Speaker: ‘After spending time with my sister, I feel she was able to move past some of the pain she has held onto so long about our family and our differences of experience, but I still feel I don’t really understand her and how we are so different.’
Together, you may have shed light on these past pains and with you she was able to explore seeing things in another way, but her journey will continue to be different than yours. One of the benefits of maturing is that as time goes on, many find more available a capacity to let go of edifices and break patterns; to step into another era of one’s life. You can let go of pain, do what you didn’t do before or allow yourself to give up feeling you must do something. You can let yourself be open to the next, the new, not being as you have been. For many people this is very exciting and freeing. For others is may feel like a burdensome challenge to be other than they have been. Many people live their lives from the construct of life - the weaving of identity.
At times we must accept change in what we did or do, prefer and no longer desire. But on a deeper level, many do not trust being. Their whole identity is woven with doing and having that doing affirmed and mirrored and acknowledged as right, correct and in accord.
If pain is given up, the absence of pain will, at first, seem just an absence, empty, hollow. The hollowness may fill again, but one doesn’t really know with what. ISo often, one takes the energy we already know and refill with it, even if it is pain from a long-ago wounding. .In this choice, what is also occurring is the feeling that ‘Ahhh- I am me. I am comfortable. I know how to be with this.’ ‘I have endured and succeeded in life in spire of my pain’ is the stronger identity. For many a true desire for the absence of pain is not what drives them.
Such an identification is not essentially wrong and usually emerged from a true circumstance. But it does lead to a single focus, a single energetic diet, that is often not revisited and questioned. With your sister, your time together has brought the questions present. For others, there may be no question. They may have their inner map of a ‘good person’ and that is how they will live and die.
Others have exposure to more maps, as it were. For instance, when we are physically in a challenge, we sometimes open up to things. One can use the platform of physical limitation to experience some things you wouldn’t have done before. In crisis we may also call upon our strengths from another time of our life. We can get ourselves back, we can do what we once did. And this feels good, but it is still familiar energy. And familiarity can keep at bay the query, ‘How else can I be in my life?’
We make so many comparisons to earlier times of our life and see change as loss. So much in fact, that we often lose sight of the fact that we actually would no longer make that choice in the present, with today’s ‘me.’ So the struggle becomes not having enough ‘new’ ideas of oneself and regarding the ‘old ideas’ only as losses, rather than natural completions. It is at this juncture that may think we should create the ideas of ourselves. We come to believe in the ‘idea’ of self. Unfortunately, this can interfere with the true process of change and growth which we see as opening to that which we don’t know.
Opening to what we do not know is a process of discovering our self, rather than having an idea of one self. And such discovery can become uncomfortable. We can be uncomfortable in listening, looking and not knowing. Having our ideas is more readily soothing and important because the idea supplies of false sense of knowing. But often what is asked of us in life is to simply be- to be yourself just as you are.
Often the wound that truly binds us to our old patterns is that being ourselves is deeply felt and experienced as not sufficient. The past cannot heal that wound. One can only step further, moving with Spirit. One has to trust, or consider trusting, what you don’t believedo have inherent value and worth, sufficiency of being. And from there, what you may next come to do in the world can begin to show up. – that just being the person you are is sufficient. Consider trusting that you
The child learned to be okay in the world through their doing. And even when the doing was not acknowledged enough by mother or father or siblings, the outside world may acknowledge that doing is a good thing. What needs to be learned anew is that we are beingdoing. It is a great gift if a parent can share this with a child. It is a great gift if, as adults, one can give this to yourself. In fact, one’s doing might not always please others or even yourself, but your being in the world is just fine. beyond all
The more one needs to control the doing of the world is often an indicator that there is a wound to the connection with experiencing one’s inherent ‘alrightness’ of being. And note, that we say experiencing. The inherent worth is always present, simply is, no matter that we carry the capacity to not recognize or experience it.
Children often carry a deep sense of knowing that in their essence they are okay. But they take on the onus of doing as others want. They are afraid that for mother or father being one’s self is not enough and they will valiantly try to give them the doing the child believes is wanted.
Sometimes we experience a connection with others where we feel it is, indeed, okay to just be, even as we share doing. But often when we are in a challenge or need help or are ill or such things, we actually pull away from those people because in our need, we are afraid to trust that simply being without doing is not enough; that we are asking too much, that we will not be accepted on our being alone. When we withdraw to protect ourselves, we may feel instead that the other has withdrawn, mirroring our own fear. In all this, we can see the tender heart of the little child who learned that his or her doing was more important than their being.
