November 2019 - Compassion Group Notes
Ambivalence to Awareness
"It's not so much that we're afraid of change or are so in love with the old ways, but it's that place in-between that we fear...It's like being between trapezes. It's Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There's nothing to hold on to."
~Marilyn Ferguson
The change of which we are all the most afraid, is the change from unawareness to awareness. The act of surrender to a self-evident truth in our lives fills us with terror and of course, fears consort, shame.
As soon as we become aware of our motives, we feel the sinking feeling of how the self elevated position we were holding is rooted in trauma – it is deflating of the ego defense and brings what we have been doing into question.
We do not trust ourselves to not immediately go to the trusted and known place of self judgment and shame and see ourselves and what we have chosen in our lives as wrong, bad, stupid….. and on and on. We are so afraid of ourselves! And rightly so, because we have become perpetrators and judges of our own original fears and shame. We have set ourselves up as false gods of judgment, which is why we worship this kind of god, in this stage of development.
The story of “The Emperor has no clothes on,” comes to mind. It was a self-evident fact that the emperor was naked. However, for him to admit this would have filled him with shame and embarrassment. And so he lived in illusion and everyone around him colluded with the lie, fantasy, defense…. Until a child, still innocent of the trappings of ego defense, blurted out the truth. Oh, what shame to be caught defending against shame – pretending to be invisible, when you are truly visible.
And so, in group, a self evident motive, behavior, thought is named, or a dynamic explained, or a process taught, and the “yes, but’s, rationalizations, (grabbing for more clothes, justifications, denial, minimizations and arguments, blaming start….” We do not want to be seen naked in our shame.
There is another layer to our ambivalence to awareness. Awareness is Love. When we bring love to our acts of power and control, we know that there are no excuses and that the inner awareness must result in outer changes. And this means not only surrender but also sacrifice. We may stand to lose our quality of life, our money and material posssessions, our relationships, security and stability, our countries, communities and friends, our jobs….
The emperors court of colluders would all feel betrayed after they, after all, had put their lives into the collusion and now the emperor changes his perception, mind and behavior, they would all feel betrayed. They would not all say, “Oh yea, at last the Emperor woke up and now we can support him in being a good leader.” Put yourselves into the story and you will see how this emotionally works.
It takes great spiritual maturity to see without judgment, to surrender even when afraid, to wake up and feel the shame, and to change without guarantees.
No-one in these groups needs a blankie anymore. You are all capable of doing the hard inner work of bringing loving awareness to every bit of your shame, whether it resulted in re-enacting victimization or perpetration. I wish you all the rapid transformation of Alice (In Wonderland) when she said, in response to the caterpillar’s enquiry about who she was,
"I-I hardly know, Sir, just at present," Alice replied rather shyly, "at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then."
~Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
"Change and growth takes place when a person has risked himself and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own life." ~Herbert Otto
"Only the hand that erases can write a true thing." ~Meister Eckhart
"The chief object of education is not to learn things but to unlearn things." ~G. K. Chesterton
"One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time." ~ Andre Gide
EXERCISE:
What do you never talk about in group – of what are you so ashamed that you avoid speaking about it at all cost?
What change in your life terrifies you? Why? Are you in a memory state around loss of relationship, loss of safety, loss of belonging, loss of love… all of which meant that you were bad, when you were a child. Can you face these losses and process them through now?
What are your fears about other’s judgments when they see you naked? What is your memory?
Crossing from Involution to Evolution
“The seeing eye at the top of the pyramid represents the transcendence of the duality of lower levels of human development where the focus is on getting lower order needs met internally by ourselves. When we can successfully do this the desire arises within to serve humanity in pure consciousness – the goal of the pharaoh or the king and queen of our being, or the Self Actualized person as Maslow says.”
The capstone was painted gold to symbolize this state. However the capstone could not be put in place until all the lower levels of the pyramid had been built.”:
There is great difficulty in crossing over from awareness that is judgmental and regretful, to awareness that is celebratory, embracing and joyful.
As long as you gain insights and awareness about the patterns of memory state in which you have lived and then immediately decompensate to judgment and shame without loving witness of both states, you are still living the dark, involuted side of this journey and plunging yourself deeper into hell realms, by adding a hell realm (shame) on top of a hell realm (judgment), without the presence of God/Love/Truth/Spirit.
