Punished by those who were meant to be your closest allies, your dearest. And all in the name of family.
And so the fear is a friend. The terror is the body speaking to you. It’s shaking you up. Waking you up. Saying, hello hello, mayday, mayday! We’ve been here before and it was hell. Safety needed. Pay attention here.You’re needed here. In the body.
And the body itself is confused. Because when family are the one’s who are “dangerous” – it’s a mind fuck. Because it’s the most seemingly familiar being seen to be the most foreign. It’s “home” but something know this is not what home is supposed to feel like. It’s all you’ve ever known but what you’ve known is hell on earth. It’s the biological pull to be in the safe arms of family and the intelligence of the trauma pushing you to run be as fast as you can. And this is confusing as hell. For the body and the mind.
So let’s bring real kindness, real gentleness to this fight. This agonizing struggle. The mind fuck of it. The heart wrench of it. The panic of it. The one that wants to run and the one that feels pinned down. Let them both be here.
And really look, what was really happening. What is happening beneath the guise of family. What’s really going on here. Why do I feel so endangered around these people? Am I in danger now? Why does the body feel like it’s being ambushed now? Why is it activating fight or flight? There’s intelligence here that needs a deep listening to.
Is this the ambush of feeling ganged up on… Act this way or else. Do this or else. Stay in line or else. Or else. Everyone’s getting their ducks in a row and you’re in the way. What a problem you are. How rude. How impudent. You think we have time for your childish feelings. Your imagined sovereignty. Your unacceptable behavior.
And you feel it, the more you speak your truth, the more this fear is activated. In this interaction and in that interaction. You speak from truth, you act from truth and it’s not well-received. So something in you wants to run. Feels unsafe. Because in the past you were unable to create that safety for yourself and neither did you have it. Nor did you have an understanding or capabilities to discern what was going on.
And there was a hierarchy that you believed in. The family hierarchy. Mom, Dad, older brother, older sister. I’m the little one. The child. Treated as such. This constellation.
A software update needs to happen internally and is happening. The update of seeing through the guise of the family. Dismantling the hierarchy or having it dismantled for you. Undoing the sense of ambush. Seeing through others wanting you to do their bidding under the guise of them doing your bidding.
The stigma around setting boundaries and living from your truth is what activates the fear of being ganged up on. Because in being the family scapegoat, in being the one who carries the burden of the family’s collective unconsciousness, you’re a problem – for them. And so you need harshness or diplomacy, a tugging or a pulling – you need a strategy in order to be coerced into doing, saying, acting in a way that is ‘beneficial’ to them.
But this is not real ‘benefit’. Real benefit is acting in accordance to your innermost knowing in the moment. And finding the whatever it is you can find to anchor you to the earth, ground and breath. So that you’re not sullied by the attempts at coercion, the stigmatized beliefs around speaking from truth. So that you can hold your own amidst the stormy weathers of the family ambush.
You don’t have to leave. That’s the trauma. It wants to run.
Your true yearning is to be able to hold your own. Stabilize and resource yourself enough so that confusion, manipulation, distortion don’t color your vision.
It helps to rest. To digest. To let whatever is revealing itself, coming in or going out – integrate, land. Use your resources for this. Learn to rest.
Your true nature is quiet dignity. It reveals itself in relaxation. In resting back. In slowing down. In taking your time. In not rushing to do, say, or act.
The trauma wants to tell you what you need and what you don’t need. But you don’t know what you need. And that is a blessing. To think you know what you need is in a way a limitation. A narrowness.
The trauma is for healing and digestion. It’s for integration. It’s not for deciphering needs.
In a way your focus is resourcing the body. Learning what it needs. It’s cues. Providing safety, rest and space for it to unwind. Unravel. For all the seeds that were planted, are planted to rest in nutrient-rich soil. To be watered.
Your focus is to breathe. To breathe deeply. To breathe into. Into the gut. Into the clenches. Into deeper and deeper rest.
To admit your vulnerability, your humanness, your trauma-ness, your wounding, your little child-ness. And to find shade under big trees. Teachers, guides, friends on the path.
There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s no shame in that. It’s not about teacher- student. Lesser than or more than. It’s not about becoming someone who knows things too. It’s not about that. And it’s not about collapsing on the one who knows either.
It’s about the quiet joy of feeling connected to yourself. Of understanding your priorities. Not mentally. But in your spine. In your alignment. In your gut. Your root. Learning to trust yourself. Of not letting your movements inner or outer be dictated by others whims and fancies.
