October 2019 - Compassion Group Notes
The Awareness Project
Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not. C. G. Jung: Psychological Reflections
I would add that ignorance is the foundation of knowing - but how do we become aware of our ignorance and unawareness? This is the first step. And it is treacherously difficult, because we cling to our ignorance for dear life.
Paradoxically, this life journey is one of working at becoming more and more aware of what we are not aware. This is different to gaining knowledge about something about which we are ignorant in the external world. It is easy to say to ourselves, “I know nothing about chemistry, so I will take a class and learn all there is about it.”
Learning to be aware of who we are cannot be found in a book. The principles of awareness and evolution can be studied – but to find this within ourselves is fraught with difficulty. We cannot go and read a book about the dynamics, processes and principles of awareness and become aware.
Awareness of our intra-dynamics are only possible through relationship and in community. Everything we are unaware of in ourselves, is projected outwardly on to other people and their response to us is the mirror of what we need to be seeing. If we recognize this one fact then we will start reading the knowledge that is in every interaction – each interaction reflects an intra-action. Every way in which we behave in relationships with others, is how we relate to ourselves.
So, how people respond to our behavior, can be a very accurate reflection of how some aspect of our own self responds to another aspect of self within ourselves. Consider for a moment, as a very simple example, about how others react to you if you give advise, which is most often an ego defense. They may comply and be secretly irritated and feel misunderstood, demeaned and shamed. Or they may feel demeaned, shamed and annoyed and act out towards you with aggression. This teaches you something about how the wounded self in you responds to the defensive advise giving, controlling ego. Either your tendency to your own internal “shoulding,” on yourself, is outward compliance and “gratitude,” to mask the inner pain of feeling stupid and inadequate, or angry acting out and “doing what I want,” no matter what you tell me. Can you now identify the conflict inside of you that you create by your ego defense? When you give advise it is also how your relate to yourself and so, now you can see the pain your are inflicting, by seeing the response in others by your defense being projected outwardly on to them. Does this bring deeper awareness? To discover and accept this madness within means there is choice – and hopefully celebration.
Have you noticed that all your foundations are completely mired in madness? Do you not want to recognize your madness and welcome it in a friendly manner? You wanted to accept everything. So accept madness too. Let the light of your madness shine, and it will suddenly dawn on you. Madness is not to be despised and not to be feared, but instead you should give it life. ~Jung
Learning the language of the psyche is more like learning a foreign language. If you do not actually use the language in relationship to someone, you will quickly forget what you learned in the book and you will never learn to speak it fluently. It is the interaction, and response or lack of response to you that teaches you how to speak in a way in which there can actually be a relationship with someone speaking another language.
Studying the self is far more difficult and also painful, than studying for a chemistry examination and learning facts about how the external world operates. It is also the most exciting adventure of discovery on which to embark. And the deeper your awareness – right down to the chemical reactions in your own body, the vaster the expansion of awareness becomes, until it can merge with consciousness itself.
The answers all lie within but can only be discovered in relationship to the experience of others and the world, including your own body. It requires constant self reflection, self wondering, self witnessing of the dynamics at play in all our relationships.
With awareness comes choice. And so to use our example above – once you can actually see how people respond to your advise giving, you know how you are violating boundaries with them and also with yourself. You can choose to continue to give advise with the results it yields, or you can choose something different that brings connection, internally and externally, instead of disconnection.
Repressing, Collapsing or Indulging Feelings
There are variations in parenting children when they have feelings.
One way is to shut the child’s feelings down immediately and not allow them, through shaming or ignoring them. (eg. Leave the baby to cry until it is worn out and sleeps). The child is told to grow up, stop being a sissy and given the message that feelings are shameful and immature. Feelings are experienced by the parents as anxiety producing, evoking feelings of shame (I am doing something wrong), helplessness (I don’t know what to do), anger (feelings must be socialized out of children as immature).
Another way for parents to deal with the anxiety that their children’s feelings evoke, is to rush to “fix,” them with whatever it takes – candy, food, placating, soothing, attention, indulging a child’s temper tantrums and giving in to whatever will help the child stop feeling.
Another way for parents to cope is to collapse into the feeling with the child and not know what to do.
