I left off in my previous post saying:

“So, one night I realized this was carrying on for too long (Snowy’s odd behavior in relation to Cesar and her toys) and that something else must be going on. I placed my hand on her chest, breathed and then checked which person was a match for the point she was working with – which of course, was me – lol.

The next point was to see: what point is she showing me about myself??

What opened up for me was quite fascinating – I don’t know if I would have seen/realized this point if it weren’t for my Snowy-bear assisting me with such specificity – I’ll share in my next post!”

To see what point Snowy and I were working with, I kept one hand on her chest and placed the other on her side. The first thing I looked at was identifying the energy that was running – because that was the most noticeable about her behavior – as soon as she would hear or see Cesar, or as soon as she picked up a toy – a particular energy started directing her behavior – where no matter what we said or did – the energy was not moving out or diminishing and she continued to follow the energy – we couldn’t ‘snap her out of it’ or even ‘get through to her’. When identifying the energy, the word ‘protectiveness’ came up. Snowy takes her ‘protective role’ always quite seriously, but now every time she’d hear/see Cesar, that protectiveness went into over-drive.

As soon as I placed the word ‘protectiveness’ within me to check if that was the word – I could feel/became aware of ‘lines’ that together formed a particular geometric shape and that shape covered my abdominal area. Here – I remembered the article from Jack where he explained how weight in the abdomen is due to protecting fears.

So – this was getting more and more interesting – because the word ‘protectiveness’ was showing to contain more than one dimension – it was not just about protecting others, but also about protecting myself and protecting fears. So I focused in on that geometrical shape that I felt over my abdomen and saw two sides to it. On the one side I saw it relating to the symbology of pregnancy – where a baby is in the belly, protected by the uterus and abdomen – so an experience of safety/security. On the other hand I saw how the geometric shape was somewhat like the door of a prison cell – so, here I was looking at self-limitation – fear and insecurity.

I could see how that polarity had played out in Snowy’s behavior – where on the one hand she was ‘excessively nurturing’ – with her toys as well as licking Cesar all over when he would get close to her – yet on the other hand, she was seeing Cesar as a threat and tried to protect herself from him.

(If my story is sounding a bit jumbled, it’s because I’m trying to tell it the way it opened up for me – so bear with me if it’s not sounding very coherent, lol – it did kind of open up as ‘pop, pop, pop’ – I started seeing the factors at play, the ingredients if you will – but did not yet see how I had ‘cooked it up’ for myself or how it all strings together – that I looked at afterwards.)

At that point I was satisfied that I had identified the energy as being ‘protectiveness’ and that it was related to motherhood and that there was a polarity construct involved. But keeping a discussion I’d recently had with Esteni in mind, as well as the tools introduced in the SRA3 course of Desteni I Process – I could see I hadn’t ‘gotten to the bottom of it yet’ – I so far had only opened up a particular behavior and how that behavior was driven by an energy – but I had not yet identified the source point. I knew I had to identify one word – one word that contains a polarity in its definition – where ‘protectiveness’ is how I ‘live out’ the polarity of that word in my reality.

Now that word – interestingly enough, is: ‘Life’.

It was easier to see the word by looking at the positive polarity – the positive polarity being: what is it I desire to protect? So – looking at motherhood – protecting a baby – protecting innocence – I could see that it boils down to: protecting ‘pure’ life. Then I looked at the negative polarity to see if the word ‘life’ is accurate – so I checked: Is life something I fear/something I feel I have to protect myself from? And the answer was ‘yes’ – meaning: life as life on Earth as it exists today. Growing up, the world seems like a scary place – people are so unpredictable and I definitely felt insecure. So – my definition of the word ‘life’ existed within a polarity – giving rise to both a desire and a fear – and the energy and behavior of ‘protectiveness’ was driven by that desire and fear.

So now I had the rough outline of the construct. Then I looked at how I had created and lived this construct as myself – what decisions I made from within this construct and how I shaped ‘me’ and ‘my life’ from within and as this construct – I will share that process in my next post.

Snowy is one of the two Pyrenean Mountain dogs that live with me. Those who have met her know her to be a big, fluffy, goofy dog that likes to barks at anything that moves, is very lazy on walks, and has the sweetest eyes – that is, of course, when she’s not barking at something. That would be her ‘usual self’. About a month ago she started acting – hmm, what is the word – well, ‘odd’, to say the least.

