Breaking the skin of the berry

The work I’ve been doing over the last few months has highlighted that I live in this flat world where most feelings of my own are seriously depressed, I feel very little. On the other hand the pain or joy of others I feel intensely whether real people around me, news reports or films and stories. I’m readily moved to tears for others but not myself. Albeit silent shameful tears.

So on the convoluted journey home from the RAM workshop I was mulling over Robert’s often repeated suggestion to get in touch with these feelings, relate to them not from them; break the skin of the berry to get to the juice and wondering…but HOW? How do I do that when I feel so little?

I’m interested in how others have made this break through, broken the skin of self protection to come alive again.

Juliee

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Well, Juliee, y'ave always seemed to have a lot of juice to me… I love how we express ourselves differently in different mediums…. juice might pure drip out of our fingers onto the key board, and then, ahem, we can look up into what appears to be a mundane constriction of the day-to-day.  And being at Robert's workshops are like that too….. berries bursting open here and there, and all so naturally and almost predictably in retrospect…and yet, we are so neatly(or not-so-neatly) packaged up upon arrival and upon return….. 

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Hi Jane

I feel that the things you’re suggesting are one step ahead of where I am, I can’t even feel what it is I need to turn to most of the time. I’ll hold what you say in the wings though, with the practicum coming up I’ve no doubt there’ll be plenty of berry bursting.

Thank you
Juliee

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Hi, Julie!  I can totally relate to what you're talking about, as I've had plenty of experience with it.  I think the best thing to do is to start relating to the flatness itself.  “Start Where You Are,” as Pema Chodron says.  If what's happening is emotional flatness, why not talk to that place inside yourself?  Dialogue with it, observe it, have it speak back to you, get a relationship going with it.  I've found journaling to be a useful medium for this process.  You might find that in the process of  relating to the flatness, the feelings that it's protecting start to become more readily accessible.  But don't go into it with that kind of an agenda, because then you're not really relating to the flatness – you're making small talk with it while waiting for the juice, which then probably won't come.  Developing an acceptance of, curiosity about, and compassion for the flatness is a good way to go, and from there, whatever (if anything) else needs to break out of its skin will be able to emerge in its own way.

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Thanks Tely, I’ll try this. It’s so obvious once you say it.

Juliee

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

I’ve come back to re-read what you Jane, Clare and Tely have written and I have a question (yes another one!!).

I have a horrible sense that I have held back these feelings for so long that when the skin bursts it’s going to be really, really messy, sticky purple juice everywhere, to continue the analogy (which by the way came from a recurring dream weaving its way through all my other dreams on Fri night/Sat morning of the workshop weekend).

So the temptation for me is likely, no definitely, going to be to hold it all in until I’m in a safe environment - with my therapist or on my own. But this seems counter to the idea of relating to the feelings as they arise, just more repression and I still can’t see myself ‘inflicting’ this on others. A simple and ‘untraumatic’ example - I watched an episode of Scrubs last night that was particularly sad; I could have really bawled and sobbed at it, but the kids were there so I didn’t.
It’s one thing to explore this stuff with a therapist or in a workshop but it is the everyday living it that baffles me. How do we /I do that?
Perhaps I’m just pushing too hard, too fast, but again I’d value others’ perspectives on this.

Juliee

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

     Hi Julie,

Yes, my experience a number of years ago when I woke up from my lifetime nightmare, was one of as you describe it so well “ when the skin bursts it’s going to be really, really messy, sticky purple juice everywhere,”  But it doesn’t have to be like that for you.  I had no guidelines or the right support at the time; just scared people who hadn’t a clue what to do with me!! (smile)  I know different now!!

And yes, often when we go on deep exploratory  group weekends, we open up old wounds, and  of course good facilitators  such as Robert and Diane will make sure there is a safe container for these wounds to be healed.  But when the dust settles, and  we go home to our families. we need adequate support for the ongoing process from our therapist, our friend, or even an online support group.

  I believe that when we have a context and see the bigger picture of the profound transformation which is taking place in our lives our ‘adult’ self will do as you have said  “ to hold it all in until I’m in a safe environment - with my therapist or on my own.”

When we are in touch with feelings as they arise, and we are not conscious, we act out on them, or dump them on others,  but when we are aware, we can experience the feelings as they arise, and do a quick check, and if we feel that we might be overwhelmed by them, if necessary remove ourselves to the bathroom, or wherever, and keep them under wrap until such time as we are in the safe environment of our therapist’s space, or with a dear friend.  I have always known, at some level,  when and where it is safe to let go into the feelings;  even with some therapists.    We need to trust our intuition.  We are the good containers. 