Consider the parenting you received? Was it predominately one style or another, or a good mixture of all the styles mentioned above?
Then consider, what did you learn. Do you tend to repress, collapse, or indulge your feelings. How do you project this outward into stoicism, self pity or tyranny of others to give you what you want (caretaking), thinking it will take away your feelings.
In every instance, whether, passive, passive aggressive, or outright aggressive, this behavior will constitute an abandonment by you of your young self and feelings. It will be a re-enactment of memory instead of a self-empowered, relationship with yourself and the memory of emotion and belief and defense that was introjected at a young age. In other words you will be doomed to live in a never ending cycle or repetition and misery.
Consider how you are parenting or have parented. Did you try to do the opposite ofyou’re your parents parented you? Or have you done exactly the same as what your parents did? In other words, if your feelings were denied as a child, do you now over-indulge your children’s feelings/or deny them as well?
Consider the results… indulging feelings, because you were taught to indulge your feelings, for instance, will raise entitled children that use their feelings to control others. There are endless patterns and combinations, but not responding with Love and Truth to the feeling states of children (your inner child as well as other people including your own children) will have Karmic consequences.
“This is Old News”
~The Mother
Related to the above is the way in which most people do their work. They keep rolling the old traumas around in their minds, rehearsing and re-enacting old hurts, as if this is doing the work. There is great secondary gain in doing this. You get attention, empathy, interest – all needs that were not met when you were little. However, once full awareness has been brought to something that was in unawareness, it is healed by the power of love. If you keep talking about Old News, then you are not doing the work of the spiritual path which is to become aware of something you are NOT aware of. So if you find yourself worrying something you do know like a sore in the mouth, then you have to ask yourself, “What am I NOT seeing?” The work is not to wallow in what you do see and know. To use old trauma to get needs met is not cool.
“I Know you Can be the Mother you Deserved.”
~Charisse Lyons
If, in our formative years, we were “related” to in a disconnecting way, then we believe relationship is disconnected because we have learned to disconnect from our feelings and needs, our perceptions and true beliefs through shaming, neglect and rejection. We have not learned how to relate to ourselves in a warm, loving connected way, and so how would we even know how to start doing this? What does it look like? We are baffled, unaware, confused by the instruction to be a “Loving Mother” to ourselves. We keep “relating” to ourselves in a distant, or shaming, or absent, or unkind, or controlling way – because this is what was called love.
And yet each of you innately knows good from evil, love from fear, connection from disconnection. It is just that this small spark of inner knowing is no longer trusted – it has been made the enemy. We have learned that others know better than us and our own intuition, perceptions, feelings and beliefs have been squelched under the oppressiveness of defense in others, that is internalized as our own oppression.
The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the whole moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook on life. That I feed the hungry, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ -- all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ. But what if I should discover that the least among them all, the poorest of all the beggars, the most impudent of all the offenders, the very enemy himself -- that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness -- that I myself am the enemy who must be loved -- what then? ~Carl, Jung: Memories, Dreams, Reflection
And so, the first step in being the “Good Mother,” is to give yourself permission to first, notice and secondly trust your feelings. The feelings and needs belong to the young wounded self – the one who has become the spurned one, the beggar, the poorest of the poor, and your defenses against this one is now the offender. A good mother would not negate a child’s feelings she would say something like, “You are feeling ……I trust and accept that feeling. Tell me all about the feeling. What happened to make you feel this way? Of course, you would feel this way – that makes complete sense to me.” Good mothers do not negate feelings, they investigate them, wonder about them, try to discern what need is not being met, stay present to them without trying to fix, get rid of, soothe out of anxiety. The Good Mother stays present without anxiety, knowing and trusting that feeling states come and go the more they are understood, accepted and supported in love. A Good Mother, does not collapse into anxiety and control, or over-identify and collapse into the feeling state of the child - which would mean there are now two children in the room.
Study the handout below to see how to process your inner feelings in the paradigm of being the “Good Mother.
How to Process Feelings
“Emotions pass like clouds across the sky. They are to be noticed, accepted, acknowledged and allowed to flow on. Honor your feelings; they tell the truth about how you really experienced the world. “ ~Stephen Paul
What are feelings?
Feelings are energy experienced and registered in the body at a level that is above or below the natural experience of pure energy.