And it’s about being able enough, humble enough, wise enough to be in need of help, ask for help, get help and be gracious enough to be able to receive it. And not know anything of it, above it or below it.
Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to. Don’t try to see through the distances. That’s not for human beings.
How you’re feeling is not your fault. How your nervous system is acting doesn’t mean anything about you. It’s not a mistake. Not a wrongdoing on your part. Not a sign of failure.
The narrative of:
If only I had done something differently, I wouldn’t be like this. If I was “normal” then this wouldn’t be happening. Other people don’t experience this. This must mean there’s something wrong with me.
Is a false, self-deprecating conditioned narrative from a culture that demonizes and has great disdain for dark emotion – pretending that this darkness doesn’t exist.
Psychologists call changing what you think about what you feel “cognitive restructuring” or “reframing.” For instance, thinking “I’m weak” when you feel sad or scared can be reframed as “I’m strong and courageous enough to let myself feel sad or scared.” In re-visioning and reframing the power of grief, fear, and despair we come to think about them not as obstacles or enemies but as guides to spiritual transformation. This kind of affirmation is an essential foundation for trusting emotional energy and using it wisely.
Miriam Greenspan, Healing Through Dark Emotions
Tapping into this darkness and being in tune with the delicate tapestry of this emotional underworld means giving space and permission to the hurt little ones within. Their right to be here. The right for the embryonic pre-communication vulnerable ones to move through us, to show their faces.
Their repression into shadow need not be the norm anymore. They can come into the light and feel into their right to exist, their inherent right to be here. And part of that is acknowledging and feeling into their conditioned and believed sense of wrongness and the shame that comes with that. The shame of the dark emotion, the shame of intense vulnerability being labeled as weakness. And the recoiling nature of that shame.
Being in the dark for so long can cause an aversion to the light. So a recoiling can happen, a recoiling of ‘it’s not safe enough out here, let’s go back into the dark’. But great patience is needed here. Great self-compassion. To acknowledge inwardly that it’s no small feat to be in tune with the underworld. To learn to let it move through. To feel the aching vulnerability of a baby who feels totally, utterly and violently overwhelmed by 3D reality is no small thing.
And the facade of ‘normal’ out here in the world – especially in relating with others – is a great trigger point for any vulnerable, scared, hurt parts of us to feel outrageously out of place and recoil. The “normal” surfacey interactions of everyday life can feel even callous for those of us who are courageous enough and willing enough to unearth the underworld of dark emotion and live on the edge of vulnerability, precision and open-heartedness.
The ‘normal’ can feel painful to us. And it’s important to name that and not make that wrong. That ‘normal’ is fucking painful to us and this truth is our new normal. The truth of acknowledging and recognizing the facade of normal for what it is. No matter how convincing it looks.
A facade is a front. It’s not real. It’s aesthetics. It’s reality is lesser than the reality of the underworld of dark emotion. Meaning that it’s unreal. Even though it might not look like it or even feel like it sometimes. But that whole surface level of relating is sitting on top of suppressed dark emotions. And that’s where we learn that darkness is wrong. That’s where we learn, I’m crazy (for feeling this, for seeing this, for sensing this). We learn it and imbibe it by taking in the facade of normal to be realer than the underworld of dark emotions.
Making the darkness right needs to happen first before the darkness can turn into light. Which is ultimately not something we do but an inner alchemy that happens of it’s own accord. We can facilitate this process by making the darkness right; recognizing and acknowledging from our full humanness and full being-ness that the underworld of dark emotions is real. For us. And is not just worthy of our loving attention but more than that if we are to function and relate in a healthy and wholesome way, we must tend to this underworld wholeheartedly. Otherwise it will leak out in ways beyond our control or even awareness.
In making the darkness right, an inner permission slip is given to unearth the hidden, shadowy, latent tendencies of that underworld. Bringing it up to the light to be seen, felt and digested. In the rightness of the darkness, we start to see through the facade of normal functioning and the facade of normal relating. And in seeing through this facade, our ability to function and relate in a more real and grounded way starts to reveal itself to us.
When we are no longer participating in the facade nor believing the facade, our attention can be freed up to turn around from the outward appearances of ‘normality’ to the inward reality of what’s being unearthed. The vulnerability, the fear, the shakiness, the aching become our allies. And a new learning happens where we start to understand and listen to the cues of our inner world. The ways in which it is constantly communicating to us through the body with information we need to pay attention to.
Information like:
This is too much for me right now. I need to set a boundary here. I need to rest now. I don’t feel safe here. My nervous system is overwhelmed. This interaction doesn’t feel true for me. This person is standing too close to me. I need to remove myself from this situation.
