Books of Healing

I've been going through books that are piled in boxes as a result of new carpet being put down, determined to reduce my book volume by half.  Many of the books are about healing from the past, from trauma, abuse, abandonment - books that I have clung to with desperateness as I strived to relieve myself of some of the pain I was experiencing.

But I am finding many of those books easy to let go of today.  I have not looked at them for years, and I know the basic message contained in each one.  My healing has not taken the form I thought it would - it is hard to say exactly what I am healed of, and how much I am healed.  Yet I am finding these wonderful books no longer critical to my life, and the issues and distortions of my thinking no longer severe enough to warrant the kind of intense attention I used to give it.  Healing has in fact taken place - not in a flash with laying on of hands, but through time, thought, and a ton of support and care from friends.

The books have become an indicator of progress that is otherwise hard to see - it is a milestone to discover I no longer need many of the supports I relied on for years.  Things are not perfect, and other issues are on top, but there is comfort in seeing evidence that I have actually changed.

Freedom and Disobedience

This morning, glancing through "The Betrayal of the Self" by Arno Gruen, I read,

"We learn in earliest childhood to yield to the demands of those whose 'love' we are dependent on.  Without reflection, we learn to equate freedom with disobedience.  Therefore, we respond to freedom...with anxiety and fear...

"The lesson of our childhood is that power, initially experienced at the hands of our parents, promises an escape from the helplessness we despise...Freedom then takes on an entirely different, unexpressed significance: it means deliverance from, not harmony with, our own needs."

Life is about living in harmony with our needs.  I heard "needs" defined by an NVC teacher recently as the basic life force that causes everything to live and move, from the first single-celled life form to the complex creatures we are today.  Needs are what get us up out of our chair and cause us to desire to live, breathe, love.

To live in harmony with our needs would mean, first, that we know what our true needs are, and second, that we accept our needs as legitimate, and do not apologize for them.  How easily said, yet hard to do.  But I am learning - by being still, by reading, by reflecting, step by step, mistake by mistake.

Oh, to live straight from source, to feel the wordless part of my being speak to me from its own deep intelligence about my needs, and to see myself respond without question - that seems like a state of being worth living for.

Standstill

My life is in somewhat of a standstill. Most of the activities that defined who I was have stopped. I no longer do many workshops. I am not writing my books or blogs. I ceased doing my computer job back in April. My move across the country has been put on hold. My primary relationship has changed. And the recent changes in my health have stopped me from dancing, from going to many events that I love, and from seeing friends.

Who am I, having been stripped of the identities that I relied upon to define me? And what is the next step, now that everything has changed?

I realize I am waiting. While I am healing from my sickness, I am doing a lot of reading - books on mindfulness, on happiness, on living. I realize that I am waiting because I don't want to put as much effort into activities that will end up a disappointment. I've spent many years building community, only to find something "wrong" with whatever I create, and leave, dissatisfied, to try again in another format. I've worked hard at various forms of relationship that have not turned out as I had hoped. I've looked at several places in the country that I thought would be more condusive to having the kind of life I want, and yet never found that perfect place that I knew I would finally call home.

The books I'm reading, and the meditation I've done, tell me that there is much flawed in my thinking, that I build a lot on illusion and unobtainable demands. I keep discovering old issues and hurts under what seemed like a noble undertaking. How much of my desire for community is simply missing the warmth of the close family I never had as a child? How much of that desire can never be satisfied? How much have I been surreptitiously demanding that others meet my personal needs, rather than building for the good of all? How much of my leading has been a desperate attempt to be finally seen and heard, rather than the spirit of life and healing pulsing through me? The feeling here is not that I should be perfect; rather, the feeling is that I have poured out a lot of energy in ways that have not fully satisfied the deep longings within me.

And so I wait, and the books are my teachers. I want to know where I can put my efforts that will result in true happiness in my life, and not lead to more disappointment. I want to know what truly satisfies, and to find that out, I feel I must set aside every preconceived notion and find a way of holding myself truly open to new wisdom and experience. When I get up to try yet again, I want it to count more than the previous times. I want to be a bit more mindful where I put my efforts. I want to be a bit more open and aware of the energy and love around me I might have ignored. I want to be less focused on satisfying the ego and more on satisfying the heart.

It is lonely here, in this standstill, and sometimes loneliness is a good thing - it can allow us to center and ground, and ask, what are we really longing for? If past efforts have not worked, maybe I can drop a bit deeper, and ask, what is that inner ache really about? Where will it lead if I drop my assumptions about what I need? Standing here, right now, everything feels expendable in return for true satisfaction.

