The Big Picture
Having moved our focus to the body, – a more healthy form of being „out of our heads“ – we can engage our deeper Self through the heart, and shift to any one or combination of the five so-called Sage Powers: Compassion (Empathise), Explore, Innovate, Navigate, and Activate. Each of these is a manifestation of one of the many facets of love. Compassion is the love of connection. Explore is the love of discovery. Innovate is the love of creativity. Navigate is the love of values and purpose. Finally, Activate is the love of making a difference, of converting ideas and intention into actions…
Scapegoating
On the definition of sin, I can remember many lessons in junior school where countless examples of sin were expounded by the elderly Jesuits in whose care our education was placed. Original sin, venial sins, mortal sins, white lies, etc. Egged on by my classmates, I would distract the teachers from our regular school work by asking to which category this or that deed (or thought) belonged. Today, I prefer the definition of sin provided by Richard Rohr, contemporary Christian mystic, namely “missing the mark”. This implies that our thoughts, emotions, or deeds are not in alignment with our deeply held values…
Metanoia
Richard Rohr, a leading contemporary mystic, says — when speaking about childhood trauma — that we have only two choices: „We can either transform or transmit (to the next generation)“.
I am so grateful for the many modalities for transformation which have emerged in our lifetime: The ACA Programme, the Positive Intelligence (PQ) Mental Fitness Programme, Polyvagal Theory, Emotional Freedom (tapping) Technique (EFT), various forms of Somatic Trauma Therapy, and more. We truly live in a Golden Age, in terms of the resources available to us, and their ready accessibility to anyone who wishes to partake of them…
Encouragement
In the Positive Intelligence (PQ) Mental Fitness modality, we postulate that the fear-driven Saboteurs (Judge, Controller, Pleaser, Hyper-Vigilant, etc.) reside in the left hemisphere, and that the love-propelled Sage Powers (Compassion, Exploration, Navigation, etc.) are located in the right hemisphere. A neural shift is required if we are to move from Saboteur to Sage. This shift is enabled by the Mind Command muscle, which is activated and strengthened by daily on-going short bursts of somatic and imaginative exercises, many no longer than two minutes each. These so-called „PQ Reps“ represent a circuit-breaker of our incessant thinking. Called „Stinking Thinking“ in some quarters, this habit keeps us either in the past or the future, or alternating continuously between the two…
Patterns
“In to me see.” True intimacy is one of the greatest challenges for me. As with all of the new behaviours, it gets easier with practice, that is daily practice. For any transformation process – if it is to be successful and sustained over time – is made up of 20% insights and 80% practice. That is the key. And remember, it is not true that: “Practice makes perfect” (for that is the Judge Saboteur coming in through the back door again,) but rather that: “Practice makes for progress.”
Panic!
How many of us have done this in our own lives? We get hurt, betrayed, lied to, or abandoned, and instead of healing, we obsess on the apparent cause of our suffering. We replay conversations. We wait for apologies that may never come. We try to explain ourselves to people who have already shown us they could never truly listen. We pour our energy into understanding the one who hurt us (so we can better manipulate their thoughts, feelings, and actions) instead of caring for the part of us that has been wounded. The truth is simple, even if uncomfortable: Some people bite because they are in the grip of their fear-driven Saboteurs. Systems driven by fear wound because that’s how they are designed…
Trapped
As long as we are constantly hijacked by our Saboteurs, fear rules our lives and the lives of those around us. This takes place sometimes very obviously, sometimes more subtly. Fear’s toolbox contains a very powerful device that, if not addressed and relinquished, will ensure that the old order will forever rule the day. This device is denial. For many years I stewed in the juice of denial. Sara Bareilles describes the dynamic eloquently in her sublime song “Orpheus“:
Missing the world
The one you knew
The one where everything made sense because you
didn’t know the truth…..
Indeed, many of us didn’t know the truth for long stretches of our lives. Denial has an important role to play in our survival…
Mind The Gap!
My general observations lead me to conclude that we are either in autopilot and react in line with the coping mechanisms and survival strategies we developed before our fourth birthday (approximately) or, having developed sufficient awareness, mindfulness, and mental fitness, we learn to pause before responding to whatever stimuli cross our paths in a conscious, loving manner – beneficial to the healing, growth, and joy of all concerned. The term “autopilot” may be considered charitable. Some would call it “sleepwalking through life” (Dr Allen Berger) or even refer to a “Zombie” existence. And of course, this is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon…
Balance
So, it was really telling when, in a recent yoga lesson, we went though balance exercises which included the Vrikshasana (The Tree Pose, where standing on one foot we bring the other to the inside of our upper thigh), that the terror of childhood – as a felt state – returned. My heart began to race; I began to sweat and couldn’t maintain my balance for longer that twenty seconds. Of even more interest was the fact that my breathing froze. Despite all the insights and, indeed, practice in so many other modalities and situations, here we had the default patterns re-asserting themselves immediately, and with a vengeance…
Dis-illusion
Then there is the case of Deepak Chopra whom I have admired as a spiritual teacher and a person who has not only achieved heightened states of awareness but has also been very effective in helping those who have embarked on a similar quest. What alarms me is the documented propinquity, familiarity, and absence of scruples between this powerful spiritual figure and a man (Epstein) whose crimes against children and young women were not only widely known but had already led to criminal prosecution. When someone claims moral authority, association itself becomes evidence of lack of discernment. When Chopra positioned himself as a global moral authority, and spoke endlessly about consciousness, healing, and enlightenment, while simultaneously maintaining close relationship and correspondence with one of the most documented child sex traffickers in modern history, no further „evidence“ of his spiritual bankruptcy is needed.
