Monday 23 February 2015

Letting go of trauma

Being raped is a terrifying experience for a seven year old child. I know because I've experienced it.

The mind is clever at dealing with such things. In order to avoid the intense rush of adrenaline and cortisol that such an experience induces, the mind disassociates. That is, it turns its attention elsewhere. In my case I focused on the sky and the forest around me, on the feeling of the hard ground underneath me. These are the things that I remember. The pain and confusion didn't really register, at least not consciously.

Letting go of traumatic experiences like this is not easy because with no memory of the incident it's hard to see which behaviours stem from the trauma. No doubt the observer self holds a full record of the experience, which could be accessible by hypnosis or meditation, but in the absence of the logical connection between cause and affect it's difficult to discern whether a pattern of behaviour is unhealthy or not.

Trauma also stays embedded in the body at an energetic level, mainly in the auric body. The result can be energy blockages, over or under activity of the chakras and other disorders. These can be resolved through meditation, energy healing techniques such as reiki, kinesiology and acupuncture. Yoga, aromatherapy, sound and colour healing can also help.

 
Practice conscious presence in your everyday life so that you become aware of whether your behaviours impact your energy body in a positive or negative way. This may feel like areas of tension, pain or tightness in the body. Let go of behaviours that do not serve you.

Letting go of trauma can be the catalyst for healing of chronic disease and mental illness, and the key to success, abundance and inner peace.

Monday 16 February 2015

Letting go of identity

Recently, I’ve been reading this book called ‘Multiplicity: The new science of personality’ by Rita Carter, fascinating stuff for a psychology nerd like me! The premise of the book is that instead of having one steady personality most of us have several, developed in response to the dynamic and unstable contexts we encounter in modern life.

Consider how it must have been for people even just 300 years ago: with no means of getting anywhere other than by their own steam, or with the aid of an animal if they were lucky enough to have one, most people in the lower classes spent their entire lives in one locality with the same group of people, encountering the same situations day-after-day. They thus developed a very simple, stable personality that could be relied upon by the people around them.

Today things are different. We exist within multiple contexts simultaneous, with different groups of people and with complex social dynamics and expectations. Thus it is not surprising to find that most of us have a suite of personalities, just as we have a wardrobe of clothes for different occasions, one for work, one that comes out when we are at home with our family, and one that we share only with our lover.

How do these personalities arise? Just as personalities have always arisen: in response to the pressures of our environment and the needs of the people around us, and through the lens of our natural tendencies, we develop habitual behaviours that we then begin to associate with who we are.

For example a child grows up with a deaf mother and a violent alcoholic father. In her childhood she does her best to help her mother whom she loves but who also makes her feel guilty, not intentionally but in the subtle unintentional way of people who have learned to play the martyr. She also learns to fear male aggression and avoids openness with her father because it makes her physically and emotionally vulnerable.

Based on these early experiences, we could make a very simple prediction that this child is likely grow up to be a people-pleaser, working in one of the helping professions and never feeling she is good enough to be truly worthy of love, respect or status. In intimate relationships she may well struggle to be open and will likely take on either a submissive role or a strident nothing-can-hurt-me aggression that prevents her from really connecting with the other.

But because modern life is not simple, the development of personality is not simple either. Perhaps this child, so powerless in the home, learned to exert her power over children at school. Thus we may find that the woman who evolves is submissive and a pleaser at home, but an assertive, power-hungry bully in the workplace.

Carter defines personality as ‘a coherent and characteristic way of seeing, thinking, feeling, and behaving’ and this seems a good enough working definition to me. This clearly indicates that personality is not just a role we play, it’s something we identify with, we consider it to be who we are.

In my life I can clearly see three different personalities: there’s the studious responsible me who works in a leadership role within an organisation dedicated to personal and social change. Right now this is the me that’s writing this blog! Then there’s the rebellious, outrageous me, who does things my work colleagues would find very surprising indeed. And finally there’s the me that comes out when I’m with my lover and that is a very different person again.

There are also roles that I play but do not identify with: for example I used to work in a big corporation. I played the games and wore the uniform because I thought I could get things done that way, but it never suited me and I never felt comfortable in the role. So at some point in our lives we begin to identify with some of the roles we play but not others, and these became our personalities, our identities.


The trouble is that identifying too strongly with these roles can become very limiting, and in some cases can cause serious cognitive dissonance in our lives.

For example, because I’ve come to believe so fully in my most prominent personality, the responsible, good one, I sometimes feel that I need to hide the other two, both from others and from myself. In the past I even tried to deny that they existed: these weren’t really me, they were some kind of aberration, a dark-side that I needed to resolve or work to integrate or grow out of, or at the very least keep well and truly to myself. I worked to make the dominant ‘good’ aspects of myself stronger in an effort to assuage my guilty feelings about these other aspects of myself that did not fit into my self-defined identity.

It’s very freeing to recognise that none of these personalities are actually who we are at all. As all the mystic traditions teach us, these layers of identity are nothing more than self-constructed facades behind which the true self resides, the silent observer.

When you let go of identity, accepting that none of your personalities are really who you are, you bring a playfulness back into your life. You’re free to try on different roles, as you would try on different clothes, selecting the ones you enjoy wearing and discarding the ones that don’t serve you. Life becomes a big game of dress ups where anything is possible

So now I hear you say ‘that’s all very well but if I suddenly start cross-dressing or play the smart-arse with my boss it’s not going to go down very well,’ and you’re absolutely right. But that doesn’t make cross-dressing or sassing your boss the problem. If you’re a man and you really want to wear woman clothes and the people around you can’t handle that then you have to decide what is most important thing to you. Like anything this will depends entirely on the context.

