Beyond Broken

Trauma

Spring Gardening

In my garden this year the weeds are plentiful.  Especially one kind of weed that is very satisfying to find and pull out.  It is wide and can spread out its lush and large tendrils for several feet in all directions but at its base is a small ball and if you are lucky and pull it out just right you get the very deep central small single minuscule little root.  I am always amazed that such a small yet tenacious root can give rise to such a prolific plant.  Buckets of this weed come out of my garden and into the compost.  A Taproot, as it is called, turns out is the first root to appear from the seed and remains the central root of the plant.

I love this as a metaphor.

While we may, in our lives, spread out in many directions with flashy, fleshy greenery we have one central root to our lives and it has always been true.  In the Pathwork this is called our Soul Task.  The promise is that finding this task and staying true to it is the secret to a satisfying life.  Recently, my husband Tom found a letter that I wrote him in 1988.  We had been married for 7 years and I was about to turn 35.  In the letter I say that I  feel like I have checked important boxes in my life: kids, self employment and married for life.  While all this is great I go on in the letter to answer a question Tom has asked me the week before.  He asked, “Do you think we will ever make the Big Time.”  He is  referring our fledgling technology business at the time. Reading it all these years later, I am pretty astonished at my answer .  I write, “I think we will — but on a different track than what we are on now.  I think the contribution we can really make is to share with others who we are and how we are and that is our most marketable product!”  I go on to say that I am clear I can only keep going in this business for two more years….

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Allowing – Coming Into Congruence With Our True Nature

By now it is obvious to me that most therapeutic tools and also spiritual practices have one main unifying focus.  That focus is to help us develop the willingness to pay attention, while letting feelings be as they are.  Mark Epstein writes in The Zen of Therapy that “non-interfering attentiveness… is by its very nature transformative.  The point isn’t to stop feeling or thinking them (our feelings) but to change our relationship with them.”

Fear is one of our strongest and most prevalent feelings.  Recently I have noticed that it is my go-to feeling.  It overrides many more authentic feelings underneath.  Here are a few of my examples: A house keeper does not show up.  I feel very anxious and panicky instead of disappointed and actually a little angry at her.  Another example cutting back on medication I have a back spasm.  I feel anxious and afraid instead of sad and in pain.  James Hollis, PhD. writes in Living an Examined Life, “If we are going to have a meaningful life we have to feel our feelings.  Much of our behaviors are fear based. Fear protects us but also constricts us.”  In 1912 Jung said, “The spirit of evil is negation of the life force by fear.  Only boldness can deliver us from fear and if the risk is not taken the meaning of life is violated.”  Hollis goes on to say, “Realize ninety percent of energy that blocks you has its origin in your childhood where everything was overwhelming.  When we are stuck, we have activated this archaic fear.”  Sooner or later, to have a meaningful life, we have to  begin with allowing our feelings with open, curious attention.

James Hollis goes on to asks us “what does our soul ask for us?”  To get to this question there are layers of blocked feelings that block our intuitions and knowing.  Jung said “We don’t solve these problems … we can’t cut our history out of us like a tumor… our task is to outgrow their influences.  You cannot rule out what is wired in neurologically or in your psyche but you can watch it with curiosity, compassion and spaciousness.  In this attentiveness it loses its power….

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Expecting Disappointment

The holidays seem an apt time to write about disappointment.  How many of us struggle during December and January to create meaningful experiences that end up falling short in comparison to some magic we remember as children?  There is a “big D” of Disappointment.  COVID is still here and we cannot see family and friends without feeling anxious and in danger and there is the “little d” of disappointment; the gift that was not quite right, the lack of attunement of a friend or family member.  All disappointing.  There is the FOMO and being excluded during holiday events and there is the overwhelm of too many activities and burn out.  More disappointment.

However we have an odd coping mechanism to avoid disappointment. WE EXPECT IT!

What sense does that possibly make?  Because expecting something is a setup for having it actually happen!  Ways that we try to avoid disappointment include perfectionism, pessimism, vigilance and a kind of living on the edge of life….

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The You AND Me Universe

Join me in an exploration of the Me AND You Universe, a concept introduced to me eight years ago by Diane Poole Heller.  She described an interpersonal Me AND You universe; I have found that idea applies also to our intra-personal and transpersonal experience.

In one of her modules of her DARe Training, Diane teaches about how the Me AND You Universe contrasts with the Me OR You Universe.  She calls each state of mind a universe because they are a lived reality that is exclusive of other realities in a person’s experience.  Most of us live in the You OR Me Universe.  Unfortunately, our early attachment experiences lead us to the conclusion that we can have either ourselves or the other, me or you. In Pathwork terms we might call this a Main Image.  It’s a belief that “if I have you, then I lose myself, and if I have me, I lose you.”  This is a duality of consciousness or psychological splitting which is very painful.  The way this often shows up for me is that I am loving being with you, but also can’t wait for some “quiet time”.  Then when I am alone and have this “quiet time” I am missing being with you.  Either way there is a tinge of dissatisfaction and a lack of wholeness.

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The Light At The End Of The Tunnel

Yesterday we took a trip to the old Crozet Tunnel.  This tunnel in Afton was built through the Blue Ridge Mountains for trains in the mid 1800’s. It closed in 1944, but it was recently opened to bikers and pedestrians.  In this photo I am standing on the east end of the tunnel pointing to a spec of light which is a mile away at the west end.  Walking through the tunnel is beautiful and eerie.  You need a flashlight because it is completely dark.

The light at the end of a tunnel is such a powerful metaphor as we all wait patiently for the grip of the Pandemic to loosen and end.

In my life I have known two different ways to hold this metaphor.  The first one is waiting for the light at the end of a tunnel to finally appear or arrive—the hope that salvation is out there somewhere in the distance

The other is an on-going sense of hope and purposefulness that we might call faith. We all need a sense that things will get better, that we will arrive somewhere better. It can be a companion to us as we are progressing towards the light.

I have experienced my share of looking for the light at the end of a long tunnel through coping with chronic pain. When it began fifteen years ago, doctors were mystified and there was a lot of treatment that was driven by guesswork.  I was on multiple medications and I had to give up a lot of things I had been enjoying in life.  There were days when I was not sure I could keep on living.  But I kept hoping for a light at the end of the tunnel.

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