Want to get this down quickly before I lose it, was such a revelation. Yesterday I was in tears laying on a rock and witnessing more clearly than ever how cruel I have been to myself. I have beaten myself up my whole life for being “too” sensitive. Recently I have been guided to not just see this trait as neutral, rather to explore all its myriad gifts of which I have discovered many. Now I was moved to deep grief for all the ways I have terrorized myself, berated myself, ridiculed myself for this perceived flaw. Three other challenges also jumped in to be welcomed and for me to ask these aspects of self for their forgiveness.
Today I was sitting with my latest self awareness of how trauma and the need to seek external safety has dominated my entire life, allowed me to stay in a relationship that gave me the spiritual mojo yet was abusive to my human, stay in groups that seemed to offer information leading to external safety yet left me feeling perpetually traumatized as one more future negative fantasy was offered with a hoped for solution.
I am guided back to ACIM lesson 135, if I defend myself I am attacked. We can not plan. But I digress.
Here is what was revealed today as sat and stewed how I could never free myself of this trauma/ safety seeking loop. It seems to require I withdraw from even more of the people I know leaving me more isolated than ever. Ok, not fun but ok. Here is what stopped me in my tracks. Last week I was guided to a group on the drama triangle even though I was reluctant to go. I have often identified as the victim or the rescuer, almost never as the persecutor.
Here comes the part I still can barely hold on to. In 1987 I woke up and saw that I was a mess in so many ways and I got busy fixing myself. For the last nine months my circling/ inquiry practice has a key tenant that says we are not here to fix or change ourselves or anything. I have seen repeatedly how being held in Presence is so magical and often results in spontaneously wholeness without the intent to fix.
Here is what I saw. The minute I saw myself as broken in 1987 and set about trying to heal myself, I was in the persecutor role of the triangle. You are broken, I need to fix you. I was constantly asking what is the matter with myself which is a subtle (Now feels not subtle) form of violence. I have written these very words many times without seeing the depth of the self attack. I doubt many will catch this as it was so below the radar for me until now. Now it has dropped in to the heart. Any time I try to fix myself I am in the persecutor role exerting cruelty upon myself. Of course then this is how I raise a child using this subtle cruelty to fix them. Perhaps not surprising, I was able to stop doing it to my daughter while still doing it to myself. May these words support even one person in stopping this subtle violence of seeing ourselves as broken and then (often very subtly) mercilessly setting about to change ourselves, all along missing our inherent Wholeness.
Turns out, I never wanted to be fixed, I only wanted to be held.
