Words....

Yesterday I wrote about having been in a process yesterday of healing a major shame 'button' from my past. As I said, there is another way to live than in the shadow of our life experiences. 

Recently I have been wrestling with a bit of a demon - one that told me over and over "I'm not good enough". Know that one? In fact mine had got really demonstrative and was screaming "In fact you're stupid!" I hope you don't know that one. But either way, I know I'm not alone, and it's something that saddens me to see it so prevalent in so many people. It's a demon that responds of sorts to various methods of 'Get Rid Of It' therapeutic ways, but it still tends to pop up again when least wanted, and it had been around for me far too much recently. Of course it was also giving me the gift of choice - choice as to go on squashing it down - not realising what I was still believing - and see things important to me slip through my fingers like sand, or to face it within my body, heal it, and move forwards. 

This is how it was for me: I knew I wanted to process a feeling of shame, of embarrassment, of fear that had risen up the in the days before. It was strong! Why I have no idea, other than it was decision time, so I am really quite grateful to it for turning up its volume so strongly. 

As soon as I settled into the safe silence with my facilitator friend and my soul, the feelings increased, and unusually very definite images moved swiftly through my mind.... I was 16, back in school in the upstairs classroom near the main hall - 5A I think - and I was aware of myself at my desk in the back corner, in my summer blue and white dress with the short 'bell-type' sleeves. I was so 'there' it was extraordinary. It was the start of the September term, hence my still being in summer uniform. 

I stayed with the feelings in my body, allowing my mind to let the images flow. Some of the images I had remembered before, but not the detail and certainly not these feelings. A huge sense of shame flooded through me. I was at that desk in uniform because I was still in the fifth form. 3 'O' levels were needed to get into the sixth form and I had gained 3. But 'art didn't count' and my two english passes weren't enough. All the other 73 fifth form girls had moved up, but not me. They were in home clothes now, in a different part of the boarding houses, bedecked with prefect and head of house badges, and I was the laughing stock of the school, 'held up as an example'. One out of 74 girls to not 'go up'. The sense of shame I was drowning in was dark, pungent, suffocating - everything about me shrinking inside, not unlike the dot on the TV screen that used to disappear down the middle when programmes ceased at about midnight in the 1970's.

The next sensation was one of my chest lifting, something in me producing a shield, a defiant 'you won't see me crumple' attitude - but inside was a different matter. Open pages of exercise books flashed before my eyes - the marks D minus, E, C plus, D, even Fs and H's (fail and un-markable) - despite my ever-optimistic plans of A or even A-. It seemed no matter how how hard I tried, nothing I wrote passed muster. I would be pleased with my work, but I seemed stupidly alone in that. * The re-sensed feeling of utter hopelessness was with me again in this process - but this time I was safe, and had my soul experiencing it with me. Soul work is powerful; its high-frequency energy able to transform old, stuck, cellular low-frequency energy in the same way light turns darkness to light.

Again I was in lessons, putting up my hand with a confident answer only to have the whole class laugh at me. Again receiving back homework covered in red ink. Again in my boarding house being told to 'stop being difficult and simply  start trying to get higher marks'. Again in the car with my mother, she pleading with me to "Just please don't come bottom?" and "Just look as if you're trying, darling?" Again in the hall when the class placings were read out - if I was really lucky I would share 74th place with one other girl, mostly not; it was all mine. Again in the headmistress's room being told I 'had the mental age of three and would end up cleaning lavatories on Waterloo station'. (One of London's main railway stations.) But the over-riding feeling was the empty, hollow, black sense inside that accompanied the being laughed at, jeered at, mocked, teased, endlessly 'baited'. 

A friend gave me a wonderful healing a week or so ago and said she had the really strong feeling that I had 'put myself in a box and closed the lid right down at about 16-18 years old. Was this the case?' I had forgotten this during the process I was in above, but yes, there it was: 16 and I did shut that box down and locked the lid. No point at all in being 'out there' where I had to risk feeling these painful feelings of 'stupid' any more. I would 'build a me' that could resist this - a me that looked fine, looked clever, looked busy, looked busy at trying to be clever. (Recognise this from the previous blog?!) Yes, looked busy at trying to be clever. Or even trying to look busy because I was clever - not. Or even busily and cleverly trying to try. Lazy and stupid? Me? No way! Can't you see how that can't be so??! And that habit had stuck. And despite its seeming effectiveness, of course I still didn't succeed. Me in the box never believed that could ever be possible; I had enough evidence to the contrary. 'Try but fail anyway' was my label. I had been told so by very powerful people in my upbringing. And my busy-ness was empty.

But life eventually gets us to a point where we can release all our old 'boxes', and my soul seemed to have brought me to this point this week. I was being encouraged to write, to share my experiences, but I was fighting this all the way. Yes, I have a computer stuffed full of words. I have several 'books on the go'. I write my feelings and experiences, my ideas and plans, about my work, about consciousness, about the magic that is humanity..... thousands of words...for One Day. How could I let those words out there to receive those (at best) D minuses, become covered in red ink, and risk the derisory laughter all over again. And what if people, being older than meanly blunt teenagers, said it was great but laughed behind my back? So, I couldn't let the words fly free. So what did I do? I tried. I looked really busy. I tried to look busy. I wrote about having written. I wrote about what I would write. I tried to look like I was doing what I knew needed to happen - but none of this was Doing. It was Pretending.  (Ironically I had turned Non-Doing into an art form!)

It is quite extraordinary how schools kill creativity. How school replaces a child's uniqueness and freshness with stale old stuff. And how many adults, whether they passed exams or not, are left thinking their words are not good enough. I know so many. Yet, who says??? It's time to not agree any more.

So, I am still wondering, still respectful of the fact that you may well not like my words at all. That they don't resonate with you in any way (which means you might not have reached that sentence so have missed my grateful acknowledgment of you even beginning to read!) But after the powerful process of yesterday I am going to Give It a Go and Do It. I'm not stupid - never have been, even if we don't agree on everything - so I will write and post. Share into the ether to unseen eyes that belong to warm beating hearts. And if one word reassures that none of us is stupid and reminds that those how label thus just have yet to wake up. And if just one word supports, encourages, or has another not feel alone in their as yet un-popped bubble of 'NGE' (not good enough) then my writing has served.  And that is all I want it to do....to serve, to be a friend to another who has felt any of the feelings I ever share. And to offer reassurance that, as I said at the top, there really is another way to live than in the shadow of our life experiences. 

---ooOOOoo---

Postscript

* Mind you, the 32 pages of hard and noble work on the essay "Describe the differences between the organisms of the amoeba and the paramecium" ended somewhat badly but with a good laugh; I received a really unexpected 'R' (returned) for this one, a huge red 'R' that covered the whole of the front page and the downward stroke of the 'R' cut four pages right through with its fury... I had completely unwittingly written 32 pages about the difference between the orgasm of the amoeba and the paramecium..... 

And this is the powerful video I have ever seen that addresses the 'flood of shame' - do watch. Brene Brown - Listening to Shame