Up to late last week I felt threatened by adults. Till Wednesday night last week I had lived my life pretending that I wanted to make a difference to adults while the truth was that I viewed all of them as a threat to me. This gave me a distance and lack of relatedness with adults that I now recognise was as a protection to me. I have no idea what the event was where I decided that adults were a threat. What I see very clearly is the impact of having lived my life up to now with that running my life. What is so ironic is that the path I then chose for myself involved a path which required me to be authentic and related to people. Whose idea of a joke was this? What is also so frighteningly obvious to me now is how I have kept myself childlike so that I didn't have to enter and play in the adult world. I have never had a relationship that lasted more than a year and even during that year my way of being was more childlike than adult.
Those of you who have been loyal to this blog will have seen this play out in my entries about feeling autistic, separate, different. The source of this has now been unconcealed to me and it is nothing more than me deciding when I was a child that adults were a threat and that I had to be arrogant and superior to protect myself. This is what I did in response to something that happened to me when I was a child and I assert that it is the tendancy of human being to do this that marks human being as different to animals. When Socrates said 'know thyself', it is this he was speaking about. Or Plato 'the unexamined life is not worth living'.
To uncover what those decisions are that we made when we were upset children that are now living our adult lives. And in the unconcealing comes freedom. Until I could see what it was I decided when I was an upset child that had me being distant and aloof when it came to adults no amount of good intentions or actions on my part to make a difference was going to have any effect. I had to get to the fundamental inauthenticity, or what it was I was pretending, realise the impact of it and from there create something powerful which in my case is to be powerfully and profoundly related to adults. This doesn't mean that I have sold out on my dream of being a powerful leader for children and young people, not at all. It just means that now when I am speaking with adults there is such an ease and a comfort. This weekend I saw how the ease, comfort and relatedness I now feel is directly proportioned to the degree of unease and distance I felt before I got this insight.
I saw it in how related I felt to everyone this weekend. I could look at people deeply and really feel connected to each and everyone. Up to now I rarely spoke about myself in large groups and this weekend I shared and spoke about myself and events in my life openly and freely. There was a competition for the person who gave the most vivid share of where something had happened, the impact it had had and the decision we had made and what life was like after that decision and then how life shifted when that decision was unconcealed. 86 people gave their shares and the finalists were whittled down to three.
I emerged the winner. There was a drum roll, music, a standing ovation, crown and septre and looking down at all those adults beaming support and love for me that I could only see for the first time was so moving. I was fighting back tears. One lady came up to me afterwards and said 'if I had to choose one person who would have won the competition today, it wouldn't have been you'. I knew exactly what she meant. Up to then I had made myself invisible so that I could minimise the threat that adults were to me. That invisibility is now over in every sense of the word. I have such a burning desire for people to be free which for me means nothing more than taking on ruthlessly the game of self-discovery, to take on seriously and commitedly that every upset is an opportunity to discover something new about how we have been put together as human being. To access those deep layers of the sub-conscious that are running the show while fooling us that we are in control. I feel so passionately about this.
There is also another reason why I am being much more definite about everything. In many of my blogs I have mentioned how difficult I have found it to meditate. That there was something fundamentally rebelling in me at the suggestion of focusing on the mind on either the breath or something else. I never knew what was behind this resistance and put it down to my mind being just too active. Last week I was in Waterstones browsing through books. I was drawn to the book 'Science of being and art of living' Transcendental Meditation by His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. I think many years ago I had dismissed all of this because it had been linked with yogic flying which I had thought was completely barking. I took this book of the shelf and skimmed through it. I put it back on the shelf but for some reason I couldn't leave the shelf where the book was. It was like my feet were rooted to the ground at that spot. I had a few minutes argument with myself about being on the training course that I'm on and being focussed and committed to that and with a stupendous strength dragged myself away and down the stairs. I didn't get very far beyond the bottom of the stairs when a compulsion which is difficult to write about found me upstairs with the book once more in my hand.
I took it to the cashier and bought it all the while having a massive argument with myself about what on earth did I want to buy this book for. I took it home and began to read it and I couldn't believe it when I read about how the nature of the mind is not to stay still focussed on a point in meditation but to find it's way gently and naturally back to the source. The example given was that of the bee. The nature of the bee is not to fly, the nature of bee is to settle where it gets the nectar from the flower. The wandering is just how it gets to the flower. It is the same way with the mind. It's nature is to wander gently back to the source where it rests happily. Forcing the mind to focus on a point puts effort which makes the process impossible. Now I understand why I have been unable to do conventional meditation. It felt intuitively wrong for me to sit down and force my mind to focus on something. The mind, left to itself will 'wander' in search of bliss, pure happiness for no reason except that this is our true nature. If you analyse the reasons why human beings do anything in life - career change, moving home entering a new relationship or going on holiday it will be seen that the fundamental underlying reason for doing anything is the desire for happiness.
