Looking Inside

Saturday, February 27, 2016

"Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes." – Carl Jung

I experienced a tremendous shift in my own growth in the last few months. I shifted the focus of my exploration. I no longer spend any time in therapy speaking about my feelings about the people from my family of origin. I was consumed with that about two years ago. Instead I am looking inside myself and exploring how I feel about myself. And I clearly see that I can be very hard on myself.

As I shifted my gaze I began to feel mortified by what I was discovering. I began feeling that my own behavior in regards to my family of origin resembled that of a battered spouse who repeatedly goes back to an abusive partner - and then experiences yet another dose of abuse and horror. I found myself understanding that my own behavior for so long had resembled such a cycle of ongoing harm.

I felt really horrible as it dawned on me how much my desire to be loved and cared for was prompting me to tolerate the inappropriate, unkind and abusive behavior of people from my family of origin.

For far too long I have lived a life with a very coarse voice inside my own head. I feel I see an aspect of the imbalance in my own earliest years of life very clearly now. My upbringing led me to internalize a much too stern, authoritarian voice inside my head. I developed a capacity to be extremely critical and harsh. Though I did experience some genuine nurturing in my childhood that influence was relatively weak. And so I have come to realize that I need more...gentleness.

A therapist I once worked with articulated the following wisdom to me: We often treat our bodies in a manner quite identical to how our family of origin treated us. People who treat themselves in harsh and abusive ways thus tend to have grown up in harsh and abusive environments. It's quite sobering to ponder really. This wisdom suggests that early life conditioning is indeed a very powerful influence on who we later become.

I feel fortunate to have developed the insight I have developed over these last few years. As I continue to transform my life I feel more and more optimistic that I can create a good future for myself.

Watching Life No More

Friday, February 26, 2016


I see beautiful sunlight falling upon my hands as I type yet another entry to chronicle my unfolding odyssey.

Outside it's winter but not really winter. It's almost spring but not quite spring. We are moving into that between time of the year. I am in between as well. I do not feel fully healed. But I am not in a deep abyss either. I am moving. I am moving forward. I am breathing. I am relaxing. I am relieved.

It seemed as if I was slipping back into an immense darkness earlier this month. And so I decided to do something kind for myself. I sought out some resources from some familiar places here in my local community. And now, due to my own diligence as well as the kindness of my friends, I find myself feeling much better.

My sadness is still with me. But it is no longer an immense, nearly suffocating cloud. It is much smaller and lighter now. Rather than needing a full size suitcase which I would have to check onto an airplane I can "fit" my sadness into a carry-on bag. My body and the feelings I carry is much more...portable.

I can't watch life any more. I can't be someone who witnesses life rather than actually lives it. I can't be a vicarious dweller of shadows whose pain lingers and smothers. I see myself taking myself to a new realm. I see a new place and a new possibility. I see healing and wholeness in my future life. And I see love and friendship as well. These are the things I dream of for myself.

...

When we feel deeply victimized, demoralized, frightened or confused it is a very natural response to withdraw from the world to protect ourselves. We may find we need a significant amount of time to regroup and recover. If we truly love and care about ourselves we can, to the best of our abilities, give ourselves the time we need to restore ourselves.

...

I have heard grief described as a sort of high praise for that which we have lost. This feels true to me. One of the greatest honors we can bestow upon our losses is our tears.

Being Willing to Learn

Sunday, February 21, 2016


I would not be where I am today had I not been willing to learn throughout my life.

In June, 2013, when my life felt as if it was in free-fall, I opened myself to the possibility of doing still more personal growth work. But I certainly was not enthusiastic about it at the time. I felt I had already done enough work on myself. Why did I need to do more? Hadn't I already done enough self-inquiry to heal from the deep wounding I experienced as a child? It soon became clear there was a whole new level of functionality I could attain through application of the proper treatment.

Thirty-two months have passed since that eventful June. I now feel very grateful that I took the plunge and allowed myself to learn still more. A piece in the New York Times Sunday Review from July, 2015 speaks to the significant value of research. I invite you to read it and then consider how open you are to learning new things. Are you willing to change your life in the short-term so you can enjoy a higher quality of life in the long term? Are you willing to truly listen to observations and recommendations you might initially find unpalatable?

Being willing to cultivate an attitude of curiosity about the world around us is, in my opinion, vital to our well-being. What would you be willing to do today to foster such an attitude?

