“Keep the Real always passionately and stubbornly in view and duality will dissolve, burn away like a paper-chain in the fire of love.” Rumi
To make friends with the real, you must learn to discern between the story in your mind and what is really happening. It is one of the keys to mastery in life. You must re-associate feelings that were dissociated long ago, and hidden in the formation of your false self.
You must learn how to come into present time…that life is simply happening, not to you. It simply is happening, and you claim your right as a co-creator when you choose how to respond. You take back your sense of being a creator when you become fully intentional.
This entails the work of reconnection to the true self, which always involves the shedding of what is not real. There are few human beings who would not benefit from taking on the task of healing and clearing the relationship with their parents, whether they are dead of alive. This means taking ownership for our lives today, no matter what happened before. This allows you to stop projecting mom and dad and big brother and sister onto other people.
I once had a wise psychodrama trainer, Dale Buchanan, who said “We are all living in a huge hall of mirrors, and it is a miracle when we are really seen, or when we fully see another human being.” We are each wired to project and protect if we perceive danger, and there have been plenty of instances for all of us. There is a tendency to repeat this over and over.
We all experience a certain amount of trauma, some a great deal. Trauma inflicts a loss of innocence, a cutting off from what was considered Source. There is a grief and even a rage about that loss of innocence in each of us. The “false self” is adopted, and is called an “adaptation” that is projected as the real self. Carl Jung called this persona. We become cut off from our child of joy.
The persona serves as a protective boundary between between our inner self (thoughts, emotions, instinctual impulses, etc.) and our outer relationships, similar to the way skin serves as a protective layer between the body’s internal organs and the outer world. Most people don’t want to be an “open book” to everyone they encounter, and thus we wear a mask. In daily life our persona is reflected in our choice of clothing, makeup or hairstyle, the way we speak, our posture and general demeanor. Even the type of car we drive, where we live, and our community and organizational affiliations are aspects of our persona. None of this is who we really are.
Think how many times you said in the past year, something to the effect, “I remember when we didn’t have to worry about our kids the way we do now.” It was simpler, easier, safer, more fun. As a culture, we long for it, as evidenced in our Culture of Youth.
I meet many people living out the grief of abandoning the true self. They do so through affairs, addictions and excesses of all kinds. Their children suffer the unmetabolized pain, and the legacy gets passed on.
The tough news is that few human beings are entirely immune to the powerful influence from the outside. Everyone adapts. I remember the day my son Jonathan dropped my hand when he saw his friends walking toward us. He was about 7, and had already been accused of being a sissy for holing his mom’s hand.
The GREAT news is that It doesn’t matter how much we adapt, really—that kernel of who you really are is still there. In over 25 years as a psychotherapist, I have seen that the gift inside each person, their “loveseed,” is inexhaustible. It needs to be seen, to be reflected. That is what brings us back from trauma. That is what heals—the softening and opening of the heart that comes when one is seen for the gift that one is. People unfold like magnificent flowers, at any age.
It is not our age that makes us “old,” but our capitulation to a pre-programed sense of decline that comes from a life committed to the false self. After a while, you see the light flicker in a person who refuses to acknowledge what they truly want. They are too attached to the old story.
“Without our stories we are pure love, “ says Byron Katie.
The creative and innovative impulse comes from the child in us…the part who still carries more of the dream than the fear of loss. Today is summer
I don’t know about you, but I have my dancing shoes on and leave in one hour for 5 Rhythms. I take 2 Aleve, ice my knees before and after. That is being friends with the real.
Happy Summer Solstice!
Remember, be brave, joyful and kind!