I have now finished reading this book and I recommend it to everyone. I was searching for material to assist me in developing the third stage of my three stage model of spiritual awakening 'know THE ONE', in this book I have this material and I understand and resonate with it so deeply. So I have lots of material for two of my three stages. The hunt is on for material for the second but I am confident that I will stumble on this too. What is great for me is that this material complements and doesn't conflict with my intuitive insights. If they conflicted with centuries old wisdom I would be suspicious that....something else was at play....
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2 comments:
Hello Margaret
I found the last few postings in your blog particularly interesting to me because I have always distanced myself from others in a similar way to your description. Even before my Shaktipat awakening & as a child I felt apart from others. I have felt lonely & left out of things all my life & this continues to this day.
When I think about it I suppose I have also developed a form of arrogance as a defence. My arrogance is not usually displayed outwardly. I am extremely non-competitive. I won't compete in anything. I hate all sports. I never compete for another's affections. If I have had relationships with women & another person is also interested in the same woman, I walk away. I suppose under lyingly I want that person/woman to choose me, for who I am. I don't like the idea of having to compete by being smarter, richer, more witty, better looking & all the rest. If that's what impresses, then I'm not very impressive.
I think my arrogance is an inner arrogance, an arrogance of being separate & different & therefore somehow superior. Obviously this does not work & like you say must be born out of some fear of people & a threat to my level of safety & trust around them. I don't trust people easily because I believe they will hurt me. This has been my affirmation & boy have I proved myself right over the years.
Even to this day I experience being left out & get very hurt by it. I also cannot understand how I achieve this. I try hard with people, I want them to like me. I go out of my way to help & seemingly far more than most other people in the same group for instance & then I get overlooked, left out & never seem to be anyone's favourite.
I have even managed to achieve this in hyperspace by getting myself thrown out of both accounts a woman I liked, has on Twitter. She has blocked me as well. This woman has two accounts, her second account is secret. Only five of us were ever in there 3 other men & two woman.
Because I was privvy to the others Tweets/conversations (other than Direct message's) I could notice how the other men were competing for this woman's attention. I decided that I would not compete & would see if the woman would see through the obvious flirting & attention seeking of the others & give me an equal footing. However, this woman responded well to others & as a result I got left out (again) & ignored.
When I mentioned this the woman she accused me of being jealous & threw me out. Now I stare at two padlocked accounts. The people inside still remain & I stand outside all alone. It hurts actually, just as in real life. How can I set about changing this though. I have tried affirmations which haven't worked. I have tried acting the part which doesn't work either, because it's not really me. It feels like a form of victim mentality because I am at effect of it & it's making me very unhappy.
Harry
Harry, this realization of mine that when I was a young girl I decided that adults were a threat to me and as a result I had to be arrogant and superior has been such an epiphany for me and has made life for me around adults unrecognisable. I suddenly understand my reluctance about never wanting to experiment with make-up clothes, spend hours shopping and browsing, have relationships, it's just been incredible.
I also decided when I was a young girl that I couldn't say what I thought, that to do this was dangerous and so I became a bossy, independent and opinionated teenager and adult. When we feel that we can't be self-expressed that the consequences would be too painful we become opinionated and this is exactly what I became. This is how my identity got constructed. To see this and accept it is to be free.
The difference in how I am now with adults is amazing. I feel exactly the same with them as I do with children. Today I spent a whole hour in Monsoon just looking deeply at the clothes and taking dresses off the racks and putting them up against me and just loving the experience. This insight is like a miracle for me.
I am saying this to you to encourage you to look for yourself at what the event was where you decided that you were apart, different from the others and see that this is just a story you told yourself and you can be free of it in a minute. I understand what you write about being passively arrogant because this is exactly what I was also.
You like me have had a powerful spiritual experience and with the best will in the world it is very easy for the subtle devious spiritual ego to go 'yes, I'm special, different to everyone' but consider that it's just a cop out to stop you from dealing with life. Just as my great intention to be a powerful leader for children and young people was me attempting to do everything in my power not to engage with the adult world - really difficult to understand but it's how it has been for me.
You continue to choose to be upset because it is your story that is still running you. While you refuse to look at what happened that you created this story then you will remain stuck.
This is said to you as a contribution. I see you as a powerful contribution and not as a victim of a story that isn't even true.
All the very best
Margaret
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