This blog post is a continuation to the following posts – please read them first for context:
Day 153: Snowy – My Mountain of Support
Day 154: Snowy – My Mountain of Support – Pt2
I explained in my previous post how I saw the particular construct I required to work with that Snowy had been showing me by living it out. I saw how the energy I was working with was ‘protectiveness’ and how the word in relation to which I would activate the word ‘protectiveness’ was the word ‘life’. I saw how there was both a positive polarity of desiring to protect life as well as a negative polarity as trying to protect myself from life.
As a child and growing up, I have always been reserved when interacting with others. Not that I would always stay in the background or be a loner or be the shy one in a group – I would make friends and have fun – but I would always be ready to ‘pull out’ in case I felt I had to. I had noticed that no matter how ‘nice’ a friend or a family member may seem in one moment, in another they can suddenly change and ‘turn against me’ – often unexpectedly, where I ‘wasn’t prepared for it’. The same with animals – in one moment a dog could be gentle and in another they could suddenly snap their teeth. The same with nature – the one moment I am playing in the garden on the grass, the next I get stung by a bee. In all these instances I felt that my sense of security was false, that I wasn’t really safe from ‘life’ as how I experienced it.
What I saw within using the tools of SRA3, is that I had defined the words ‘safe/protected’ within a mother-child relationship. You know – when you’re a child and you’re just sitting next to your mom on the couch and you rest your head on her chest, she wraps your arm around you and you can hear her breathing and her heartbeat – that experience of ‘I am protected, I am safe, nothing can happen to me’. That experience is what I desired.
So – within deciding who I would be within my life, I wanted that point of safety/protectedness to be a part of it. Of course, I couldn’t stay a child forever living with my mother – but I could become a mother myself. Because, a mother and child, I presumed, both take part in the same experience of safetyness/protectedness. Herein – my perception of mothers was also relevant. Of all the adults and their extent of participation and interaction with ‘life’ as that which I saw as unpredictable and dangerous – I thought mothers were the least exposed, because they are at home taking care of the children. Perhaps that is why I would say I wanted to become a mother of 5 kids – to make sure I’d never have the time to do anything else but be a mother, lol – but remain secluded, protected in the safety of my own home.
That was how the negative polarity to the word ‘life’ influenced ‘who I wanted to be in life’.
The positive polarity of the word ‘life’ refers to seeing life as something pure and innocent – and yet so fragile – something that can be easily corrupted, hurt and abused. From within my own fear of the ‘outside world’ – ‘life as we know it’ – I created a desire to protect this ‘pure, innocent’ life – and where I had defined this ‘pure/innocent life’ to exist was in babies and young children – the ones not yet influenced too much by ‘the world’ – who were still blissfully ignorant and under the impression that ‘life’ is welcome here. So – from the positive polarity of my definition of the word ‘life’ I wanted to be someone who protects ‘life’ in this world and of all the social roles in society – I saw that mothers taking care of babies/children were the ones to fit this bill.
So – through accepting both the fear and desire that sprung up within me from both the negative and positive polarities of my definition of the word ‘life’, I created a behavioral design of ‘protectiveness’ within me – both in relation to protecting myself as well as protecting others. That was the same behavior I saw in Snowy – where on the one hand she wanted to protect herself against Cesar, seeing him as a ‘threat’ while at the same time ‘protecting him’ through playing a nurturing role towards him.
I then went and wrote about all these points, applied my Self-Forgiveness and wrote my Self-Corrective Statements to remove the separation I had created towards the word ‘life’, to redefine the word as myself and diffuse this construct as a whole. I had shared with LJ and Leila what I’d seen in terms of how Snowy’s behavior mirroring mine. After I had done all my writing, SF and SCS – Snowy’s behavior immediately changed, lol. She was back to her ‘old self’. Leila noticed the drastic change in Snowy and asked me if I’d worked on my points – to which I said ‘yes’ with a big smile, lol. So – this was a very cool feedback point again –where Snowy showed me: you got it, girl – my work here is done. Lol. I gave her a big hug, amazed and grateful for the unconditional support that she is.
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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.
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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!
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This is a continuation to
Day 81: What to Expect when You're Expecting
Day 82: Only Bad Mothers Hate Pregnancy
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continue believing in the idea that motherhood is all about fun and fulfillment despite the fact that I have had actual physical experience with spending a lot of time with children, where the majority of the time does not consist of having fun and fulfilling yourself, but of the practical considerations of what the child requires and fulfilling one's responsibility within that.