For me, during the past 5 weeks, I have been recovering from a virus, and this has brought up early painful feelings for me, and I have managed to ‘hold’ them in around people with whom I don’t feel safe, and later to let them out when `i am alone, with my friend, or with my
 therapist.  I find the shower is a good place to let all the grief out,  (its nice and noisy ) and at the same time, we are in a grounding atmosphere of the running water.

Here is an article written by Sam Turton, on what to do to avoid overwhelm, and I think it is simple and good.



March 4, 2002

On the Edge of the Rabbit Hole

Last week in “The White Rabbit's Tips on Primal,” I gave a perspective on how to focus on discomfort and “go down the hole” in order to get into primal feelings. Unfortunately, there are those who need no help in this regard. They live on the edge of the hole and struggle every day to keep from falling in.

It's exhausting and frightening when you have to work so hard just to cope and get through the day. Sometimes the depression is so heavy you can hardly move. Sometimes the panic is so great you feel your heart will burst. Sometimes the rage is so wild, you're certain you'll run somebody off the road.

When things are that bad, and you have an on-going relationship with a reliable therapist, it is possible to take those feelings to session and express them. If you don't have that opportunity, or your session isn't for a few days, there are two options - have the feelings at home or learn how to “back away from the hole.”

The decision to do the feeling work on your own is a big topic and is something that needs to be worked out between you and your therapist. I do not recommend self-primaling without the supervision of a therapist because, depending on a long list of factors, it may be seriously destructive.

The ability to back away from overwhelming primal feelings is a very useful skill. Traumas are repressed behind psychobiological blocks, or defenses, and their purpose is to keep the painful material from invading working consciousness. Some children are able to create shields that are very effective and allow them to grow into a reasonably functional adult life. Others, due to the nature and severity of their traumas, are not so lucky. Their shields do not work so well, and they feel overwhelmed much of the time.

When we are awake, sensations flood in through our senses. We have the opportunity to respond to the world-as-it-is in ways that are appropriate to what is actually happening. If, however, we are carrying powerful traumatic imprints in our lower brain centers, they can rise into consciousness in fragmented ways and overshadow incoming, present-day sensations. It's similar to getting lost in the “inner” imagery of a daydream. When this happens, what we perceive is a mixture of the “old” imprinted material, and the new sensations - all playing out in the present.

At these times, if you want to suppress the imprinted material, there are a few things you can do:

• Try to see if the situation is really as bad as it feels. Ask someone else for a “reality” check. Then, if you aren't really in danger, repeatedly tell yourself something like this: “Although I feel terrible, I am not actually in danger. It's just an old feeling.”

• Remove yourself from any situation which is too stressful and may be making the feeling worse.

• Know your non-destructive shields and use them. Anything that is distracting or enjoyable will do. You can get busy, watch TV, exercise, go for a walk, listen to music, visit people, talk on the phone, eat favourite foods, tell jokes, read novels, have safe sex, play sports - whatever works and doesn't make matters worse. You are focusing your attention on these things to create a comforting or distracting shield against the rising imprints. By using them, you shift your inner chemistry just as if you were taking valium or some other drug. The benefit over drugs is that you have the option of greater control.

• Focus on mundane things. Washing the dishes, cleaning, organizing, or talking about the weather can get your attention back on the present-day world and away from the painful inner imprints.

• Do expressive, creative things that you love. These favourite activities of yours are what Joseph Campbell called “your bliss.” They can be very healing and supportive.

• Stay out of the dark. Go to bed with a light on. The dark is like a projection screen for our inner world. The light fills us with present-day sensation and can help shift our focus away from the old feelings.

• Breathe slowly and deeply. Painful feelings can cause us to hold our breath. Breathing slowly and easily can calm things down.

• Meditate. If you know a calming, centering meditative form, find a way to use it.

• Be with supportive friends who can let you be you.

Learn the things that work for you and think of them as tools in your emergency first-aid kit. The idea isn't to live this way, but to manage the flow of feelings so that your process can be balanced and not chaotic. If you are struggling to cope and don't have strong shields, it is an important part of the work to reinforce them.

Sometimes the rabbit hole needs a guard rail.

