Hello Loves!
This week and next week I want to deeply explore WHY 'focusing on the pain/suffering/negative' is not actively CREATING these things, why the spiritual and self help world are so stuck in their ideas of 'positive' focus and how it's actually a tool of bypassing not healing, why we need to take an ADULT view of pain and what we can do about it, and why being truly 'spiritual' involves deeply looking at pain, injustice, harm and so on so as to be able to MOBILIZE to create something better.
A true light worker doesn't run from or deny pain, they embrace it to understand it so they can shift things to make create better alignment.
This is a deep dive, so settle in.
You ready?
We Do Not Have To Fear 'Calling Things Out' If We Know How To ADDRESS Things:
We don't have to fear the act of labelling or 'calling things out.
These actions do not create problems where problems don't exist, nor do they actually inherently inflame problems.
Rather, for most humans when we call a problem out, the reason this feels so violent or 'unloving' or like it just perpetuates cycles of problems getting worse is because along with the labelling seems to ALSO come awareness of a problem where there was ignorance before (thus is looks like the label or call our 'created It') or there is an automatic instinct to judge, condemn, berate, blame and project evil.
Many in the spirituality community have been spreading the rhetoric of 'what you focus on grows' and the idea that we shouldn't look at or label or call out problems/systems of abuse because it appears to them that the more they are made AWARE of systemic issues that exist and that seemingly give them benefits at the cost of others, the more they see it everywhere and it overwhelms them.
They weren't seeing it before, and once they are made aware it explodes in their face, often leading them to think it's the focus that exasperated it rather than seeing that the focus just opened their eyes to a problem that's much, much bigger and more painful than they feel they have the capacity to process right now. They mistake the 'seeing it everywhere' as the problem growing, when really it is just THEM coming into AWARENESS of how big the problem WAS ALREADY. Or they find that in looking at problems deeply they start to feel shame, guilt and resistance to the idea of the pain that's existing because there comes an awareness of how they are playing into it in some form or other. There comes an awareness of the SYSTEMIC reach of all that we are facing, the pain, the suffering, the injustice, and this feels like again, it is being 'created the more we look.' So let's just stop focusing on it. It is the awareness that overwhelms, that makes us want to think it's creating.
We want to deny, suppress, run from and minimize the pain we are seeing in others and the problems others are telling us about, and the pain we see in OURSELVES and the often deep, twisted, systemic and complex sources and causes/effects of this misalignment because it disrupts our sense of security that the world is a safe, even and equal place for all people. For ourselves especially. It rocks our personal sense of security, and our world view that everyone has the same rights and freedoms that we do, leaving us feeling guilty.
That problems have simple and straightforward 1 to 1 solutions. Where we all have the same capacity to 'work hard' and liberate ourselves. It disrupts the idea that we are 'good people' who are doing the right thing. It often disrupts the vision we have of ourselves of being the victim or of having been the victim and now no longer being that victim because we empowered ourselves.
Many in the spiritual community are living in some form of pain they still don't understand. They want to - in many cases need to - believe their pain is isolated to them and their lives - their mindset/perception/spiritual or intellectual misperception - so as to believe that their liberation is as simple is believing and thinking the right things, focusing on the right things, saying and doing all the spiritual things. They need to believe it's all internal and simple, so that the freedom they seek also seems simply to attain - or at least is something they can CONCEPTUALIZE being able to do.
Dissociation is sold as spiritual attainment because in reality the issues we face on this planet are not individual issues - they are universal and systemic and more complex to deal with than our currently traumatized nervous systems can handle generally speaking. WE have individual power yes, but we are ALSO one with everything else here - feeling the consequences of the actions of everyone else. Living with the consequences of everyone else's actions and choices. There is no separation.
We want to deny, deflect, gas light, minimize and otherwise tell others to just stop talking about their problems and pain not because we think this will actually help THEM but because we need them to stop talking for our own world view and sense of autonomy and power to be upheld.
For own security not to be rocked.
We need to believe each one to be responsible for themselves (and for all to have the opportunity to liberate themselves in the ways we have) only because that narrative saves US from the feeling that we may not be able to find total freedom from just doing our work, if the world stays how it is. We want to believe we can change ourselves enough to stop suffering whether or not this world changes.
This Was Born In Childhood:
This is this child view. 'I can't change my circumstances or how my caregivers react to me. They are my source. All I can do is manipulate myself and my mind to cope with their treatment. If I become good enough one day they will reward me with all my needs being met.'
This isn't really taking responsibility - this total focus on the self and how we can change within to stop suffering - this is a massive minimization of the realities of life and the complexities of our interconnected nature.
It's not to say there isn't inner work that CAN and MUST be done - not at all - it's simply to say it's not the WHOLE PICTURE.
Both and.
Bare with me.
