The Right Medicine

I have come to an end of a chapter…so this will be my final post…for now.

November 1, two years ago was the day I got up close and personal to my inner wounds. Catalyzed by a break up.

It turned out, I was being given medicine from the Universe. It tasted like poison, but it was MY medicine, the medicine that would heal wounds I didn’t even know I had.

He was a Medicine Man of sorts. Giving me a dose of homeopathic medicine: drawing out the poison with the same poison.

I realized through an honest and raw probing of my feelings and reactions after the break up that these feelings were really hidden fragments of ME, and have very little to do with him.

A painful, emotional rollercoaster ride that had me feeling lost, confused, sad, angry, resentful, self-pitying, worthless, doubtful, insecure…and did I mention, confused.

I didn’t get it. What was going on? An 8 month relationship…that I chose (although didn’t want to) end, and this is what I am left with: a mess of dark, crazy feelings to sift through?!

And I kept the story alive; I couldn’t let go. I was trying to find an answer, trying to find a reason, trying to make it make sense…whatever that would have been. I was just trying to quiet the noise, soothe the pain and feel okay again. I want to end my suffering. I wanted a way out of my painful feelings.

“A whole person is one who has both walked with God and wrestled with the Devil.” ~ Carl Jung

It’s funny how we hold on to things, replay them in our head over and over, trying to figure it out, wishing we would have said this, done that, analyzing it to death, believing we can find some sort of answer or something that will make us feel better. Whatever that really could possibly be, who knows, but we try in vain to find it… yet we never do because it doesn’t exist.

We hold on to the anger, pain, resentment thinking that this will in some way correct something, make us right, punish them, change things. We don’t let go until we find something that will give us some peace, make us feel better again, make us feel like we are okay.

It’s crazy and it’s distorted thinking, but it’s what we do.

But the craziest thing about it is that it is this very need to have it be different, that keeps us stuck in the place we are trying to get out of. It is what is causing the suffering…the clinging to how we think things should be.

The pain isn’t the pain; the hiding, running away from, the ignoring of, and the hating of it is the pain.

“The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering.” ~ Ram Das

It is funny how we always want things to be different when they are challenging or cause us uncomfortable feelings that we don’t want to deal with. We, then, choose our default coping mechanism, which actually just keep us in the abyss of our suffering or a million miles away from our true selves, rather than taking a closer look at ourselves.

“What lies before us and what lies behind us is but a small matter compared to what lies within us.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I learned that nothing needs to be different; that is NOT what will end my painful emotions. I needed to change to make me feel better, not him.

And by change, I don’t mean I needed to change my thoughts and perceptions I had about him and the choices he made (I did ENOUGH self-doubting), rather I needed to change my thoughts and perceptions about myself…the ones that created the ego wounds, the self sabotaging beliefs and patterns. The very ones that lead me to have this relationship with this person.

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” ~Victor Frankl

Our wounds are wise; perhaps the wisest part of us.

We don’t come by our wounds by accident. They are meant to be ours. They are part of a larger purpose.

Our wounds carry within them the answers we look out there for.

Our wounds embrace our true gifts.

So as I close this chapter of my life, I will carry forth a very precious gift: the chance to get intimate with me/my deep, dark hidden wounds. Giving me the opportunity to understand them, accept them, love them, and heal them. Transform them. So that they can serve the beautiful purpose they were meant to in this life.

“Go on a journey from self to SELF, my friend…such a journey transforms the earth into a mine of Gold.” ~ Rumi

Deluded by delusion

I deluded myself into believing that, that relationship was okay with me. Deluded myself by thinking his behaviours would change because of his love for me, because of my support and understanding. Deluded myself by convincing myself that my thoughts and feelings could be wrong, rather than his, even though he had a lifetime of dysfunctional thinking and behaviours (just 5 years before and for more than half his life he was an active alcoholic, drug abuser and an associate of bikers (his Dad’s gang)).

But still I questioned MY thoughts and feelings. Maybe I am the one that doesn’t understand, doesn’t get it. Maybe his relationship with his ex and even his son isn’t dysfunctional and emotionally unhealthy like I think it is. He’s so convinced that it isn’t. So I keep deluding myself with self doubt, beliefs that it will change (and I did see some progressive healthy change…so maybe I wasn’t being delusional).

Then I deluded myself again after I let go of him. Deluded myself by thinking he must have changed because he has a new gf soon afterward. Deluded myself by thinking I must have been wrong about seeing his behaviours with the ex as codependent and unhealthy because this girl is STILL with him. I MUST BE WRONG.  Deluded myself into thinking that I just wasn’t good enough. I didn’t wait around long enough. I didn’t know what I was talking about. I can’t believe in my own wisdom and instincts.