The point is not to cling onto something new, that is the need to try out different roles, but to recognise how by identifying with the roles you do play you hold yourself back from experiencing life to its fullest.

Monday 9 February 2015

Letting go of our need for 'roots'

One thing that’s always been distinguishable about me is my lack of roots. It’s not that I’m in any particular way a rootless person; it’s just that my life’s circumstances have been such that I haven’t really had the opportunity to settle down, or become attached to any place or person. I have no hometown, no childhood friends that I catch up with every year or so, no place to go back to. My mother and father both live many miles away from the area where I grew up and my brothers and sisters are scattered all over the country. I live a nomadic life, staying in a place for a year or two before moving on. At this point I’ve lived in more houses than there are years to my life!

But throughout my life there have always been a few things that remained stable, anchors in what was sometimes a tumultuous sea of experience, and one of these anchors has been my grandmother. On many occasions I’ve returned to live with her after some adventure in my life ended or went a little more pear-shaped than I could handle. Because we share many of the same values and perspectives on life we have a wonderful relationship that is very enriching and her support and unconditional love has nourished me and made me the person I am today.

Now she is 1000's of kilometers away from where I live. Letting go of her is perhaps the hardest lesson in surrender yet.

Roots are different for everyone: they include family, childhood friends, cultural traditions and customs, a piece of land where one feels at home, learned ways of looking at the world. Many would argue that letting go of these things is not desirable, that roots are essential and beneficial to our wellbeing. I agree that roots provide stability, a firm foundation. They are nourishing and grounding. But here we need to distinguish between enjoying and benefiting from our roots and needing them, which is where attachment comes in. If we ask ourselves ‘what would happen if I didn’t have that person/place/idea/thing in my life?’ the answer should be ‘I’d be okay.’ You can be happy and creative, free to go with the flow of life, either with or without that connection. 


Two situations illustrate an unhealthy attachment to roots:
  1. Your roots feel inhibiting. They hold you back from following the natural flow of synchronicity in your life, from taking up the opportunities that come your way and from using your gifts. You are like a pot-bound plant that needs more space in order to grow.
  2. You feel great about your roots. They provide the foundation on which you’re able to be creative, to explore and to grow. However when those roots aren’t there you fall down. You can’t seem to be happy and at peace without them.
The first situation is not so relevant to me, as my family is supportive and encouraging of my choices, never judgemental or clingy or manipulative. But for many people family roots equate to disapproval, guilt, secrets, game playing and other unhealthy attachment-based behaviour. In these cases letting go of one’s roots can be very freeing.

In my case I have learned very well to do without roots and the freedom this has allowed me has enhanced my creativity, my courage and my growth as a human being. But still I feel a great fear in my heart when I think of my grandmother’s passing. It’s as if the constancy of her presence has allowed me to explore so boldly, knowing that if anything were to go wrong I could return to her, that if I became lost she would always be the reference point by which I could reorientate myself.

I suppose that letting go of my dependence on her for this sense of security will push me to find my own inner anchor point, my inner roots. So that in dark times I may find light within, in times of tumult, peace, in times of confusion, clarity. To do I must remain aware of the petty day-to-day attachments that divert my attention, pull me away from my centre and stifle my freedom of expression. Meditation remains the best tool I know of to achieve this clarity: as I sit, allowing my thoughts to pass by without my mind grasping onto them, I learn to let go of the frustrations, the fixations, the passions that occur in my daily life.

Once you’ve found your inner roots you can begin to nurture them, tending them with care and attention, watering them with love, so that they grow deeper and stronger, providing a stability that is far more real than any security you might find in the outside world. Such outer security is subject to change: the lover dies, the house burns down, the business fails and where are you left? Letting go of our need for roots allows us to become strong, to act with freedom and to grow into the highest expression of ourselves.

Monday 2 February 2015

Letting go of jealousy

Jealousy is a common emotion for most people and indeed is thought by some to be a healthy expression of love in a monogamous relationship. This is because it seems to demonstrate care, that one feels strongly enough about the lover to care whether they connect strongly with others or not. To me jealousy does not signify care but merely attachment, and all attachment is based on insecurity, never on love.

Those who identify as poly-amorous use the term compersion to express the opposite of jealousy. To experience compersion is to be full of joy when you see your lover discovering a beautiful connection with another. Isn't it incredible that in order to express this sentiment, which seems to be a far more positive way of dealing with this common scenario, a whole new word needed to be invented so late in the history of human relatedness and connection!


Some people don't experience jealousy. I'm not one of those people! For a long time I struggled with this. I wanted my lover to claim me, to create a boundary and demand that I not cross it, to show me through his jealousy of other men that he cared. On the other hand I wanted him to want me so much that no other woman would make him look twice, or if they did and he enjoyed that connection that it would be no comparison to the connection we share.   

In other words I wanted to be special, and to believe that our relationship was special.

Letting go of jealousy is about recognising that our worthiness and value as human beings does not stem from our relationships with others. It's about realising that deep connectedness need not be synonymous with attachment and that despite what the media and other fairy tales tell us, true love always means freedom: freedom to create, freedom to explore and freedom to grow as human beings.