I forgive myselff or not accepting and allowing myself to face the facts of reality of what it means to raise a child from birth, but deliberately ignore these facts and 'choose' to delude myself into thinking that being a mother is just fun and bliss.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not want to face the facts because that means I might influence my decision to have a child or not - whereas, I have always had a desire to have children and created a belief that, because this desire is so strong, that I will find a purpose and meaning within having children and that therefore, nothing can come in my way of becoming a mother.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself according to my memories of being a child and being asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, where my answer was 'mother of five children', where I would stick out my hand pointing 5 fingers, because I only could count to 5 at that stage.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define 'who I am' according to these memories of telling people that I would be a mother of 5 children as a child because of the certainty that I experienced in those moments, where I did not in any way question or consider any other options, because apparently this is what I had decided I would be and become when I grew up.
I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to ever consider and investigate where this experience of certainty originated from - where it might have been a preprogrammed point, or where it might have been due to the fact that my mother was the main character as example within my world in terms of what adults do in life, and so being a mother was the only thing I really knew about when it comes to adult jobs - but instead sought for a 'sign' or a 'meaning' within the experience, thinking and believing that this was simply my purpose in life and that this is why as a child I experienced this certainty.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to build my life through making decisions based on experiences which I interpret through my mind - which then completely determine the rest of my life - and where I never actually took the time to investigate these experiences so that I was aware/understood what exactly I was basing my decisions on - but in essence, simply trusted my experiences as giving me 'signs of God' - in the same way that I would believe that if I fell head-over-heels for a person, that it was a sign from God or the universe that this is the person I was supposed to be with - never even considering that I might have been the creator of my own experience and that the experience is merely an out-flow/consequence/manifestation of my participation in my own mind.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to judge myself as stupid within the realisation that I have been kidding myself my entire life simply within this one point of accepting my experience as God and defining myself according to the memories of telling people that I would be a mother of 5 children when I grow up, where I took an interpretation for granted - leading me for the rest of my life to believe that I would be a mother and that this was something that would fulfil me in life.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to postpone my self-fulfilment through believing that I will only be fulfilled once I am a mother - where, I missed what was right before me, because I believed I had to wait until being a mother to be able to be fulfilled - and thus, in essence, wasted my life away due to a belief based on an interpretation of my mind.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that if I were to decide not to become a mother, that I would be betraying myself for not fulfilling my destiny.
I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realise that the decision to be/become a mother should never be based on a personal experience as a desire to fulfill oneself, because this is a starting-point of self-interest, where one is expecting of an unborn child to fulfill one's life - when the child was not asked to be born and can certainly not be expected to be someone else's fulfillment - but, instead, the decision to have a child should be based within practical considerations only, where the questions must be asked whether one is able to effectively assist and support a child in this world - and thus, where the focus within the consideration of having a child, must already be the well-being of the child, and not the happiness of the parents.
I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realise that one of the reasons motherhood is mostly not what was expected, is because the decision to have a child was made from a consideration of one's own experiences - whereas the practical reality of living parenthood is entirely focused on the child and not the parent - and thus, one's expectations can never become fulfilled.
I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to ever consider not having children and consider what my life would be like and who I would be if I weren't a mother - because of the self-created belief that I have to attain this point of motherhood in order to fulfill myself, my life, my purpose and my destiny - where I think/believe that motherhood is the last step, the last stage that I must see to achieve and that after that, everything will just be okay, and I will finally be able to feel settled and 'in the right place'.
I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realise that it is nonsensical to attempt to raise a child in terms of what it means to live in this world if I have never even lived for myself, but only ever waited to start my life once I'd become a mother.
To be continued with Self-Corrective Statements.
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This Blog-post is a continuation to Day 81: What to Expect when You're Expecting
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to always romanticise what it would be like to have a child, where within considering what it would be like to have a child, I only ever picture the 'happy' moments of holding a baby sleeping or playing with a child in a park - everything that seems to be fun about having children - and deliberately ignoring all the difficult points in terms of having to take care of a child 24/7, where the child becomes the number one priority of my life and I have barely any time left to do what I'd like to do.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to define pregnancy as a 'deep' spiritual/highly meaningful experience of bliss, where mothers just experience 'love' and intimacy with the unborn child, without ever wondering what the actual, physical, experience is of having a child, which, basically, involves the wrecking of the female body as a parasite grows inside the womb.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create an opinion of what pregnancy should be like and how I should feel about pregnancy and how I should experience it, based on a memory where I told my mother about my French teacher who said that she hated being pregnant and that she never wants to go through it again - to which my mother said 'wat e kieke', which is, loosely-translated from Dutch: 'what a moron' - where, I then created the idea/perception/belief that pregnancy is something you SHOULD enjoy as a mother and that it is unacceptable to acknowledge any unpleasant experiences within it - thinking/believing that that would make me a bad mother.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate in the belief that mothers should only ever love their child and experience love towards their child - and that anything else indicates that the woman is a bad mother.
