Just came from a group called honoring your protectors. I see clearly how protection and war are themes that fit together. I believe it was 1997 when I was told that the theme of this lifetime for me was to embody lesson 135 of “a course in miracles”. If I protect myself I am attacked. How to live this out when one has trauma and conditioning?
Not a small question as far as I can tell. This year I’ve had two trauma responses in relationship to another. It felt as though I was being attacked and the need for defense was so powerful. In the group today I explored a protector named Godzilla. When I was wide open and someone came in with some thing that felt very unskillful Godzilla stepped in. Godzilla had my back as I started hyperventilating and my heart rate went through the roof.
As a child I didn’t have a protector. And that is very scary and painful so it’s no surprise that the theme of safety or the lack there of has been up for me. Yet if I stop there I will perpetuate war internally and externally. I will be part of the worldwide dynamic playing out in the Middle East. How to move beyond that?
It’s not been easy to continue to try to see the other persons point of view, to try to see how their Trauma and conditioning had them acting the way they did even if it was unskillful. Yet I know if I let the poison stay in this heart it will produce foul fruit. Of course I don’t choose to put myself in situation where knowing I will be attacked. But neither can I avoid them on the off chance it might happen. If I protect myself, I am attacked.
How do we move beyond that? Of course ultimately it’s to know that this one I have called I all this life isn’t my true identity. Yet that would be great when I’m there on a permanent basis. How about until then? What I find works for me is to really try to allow myself when I have the space to imagine what might be going on for the other. But first I must nurture that part of me that feels so devastated. First I need great compassion for my own suffering. First I need to allow them he spaciousness to be with my own experience of trauma. Only after that is integrated am I able to even consider seeing the others point of view. And that to me is how ultimately it will be game over.
In the group I was in today two people had my back energetically as I explored this deep wound. I also have it that this is how it will be done. We will come together with great compassion and care and nurture each other, nourish each other back to well-being. We will have each other‘s backs. Thank you Luna for having my back while I was visiting with you. I had just met you and yet you befriended me watching over me as my attention was elsewhere.
I can’t make myself be more spacious than I am. Yet I can intended it. Yet I can let love be my guide always in all ways.
PS. I went from writing this to receiving a friend request that had these two quotes that fit perfectly for me.
“When you find your path, you must not be afraid.
You need to have sufficient courage to make mistakes.
Disappointment, defeat, and despair are the tools God uses to show us the way.”
~ Rumi
“Actually we are violent, agreed. We are struggling to be non-violent. It is the projection our desire, the ideal , a projection of what is, only under a different name, is not it ? If you can understand the mind’s trick upon yourself projecting same violence as non-violence , then you are able to see false as false. You are free of conflict, hence living in peace.”
Durga Misra

