A few ways of looking at the same experience of “a truth”. A case study. Can you find more ways?
*I have a right to show up for myself first without being blamed for your need that I show up for you first.*
(I don’t want to take care of you, I want you to take care of you and I still want you to love, honor and respect me.
I want to do what I want to do and want you to look at how you feel and hold yourself instead of blaming me for being selfish because I have needs/wants that are not yours.
I feel angry that I have to be responsible for how you feel and that you withhold and change yourself to manipulate me to guilt/shame because I want something else.)
What might we see here? Maybe someone who has denied themselves often enough they are protecting their “right” (which has never been lost but they have believed that) to choose themselves. Then the other whom they are speaking to, is now responsible to play a role of prison guard to let them have their freedom. Maybe this person has had a history and pattern of care taking people who are emotionally unavailable to process intelligently their issues and make this person the reason for their issues.
This person is tired of doing that.
And they are also misplacing their power, creating the idea that someone has more authority to give them what they already have if they could just see where they are misplacing their power. They seem to want have the freedom to choose whether to show up or not and not be judged for their desire for their autonomy.
When looking at this deeper we may see the fear that arises when they actually start to change and shift that pattern. Hidden fear that they will not be cared for if they don’t care for another. That their worth and value had been that of doing for another and forgetting of self. That when one remembers themselves, it triggers feelings of guilt.
And so the challenge here is to see self value where one has given it to the world to consume its value because when we are in a pattern of self-sacrifice to the “ego” or “world” we are not conscious to all the ways we are being consumed and devalued. We are not aware of all the ways we are pushing our edges only to find ourselves lost in the formless and questioning the value of the formless.
Yet it is here, in this fear, that we can find wholeness.
When we discover where we have devalued ourselves, sacrificed ourselves to the world who would see us as an energetic fuel source to care for it versus see that without form we would not exist to partake in the marvels of the “world”, we too cannot appreciate and value it. We must be fully present, body (forms), mind (ideas about form and connected meanings/values we give it), spirit (that which is the essence of all body/mind and beyond) to enjoy this existence we have been given. And to let the world who would consume itself with no remorse, do so.
The pattern of giving to the one who would consume with zero gratitude of what it is receiving is nothing more than a hungry ghost. And to see another who carries this parasitic form of consumption of your energy, time and care without seeing its value, will reflect back to you its resonance. If you don’t see it, you will be consumed too.
So to move beyond the inherited program we must integrate the false.
Guilt and shame are guideposts back to wholeness where we have believed ourselves something different than what is true. And many will not get your journey in wholeness. Especially if they don’t value themselves in the ways we are learning to, yet. So we must see a bigger picture that includes ourselves in another as ourselves.
Loss, abandonment, manipulation, scapegoating etc may be secondary fears to the original fear of returning to self-love. These may arise as result of the programming we have done to ourselves by perpetuating false ideas as being true so that we need the challenge of them coming to the surface so that love can restore them whole.
Imagine being the solution for every “problem” you encounter. Not only in your spaciousness of how to hold it all, but also in the knowing of the antidote of any dynamic relating?
This capacity to be the solution requires an anchor in the self and the not-self simultaneously.
An example: If we have not valued ourselves, we will be seeking for any form of lack we feel. In a way we could become hungry ghosts. When we empower ourselves to start taking deeper looks into the proverbial closet and integrated the distortions, we gain a lot of value. What wasn’t now is. And we can also see that what is, always was.
As we watch ourselves change from the “work” we do, we see it’s possible to everyone else if they too would just look. We also understand that it isn’t about what is found, although these are treasures to be shared, but the desire in wholeness. We desire to feel and know ourselves whole. And we see that underneath the grasping, using, exploiting, abusing, manipulating and hostility is a desire.
For what? This is the journey itself. For if that desire were seen as the animating force behind the universe and the power it has, that we too are given to orient it however we wish, we may discern our experience differently in “relationship” to “other”.
Yet this too is part of the Self-discovery. And we can only start where we are, all parts equally important to the whole.
As a final invitation, imagine that the response to what was spoken to was something like this:
"Thank you for showing up for yourself first. I appreciate your self-care, despite how I may feel about what is generated from your choices. I know those are my feelings to look at and figure out without making you responsible for them like I was when I was a child. I understand that you and I are both breaking inherited patterns and they may not always look and feel loving because we are stretching our boundaries to include ourselves now. I will hold myself and my feelings without making you responsible to care take me, too. I know that when you respect and honor yourself, and you feel respected and honored by me, our relationship will grow stronger and closer. And I desire our closeness. Thank you for choosing you, because I know that I am with you in this same love."
Some might consider this too much, not real, unobtainable, unimaginable, ridiculous (people don’t talk this way)…yet how does that feel in your body to imagine yourself receiving that kindness? How would that “permission” feel to receive from another who was originally your “prison guard” and momentary “enemy”? What would hearing that from someone else impact your experience of yourself?
This is the world we are waking up to within; kind, caring, considerate, free, abundant, generous, respectful, dignified, honorable, thoughtful, receptive, tolerant, trusting and grateful are just the tip of the iceberg of knowing ourselves, each one in another, whole. When we can give back something better than what we were given we honor and dignify ourselves, overcoming the habitual shame from not showing up as “enough” as determined by outer standards.
It may be hard, this is what we are learning what not to run from, ourselves. Love anyway.
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