Throughout the whole relationship I deluded myself. I was questioning my own thoughts and feelings. My own intuition. I tried to override them with excuses, ‘I am not the type to have a conventional relationship,” “he’s like this because he’s had a bad childhood so I will accept it,” “he will realize he needs to change once he sees that he can trust me,” “we are meant to be”…

But that was the fearful codependent girl speaking who believes she’s unworthy, who is very self-doubtful and who clings when she is afraid. Delusion to feed my own unhealthy emotions and wounds. Delusion to keep me from stepping into my power.

Delusion is just another defense mechanism – a very sly one because it is almost undetectable – that keeps us from facing our unwanted wounds, ‘flaws’ and the things that we believe are unacceptable about ourselves. It shields us from hidden aspects of ourselves that we don’t want to feel, such as unloveability or self-loathing. Things we believe we cannot face because we are afraid it will kill our SELF. We cannot live with it. Delusion can even be fear of facing your own strengths!

Although delusion isn’t inherently bad, it was put in place by us to keep us safe at some point because we believed we could not cope with certain feelings or stand up for ourselves, so we shoved the feelings (and maybe even the once upon a time confidence) down more and more as we replaced it with a self we thought was better. A self that kept us safer. A self that fit the role we were put into.

Delusion then became the iron shield that protected us from our greatest fears about ourselves – the ultimate protector. We shoved it all down into a dark cavernous place and labeled it bad, unacceptable, unsafe, unloveable and unlivable.

It’s the big bad monster under our bed that we need protection from. And as we learn, the monster is only a hurt and lonely creature that just needs a friend, and some love and understanding.

But as we held on to these fears,  false beliefs, and roles that seemed to keep us safe, delusion only came to serve as a very high and dense wall – hiding us from ourselves.  In the end we are only fooling ourselves. We are losing ourselves...our authentic selves and our true power.

The Language is in the Knowing

We get all caught up in trying to describe stuff, label things or analyze something or someone, and we lose the real meaning of it all. Sure words are a useful form of communication, but often when we are trying to figure out an issue or facing a difficult challenge in our life, language just gets in the way.

Using language is what I have been doing for over a year now in trying to “understand” the break up, to get a handle on my emotions, and to try to quiet the demons in my head.
Analyzing all his issues, so I don’t have to believe my own self-defeating beliefs because he and the break up really TRIGGERED them.

Descriptions of all my emotions so I can better understand them and where they came from.
Replaying everything over and over again in my head to find the right words to describe my feelings at the time, to remember why I chose to walk away from that relationship….because once I did, the words of self-doubt and ‘not good enough’, ‘not special enough’, ‘not loveable enough’, ‘not worth fighting for’ were all screaming in my head.

Explanations of what went on and who he is to convince myself I did the right thing, that I made a healthy choice. But all of this language to understand and make sense of it all has just added to the noise in my head, the self-doubt and the confusion…more ammunition for the demons to play with.

It is true that ‘The devil is in the details.’

Our mind, and the way the brain functions, needs to make sense of things and create patterns to organize and understand things, which is all good and useful for it's purpose, yet we rely way too much on our minds and so little on our gut instinct or intuition. That inner knowing that doesn’t require all the workings of the brain.

In yoga, my teachers and myself, as well, talk about quieting down the mind in order to get in touch with your inner voice and your intuition. Your inner wisdom. It’s just a knowing. The heart and the soul does not work in language, it works in a deeper knowing. I even use words to try to help remember that I had the knowing and to try to remember what that knowing was! WORDS, so many words…almost like an addiction that I keep relying on.

I could go over my break up and his dysfunctional behaviours, what happened, why it happened, what I should have said, what I should have done (listen to my intuition in the first place) to get more and more understanding ,thinking it will help me in letting go . I could spin these words over and over in my head and in my journal for another year plus and I likely won’t get any closer to healing.

I need to stop using the language of the mind and trust the knowing of my soul.

Beauty and the Beast

I went for a hike yesterday around what’s called The  4 Lakes and the scenery is absolutely breathtaking. I was walking up a forested path with trees, mountains and a   picturesque waterfall on one side of me and the calmness of a still, blue lake on the other side. It felt like I was walking through a story book; a fairy tale. And as I was enjoying the surreal beauty and peacefulness of the walk I became acutely aware of the possible presence of wild animals as noted in my article below and I thought to myself: 

Don’t allow the monsters to ruin or prevent you from seeing all the beauty that surrounds you. Don’t let them scare off all of the beauty within you.  I told myself that the monsters in your head, after all, are just a figment of your imagination born from wounds, wounds from misperceptions of a child’s mind.  