One significant change was her behavior towards Cesar. She would usually be gentle with him and allow him to come close and lick him once in a while, but otherwise not be too ‘phased’ about his presence. He was able to come up to her and lean against her while she remained calm and patient. Now, about a month ago, what started happening every time Cesar came into the room, or if she could hear him in the other room, she would immediately go into ‘high alert mode’ and start following him around as though to ‘keep an eye on him’ that he doesn’t do anything that ‘he’s not supposed to’ – yet at the same time, try to back off when he would come close. So – she was literally pacing around him while trying to keep a certain distance at the same time. If she would sit, it would be for a second, and then she was up pacing again. And when he did manage to come close, she would seem to be fighting within herself where on the one side she’d want to scare him away/off of her and on the other hand, obsessively lick him all over.

The other significant change was that she started adopting a toy as though it was her baby. Where, she would pick one toy and keep it with her at all times. When she was walking around, it would be in her mouth and when she was laying down, she would put it in front or next to her and lick it. And when she’d lose her toy, she would go around to everyone making a whining/crying sound. One night, she was standing besides me whining/crying, but she had her toy (at that moment her ‘baby’ was a monkey-teddy) in her mouth. So, I wasn’t sure what she wanted. Eventually, I figured out she was trying to find a ‘safe space’ for her and her ‘baby’. She only stopped crying/whining once I made a little ‘cave’ for her with pillows under LJ’s desk.

The behavior of her taking a toy as a baby, we had seen before and so we thought it was part of a hormonal cycle – where this motherly behavior gets triggered by hormones – and that somehow she had translated that behavior to Cesar as well. Of course, with Cesar, she started to become a ‘danger-point’ as she was unpredictable while within that ‘high alert’ energy – and with her being a large dog, we kept her away from Cesar as much as possible, waiting for this ‘hormonal phase’ to pass. But it didn’t…

So, one night I realized this was carrying on for too long and that something else must be going on. I placed my hand on her chest, breathed and then checked which person was a match for the point she was working with – which of course, was me – lol.

The next point was to see: what point is she showing me about myself??

What opened up for me was quite fascinating – I don’t know if I would have seen/realized this point if it weren’t for my Snowy-bear assisting me with such specificity – I’ll share in my next post!

This post is a continuation to the post
Day 151: When Cesar gets it ‘wrong’

In my last post I explained the scenario where Cesar is using the blocks of a ‘game’ in a way that doesn’t fall into the parameters for which the game was designed and how I would react ever so slightly and yet very distinctly when seeing Cesar play with the blocks in a way that I see is ‘moving him further away’ from ‘getting the answer’ of ‘what the purpose is of the game’ – as describing one scenario where I would react in perceiving ‘Cesar getting it wrong’.

Another scenario where I would react within myself is when Cesar is playing with the same blocks – the ones with the holes of a particular shape and the towers of the matching shapes, where the purpose of the game is to place the blocks over the tower with the matching shape – and where Cesar would take a block with for instance a triangle whole and try to place it over the rectangular tower. Lol, I’m laughing as I write it as it now seems so silly to react to it – but in the moment of observing Cesar do this, I would become uncomfortable and would ‘fight’ the urge to tell him ‘no, that one goes over the triangular tower’ to then show him how it fits.

So – in this scenario, the reaction was again stemming from trying to ‘protect’ Cesar from experiencing  what I believe he would experience in realizing the block doesn’t match the tower. So, here again I was projecting my own experience onto Cesar, where I believe he would experience frustration, anger and self-judgment in not matching up the shapes. Cesar, however, didn’t seem to ‘care’ if the shapes matched up or not, he would try to get it on, and if it didn’t work, then he would just do something else with it. He didn’t have the concept of ‘right or wrong’ – he would just observe that sometimes the shape matches and he can get it over a tower and sometimes not. I could tell him that the shape with the triangular whole will only fit over the triangular tower, but even when I did, he would try to place it over the rectangular tower – lol. So – I realized that he’s going to test it out for himself over and over until he is satisfied that it is indeed physically impossible to match a triangle and a rectangle – and there’s really nothing wrong with that. For him to ‘accept’ the fact just because someone told him will create a point of belief. And even more, if he keeps doing it because afterwards we say ‘well done!’ with a smile on our face, then we’re interfering with his learning process.