Feelings are closely related to / correlate with the thinking state. E.g. Thinking I am in danger correlates with Feeling fear. Feeling arises from the unmet needs of childhood. If your need for safety, value, love is not met you will naturally feel fear, shame and pain.
In adulthood, in the absence of any realistic threat to danger to physical or emotional well being, it is a memory state evoked by a trigger in the present of a past childhood experience. In childhood the neural system is too underdeveloped to deal with excessive energy which is experienced as an overload to the system and is uncomfortable or even painful to the body and experienced as emotion. It is adaptive to find a defense against the experience, and these defenses are taught by the culture.
The core and primary feelings are fear related to the belief that I am physically in danger or shame related to the belief that my identity as a good and lovable person is in jeopardy. Anger is a secondary feeling to fear and shame and arises to mobilize ourselves into a protective stance.
What do I do with the feeling?
The first task is to become aware of the feeling state. Because this state has been repressed and denied in childhood it is often difficult to identify it. Do not judge it. If the original problem was judgment and repression, then the antidote is awareness and acceptance:
What bodily sensations are you experiencing?
What is your self talk? Does it result in repressing the feeling or exaggerating the feeling?
What about the situation is familiar and often evokes/triggers this response?
What images are you having?
What memory flashbacks are you having? How did you learn to repress and deny your needs and feelings?
How old do you feel?
What color/sound/texture do you associate with this inner response?
In order to answer these questions there must be an observer of/enquirer into the experienced state. Logically therefore it follows that the observer is not the feeling. The feeling is merely a temporary state arising - like a wave on the ocean. It is not the ocean itself. Developing an observer is already some degree of freedom and detachment/relaxation away from the feeling state. If you are able to observe the feeling, answer the above questions and gain insight into the origin of the feeling in the past, then, usually there will follow a bodily relaxation and the current situation will cease to be a trigger and will be dealt with effectively, free of overwhelming emotion. By doing this you are not either repressing, suppressing or expressing the emotion. You are merely noticing, acknowledging and accepting the natural movement of a wave rising and falling. To summarize: Pay attention and relax.
If you cannot gain enough insight, the feeling state will remain. In this case, it helps to express it in a constructive, respectful, assertive way through conversation with a safe person who will accept the feeling without turning it against you, judging, minimizing or denying the feeling. In other words, if you cannot be the “Good Mother,” to yourself, find someone who can model this for you as you express your feelings to extent that you have awareness. Or, express the feeling in art, music, dance, journaling or writing until you gain enough insight to return to your natural peaceful, creative and proactive self. © Lyndall Johnson 2004
Emotional Boundary Violations
When our emotional boundaries are violated we lose the ability to enhance and share our feelings which affects intimacy. We lose the gifts of our emotional life guidelines. Emotional violations include:
• abandonment, living in isolation, neglect
• feelings denied and made fun of or being told what we can feel and when we can feel
• being raged at
• constant criticism
• name-calling, ridicule, put downs, being belittled and scapegoated
• sarcasm
• comparisons
• blaming, finger pointing
• unrealistic or lack of expectations
• excess of pressure, or no expectation to succeed
• being judged and never good enough or always better than
• excessive focus on repetitive, negative comments
• double binds and double messages
• being terrorized
• lack of affirmation
• no structure or limits, no consequences or overly structured with excessive limits
• over protected, smothered and not being made responsible for behaviors
• no protection from the emotional abuse of others
• poor modeling of relationships and feelings
• lack of affirmation of feelings
• people projecting their feelings
• racism and other prejudices and -isms
• being rejected
• not being taught to care for self
• not being given gentleness or warmth
• living with addictions or addicts
• living with depression or illness and not being able to talk about it
• living with denial and denied feelings
• being shamed for the feelings we have or how we express them
• being taught some feelings are okay and and others are not
• not being taught appropriate expression of feelings
• not being taught there’s a time and a place for feelings
• living with many secrets
• sticky non-directive parenting
• excessive guilting and shaming
• not being listened to
• being the favorite kid or the little prince or princess or a parent’s best buddy
• inappropriate roles in families
• having to be an extension of parents or scripted by the parent
• being over-bonded/enmeshed with a parent
• being placed in inappropriate settings and around inappropriate people
• excessive suspicion
• getting over-involved in parents’ problems
• living with people who are phobic, worrisome, obsessive and overindulgent
• excessive emphasis on externals - physical appearance, possessions, performance and manners. Adapted from Broken Toys Broken By Terry Kellogg
This is an excellent book to read on Dysfunctional Family Systems
I would add:
· Having the expression of feelings turned around on you. Eg. feeling hurt when attacked and criticized and then being told that your feelings are not justified and that the abuse was justified.
