The following excerpt from Mark Nepo is very powerful and it speaks of how when an authentic need or intuitive truth is felt and responded to instinctively we find a way to honour and act upon what we know deep inside. It is taken from The Book of Awakening : Having the Life You Want by being Present to the Life You Have.
Courage is the heart`s blossom.
Despite all consequence, there is an inevitable honouring of what is true, and at this deep level of inner voice, it is not a summoning of will, but a following of true knowing.
My own life is a trail of such following. Time and again, I have heard deep callings that felt inevitable and which I could have ignored, but only at great risk of something essential perishing.
It was this honouring of what is true that guided me through my cancer experience: saying no to brain surgery and yes to rib surgery, saying yes to chemo and no to chemo. Each decision appeared both courageous and illogical to my doctors. Since then, I have been called heroic for surviving, which is like championing an eagle for finding it`s nest, and I have been condemned as selfish for seeking the Truth, which is like blaming turtle for finding the deep.
Courage of this sort is the result of being authentic. It is available to all and its reward, far more than respect, is the opening of joy.
My brother called this morning. My sister’s anxiety is so bad that they are putting her in hospital and he wanted to come over to discuss it with me in half an hour. Her psychiatrist just ‘retired’ leaving her with no one, she then got another referral and has to wait 4 months to see anyone. I was so angry to hear this. My sister never opens up to me but maybe I should have asked what the situation is but since my sister chooses to do no therapy I find its a bit of a no go zone discussing psychiatrists. My sister has been struggling and I think I have failed her by not noticing how hard it was for her lately and concentrating on how I am struggling and not getting enough from her. I feel some guilt over it. I think I may have been self centred. That said I have never found it easy to trust her as she has hurt me before I know she must be missing Mum a great deal and feeling guilt over the stress she caused by trying to take her own life while living with Mum back in 2013.
I then opened up to my brother about things from the past that happened after Dad died and before, he let me cry but then said to me “you need to find a way to put these things behind you because that all happened years agon and is in the past” which shows I was not wrong in being wary of opening up to him. He did hold my hand as I cried and told me to ‘let it out’ but then his comment felt like being shut down again. I tried to tell him how trauma such as I have had with things of metal going deep inside by body is just not a ‘head’ thing that can conciously be let go but affects neurobiology, but he quickly said he had to go when it got too intense for him. Most PTSD survivors will be familiar with this kind of reaction. Maybe he was just protecting himself.
I have to remember that my brother’s relationship with his own body is not good and he never was one to be able to relate and open up emotionally, my sister also never opens up and I told my brother I see this as a large part of anxiety because of the inner shame and constant inner critical voices that I know my sister does endure because she has shared about them with me.
I called my nephew to share my hurt over what my brother did, I wasn’t angry but I noticed I was shaking after he left and feeling so anxious my heart was beating wildly with the real life energy coming up seeking a container with him and the container broke aparts and it all flooded back on me. I was also conscious of that body anxiety coming up as I discussed it all with my nephew until tears fell again and I expressed my vulnerablity to him. He said I am not responsible for my sister, that her sons need to step up but I know the older son is not good with feelings either.
Anyway I did take the risk of opening up with my brother. I learned why I so often don’t trust opening up and fear I will be dropped or negated. I know what he said is not fully true wounds we go through do leave scars and much depends upon how we tend them, we don’t need to fixate on them, just respect that they are there and hurt more when soothing empathy is not shown and physical and emotional trauma does leave lasting effect no matter what those who do not suffer from it say to us.
Our total health rests on who we surround ourselves with and how well they receive us, until we can hold the charge for us in relationshp and after they left and recognise what went down in exchanges. Today some things were confirmed but I have still been crying for my sis I wish she had real help that helped her to deal with her feelings and anxiety. I hope she gets it in the hospital, but I am scared as I don’t trust they really know the full story or what they are doing.
I just had a watershed moment after briefly connecting with my sister at the markets and touching on the recent death of her daughter in law’s father about how alone I was following the death of my Dad and how prior to that Dad never protected me from Mum’s angry whirlwind energy and perfectionist project which was part of an onslaught on me from a very young age.