Sam Turton.  www.primalworks.com

Hope something here might help.

Love

Clare

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Julie, I've got two responses to this:

1) Don't assume it's gonna be so messy. That may be a narrative that your fear/ego is creating to help you stall rather than an actual reality. I can't tell you how many times I've heard some variant of, “If I start crying, I'm afraid I won't ever stop.” So far, none of those fears have ever come true. And if it does turn out to be messy, then so be it. Trying to stay totally clean keeps you in that disconnected place. As you continue to grow, you'll get better at riding the waves of your e-motion (energy in motion) and integrating them more smoothly. Experiencing the messiness (if indeed it turns out to be messy) and learning by doing will in itself be the process by which you grow.

2) Don't try to plan too much and figure out in advance what to do and how to do it and what if this-or-that happens. That puts you into a head space, which is something you probably don't need more of, and takes you away from the grappling that is so authentic and that can birth your self-connectedness.

I guess what I'm kind of saying is don't be afraid to throw the baby in the pool and let her figure out how to swim!  I'm almost positive she won't drown!  :-)

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Ha!

As I was posting something yesterday I was thinking “I'm squealing like a stuck pig! just get on with it woman.” :D
You hit the nail on the head.

Juliee

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Hi Juliee,

Thanks for posting this.

I wonder too if you could find a way to connect to those feelings for others, as you.

You are the woman in the news story.
You are the man in the film.

In the moments when those emotions arise for others, tip into your awarness of yourself and see you with/as them.

The ability to relate to yourself might work if you go through what you are already feeling (even if it is directed to the other)

much love!

g

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Yes, because in reality the pain for other is just pain for self in disguise.

Hmm I can see I’m going to have to invest in a few boxes of tissues over the next few weeks - already put a call in to my therapist to set up a meeting!

Juliee

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Bit by bit I’ve been making the connection with past times and realising that the most consistent feeling I’m aware of experiencing in my own right (rather than voyeuristically experiencing that of others) is anxiety; social situations, work situations, family gatherings etc. And that a lot of my closing down is to avoid that anxiety. And for the first time in a very long time I woke yesterday morning and there it was – a huge heavy lump of cold, sharp grasping anxiety, to the centre and slight left of my chest. I reviewed the day ahead of me and there was nothing there to be anxious about, a day of routine tasks and enough time in which to do them.

And I can see that the last 4-5 years, in addition to all the exploration I’ve been doing, have been predominantly about avoiding anxiety, so much so that I’m almost comatose in my ‘self-medication’ (relaxation techniques, meditation, reading, food, alcohol). I can also see a pattern in my constant need to relieve the pain of others – it’s really my own pain, unfelt, that I’m trying to assuage.

So I’m sort of holding that anxiety in a little bubble, I know it’s there, I can still feel it but not going any further into it for the time being.

So my question is how do I take myself gently out of the coma without having to face the full onslaught of crippling anxiety that I used to feel? Or perhaps that can’t be done and I have to just go through the pain but in a controlled way as Clare has described it.

Juliee

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Hi Juliee, within limitations imposed by this impersonal internet format, I'll give you a few guesses from my personal perspective.  My general attitude toward emotions is that they carry vital information about my relation to something, and thus information about some aspect of my self-state, and that they are doorways to regions of myself that, but for stepping through that doorway, remain unintegrated.  Of course, taking the route through one's emotions can feel very uncomfortable, almost like stepping through an electrical field.  But query whether, instead of walking through and feeling, one charts paths around, one thereby becomes less flexible in life (for all that necessary 'walking around') and less vital (because energy is spent keeping energy at bay, a double whammo), with possible ramifications that growth is retarded, ideas 'biased,' etc.

I suspect you'd feel better by feeling the anxiety, the more fully the better.

: )

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Juliee, you might also scroll down a bit in the discussions forum and read the following where Ken Wilber speaks of a general orientation to emotions:

http://pods.gaia.com/robert_augustus_masters/discussions/view/348923

I tend to agree with Ken when he says the feeling contains the gold.  Mind you, I'd qualify some of what he says about voluntariness of feelings.  I think, for instance, feeling the dread of death ain't so voluntary, nor so easily worked through.  But j'digress: it's good to hear a more human side of Ken.  He's a very articulate man.

