April Love 2018 - clarity and reverence.

I saw the above meme on Facebook the other day and it made me smile wryly. I've been listening to the audio book of "defy gravity" by Caroline Myss since the New Year, it's taking me a while because I am revisiting parts that are meaningful and helpful to me right now.

I'm learning about the seven Graces and the seven shadows. Caroline links each of these to the seven Chakras too which I love, because I always love making connections between ideas and theories.

Listening to her talk about the first Grace Reverence and it's shadow hubris or pride, has helped me understand a lot more about my own particular struggle and how it has led me to where I am now in life. She discusses how in any situation linked to "tribe", "identity" or "group dynamics", our first Chakra is "on alert", and we make comparisons between ourselves and others, often resulting in shaming ourselves or turning on others to protect ourselves.

 This first shadow, hubris, is one that is encouraged to grow by our society, and has become a particularly powerful collective shadow since the 70s in the UK when Thatcher was in power. Since that time,  the focus of politics and society, has been on the individual and also on difference, "othering" and "divide and rule".

I was a child and teenager in the seventies and eighties, and when my own child was born in 1987 I had lived with the Thatcher government and the media's shaming of many groups in society. The shaming of "unmarried mothers", of the unemployed, "yobs", striking miners, people affected by HIV and AIDS, were examples of the vicious attempt by those in power in the 70s and 80s, to control the masses at this time. Individualism and consumism were increasingly leading to a sense of separation and fear.

Something about Caroline Myss's voice and words, (and she reads her own audio version of the book).....boy is she fierce.....feels a little bit too much at times like she is putting all the responsibility right back at the individual's door. She is compassionate, I can feel that in her words; and she makes me laugh out loud. She is tough and yes brutal with her words, because she wants us to take back our power. The power that may have been taken away somehow, but that we continue to give away (because we know no different and may be we are trapped). At  times she is so honest and gets right to the reality of our life's struggles, like a compassionate friend. I wish we all had someone in our life like that as we grow. 

April Love 2018: Day 3 - Inspiring Quote. "Kindness gives birth to kindness."
Author: Sophocles (447 BC)

 

 

 

Caroline does look wider than the individual however, showing compassion for how difficult is is not to be overtaken by shadow, ego and emotion in our choices. She looks at history, discussing how "the age of enlightenment", brought more of a focus on "reason" and "mind", and how this then led to society turning away from the "mystical" or "spiritual". Feminist theory also discusses this and how women and emotion were linked, and seen as unreliable and inferior to reason and mind..

Fitting in is very much a teenage thing ....I think I got a bit stuck in that stage of development and in not knowing who I was or where I belonged. I have written before about becoming too much of an adult too young, but at the same time having this feeling I have never grown up either.

Alongside this societal context, was a small child dealing with the loss of her Mother; there wasn't any discussion of her that I can remember. No-one seemed to want to talk about her to help me keep the memories of her and my previous life alive. Adults then were often scared of speaking about death to children, in case they got upset. It was like my Mother never existed.

I was luckier than many fostered or adopted children, because I still saw my sisters and Grandmother regularly. This helped in many ways but at the same time they were all dealing with their own grief and unable to talk about the loss of our Mother either. My Father then disappeared for a while and I did not know if he was alive or dead.

Somewhere in all of this I lost myself, and the self that appeared in my teens and then in adulthood when I became a parent myself, was one who did not have much respect or love for herself or her life, and was full of confusion and illusion. Thinking about myself as an individual, born into my particular family, into a particular part of my home town, in the UK, in this particular time in history....is it any wonder that I had lost my own voice for much of my life, that I acted from ego and shadow, that I was very concerned with both being myself and fitting in?

I still often feel I will never be this whole person who is grounded and centred and acts from that place that some other human beings seem to do just naturally. Of course not many humans feel this certainty about themselves and their actions, I know this is an illusion and perpetuated by the establishment and the media to shame people for things that are often beyond their control. On the other hand I know that others do have more access to this place, appearing more authentic and grounded in their "selves", and with their self-concept, power and identity.