Byron Brown’s book which shows how we engage with the introjected critic from a young age in three ways, counterattack, rationalisation or by absorbing and collapsing in reaction to its energy has mirrored insights I came to following reading Pete Walker’s book on Complex PTSD a year or so ago but Brown expresses this information in a more useable way showing how each matter of relating means we respond from one of three bodily levels, gut, head or heart.
You will need to read the book to find the outline of the information he presents in it but his basic explanation is that early on we learn to take in the criticism that is not fair on us and identify with it even when we are defending against it, rationalising it away or using it to fall into a depression or psychic paralysis we are wedded to the critical energy and it exerts profound power over us. When we respond to inner or outer criticism with any of these three methods we are in fact ‘hooked’ by the idea that in some way the critic is right or that we deserve such criticism on some level. From this position we self reject and so disempower the helpful response which would be to let the critic’s criticism fly past us without reacting, instead staying connected to love and compassion for self from our inner centre. Which is a powerful position of letting go.
I found myself crying on the way to the market after reading the chapter Engaging the Judge for I remembered how often as a child I was on the end of ‘attacks’ from my Mum. I would defend against these attacks, sometimes by flying into rages or even pulling knife on my Mum at one stage after it had gone on for years and Dad would just sit on the sidelines and do nothing to help except say to my Mum behind my back “her mouth is her defence”.
I internalised my Mum’s own shame as I see it now and this is why my father’s death had such an affect on me, regardless of the fact I had no one nearby to comfort or protect me after he died, I was also without the inner protection I needed from internalised criticism due to my upbringing and I think this realisation is what really brought me undone this afternoon. I also identified how often when others criticise or hurt me I rationalise the pain away rather than feel it and I have also allowed it to enter me and overtake me so badly that at the end of my marriage I had completely absorbed it and collapsed under its weight.
Add to that this afternoon we were speaking about how much support my niece in law has around her following her Dad’s death and that triggers the deep pain that following my own father’s death I was completely unsupported which is why I left the meeting with my sister with a bursting chest and tears fell when I was soon out of the carpark.
In a way this blog isn’t really for my readers although I do hope some others gain some insight into how their own inner critic may not belong to them, it is my attempt to put in black and white what I have gone through. I am recognising how emotionally abandoned I have been not only after my Dad’s death but by so called boyfriends and friends who didn’t recognise the full brunt of what I was going through in those painful years age 23 – 31 and even into recovery both with my ex husband and last partner.
On the way home from the markets I listened to Massive Attack’s song Protection full bore as I recognised how the loving arms I needed around me were never there.
I was never protected and even worse my own deep pain was never validated nor understood anywhere apart from with one or two therapists …oh and yes, on here with those who have gone through the same devastating soul crunching emotional abandonment in their own lives. I watch other’s struggle with the critic’s attacks of their own process when they are opening to deep and valid emotional pain, so long buried in their own souls. I recognise what they go through when that inner critical voice tries to shame them for feeling or starting to depend on someone who finally WILL protect them when the fear of being hurt again is so huge.
All I can say is that such recovery takes so much courage and so much work for the worst ever thing would be for the critic to jump in at the most critical stage of healing and cause us one again to sabotage the process. This is exactly what happened to me in two therapies, the first I started in July 1992 and the second attempt in 2001 and I am reliving that pain as the anniversary of the head smash up accident of 2005 draws close. It was after this I met with astrologer Melanie Reinhardt and she gave me the gift of Byron Brown’s book a gift I could not open for 12 years. Ouch and double ouch and triple ouch, but thank God now I can start to get a handle on so much in my own life and psyche that has been for me a permanent stumbling block.
Brown’s book is helping me so much because he brings recognition to a process whereby we can help ourselves by becoming more mindful and recognising too that our soul really is the part of us we most need to connect to in order to heal. On one level our soul or essence or pure being can never be open to criticism, what flows out of it when our own energy is lovingly received (which happens for so few of us in) should be natural experiences of flow and discharge of essential energies inside of the soul and our inner being.
When all we meet in the outer world from day one is forms of resistance to the flow of our innate energy, hungers and needs which issue from the soul we naturally begin to dam ourselves up with alarming consequences, However later in life we can become more conscious once we learn to tap into who we really are deep inside, that instinctive innate part of which knows how to be and what to do freed of a hundred and one defences of the inner critic we internalised over years, inner voices and judgements which keep us locked up in defensive responses and reactions that keep us trapped and locked up inside.
Emerging From The Dark Night 