Pulling it together

A recent conversation I had had me thinking about a woman I was working with last year. A psychologist I sought out during a time of intense personal crises who helped me a great deal in a short period of time. Firstly, she emphatically denied I was going bonkers as I was afraid I was. She explained that my intense early childhood trauma forced my psyche to learn strategic and well frankly, ingenious ways to protect me till I got away from the threats I lived with daily, for a prolonged period of time.

She advised me I wasn't nuts, that my dreams and intuitions were not signs of psychosis, but were evidence of my higher self working closely with me, in short her take on it was that I had somehow become highly developed psychically, this she believes was due to my genetic make up (a family history of such) and furthered by my early trauma's.

She got me to think about mystics through out the ages, and I saw what she was saying had merit throughout ages of documentation.

Pain and trauma seem to be catalytic to the human mind, it breaks you, kills you or as the saying goes makes you stronger. Ancient religious orders seemed to understand this and horrific rituals sprung up around theses tenants. This type of self flagellation, and asceticism was also incorporated into the Catholic religion, most famously is the order of Opus Dei as described in Brown's book the Da Vinci Code.

Most people misunderstand Darwin when they talk about the theory of evolution and boil it down to the catch phrase survival of the fittest. More accurate is the phrase survival of the most adaptable, this is the principal at work here. The ability of the human being to adapt to insane, violent, terrifying situations, and thereby not just surviving, but surviving by developing ways to interpret their surroundings, and sensing threats thus giving them an edge over the predator. ESP is a benefit of evolution.

This woman was a healer as well as a psychologist, she worked with what she termed sacred energy. I trusted her completely which is very unusual for me. So submitting myself to her hands for energy work, while a little odd was fairly easy. As she guided me through visualization exercises and breathing techniques I was barraged by images, sensual impressions and memories. She spent a lot of time on my abdomen and I could feel stuff moving around like tiny bubbles, or sluggish movements like water thick with petroleum.

Here she said I was holding a lot of fear. Immobilizing fear. She was very concerned and wanted me to tell her about it. Despite my trust for her, I simply found I couldn't. I couldn't speak what it was that terrified me so. But I could tell her about my anger, and how that frightened me which was really the sanitized truth. I know she knew I was holding back. After a while of silence, she asked me to tell her about why I was so afraid about being so angry with my mother.

ZING.

After an emotional confession, she smiled at me in a super kindly manner and simply asked me if I could see now, that it was okay to be angry, and it was okay to not be angry anymore, and it is okay that my mother knew I was angry, and guess what, I'll probably get angry again, and that's okay too.

I laughed out loud with relief. Intellectually I knew that, but the frightened kitten living in my tummy, didn't. It was up to me to loosen the fear that gripped my belly that makes it shake in hard little convulsions and shudders.

After a few moments of pause to let it all sink in, she next asked me to consider my anger, how I've used it in the past, and to see if I could find a correlation between my anger, and my advocacy.
ZING ZING.

Memory after memory presented themselves, then stepped back. I saw a clear moment by moment blow of each time I've stood up for others, for myself, and simply knew the catalyst for each moment was due to a rising anger I could not ignore.

This was a pattern in my life from my first memories. And what I gather from family stories, a trait they noticed the first time I ever used my voice in anger.

A wailing baby demanding respect. A toddler biting a biter to stop him from biting myself and other (bigger) little girls, a preschooler holding a knife out in front of herself telling her mommy not to come any closer... A kindergartner kicking in the TV set of a man desperately trying to take her into his basement, for a second time. Still a little older, going to her principal about a girl missing from class. Sick they told her, she's sick, wild eyes, doors closing, old rotary phones dialing. That night coming home to find the missing girl being attended by police and paramedics. She's safe now, safe. A preteen hiding a terrified stranger under her bed, helping him in a pre-dawn escape. Fearless. A pre-teen, consciously, clearly and openly walking out of that house into the hopeful unknown. Thumbing her nose at the powerful, baring her ass in the wind as she turned the other cheek.

Nothing ever happened to the people who did these things to and around me. Well nothing but effects of time marching forward. Time has a way of making people reconcile their pasts, even if the courts don't won't or can't. And I am reminded of the Rolling Stone song: Time, is on MY side.

What is being allowed to happen to the weakest members of the world is stomach turning. I see the contents of the house hold I lived and died and grew up in outside today, in the world. I see-hear it in this man's conversation. This brutality, this struggle for power by any means necessary, and I wonder about the dream that started this whole blog thing. My Macro-Micro Dream.