 

On a personal level, my stuckness in this sense of loss of identity, power and voice, was most likely because of the move from a working class family into what my foster Mother wanted to see as a "middle class" family. It was "us and them" .... "we don't hold our knife and fork like that"......"that is common"....it is "common" to speak like that. "You are selfish"..."you are deceitful". These were the spoken overt judgements I heard as I settled into my new home and family.

There were other more subtle messages from my new family, and there was the massive influence of the media which was there in our living room day in and day out. My foster Mother was also making her own choices, and trying to do her best for me and her own child, whilst living in the same context and with both love and fear to choose from. Sometimes she chose fear which I believe is where her words of harsh judgement came from.

Whatever the case, all of that must have been very confusing for the small me growing up. I was being asked to see myself and my birth family as not good enough and "wrong". From the age 8, all I knew changed. So many aspects of my identity were being ridiculed and belittled. I am not alone in this, our society has become very harsh. There is a lot of judgement, blame and criticism against certain groups or individuals and perpetuated still by the media.

So acting from Grace and not from shadow is no easy feat. This comes down to the level at which we are engaging with this learning.....head, heart or soul learning. Caroline Myss does encourage us to take responsibility for our choices if we are privileged enough to have come to this learning, and she gives guidance on how to invoke the Grace when making choices in everyday life. It's all about not giving away our power, not being a victim of whatever happened to us. About being compassionate towards ourselves and others.

April Love 2018 - Day 10: Light. Looking for the light.

I'm making sense of it all, and as I am working on reframing my life story, it is really helpful to think about the questions Carloline Myss raises, how to build my resilience and become more of myself than has previously been possible in my life. It is hard to do this without often falling into traps that lead me down to dark places of self-blame, shame and hopelessness; but I am staying present and am more able to recognise when I am heading that way.

So here I am everyday....... here I have been most of my life, still trying to be the person I thought I was....the person I thought I should be......my ideal...their ideal....trying to please others....trying to fit into my family, society, work places....becoming "acceptable" to others and to myself.

Over the years I have been blogging I have developed more understanding and self-awareness about this shadow hubris; and also about how to break free of being ruled by ego and overwhelmed by emotion. It takes a lot of work not to be constantly overwhelmed, lying in a tantruming heat on the hot pavement; or to not wander forever into the shadow to escape the heat, refusing ever to come out into the light and certain this is the right way. 

"The opposite of faith is not doubt. But certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns." 

- Anne Lammott

I write about my everyday life and story here, posting photos and writing about  the wider world, to try to gain some clarity in finding my own voice; to break free of old patterns and reclaim my power and fullness; to hold it all in my hands..... the dark and the light - giving thanks for it all and trying to choose the grace. 

April Love 2018 - Day 14 - Note to self: "We are living in the landscape of the sacred."

"......simply reflect on the beauty of your life, on quality of your life, on gratefulness for your life. I am mindful.  

If you said, “Give me an example,” which I wish you would right now, because I’m going to give you an example:

One of the most wonderful passages - I have it right here in the back of my office - is by Thomas Merton, which I’ve shared so many times and I’m going to share it now because he wrote it and he was a magnificent spiritual director.

He wrote - and it’s from his journal – “It was a hot day in June.” And he was a prolific writer and he was describing the area around his little hermitage in Gethsemane, Kentucky, and he said “It was a very hot day” and he was just describing nature, that’s all. There was a bull that was lying under a tree and he was describing how the hot wind was blowing across the fields and causing the flowers to lean over. And he said he had been walking up the hill that day and it was hard for him because he was getting older and he could feel his heart pounding in his chest and he said, “I’m getting older.” And he made note of that.  And he described how the sun was hitting the sides of the mountain. It was a kind of purplish red hue because of the time of day.

But he ends it with – ah, this is so beautiful – “This day will never come again.”  That struck me. That stuck me that day as one of the most profound things I had ever read in my life. “This day will never come again.”

It is a simple sentence, really - but no, it is not. That was one of the most profound things I have ever read in my life." 

- Caroline Myss