It’s not what I asked for
Sometimes life just slips in through a back door
And carves out a person
And makes you believe it’s all true
And now I’ve got you
And you’re not what I asked for
If I’m honest I know I would give it all back
For a chance to start over
And rewrite an ending or two
For the girl that I knew…
Sara Bareilles, „She Used To Be Mine“
Your sorrow, your fear, your shame, your loneliness, even your despair, is so fragile, friend. It can break open at any moment. A single note in a piece of music can do it. A kind glance from a stranger. The feeling of the spring breeze on your face. A reflection of a bird in flight. In any moment, your sorrow can shatter into nothingness; it has no more reality than that, in truth, no more substance than a shadow.
The more you focus on your sorrows and fears, the more you complain about them, over-analyse them, identify with them, or push them away, the more „real“ they appear, the more solid and independent of you they seem to be, the more power they have over your happiness.
In searching for a solution to your problem, you may just be creating the problem of having problems. Be available for the breaking-open of your pain, friend. Do not assume it is here for any longer than a moment. Allow the arrival and passing of all that troubles you. All this shall pass, remember. All this shall pass.
Jeff Foster
„And which wolf wins?“ asked one of the excited children. „The one you feed“, answered the Cherokee elder.
Cherokee Tale of the Two Wolves
Many years ago, the following tale was related to me: At the end of a long summer’s day, an old Grandfather began telling a story to the many young children sitting around the large campfire on the top of the hill overlooking the wide expanse of prairie under the ever-increasing multitude of stars.
„Let me tell you a story. We have spoken today about the great sorrows experienced by our people since the arrival of the White Man from the East. At times, I have felt a great hate for those that have taken and continue to take so much, with no scruples for what they do. But hate wears you down, and hate does not hurt your enemy. Hate is like taking poison and wishing your enemy would die. I have struggled with these feelings many times.“
„It is as if there are two wolves inside me who come to do battle under the full moon. The White Wolf is good and does no harm. He lives in harmony with all around him and does not take offence when no offence was intended. He will only fight when it is right to do so, and in the right way. But the other wolf, the Black Wolf, is full of anger. He is restless, irritable, and discontented. Even minor things will send him into a fit of temper.“
„He fights everyone, all the time, for no reason. He cannot think because his anger and hate are so great. It is helpless anger because his anger will change nothing. Sometimes it is hard to live with these two wolves inside me, because both of the wolves try to dominate my spirit.“
The children had been listening intently all along and were now gripped by the excitement of the battle being described.
One little girl looked intently into the Grandfather’s eyes and asked, „Which wolf will win, Grandfather?“
The Grandfather smiled and said, „The one I feed, my dear.“
At this point, I would like to give a slightly different twist to this story. I like to see the two wolves as representing reality and delusion within my own perception.
As Jeff Foster points out above, our sorrow, our fear, our shame, our loneliness, even our despair; these are fragile and have no more substance than a shadow. This is the reality.
We create the delusion, ourselves, when we begin to focus on our sorrows and fears in a way that adds fuel to them. The more we complain about them, over-analyse them, identify with them, or push them away, the more „real“ they appear, the more solid and independent of us they seem to be, the more power they have over our well-being.
In the Positive Intelligence (PQ) Mental Fitness modality, this is described as the energy of our Saboteurs. If we allow them to hijack us, – and hijack us they will, when we are not sufficiently aware and mentally fit – they will take us ever deeper into a spiral of destructive patterns of feeling, thinking, and behaving. The more entrenched we become, the less capable we are of recognising what is going on.
Not identifying with „the problem“ could be considered a courageous and heretical act in today’s culture. Our consumer society champions „the problem“ because it helps sell some „remedy“ or other, and our consumer society is all about selling.
This is the case whether the problem is real or not or the remedy effective or not. These are minor considerations in light of the sale. Even if the problem has been misdiagnosed or the remedy turns out to be useless (or worse, counterproductive), there is always another product or service waiting in the wings, to be sold on this endless conveyor belt of consumption.
So, the battle of the wolves is taking place inside our own head, heart, soul, and bodies each and every day. This is the good news, since we have agency over what is going on inside, much more so than over what is happening „out there“.