I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to ever really place myself in the shoes of a mother and looking at what is practically involved in pregnancy and motherhood - and what challenges are involved on both a mental and physical level - as all one's energy and focus is now placed on another being - which is something entirely different from how people generally live their lives, where they only ever take themselves into consideration - and thus, that it is quite a challenge to be a mother in this world, and that it can therefore obviously not just be a blissful experience filled with only an experience of 'love'.
Self-Forgiveness to be continued.
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After listening to the Interview 'A Mother's Love of Guilt' - I realised that I have always romanticised what it would be like to have a child. You always picture those moments of holding a baby sleeping or playing with a child in the park and things like that - you know, the nice stuff. I also recently saw the movie 'What to Expect when You're Expecting' where this one lady was really eager to get pregnant and she was expecting to experience this state of 'bliss' in terms of having this profound connection with the baby and this whole lovey-dovey experience in relation to carrying a child. But then once she gets pregnant, the bliss is nowhere to be found and all there is is physical pain, tiredness, uncomfortableness, emotional turmoil, weird cravings, mood swings, uncontrollable peeing, and so the list goes on.
So - what our expectations are as what we project of pregnancy and motherhood have no connection in any way whatsoever to the reality of living and walking these points in the physical.
It's fascinating - because I've spent time with cihldren for long periods, like on camps, where I'd be responsible for entertaining a group of teenagers for ten days. Or, during the summer working at a daycare, where me and 4 others would be in charge of 30 to 40 toddlers each day. And sure - there was moments where I'd have so much fun with them and absolutely enjoyed their expressions and way of looking at things - but at the end of the day, I was just so fricking glad that I could send them back to their parents, because I was utterly and totally exhausted. So - I've had this practical experience of what it's like to spend a whole day or several days with a child, continuously having to place the child as the number one priority and where I basically have no time for myself, except after the children's bedtime - and yet, my ideas and projections of me having a child of my own don't consider these experiences in any way whatsoever.
I mean, I've even raised baby-chicks in my house - which is this tinly little being that you have to look after all the time. And if you for a moment don't give it the required attention by not feeding it in time or not letting it fall asleep under your shirt, it tweets so loud and continuously that your brain tries to flee from your head. And once they get older and start to want to wander around by themselves, I waddled around after them to clean up their poop from the floor. And when they still got older, I made them diapers, because their shits were now getting so big and frequent that I couldn't keep up. And so, then I was changing diapers every day - which was so not a pleasant experience - I mean, chicken-poo really stinks and I can imagine that baby-poop stinks a thousand times more. AND STILL - when I try to picture what it would be like to have a child, I focus only on that which I think I would enjoy - completely forgetting about the poo-factor and the fact that a baby-human can't walk by itself for a really long time, where you have to carry it around all the time. I mean, what's the deal with that anyways - even a chick can walk after day one!
Anyways... the point is that I'm deliberately ignoring the fact that having a child means to be responsible for the life and well-being of a completely helpless creature. Without me doing my part of taking care of the child 24/7 - the child dies - simple. If ever I thought choice existed - that perception would be completely annihilated when faced with a having a baby.
I don't want to spoil it for you by giving the details - you should really listen to it yourself - but the interview 'A Mother's Love of Guilt' explains very clearly how and why it is that our projections of what we think it will be like to have a child/be a mother never ever matches the actual reality of it. It also explains why mothers often have 'bad'/negative thoughts about their children of wondering if they didn't make a mistake in having a child, or wishing they'd never had kids or thinking they wasted their life in having a child. Obviously, this is a topic no-one speaks about, because the mother doesn't want to be judged as being a bad person or a bad mother. But, I mean - every mother has these thoughts - and it's not that it's a bad thing - but the thing is that mothers don't understand why these thoughts come up - and in listening to this interview, you'll get a clear explanation, which will allow you to understand these experiences and be able to direct them more effectively. So, if you're a mother and you can relate to these experiences - then listening to this interview is a MUST. If you're a mother and you're reading this and you're kind of feeling offended and thinking "no ways - I would never think that - these are lies" - then, by all means, leave this page and move on. Only those mothers who are honest with themselves about their experiences will be able to change them in any case.
To be continued.
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