Moving Inside-Sunday, March 30, 2008

A few weeks back a good friend of mine, Moe, was in town with the Family Systems Research Group which grew out of the Gentle Wind Project. They make these hand held ‘healing instruments’ that work to strengthen and clear a persons energetic system. I am very grateful for all they have created and amazed at what the next step they offer is. They are now using the I Ching and Uranian astrology to create pathways for growth and clear obstacles to wholeness. They had done some of this work on me about 2 months before my encounter with the Council of Trees and I wonder now if that wasn’t what finally opened me to embrace a more expanded reality.

At this seminar, Moe talked again of the victim, rescuer and perpetrator cycle and how if we think we can help someone else, they become the victim. We act as the rescuer and they are ‘one-down’ and that opens them up to becoming a perpetrator of us or others. It creates a one-up or one-down perspective on life that is very unhealthy and breeds anger and mistrust.
What I began to understand was this as an internal cycle and how it is acted out by the different aspects of myself. The internalized critical parent used to beat me up and then I would feel like a victim and try to fix myself. The fixes were mostly external: food, sex, talk, entertainment, distractions, etc and they didn’t really work. They just appeased the dragon of discontent. Even meditation only shut up the critique for a short time. In not recognizing my wholeness, I was a victim of this life, disconnected from others and angry about it all. I was open to the perpetrators and attracted many wolves in sheep’s clothing. My anger came out in situations with other victims and I became the ‘perp’ also. So the vicious cycle can continue and is evident daily around us.

I wasn’t sure where I was going with this today but it is coming to me that so much of what is offered up right now in a spiritual way suggests that the ego is bad and we need to surrender. This comes out of the eastern traditions where there may be little of this victim, rescuer, perpetrator cycle, where there is a basic respect and acknowledgement of a persons worth. Their culture is different and I question whether what they offer will work easily for most westerners. (Maybe it is even beyond that and has more to do with the fear of the rise of the feminine in the wake of the downfall or re-balancing of the masculine. It’s as if the patriarchy has not worked so in the rise of the feminine, let’s reject the ego, because the feminine principles won’t work either.)

So many of the people I see in my work are stuck in this internal critical cycle and when they approach a spiritual path, I feel they are trying to give up what they don’t have: a strong sense of self, an ego. They try to put the cart before the horse. The goal is not to be humble, it is to be whole and feel humility in amazement of the everything that is.

Trying to be humble is not the same as knowing who you really are and having humility happen to you as an extension of that experience. Humility comes from knowing that you are the master and creator of your life and so is everyone else. You are unique but equal and an intelligence beyond this form. This is not an intellectual understanding, it is an experience that you live. Trying to be humble is a waste of time and energy. Forgiving yourself for the misperceptions you hold of who you are is valid. Taking responsibility for your thoughts, feelings and judgements helps a lot. Opening to your own wholeness and worth extracts you from the victim cycle and heads you in the right direction.
What is surrendered to when you are not experiencing wholeness? Dogma. Just a bunch of ideas like these, not the breathing in and out of a divine being living in a human body on this planet.
Blessings on this holy day,
Laurel
Comments:

Asia Guyer
I loved this insight, mostly the realization of the difference between being humble and having humility. Self worth (ego) is all too often frowned upon while on our spiritual quest, where I feel many people in this hectic day and age need to remind themselves often, how precious their individual life is to all of creation. We in our tiny parts and only all of us together make the whole. Laurel : Thank you, Asia