Eg. Crying when beaten and then being told you have nothing to cry about, and you would not have been beaten if you had not ……..
· Your feelings being taken as a personal insult and attack on the other person – which is much the same as above.
· Getting double messages about feelings. Your feelings are valid and should be expressed when other people treat you badly, but not when I treat you badly.
· Indulging feelings and using them as a tactic to get needs met from others as an adult, because they were met with too much attention, pity, pandering and rewarding as a child.
· Being taught that your feelings will “rock the boat,” “destroy the peace,” “upset others,” “cause conflict,” that it “is not worth it,” (that is you are not worth it) and that therefore we should not see, know, experience our emotions.
Exercise:
Journal about anything you have read above that “hit home” for you. See if you can dig deeper – find all the thoughts, feelings, needs, defenses, memories around the one thing that stood out for you.
The Internal Critic/Defender of the Young Soul
“Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." ... [My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.” ~Henri J.M. Nouwen
The Internal Critic
The messages of our childhood are deeply imprinted into the psyche. If we were criticized, shamed and rejected, we will internalize two messages:
I am bad, never good enough, unlovable
“It” is my fault because I am bad – even when not guilty of doing anything at all
This now constitutes the relationship I have with myself and the rest of the world. It will always be a fearful and shameful life with desperate attempts to atone for our evil nature.
This internalized self-perpetration, although it is not obvious, is an externalized perpetration as well and coheres into whole systems of abuse – like fundamental Christianity, that believes we are all bad and can only be redeemed by a ‘god’ outside of ourselves. Then anyone who does not believe in the creed of self hatred, is bad and should be eliminated as well. Hence religious wars.
The External Critic
We project our self-judgments on to others. If I am bad when I do…. Then you are too. Now the internal abuse becomes externalized into perpetration against others.
If I blame and think of others as bad, then by definition I am doing it to myself. This is the heart and soul of problems in relationships. The Beloved is not known, seen or felt within or without – there exists no God, even if people say they believe in one. They are living in a massive illusion of spiritual bypass.
Those that tend to attack others before themselves, cannot see that this is a projection of their own self-hatred. They are firmly convinced that what they are judging is NOT themselves, but others. How does this happen? Two examples come to mind, but there are endless permutations on the theme, dependent on many factors, like age, stages, family constellation, culture etc.
One kind of parenting produces someone that attacks themselves first – this is the outright perpetrating parent who is shaming in self-justification and self-righteousness. In other words the child gets the message of being bad and wrong and to blame for the parental feelings, and if they have feelings about it they are further attacked.
Another kind of parenting produces children that are very self-entitled and justified in their aggression and blaming. This is the perpetrating parent who is immediately remorseful and rewards the feelings of the child in an orgy of self-recrimination and making up to the child. Or the parent who favors one child over the other, always blaming one child and exonerating the other. These children have a huge struggle to get aware of their underlying shame and fear because they seemingly are innocent, even in their own eyes. The trouble is that anger projected outwards, always terrifies and shrivels the young soul. So while it might seem protective of the young soul, it is perpetration against oneself.
Consider for yourselves what your internal dialogue is.
Is it self-hating and critical?
Is it self-righteous and blaming?
Exercise:
Start writing out dialogues between your ego defenses and your younger self. See if you can find an inner response to the young soul inside that is OTHER than the voice of the parents and authority figures of your childhood.
Emotional Intelligence
“Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak whispers the o’erfrought heart and bids it break”. ~W. Shakespeare Macbeth
Alchemists say that
the key to the Rose Garden,
lies in the first phase of the alchemical work of transformation. We think we’re going up, and suddenly we’re grounded, brought down, into a place that hurts, a place, that perhaps we’ve forgotten. It is a soul place, and maybe a soul wound - yet in that, alchemists say, lies the key and the ‘rejected stone’ that is the cornerstone of the whole building:
Your heart is the wound and your heart is the key.