Or.
I love this. This feels natural to me. I want to do more of this. This space is safe. I feel nurtured.
Our ability to inwardly listen to these cues is heightened when we can genuinely dis-engage from the facade of normal and see it for what it is. This is like unplugging from a machine of conditioning with a motor so loud – you can hardly hear yourself. Unplugging this machine is a whole dance unto itself of standing your ground. And bringing kindness to the places that wobble. The places that still believe the facade of normal and take it at face value.
The wobbly places are where we carry trauma. Trauma can be as simple as an inner sense of disbelief at how convincing the facade of normal appears to be. All the little things we took for granted to be natural and authentic reveal themselves to be a complete lie, a fabrication, even acting.
This comes as a shock to the system – one in need of full digestion. Because it reveals to us a whole thread of information that has been unconscious to us in the past. That in our innocence and in our conditioning, we were taught to believe the lie and accept it for what it is. And there can be a lot of rage and even despair unearthed within us – just from that one piece.
The energy of the dark emotions brings us information about the self and the world; about the past, present, or future; about the inner and outer worlds and the connections between them. The information we get alerts us to be attentive to something important and guides us to transformational change.
The past is not your fault. The circumstances, the desolate loneliness. It is not something you have to clean up quickly. Or be ashamed of. The shame of how lonely you were. The shame of feeling so neglected. So invisible. So manipulated. The shame of not having any tools to deal with whatever was coming at you. All this was not your fault. Not an indication that you were wrong. Defective. Unloveable. Unworthy. None of it.
The desperation of trying to fit in somewhere, anywhere – and not being able to – is not proof of inherent unworthiness. Being on the outs is not a badge of shame.
No one has power over you.
This is an illusion.
Not a denial of the “harsh reality of the world”.
Powerlessness, helplessness, despair want to be felt, included, loved.
Accept where you are. Don’t be in a hurry for change. New Year’s tend to activate this conditioning of ‘resolution’. New me. And this puts pressure on where you find yourself. Familiar patterns. Familiar habits. This is what’s happening. Trying to change that is what causes so much suffering. An ideal of what it should be like not what it actually is. And as the human that you are, you will fall short. You will fall short of your own expectations of yourself. Of other’s expectations of you. Of the spiritual ego’s delusional expectations of itself.
The hurry is what causes overwhelm. The hurry is what feeds dissatisfaction with the way things are. For things to run their course and given the time leave your system or not. You cannot override conditioning. You cannot override trauma. You cannot override the nervous system. The whole momentum behind wanting to override is fear. It keeps things looping. Not good enough, good enough, not good enough, good enough.
Part of this accepting is accepting that you’re not accepting. Feel the fucking frustration. The agony of the human dilemma of being conditioned. The agony of trying to override conditioning. The mere exhaustion of it. And notice that when a sense of acceptance happens, that it turns into a doing. I accepted last night, so where is this acceptance this morning. Trying to hold onto acceptance is also futile.
Where you are is where you are. That’s it. Disorientation. Disillusionment. Anger at teachers. Distaste for spirituality. Grief. Exhaustion. Not being able to be in the flow. Difficulty settling down. Impatience. Despair. Pointlessness. Meaninglessness. Bad person-ness. Falling short-ness.
You cannot force yourself to be better than you are. “More aligned”. All you can do is be true to where you are. Not trying to reach for the skies. Or sink in the earth. The trying is the exhaustion. The trying is the non-acceptance of where you are. The trying is the chasing of the ideal. The ideal that doesn’t exist except as an imagined self in the mind. An imagined self who’s doing it all right. Who’s got it all together. Who’s able to deal with it all. Internally and externally. The image of what the spiritual teacher’s imagined life looks like. The comparison to that imagination and assumption. And the feeling of utter failure for not measuring up despite all the work, despite all the effort, despite despite despite.
But reality tells a different story. I am shit scared. I am fumbling. I can’t get my shit together for 5 minutes let alone all the time. I am so tired of my shortcomings. I am so tired of feeling like a complete failure. I feel mildly disassociated and at the mercy of the rush of humanity. Slowing down has become a chore. And all my tricks have gone out the window.
That is the truth. That is the humbling. That is the reality of where you are at. You can sit and meditate and then the moment you get up, you’re right back at it. And then… the disappointment.
So let’s drop all these requirements, imaginations, chores. And just be where we’re at. Non-accepting, messy, fumbly, disoriented, pointless, tight-knotted, absent-minded, abhorrent, nothing to write home about’s.