The Inexplicable

Saturday, February 20, 2016


My first foray into the world of higher education provided me with the training to understand (to the degree that science currently can) the behavior of the atmosphere. Using the term 'behavior' is perhaps not the most apt term considering that many are likely to associate such a word with a sentient being. People display a wide variety of behaviors. Animals behave in certain manners - we notice certain behaviors in our domesticated pets and describe them as variously adorable or irksome. But the atmosphere? Can we describe the never-ending motion of the atmosphere as a behavior?

When something (a behavior, an unanticipated event) defies our explanation we may call it inexplicable. I have experienced a number of things in my life which have strongly defied explanation - easy or otherwise. I have recently been reflecting on one such event as I continue to explore who I am.

In 1997 I lived among the Lakota people of South Dakota for approximately four months. I was sent there as a novice of the New England province of the Society of Jesus. The Society of Jesus, commonly known as the Jesuits, is a well known Roman Catholic religious order known for its preferential option for the poor as well as the mantra of everything "for the greater glory of God".
My four month period of life among one of the many indigenous peoples of North America was profoundly transformative.

One day I found myself driving back to the Rosebud reservation after making a trip in the direction of Rapid City. You can drive for many, many miles in certain stretches of South Dakota and not encounter another car on the highway. I had no company with me in my car. I suddenly found myself feeling overcome with tears. It seemed my body had suddenly become the locus for something far bigger than my own self. My tears, at least at the time, seemed...inexplicable.

In a New York Times Sunday piece from April, 2014 Barbara Ehrenreich talks of a mystical moment she experienced at the age of 17 in Lone Pine, California. She saw the world "suddenly flame into life." She goes on to recount that she was left with only one explanation as to what had occurred:

"I had had a mental breakdown, ultimately explainable as a matter of chemical imbalances, overloaded circuits or identifiable psychological forces. There had been some sort of brief equipment failure, that was all, and I determined to pull myself together and put it behind me, going on to finish my formal education as a cellular immunologist and become a responsible, productive citizen."

Like Barbara and her experience of a flaming world I was similarly perplexed by what I experienced on that day amidst the frozen badlands of South Dakota. Years later as I recall this experience I offer an explanation for what occurred which many all too rational individuals might believe to be absurd. I could feel the grief of the Lakota people in the landscape of South Dakota. It was as if the grief of a whole group of people had, albeit briefly, inhabited my own body and mind. The vessel of my one body could not hold such heaviness. So I found myself crying out in a state of overwhelm. I believe that memory is something that lives not only in our own brains and bodies but also in the very places we inhabit and mark as our own.

There is something else I have also found inexplicable. How did I survive what I did growing up? A friend recently described it as unsurvivable.

The anger and rage I once carried regarding what I endured is long gone. The grief is settling out now as well. I find myself mourning what seems to be the last layer of my layer cake of emotions. I find myself grieving how I endured so much of what I did alone as a child among many dysfunctional adults.

Moving Onward To...?

Friday, February 19, 2016


It's been a relatively long time since I last wrote in my blog.

Winter has grown very old here in Minnesota. And I don't just mean this one particular iteration of winter. I speak of the season of winter in general. My eyes crave the beauty of lush life beyond the windows that separate me from winter's chill. I find the barren trees and snow covered ground such bleak imagery that I avert my eyes from such images whenever possible.

I have been doing some intensive work on myself again lately. It's comforting to be able to report that the anger and outrage I once carried around for so long is now a feature of my distant past. I actually drew up a diagram the other day and then shared it with my therapist. You could call it the layer cake of feelings. I had a lot of feelings to disentangle back in 2013. At the time I first embarked on yet another (and final) leg of my psychic healing journey my anger was quite palpable. It took some time for that to dissipate. My anger masked an immense amount of fear, sadness and grief. I am still working through the sadness. But it is nothing like it once was either.

I recently came to an additional insight; there was still something more underneath the fear, sadness and grief. There was a deep feeling of loneliness. I am leaning into the weight of that feeling of aloneness now. It's a heavy feeling indeed.

But that's it! There's nothing left which I can sense living underneath the loneliness. My loneliness represents the bottom of the bucket.

I'm planning to move on from Minnesota later this year. I feel the time is coming for me to leave this place and embark on a truly new and powerful beginning.

I feel a growing capacity for happiness burgeoning inside me.