Herein I saw how easy it is to condition someone to act in a way to obtain praise – where you’ll end up only doing those things and pursuing those things of which you expect to receive positive feedback, instead of really finding out what is possible, exploring everything for yourself and see what works, what is effective and what is not. We believe we are ‘teaching’ a child something when we tell them ‘no, not that way – do it this way – look!’ – and that in congratulating them when they copy us, we feel we’re rightfully praising them for apparently having ‘figured out the right answer’ – when actually, we’re depriving them of the figuring out part – all they have learned is to copy us. The actual figuring out is a long process of testing over and over what works and what doesn’t - that is how a child will naturally learn and they won’t feel frustrated when something doesn’t work – they will only feel frustrated if we tell them they should feel frustrated, by reacting within ourselves with an experience of ‘no! not that way!’ – where every time they do something, they pick up on our reaction, and so start believing there must be something wrong with what they’re doing.

Without an outside person guiding the activity, a child will just over and over again try to fit a shape over every tower - regardless of whether it didn’t work once  – he’ll try again later – so that he comes to the understanding that – no matter when I try to place a triangular shape over a rectangular one, no matter from which angle, no matter how much pressure I exert, no matter whether the sun is shining or if it’s raining – it doesn’t work – now the child has actually learned something.

I often babysit Cesar in the afternoons while Leila is exercising and taking care of Charlie, her other baby (her horse :) ). Cesar likes being outside and amongst the dogs the most, but when it is cold or rainy, we’ll look for things to do in his room. One of the activities he’s been more interested in recently is playing with blocs, like duplo blocks or blocks that have a hole of a particular shape in them that he ‘has to’ then hang around a little tower of a particular shape. One thing here is that it is fascinating how we take our motoric skills for granted. It seems so easy to just put two duplo blocks together and make them stick and then start building a house or a plane or a tower or just some random figure. We don’t remember that at some point in our lives, we didn’t have the skills to do that and that we walked a process of continuous trial and error that demanded a lot of concentration on our part to slowly start developing the muscles and flexibility to put two duplo blocks together and make them stick the way you want them to.

So, Cesar is now walking that process of developing these motoric skills with lots of trial and error. Now, I started noticing an interesting experience within myself when I would see Cesar struggle or ‘get it wrong’. I noticed it first on a physical level, like a contraction in my solar plexus area and I would ‘hold my breath’ ever so slightly. In looking at it more closely, I could see that fear of ‘getting it wrong’ and wanting to prevent Cesar from ‘getting it wrong’.

So – what does ‘getting it wrong’ even mean – there’s several scenarios I’m referring to with that, from where I will see his actions/attempts as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.

One is when he is for instance playing with the blocs that have holes of a particular shape in them, that he has to pull/drop over a tower of the matching shape. So, the block with the circular hole goes over the circular tower, the block with the rectangular hole goes over the rectangular tower etc. For me as an adult, I can see at first glance which shape he will be able to pull/drop over which tower and I also understand that this is the purpose of the game, that this is what it is designed for. As Cesar is picking up the shapes and turning them around, banging them together, tossing them across the room, he is just exploring these objects and what he can do with it. But with me understanding the ‘purpose’ of the game, I see it as the ‘wrong thing to do’ and I kind of become impatient, because I just really want him to ‘get’ that he can put these shapes over the towers! Because from my perspective, he hasn’t really ‘gotten the right answer’ until he realizes that the shapes are ‘supposed to’ go over the tower, lol.

So, here – I was projecting the idea that Cesar would feel proud of himself after having figured out that he could make the pieces fit over the towers. Here, actually, projecting my own experience when ‘getting something right’ and the belief that something is not worth doing and a waste of my time. I would have to resist the urge to show Cesar how to place the blocks over the tower, lol. But those ideas, beliefs and desires didn’t exist in Cesar – he was just exploring and here I was wanting to steer and limit his activity towards only one possible option of how to play with blocks.

I’ll continue in my next post.