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  WH : Integral Instigator

John Welwood: Wound of the Heart

WH said Jun 29, 2006, 2:31 PM:
 

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If we take an honest look within, we may notice a certain guardedness around our heart. For some people, this is a thick, impenetrable barricade For others, it is a thinner, subtler protective shield or contraction that only emerges under threatening conditions. And nothing triggers this sense of threat so strongly as the suspicion discussed earlier: that we are not truly loved or acceptable as we are. Numbing or shutting down the heart is an attempt to deflect the pain of that.

Not knowing that we can be loved for who we are prevents us from trusting in love itself, and this in turn causes us to turn away from life and doubt its benevolence. We may tell ourselves that love is not really available. But the deeper truth is that we don't entirely trust it, and therefore have a hard time fully opening to it or letting it all the way into us. This disconnects us from our own heart, exacerbating our sense of love's scarcity.
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This whole pattern – not knowing we're loved as we are, then numbing our heart to ward off this pain, thereby shutting down the pathways through which love can flow into and through us – is the wound of the heart. Although this love-wound grows out of childhood conditioning, it becomes in time a much larger spiritual problem – a disconnection from the loving openness that is our very nature.

This universal human wound shows up in the body as emptiness, anxiety, trauma, or depression, and in relationships as the mood of unlove, with its attendant insecurity, guardedness, mistrust, and resentment. And all relationship problems follow from there.

~ John Welwood, Perfect love, Imperfect Relationships
 
What do you all think of this? Do any of you feel like this is something that impacts your life or your relationships? How have you worked with this feeling? Or have you avoided it, and at what cost?
 
I think Welwood is onto something big here, and I would like to hear what the rest of think about this in your own lives. 
  Whitewave : Into the Shadow...

Re: John Welwood: Wound of the Heart

Whitewave said Jul 1, 2006, 2:23 AM:
 

Yes, I've heard about this from Gafni.  There seems to be some Khabbalistic lore about this idea.  It makes for really great Theology.  And also really great theories on sex.  There's those two things connecting up together again…

Revisiting the wound and the wounding.  And, lo, and behold, another famous fight scene!  “Fight Club”!  Well, most of the fight scenes in that movie are about this, but in particular Tyler giving himself to Lou - completely understanding how bankrupt Lou really is when it comes to feeling connected, loved, safe. 

And I think there is another one too in “The Last Samurai” when the soldier in charge of the horrible task of erradicating the Samurai is following through and his entire countenance is writhing in covetousness for the honorable death of his final “foe”.  He is completely in love with what this man is all about and would be blessed by the gods if  killed by him.  The contrast between the code of honor that the Samurai had been holding and the modern war machine was so stark!  Even when dealing out death, it was much closer to respect and love than most of what was called “love”, and it actually counted the full value of a man's life, which in a Patriarchal society is HUGE!  The intimacy in that fight is much deeper than most sex ever gets.

Yes, I like movies.  They put the elements of our story in sharp focus.  I, for one, am very familiar with the experience of the wound from a woman's pov.  Movies help me see what it might be from a man's pov, since most men won't discuss such things with me or with women in general.  Together they make up the Human Wound. 

Personally, I experience it during sex most vividly, but any and all sexual conduct or behavior is primarily contexted by this wound.  Being objectified is a terrible, terrible thing.  Endless jokes are made about it on television and media, it is the ace in the hole of all advertizing, it must be endured if one wants to have any human contact on this planet at all - but make no mistake: It is the cessation of loving connection, concern, empathy and reverence.  Where there is no traction, there is no power.  Freeing ourselves from the power of one another was not all it was cracked up to be.  I am no longer respected as an awesome power.  I am merely consumed as entertainment.  Risking sexual contact in that kind of climate can be a game of “How numb do I wanna be?” 

I'm not saying that this is how I experience sex all the time (it actually occurs about 97% of the time), but I'm emphasizing a normally unspoken pov of how I think that wound is experienced for women.  It is not necessary to comfort me personally about this.  It is more important to be mindful of the experience of the wound for all women.

“Bless all forms of intelligent life.”

~Ww