So this is a part we cannot leave out, or if we try to, it is our soul that we end up leaving behind, and our greatest source of strength. The doors of perception must be cleansed, The ‘sacred wound’ attended before the above and below, the horizontal and vertical can meet and we begin to see into the heart of the matter.
What is emotional intelligence?
The ability to be aware of what you are feeling in the moment
The ability to know how your thinking is informing your feeling and vice versa
The ability to be aware of the unmet need that is resulting in the feeling
The ability to know the difference between a need and tactic for getting a need met
The ability to understand the primary feeling underneath of secondary feelings
The ability to express feelings appropriately and even creatively, connecting with self and other, instead of moving into a control tactic
The ability to see how control strategies are an attempt to get a need met
The ability to not blame externals for the feeling state
The ability to accept the feeling and need with compassion and acceptance with an understanding of how this arose within as a result of past conditioning
“Feel, don't think. Use your instincts.” ~ Qui-gon Jinn - Source: Star Wars: The Phantom Menace
Human relations are built on feeling, not on reason or knowledge. And feeling is not an exact science; like all spiritual qualities, it has the vagueness of greatness about it. ~Amelia Barr
An uncomfortable feeling is not an enemy. It’s a gift that says, "Get honest; inquire." We reach out for alcohol, or television, or credit cards, so we can focus out there and not have to look at the feeling. And that's as it should be, because in our innocence we haven't known how. So now what we can do is reach out for a paper and a pencil, write thought down, and investigate. ~Byron Katie : Gaia Child
Decisions that apply meanings to your feelings are the cause of great suffering. ~Moonstone White
Living' people don't make excuses for their emotions. They accept that feelings come as part of the human package; they embrace and walk with them on their journey. ~Sherilenne
“If there is one thing I've learned in thirty years as a psychotherapist, it is this: If you can let your experience happen, it will release its knots and unfold, leading to a deeper, more grounded experience of yourself. No matter how painful or scary your feelings appear to be, your willingness to engage with them draws forth your essential strength, leading in a more life-positive direction.” ~John Welwood
“Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge. They are chaotic, sometimes painful, sometimes contradictory, but they come from deep within us. And we must key into those feelings... This is how new visions begin” ~Audre Lorde : Gaia Explorer
.”..once again we face a paradox, for it appears
that softening your heart and gently tending its wounds
will protect you from evil.
Building a fortress and defending yourself behind it will
only make you more vulnerable.
Healing your own heart is the single
most powerful thing you can do
to change the world.
Your own transformation will enable you to withdraw
so completely from evil
that you contribute to it by not one word, one thought, or one breath.
This healing process is like recovering your soul.”
~Dr. Deepak Chopra
“There is never any end
There are always new sounds to imagine
New feelings to get at
And always there is a need to keep purifying these needs and sounds
So that we can really see what we've discovered in its pure state
So we can see more clearly what we are
In that way, we can give those who listen to the essence
The best of what we are.” ~John Coltrane
“Emotions are celebrated and repressed, analyzed and medicated, adored and ignored -- but rarely, if ever, are they honored.” ~Winston Churchill
Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself believe. We fear violence less than our own feelings. Personal, private, solitary pain is more terrifying than what anyone else can inflict. ~Jim Morrison
Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.~T. S. Eliot
Believe that with your feelings and your work you are taking part in the greatest; the more strongly you cultivate this belief, the more will reality and the world go forth from it. ~Rainer Maria Rilke
One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child. ~Carl Jung
This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room. ~Virginia Woolf
We must become acquainted with our emotional household: we must see our feelings as they actually are, not as we assume they are. This breaks their hypnotic and damaging hold on us. ~Vernon Howard
I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings. ~Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotions.
A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them. ~Jung
If you want more joy, get as intimate as possible with all of your emotions, illuminating and honoring the basic energy of each one. There is a kind of joy that sooner or later emerges from such exploration, the joy of simply being present at the heart of whatever we're feeling. Such joy weeps as easily as it celebrates; its loss of face only deepens its presence. ~Robert Augustus Masters
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
a joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
~Rumi
