Past Present Future...awaits the patient soul...

The past is a time of learning and experience, The present is a time to let go. The future is a time of expectation and anticipation, Underlying all the distorted thinking that follows from forgetting our true identity as beings of love, worth and wisdom is a fear of being bad which in turn might lead to rejection and abandonment.

In a child's mind rejection and abandonment are equivalent to death. This deep fear sets up a rigid mental sensor, a psychological defence mechanism that splits our thoughts and emotions into 2 mutually exclusive categories: Good or bad, black or white, safe or unsafe. Splitting means we are either perfect or a failure, a saint or a sinner. These are categories that we apply just as rigidly to other people as well. The self-criticism and the self-deceit, loss of self-awareness that accompany splitting, actually keeps us powerless and ashamed and raging and anxious. A steep price for appearing to be 'good'. Rooting out the characteristics of unhealthy guilt. No one is black or white.

We can be kind and selfish, loving and occasionally judgemental, a nice person and a very angry at the moment. No matter who we are and how hard we have worked o become whole and aware, we will stil make mistakes, We can accept our poor humanity with open-mindedness and awareness rather than censuring ourselves out of shame, we will be more capable of choosing behaviours that will maximise our freedom and give us greater happiness. By letting go and healing the past and the wound people have inflicted on us, then we hate also rejecting this tyranny of black and white, that other people were cruel towards us and instead we give ourselves an idea that they may have had powerful reasons to do so and that thye may have had no choice.

That sort of thingking eliminates this black-white, either-or thinking that we have. Makes us become more flexible and interesting and playful and humorous in the process : ). We become less rigid, less self-righteous, less stuffy and less judgemental and constricted. In effect we start to look at the past pain that we have experienced as a teacher as a gift as a tool that we can use in approaching others as well. If we have been hurt this way then similarly, it is up to us not to hurt other people in the way we have been wronged or hurt. That a powerful wisdom-gaming tool that pain or hurt or suffering can become.


| Lady Gadget Hackwrench C r u i s e d A t 7/19/2005 09:16:00 PM |