Freedom from, freedom to

One of my greatest fears in life is that of being trapped - trapped in a relationship, trapped in a destructive pattern, trapped by lack of options, trapped by lack of power. I have only felt truly free when I was alone, because I tended to take on the obligation of pleasing those near to me.

My fear of being trapped comes from a rigid upbringing, where I was taught the "right" way to be and to act; disobedience was punished severely until my will was broken, and I would obey my mother's will without questioning. I had a pseudo-freedom - when I accepted the limitations placed on me, life became easier. I was rewarded for being docile. As an adult, I have broken away from that and have gone my own way - but fear still dogs my footsteps, and I am always waiting for the punishment to start.

Thus I kept focusing on rights instead of wants - I had to make sure I guarded my freedom, or I would lose it. I focused on freedom from - from structure, from restrictive relationships, from commitments and obligations, from anything that could entrap me - instead of freedom to - to pursue my passions, to make life mine, to discover who I truly was. I was running from instead of running towards.

My fear has been based on a belief in my powerlessness - a belief that I will not be able to resist the forces against me. I was like a bird with clipped wings - I had freedom from the cage, but no freedom to fly. But the fact is that I am no longer a child whose freedom can be restricted and punished at will - like the elephant on a string, I am only restricted because I have not realized I am powerful, that things have changed. My parents are dead, I am a capable and intelligent adult, and I can do as I please.

Only when I know I can avoid what I don't want, can I begin to relax in my power and focus on what I do want. Knowing my power will allow me to start to look around, and ask, what is my desire, instead of what is my right.

Neediness and need

We all have needs that must be met by other human beings, from needing someone else to grow our food, to needing the companionship of another human being. These are legitimate needs, and unless we choose to become a hermit and grow our own food, others will always be involved in meeting those needs.

Neediness means expecting someone else to figure out how to meet our needs. This places the responsibility on the other person to "do it right", and allows us the luxury of complaining or criticizing them for not helping us, not doing enough, or not doing the right thing.

Taking responsibility for our needs does not mean we do not ask anyone to help; it means we figure out how to meet our needs, then seek someone willing to do what we want. I can't go to a hardware store and ask them to build me a birdhouse; but I can learn how to build a birdhouse and go to the hardware store to get the supplies I need. This gives me freedom to choose how to meet my need - if the store doesn't have the right tools or supplies, I can go to another store until I find what I need, or find another way of building my birdhouse.

We need each other, but we do not need any one person, or any one thing from a particular person. That is our strategy, not the need itself. We cannot obligate anyone to help us, but we can get what we need based on the help and love already available to us.

One source of support is a community with whom we have built goodwill - i.e., we have connected to a community that loves and appreciates us, and we have given abundantly to those in need so that they are willing to do the same for us. Finding people who love us, and to whom we can give our love, is part of our responsibility as adults to provide support when we need it.

You can want; I can say no

Often in relationships, I find someone else's desire for me to do something different, an uncomfortable experience. My tendency is to want them to stop desiring what they want, or to stop expressing their desire. The result of that is that they have to tiptoe around, acting as if they don't want it, contrary to their true self. To ask them not to ask is to repeat the same sin.

My discomfort comes from my ambiguity of wanting to please them, and wanting to take care of myself and my needs. I'd rather not have the problem in my face than resolve the ambiguity.

But this is no way to live. Having feelings one cannot express always causes distance and destroys intimacy. My job is to learn to deal with my ambiguity. I need to face the possibility of disappointing another human being by fully hearing and acknowledging their longing while saying I am choosing not to fulfill it.

By allowing them to deal with my decision, the responsibility for the desire is placed back on the person desiring it, rather than me taking responsibility for making another person happy.

We will never forget

I long to be understood, to be heard. And sometimes it happens - sometimes another soul in this world truly gets who I am and what I feel.

But there is a part of me that is so used to not being understood, that I easily discount the bit of connection I experienced and quickly return to feeling not understood.

I have built a shrine to the tragedy of the unheard boy, the tragedy I lived for many years as a child. A part of me is so addicted to the pathos of that tragedy that I would rather continue reliving it than to open my eyes and accept the abundance of people around me who will actually listen.

The shrine, titled "We Will Never Forget", is actually a form of resentment, of repeating our litany of how we were abused, of reaffirming our victimhood. We hold onto the dead body instead of burying it and getting on with life.

I need to switch from worshiping the dead, to mourning the loss, to letting go, to embracing new life and abundance. This is the journey of healing.