When we say ‘doing’ you may think of this as external doings in the world, but actually many of these doings are all internal. It is a sense of ‘I am me in the world because I do this.’ We all have a version that we like to do. Doing in itself is a good thing, but what serves most is when it is built upon ‘I am okay because I am me.’ At times, others use their judgment of us to create separation. Sometimes we find we take on their judgment and accept rejection as justified. Perhaps elements of their judgment are even accurate. You may acknowledge your mistake, your misunderstanding, your quality that is a conflict for them.
At other times, judgment is not of your action, but of the other’s own reaction to something that is connected to their interior world. When we accept ourselves and our innate sufficiency, when we embrace our essential okay-ness of being, we can acknowledge lack without being in lack. In this state you also do not internalize the energy of the others.
Sometimes we love people and we really can’t say why. There is a wholeness to loving them even
when their actions might not add up to being loveable. This experience is a kind of being. It is outside of what one does. It is true that if people do too much that is difficult, you may take that love and move on. But it is important to understand that someone can just love you and you can just love them, when all the ‘doings’ don’t add up in a certain way. Again, we often learn to value the doing too greatly. We can love our children but we cannot give up the fear that their wrong doings will damage them. Again, we see reflected the tender young heart that could not trust that just being was not enough. Parents can bring an unachievable idealization to a child – ‘Let my child walk in the world as I did not. Let this child be just as me and show me my worth.’ etc.
Sometimes our tender hearts are left over from being the survivors of other people’s unexamined lives. In fact, siblings often share that ‘survivorship’ and are able together to examine their lives, even when or perhaps, especially when, others in the family were not willing or able to do that. Many family members aren’t willing to question what they have brought to the situation or weren’t able to consider how something could be done differently. Survivors can find they are simpatico from a deep principle of life, such as, ‘Things come together to make up life as it is but we can also look at them, understand them and move differently or more confidently. We can look again and see anew.’ This can be seen as a shared psychological/spiritual framework that can provide a platform for sharing with each other. Often this kind of bond – which we may experience with friends, partners, etc. as well – can become a sustaining, enduring foundation which arises again and again even when other things arise that create dissonance or distance.
Empaths have an extra burden, at times, of really wanting ‘just like.’ They have a capacity and perhaps a trace-memory of experience of mirroring that is on a much higher degree than is really typical in this reality. This is why we use the metaphysical metaphor ‘If there was an Empath culture…’ because there is a ‘merge’ element that can only be episodic here and yet we see people struggle with wanting that to be much more consistent. That very desire can be something that pushes and pulls in relationship, where ‘enough or sufficient’ is never fully experienced. Enough is felt as something completely, fully, synchronized with each other and that is simply rarely possible. Many individuals feels happier in their lives when they find ease with ‘as good as it gets,’ rather than this dream of fullness, which often leads to feelings and sadly, sometimes actions, of ‘all or nothing.’
Knowing of this underlying pull for complete synchronization may help Empaths to view this desire more accurately and let it adjust to a truer view of reality and therefore allow more appreciation and satisfaction with what is. At times it feels unbearable to not have the fullness, and so the option of ‘all or nothing’ feels like the only choice. But this assessment is often based on the wound of doing over being, where one feels insufficient and can only feel sufficient with others with this quest for complete mirroring.
Others reading this may say, ‘But I do not understand that ‘all or nothing’ element.’ And so it may be. Some come into life or experience life in a deep way that no matter what occurs in life, or who says what or rejects you, they feel connected to Life itself and in that you within Life is sufficient. Being you has a core sufficiency because you have a deep direct experience of Unity. You know the interconnection and no matter how off life can get, that knowing reasserts. When this recognition is very available, perhaps we can say it is a gift of life. But it is always present, even if you have to work to have recognition of it.
We often see this deep recognition of Unity arising from early unrecognized infant traumas of one sort or another in which the infant reached out, went out – if you will, and touched into the essence of Life and connected to a deep knowing of ‘I’m alive.’ It’s preverbal, pre all levels of conceptual formations so it is completely anchored beyond words, innately. Some people have experiences that cut them off from that direct connection or make them insecure in that recognition. Our view is that those experiences are often later in development and more embedded in the mental, evolving with conceptualization. [Speaker: ‘This makes it easier for me to understand my sister and how she doesn’t feel as I do.’]
If at some point, a young child recognizes that ‘I am not connected to my family,’ that experience can override the recognition of the connection inherent with coming into life. That inherency is why tiny infants can survive traumas, against all odds, because they are existing almost undifferentiated from the vibrations of life; directly connected to the deepest level of being. If another disconnection trauma occurs, as the mind is becoming mind, that trauma and sense of disconnection is more available to be recognized as it is available in memory as mind is framing and developing.
Some consciousness typology systems, such as Astrology or the Enneagram, may even reflect that certain types may show these kinds of traumas and resulting disconnections more than others and in that, such systems can also be used as a supportive framework to explore opening to reconnection, knowing their own propensity, perhaps, to lose their recognition of connection.
