[Written around 2005.]
Moving forward is terrifying, and anyone who tells you otherwise is not moving forward. To move forward is to heal. To heal is to become more independent. And to become more independent is to leave one’s parents, and the worst of their patterns, behind. This feels like being an abandoned child. And there is no greater terror than feeling like a helpless, powerless, vulnerable infant at the mercy of the world.
Most people spend their lives carefully planning and maneuvering ways to avoid feeling abandoned. They block their healing process at every turn in the road. They disappear into addictions, relationships, parenthood, and other soul-numbing paths of a thousand varieties. They build false selves to fool themselves into thinking they are happy and comfortable, but they never realize that the beams propping up their façades are rotten with the misery of unresolved traumas. Thus they succumb to their terrors, but they cannot outrun them.
Life beckons us to heal. Life beckons us to grow. Life beckons us to become honest and speak the truth. Life beckons us to face our fears, and not blot them out. Life beckons us to open up our most deeply ugly sides and air them in the cool winds.
If we do not, we will face worse consequences. We will grow old and shriveled before our time. Our eyes will read deadness, our souls depression. We will lose our purpose, and only remember how to drive our cars in reverse – if at all.
But if we honor our soul’s deepest process, we will grow supple. We will grow confident. We will grow humble. We will grow forceful. We will grow healthy. And we will grow nurturing, because we will tap into the source of the deep mother within us all.
“Most people spend their lives carefully planning and maneuvering ways to avoid feeling abandoned.” – now, I doubt if I’m using my psychotherapist to make amends with my internal parents. You know, one argument of psychotherapy is its offering the developmentally needed relationship – a good parent. Shall I indulge myself in this transferential relationship? Am I trying to evade reality by creating a make-believe reality?