Seeing Patterns

I spoke to a good friend, S., last night. She has been in love with someone for three years but cannot be with him, even though he lives near to her. I know her well, and I know that when she was two years old she was sent to live away from her parents and  that hurt her a lot.
We chatted on the phone for a long time, and what emerged was her loneliness, and her feelings of isolation.

I can relate. I went though a long healing journey, and I had to get down deep into my unconscious to find the roots of my isolation. For a long while, I was happy to be self contained, and happy to be an island, and thats just how I was. Gradually, it dawned on me that I desired love, and that everyone naturally desires to love and be loved, and I started to search for the root causes of my disconnection.

At first, I tried to use my mind and do it rationally, trying to understand. That didnt work. I tried to get relationships and for whatever reason, they didnt last. Eventually, using awareness of my feeling states of loneliness and longing, I felt my way to the roots of my isolation, and it became clear that early childhood experiences had lead to a feeling of not being loved.

I carried the script that I was unlovable for a long time, and it played out in how I kept myself isolated. Until I could get to the root cause, any positive affirmation or action I took was almost certain to fail, as I was unaware of how my deeper game of 'not being loved' was playing out. INcreasingly, I find that if I can let go of my limitations, then my natural desires carry my forward into creating the life I want. The key, is that I have to find and release my limitations first, (in other words, I have to heal), before I can create.

So, I was thinking of S., again. Knowing what I know now, what are some tools she can use to explore her situation.

The first is to use non-conceptual awareness to stay with feelings and explore them. This simply means to just feel without getting lost in thinking about the feeling, or without judging the feeling or pushing it away. Simply stay with the feeling, notice where it is in the body, name it, and then, all the while staying with it, become deeply curious about it. If you can stay present and stay curious (this may take hours or days or several attempts) eventually the root cause will reveal itself.

The second method is to look at her situation as if from an outside perspective. The game has someone who deeply longs for love, yet is frustrated in that longing. Its conveniant that situations appear to be in place that keep her frustrated, and she doesnt know how to get out of this. So, what deep beliefs would someone need to hold, to have the experience of longing from the depths of their soul for love, yet being denied that love? It would need to be a belief of 'not being worthy of love, or not being allowed love' or something like that. Its interesting that in the situation she told me, she wants to love but he wont give it to her. So, there is a projected other who has the power to give or take or bestow love.

Once the play, or game, is seen, then it may be traced back (out of interest, but not necesarry) to early family dynamics or ther powerful emotional experiences. Did S. really want love but the family didnt give it? Once the game is seen, it can start to be transcended. This is not easy. and some of my early scripts of longing for love but being frustrated were very painful to move through. as there was also a lot of associated and unresolved hurt and anger from being denied that which I longed for. Still. a useful place to start is to 3-2-1 Shadow work to start to take ownership of the qualities which are seen in the other.

The process is simply to imagine facing and speaking to the imagined other from the heart, as openly and truthfully as possible, and then being the other, speaking from their perspective and fully and emotionally as possible, and doing this, the projection can be reclaimed.


Its difficult work. yet liberating.

love
Bruce