Many people have experiences, often a traumatic one, that takes them to these deep levels of recognition of the All and they intensely experience a reconnection. They often have insights and understandings, evolving perhaps as a spiritual framework, that leads them to the idea that there is something deeper. In knowing that, you can then do practices, such as meditation or prayer or associations that can open to direct experience of connection. Direct experience can be had through interconnection with others, such a love, including romantic love – which breaks many patterns and allows a visceral connection.
It is true that more conscious attention may be required to reach the deeper connection if the early recognition has been hidden from awareness by other patterns of loss and insufficiency. At time such individuals may see ease and flow with life in others, but they feel that as unattainable for themselves. Considering that there is innate connection is and that life can interrupt our capacity to recognize and experience it, can support ‘working’ to allow reconnection. In the end, one has to find one’s own ‘flavor’ of connection. Your own experience may not look like your sister’s or best friend’s, but the capacity to have your own experience of this interconnection which is inherently present is there.
Often people who do not have the ease with life they see others as having, tend to dismiss the other as Pollyanna-like or optimists or something else that implies such ease is not anchored in reality and denies the truth of the challenges in life. It may truly seem such to them, because their own experience of connection is not be the same as those others. What they may be saying is, ‘I’m not like you and I don’t feel attuned to your perspective.’ The true question is ‘How does the experience of interconnection show up for me? Can I know that I am part of this life and being me is enough, sufficient?’
Some of the people who ‘see’ the challenges of the world, feel the interconnection by being the Witness. This is a kind of Empath quality. Often they don’t actually do anything about the world troubles – they don’t join groups or write petitions, etc. – but they can’t let go of ‘I can see what it seems no one else is seeing. I am the Witness and it is incumbent on me to be so. It matters.’ There is a power to being the Witness and it holds a place. This can become problematic when identity becomes so intertwined with being the Witness that one cannot go deeper or further than ‘seeing’ and let themselves truly see and feel the movements and paradox of life. When we allow for the vagaries, the fullness, the all of life, we can still feel the interconnection of all this as the presence of joy of being, no matter what is occurring.
The Witness might not use the word ‘joy,’ but they do know and have experiences of feeling connected to the All. They get disconnected from that experience by being captured by their role and identity as Witness. They come to value that role above all others and everything else is secondary; the Witness energy is all that feels of purpose. Remembering the multiplicity of life can support individuals in allowing themselves to more fully experience and value the many aspects of being more easily and not feel ‘joy’ is in any way taking away from or diminishing their ‘main’ purpose.
In the end, considering that multiplicity is another part and parcel quality of Life itself is what can support us all in our differences. We don’t have to all be the same. Here we can see why the word ‘simpatico’ is a such a perfect word – we are in sympathy. We find resonance. We find sympathetic strings, sympathetic mirror neurons or morphogenetic fields and so on, but we are not ‘the same’. To us, there simply is no ‘the same.’ No one is wholly ‘the same’, because this is the realm of individuation – in the physical and in the as a movement for the psyche and consciousness.
Nothing is the same. And if we can find ease and perhaps even delight in the myriad variations of life, then we can still have ‘preference and choice’ but you don’t have to be so pushed by that what you don’t like exists. You can then be open to experiencing without such fear of annihilation that which is other.
Those who deeply seek ‘same,’ in our view, have a root element that is not recognizing the interconnections of life and has stopped growing at some point of insufficiency based on difference and therefore, difference is always dangerous. They then desire above all things, let the world come in mirroring me as much as possible. Life has a paradoxical nature – seeming opposite, different, things occurring at the same time – and we must find our way to make peace with it. But those who have this core disconnection are afraid their difference will annihilate them, which is usually experienced as isolation or being shut-out or not part of the world as it is. With a very young child where there has been neglect or physical endangerment of some kind, emotional abandonment can get very interwoven with deep fears of physical annihilation.
Ease in life does not necessarily mean one is denying truth. And those who deny truth may not necessarily find ease. Seeing the most challenging aspects of truth does not ask you to abandon a sense of ease in life or to turn your eye from beauty. Life asks you to find your own version of ease with its Wholeness and complexity.
We address all these considerations on the level of self-awareness and personal interaction and relationship. Of course, all could be extrapolated to the larger spheres but such widespread will take a consciousness shift. In your own life, though, each time you look at your own life anew, each time you ‘work’ on a relationship, resolve a conflict, let go of a pattern or find a inner wound has healed by your attention and self-compassion, you are adding to the evolving of new ways of being.
As ever, we deeply appreciate your willingness to consider and to explore the personal universe. Here your doing deepens being, for yourself and others, in ways you may not know.
Edited from a personal session, with permission.
‘We always speak to and for each other.'’