The monsters in reality are afraid of YOU, so they use scare tactics as their defenses against you. They know you are more powerful, it’s only YOU that does not know this. Why do you think they fight back so hard? Why do you think they are so relentless? Because they know you are stronger and you could take them out. 

They will do whatever they can to survive: trickery, become louder, project images onto your mind to prove they are real and they are stronger. They will even have you experience repeated hurtful patterns externally and repeated self-sabotaging patterns internally to prove their realness and strength. Yet, what you don’t realize (because they are so sly and deceiving) is that it is actually YOU creating these situations just by the sheer fact of believing in them!  

It reminds me of the lives of circus elephants. As babies they are chained by the ankle so they can’t escape their cage. When they grow up to be big, strong, magnificent animals, who can now break that chain with their  own strength, they don’t. They don’t escape that life of entrapment and cruelty, even though they can, because they have learned to believe that, that weak chain can still retain them and hold them to their cage. 

So for the rest of my hike, I decided not to believe in the beasts, and I continued my walk in solitude and freedom taking in all the beauty. I decided I was going to write a new story, my own fairy tale.

Letting the Enemy In

I open the door wide and let them in.

Oh I try to blame others for it, spend my time analyzing the other person’s issues, how they hurt me, how I am the victim, but it is only I that let the enemy in. And I make the enemy stronger by repeating the same self-defeating thoughts and make the enemy stronger by continuing to believe these false self-beliefs. Beliefs created so long ago with an innocent child’s mind and sensitive heart.

Unskilled behaviours of the adults I looked up to, looked to for love, support and understanding and when it was dysfunctional, it created my sense of self, how I felt about myself and who I thought I was. And I realize I am still operating from that same place decades later! I am not who I think I am. These thoughts, these beliefs are what are creating the pain inside … nothing external. I am the one feeding the imaginary monster.

We let the enemy in when we are weak.
We let the enemy in every time we lie to ourselves and make excuses and justifications for our unhealthy or addictive behaviours.
We let the enemy in every time we listen to our negative thoughts and destructive self-beliefs and self criticism.
We let the enemy in when we try to control or manipulate a situation or person to feed our own unhealthy emotional needs.
We let the enemy in when we aren’t compassionate with ourselves and forgive our mistakes.
We let the enemy in when we don’t believe in ourselves and don’t trust ourselves.
We let the enemy in when we choose not to listen to our instincts, our feelings and our own inner knowing.

I have not been a good guard of my gateway to my heart and soul ... the gateway to inner peace … the gateway to my happiness.

Not taking care of ourselves, not taking responsibility for ourselves…we allow the enemy in. And when the enemy does get in we blame others, external things and allow it to beat ourselves up.

The real battle is inside. Not out there with something or someone else.

RIP - Pieces of Me

Rebuilding. I didn’t realize it would take so long to build a home with a good, solid foundation, but that’s what I have been doing for the past year – rebuilding from the ground up.

My old home shattered, fell apart, collapsed from a life storm, but it had slowly been crumbling over the years from many other life conditions. The hurricane swept my home away and took away everything I clung to, including my self-beliefs. This home could not simply be repaired; I could no longer live here safely and certainly not happily. All the mortar in the world wasn’t enough to fill these gaping holes in the foundation; it had to be torn down and rebuilt from the beginning.

Pieces of me scattered everywhere. Pieces I didn’t even know existed. Dark, ugly demonic-like pieces lay there claiming to be a piece of me. I couldn’t even pick them up and look at them. ‘No these pieces belonged to someone else, they belonged to the person who caused the storm in my home.’

But in the light of day, after the storm passed through and after the year it took for the dust to settle and clear, I could see that these pieces were indeed a part of me.I came to see that the dark storm lived inside these pieces and inside my home for most of my life. That these pieces were the cause of this destructive force.

And as I started to rebuild, these pieces just weren’t fitting in anymore, in fact they just kept hindering and delaying the rebuilding project making it extremely difficult to continue to build. I had to rid my home of these pieces of debris that caused my home to be weak and insecure even in the best of weather conditions.

A painful and arduous task to rid yourself of pieces that have been with you for so long, even if you have learned they are threatening your survival. They are a part of you, you believed them, you took comfort in them and they are so familiar after all these years that they feel right.

It feels like I am ripping pieces of my flesh away from my bones, reaching in and tearing out a living, breathing organ from inside of me causing me to want to hold on to them or else I will die. Yet this is exactly what needs to happen. A part of me must die, so that the healthy part can live … can thrive … can find peace.