The TOTAL focus on the inner world is a trauma response from all the times we were gas lit, scapegoated, blamed or otherwise shamed for our pain rather than being witnessed and listened to. Every time what our caregivers were doing hurt us and rather than them realizing their ways of being weren't helpful, they blamed us, ignored us or asked us to just 'get along' with things - because they didn't have the capacity to really look at themselves and their actions, to see through their traumas and conditioning to REALITY and shift to something that we, the barometers, were pointing out with out pain, could feel good within. The mirror to this is to be in a state of constantly blaming the outside world for our pain, NEVER looking within and ALWAYS projecting it 'out there' - as 'out there' (caregivers) was/were supposed to understand and meet all my needs.
This is the child in us who never learned to problems solve in the face of pain, but rather got overwhelmed, scared, confused and lost, who learned to cope and deny rather than truly root out roots and change systems. Every time the WORLD told us our pain, emotions, anger, anxiety, inability to be 'normal' meant there was something wrong with US rather than something wrong with the SYSTEM.
The spiritual worlds, self help, mental health and physical health worlds have been gaslighting sensitive people forever - rather than asking 'what hurts?' we say 'what's wrong with you that you hurt.' This is total bull shit. Pain cannot be created from nothing. There is a misalignment ALWAYS. Society telling you that you are messed up for feeling pain is the root of our inability to find relief, not YOU and not your pain.
This is the part of us that in our adulthood is overwhelmed by the level of chaos on the planet, and how much it's really going to take to shift things. We are fighting for the system to stay as it is as we deflect, deny, suppress, oppress and otherwise look to minimize the pain of our own experience and the pain others are telling us they are in, because somewhere inside we KNOW that so much needs to change before we are going to inherently FEEL GOOD in this existence.
It's Also The Delusion That Seeing Something Is 'Creating' Something:
It is also a rejection of that knee jerk reaction that says when we call something what it is, if we weren't feeling it before or if we didn't now why we were feeling what we were feeling before, that this calling out MADE IT SO.
That if we had just not said anything, it wouldn't exist.
Many of us feel this way right now.
We didn't know about all the suffering in the world, all the systemic injustice. All the ways in which the world serves US in a way that causes it to be disadvantageous to others. We want the highlighting to stop because to US it's our first awareness and thus we are mistaking this awareness for it being the CAUSE of these things. If we just stop talking about it so much, it will go 'back to how it was before' where none of this was happening.
No.
The cancer was there. You didn't feel it or understand it but the diagnosis didn't create it, nor did it make the problem worse. Getting to see the TRUE IMPACT of what's going on and talking about it isn't making it worse. It's just worse than you thought it was. You're becoming aware of how bad it IS. Why you have been feeling so much pain your whole life you couldn't explain. Why no matter how much inner work you do, you still suffer. This is that. Being made CONSCIOUS. Not being CREATED right now.
Next, again so much of the time our awareness leads us right into shame and guilt.
This Is The Victim/Victor Cycle That Needs To Be Broken:
Looking for the perpetrator.
Looking for who the evil thing/one is and how we can blame them or eradicate them.
THIS is the cycle that needs to be broken - because when we are doing our self awareness work we are GOING TO REALIZE that we hold the patterns of the abuser just as much as the patterns of the abused.
It's a much easier path to see ourselves as victims and then to 'empower ourselves' than it is to witness all the ways in which our abuse has caused us to be abusers.
All the ways in which the systems that exist and the 'norms' of society indoctrinated and anesthetized us into systems where we actively and passively uphold the abuse and victimization others. Because we don't want to see ourselves as abusers. We don't want to see ourselves as the bad guy.
This disrupts our self image way too much.
Going from victim to victor is a celebrated story that society will accept in you. "Empowering yourself" to leave the marriage, work through the addiction, leave your family patterns of origin, create a new way for yourself is all glorified.
Identifying where you have been the victimizer? Where you have harmed others through your pain? Where you have been an active participant or simply totally unaware of a system that directly inhibits the prosperity, safety and security of others? Working to bring these structures down - that in many ways HURT YOU to participate in, even if there was seeming benefit - the fear of that, the fear of CHANGING those things in YOURSELF without that meaning you were TERRIBLE - most can't do it. Can't hold these two concepts at once - I was abused, I was hurting, I was indoctrinated, I was numb, I didn't know, AND I then turned around and caused harm - and I am going to have to face that in myself, reconcile that, not go into shame and blame but rather into maturation where I LOVE these hurting parts of myself so I can CHANGE my behaviour, uplift others, stop my unintentional tirade, give up some of my privileges, recognize that even though I suffered greatly I STILL HAD PRIVILEGES and it HURTS ME to have it. It hurts others. I have to change. I didn't create the system and I would never have CHOSEN it had I had another option - but I'm in it. It's hurting me and others.
Accepting responsibility without accepting blame.
We don't know how to do this.
So we run to 'love and light.' Don't talk about it. Don't bring it up. Just empower yourself. Just look at the light.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We will finish this off next week with some solutions - how we move through all this to create a better world.
<3
[…] Last week we started our talk on WHY looking at pain and suffering does not CREATE it, nor does it make it worse. We talked about why those in the 'love and light' community have such a resistance to calling out pain and injustice, why we want to 'positive focus' our way into a love and light world, and why this won't work. […]