This is not to say that education, awareness raising, protests, social engagement, or activism have no value. It is simply a fact that these, carried out as a substitute for inner work will always ring hollow and fizzle out over time. History has shown this again and again. „Be the change you wish to see in the world,“ said Gandhi. This is true for our visible outward relationships and behaviours as much as it is for our thoughts, feelings, and actions in our inner dialogue.
„Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change,“ is how another great teacher, Wayne Dyer, put it.
In PQ we train three mental muscles to attain and maintain mental fitness. The first is the Saboteur Interceptor. We all have a main Saboteur, The Judge, and depending on our life circumstances, an array of secondary Saboteurs such as the Pleaser, Victim, Stickler, of Hyper-Rational, to name but a few of the nine identified.
Success here is measured in our ability to head them off before they hijack us or, whenever this does happen, the speed with which we restore balance and make amends for the harm caused.
On the other side of our brain (right hemisphere) reside the Powers of the Sage. These are Compassion, Explore, Innovate, Navigate, and Activate. These need to be cultivated, as we build Mental Fitness. The Sage Perspective in which they operate is that „there is a gift and opportunity in every situation.“ The Sage Enhancer is, therefore, the second muscle we train.
The third muscle is the Mind Command Muscle, that muscle which enables us to consciously shift from Saboteur to Sage. This shift can only happen when we reside consciously in the present moment, so the practice here is to tune into the body in a way that our thinking (which is predominately focussed on the past or the future) is momentarily interrupted.
From wriggling our toes, to noticing the difference between the temperature of the air entering our nostrils and the air existing our nostrils, – the body-based exercises are simple to learn and can be executed in short bursts as we go through each day.
If, 22 years ago, when I began my journey of recovery from substance and process addictions, I had been told that I create my reality, I would probably have punched the messenger in the face. The Emotional Sobriety that results from Twelve Step recovery and the daily practice of modalities such as PQ now enable me to see that this is true. Wayne Dyer was correct all along!
The embracing of this truth enables me to relinquish the impulsivity that shapes a life of reactivity and to step into full responsibility for our own lives. I no longer live by reflex or reaction but rather in response to life.
In the musical „Waitress“, with music and lyrics by Sara Berailles based on a book by Jessie Nelson, the themes of female empowerment, personal transformation, and resilience are explored through the story of Jenna, a small-town waitress and expert pie baker who seeks to escape her unhappy life, which includes being married to an abusive husband.
The beautiful song quoted above (She Used To Be Mine) is taken from that musical. At this juncture, Jenna is at a low point, having hit bottom in the realisation that she has lost her True Self to the necessities of wearing the mask she once created to survive. She has become a persona, wearing the mask of the False Self, a woman she often does not even recognise.
This resonates with me, as I had the same realisation just before deciding to abandon my self-abandonment of active addiction, with all the risks that implies. What if there is nothing behind the mask? What if it the entity behind the mask is not viable, not capable of surviving the travails of life? What if nobody likes the True Me?
The song continues with remorse that there is no chance to rewind her life,
„To start over
and rewrite an ending or two
For the girl that I knew
Who’ll be reckless just enough
Who’ll get hurt
But who learns how to toughen up when she’s bruised
And gets used by a man who can’t love.
And then she’ll get stuck
And be scared of the life that’s inside her (she is pregnant by her husband)
Growing stronger each day
‚Til it finally reminds her
To fight just a little
To bring back the fire in her eyes
That’s been gone
But used to be mine….
I, too, had to stop feeding my black wolf while learning to nurture the white one, as painful as it has been to cast off the protective shield of denial and delusion, behind which I had hidden for so long.
That is the challenge of personal transformation. Like any transformation, it is made up of 20% insights and 80% practice. It requires work on a continuous, daily basis.
Secondly, it cannot be achieved without re-encountering some of the pain of the original scene of the crime, that juncture when we began betraying the True Self, when we slipped on the mask. That has been a very painful process for me and has involved much grieving.
Finally, it cannot be done alone.
We humans are communal beings. It is with the help of her friends and benefactors that Jenna recovers her True Self and can begin to enjoy freedom and freely share her unique gifts with the world.