And this is no easy task, because if the only thing you have experienced in life is hell then it is the only way you know to relate to yourself.
The trouble with judgment and defense is that it provides some degree of comfort and illusion that all is well. We can live in the artificial bubble of being “good” and “spiritual,” for many lifetimes, because these ways of thinking and behaving result in others meeting our childhood needs to be liked and loved and revered and respected – at least some of the time, quite successfully. Donald Trump is still riding on the success in getting his childhood needs to be “valued,” met, by making “America Great,” again. We all do this. We choose to associate with those that buy into our defense and do not mirror the truth back to us, because they too, have the same defense. It is actually harder to recognize defense when we have pleasant and socially acceptable defenses. We buy into it and so do others and then we are furious when someone actually sees us and does not agree.
To cross over from 2nd to 3rd quadrant usually happens when the comfort of where we are in awareness is less appealing than the deep longing and desire for God/Salvation/Enlightenment. It is as if these two states are on a teeter-totter. Which will win? We might live on the teeter totter of hell and purgatory for a long time, before the desire for freedom from conditioning actually wins out.
Can we cross over and work at being aware and bringing:
some modicum of humility in not being sure and knowing everything,?
some insight into the suffering underlying the defense with empathy for ourselves instead of shame?
some capacity to tell the truth and studying what the truth might be?
some daily practice in presence to our inner states of awareness and where we put our attention?
some questioning of motives in all we say and do and think?
some capacity to notice our resistance and tantruming, refusals, externalizing, suspicion and blaming with humor?
some capacity for patience and recognizing that if I slip back into judgment, it is because I do not fully see, and because I am not yet fully capable of meeting my own needs. Just as in the Game of Snakes and Ladders, if I fall down a snake, will go back down and rework the process until I am a loving and trusting person to the wounded soul? Or will I throw in the towel (judgement) think it is a stupid game (externalize and blame) feel shame (decompensate to an old emotional patterned state) that I did not make it to square number 100.
some courage to pick myself up and try again and again and again….?
some internal trust that to observe all that arises with an aspect of ourselves as yet unknown to us?
some capacity to use others as mirrors of something we cannot see ourselves, or will we try to smash the mirror?
some capacity to recognize old defense of fight and flight – distancing, rejecting, avoiding, silencing, blaming, attacking etc. etc.
some capacity to bring reverence, worship, awe to the ways in which you have survived your life and thrived in a hostile environment (life in form)
some degree of acceptance of the universal pattern of growth and suffering. There is no growth in consciousness without it.
some capacity for discipline – not allowing yourself to act out and act in even when activated and filled with memories of emotion. Real insight does not mean we carry on behaving in old defensive patterns of destruction that pose as comfort.
The calm, serene, accepting presence of the mature soul that is in alignment with Consciousness Itself (God)? The part that does not judge. Do I still worship the Old Testament God of Punishment, Damnation and Judgment, or do I now worship the God of Love represented by the New Testament myth of Christ Consciousness? This is the difference between being the observer (ordinary awareness) and being the Witness – the loving, calm presence of Spirit, that sees the observer and that which is observed.
And an image of Anubis, the jackal god of the dead, weighing the balance of how much someone is in 2nd quadrant and with the awakening of the heart on the other side. In Egyptian mythology, Anubis cannot hurt anyone who possesses the Ankh, the symbol of Life, or who has learned the ways of Love and Truth over the ways of unaware death and defense
Exercise:
Draw a scale and assess each day whether there was more seeing with the heart or more unaware acting out or in. Does Anubis still devour you every night, or are you left unharmed? See if you can name specifically what is on each side of the scale every day.
Study the symbol of the ankh – how is it different to the cross? Are you still nailed to the cross at the bottom of the pyramid, or are you expanding to a more grace and truth filled life? Have you actually made the choice yet?
Gamble everything for love.
If you are a true human being.
If not, leave this gathering.
Half-heartedness doesn't reach into majesty.
You set out to find God, but then you keep
stopping for long periods at mean-spirited roadhouses.
Don't wait any longer. Dive in the ocean, leave and let the
sea be you. Silent, absent, walking an empty road, all praise.
~Rumi