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Ken was talking more about the feeling of non-differentiated dread that I described to him being the gold, in that it's the key to one's ultimate identity (sez Ken).  I'm not sure if that's the same as what Juliee is describing…it doesn't sound the same to me - pretty interesting stuff in it's own right, for sure.

I'm looking forward to Robert's answer to your question, Juliee.  I relate both to pervasive feelings of anxiety and to a shutting down of feeling.

I like what Robert says at the beginning of Facing the Dragon: Ending Our Suffering by Entering Our Pain:  “Turning toward our pain — our contractedness, our fear, our distress, our numbness, our unhappiness — puts us on the road to authentic happiness.”  It reminds me of something Gangaji said to me; I told her I was willing to experience anything that would come up for me, but I didn't want the experience of resistance  that I was having (at that moment, and frequently) - and she said, “Well, too bad - that's what you're experiencing.”  Ditto for feeling “numb” or “detached.”

More so than in the past, I've become OK with feeling “numb” or “contracted” or “detached” - rather than fighting it or wishing I felt differently.  It seems like some kind of progress…

spiral out,
Arthur

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Hi Arthur

I read that essay just before I went to the workshop and I was convinced I’d asked the question “but how do you know what your dragons are if you’re closed down?”, obviously I didn’t as this thread is another metaphor for aspects of the same issue.

You’re right I’m not talking about existential anxiety (already did that a few years ago - and yes I know - famous last words!! :D) and the stuff you’re talking about Hermes is all well and good - telling us the ‘What’ we’re supposed to be doing (I’ve a book shelf full of that type of writing) what I keep coming back to though is the ‘How’, the nitty gritty of breaking the skin, facing the dragons in the context of everyday life.

The conversations and contributions here are wonderful, lots of practical, dirt-under-the-fingernails, real life ideas and experiences that make Robert’s essay more real for me now.

Thanks to you all
Juliee

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Arthur, I was refering to the general orientation to feelings Ken mentions in his discussion with you, which might be called the Stop-&-Face-It orientation.

This orientation, as Ken suggests, is an essential element of the Tibetan transmutation method to inner states (feeling, affects, orientations), and applies thus, not only to dread, but to anger, anxiety, fear, etc., including feeling-related whole-body states of envy, pride, etc.

My posts to Juliee highlighted this fundamental element of Facing which, really, when you look at it, is a very subtle, complex thing involving awareness, acceptance, focus, attention, honesty (!), courage, etc.

And my reference to Ken's discussion was to highlight that inner states, including feelings—including the feeling of anxiety—are the means by which gold nuggets make their appearance to us.  Integrally (evolutionarily) speaking, a feeling is perhaps but the means by which an integratable inner 'thing' appears—it is an e-motion that, for its part, wants motion—transmutation (-mut = move).  The question becomes: what is that motion?  One answer is: face it and see, just what Tely highlights below.

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Arthur: I relate both to pervasive feelings of anxiety and to a shutting down of feeling.

Yep, me too! And for me that shutting down of feeling extends to both self and others – and it's odd: I know the feelings are there; it's just (usually) difficult for me to feel them.

So, Juliee, I'm grateful for you asking this question, and for the responses people have shared thus far.

Mary

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Speaking of anxiety and shutting down feelings, let me share something that one of my professors taught us in grad school. He said anxiety is running away from feelings, and depression is a shut-down of feelings. In other words, he was saying that anxiety isn't really a feeling per se. Both anxiety and depression are ways of avoiding feelings, but with anxiety, you're still aware of something (some vague, undefined angst, perhaps) looming in the background, whereas with depression, the shut-down is so complete that you don't even have any awareness of that which you're avoiding.

People often use the term “anxiety” to connote a mild and/or undefined fear, and I'm fine with using it that way, too, but the way this professor used it, he wasn't referring to fear. Julie, Arthur, Mary, myself and anyone else here who feels anxious, it would be worth clarifying what exactly “anxious” means to you in order to better work with it.

Regardless, though, the solution is what many of us are suggesting – moving into it (whatever “it” may be presenting itself – anxiety, depression, shut down, fear, flatness) rather than away from it.  Easier said than done, of course.  But if what presents itself is resistance, then so be it – move into that and see what will emerge.

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

This is an excellent clarification, Tely, and answers a question I couldn't quite put into words last night.

I don't experience depression very much, and don't relate to not feeling my feelings as it's been presented by Arthur, Mary and Juliee. But I do have anxiety. It makes more sense to me when you put it this way.

It explains why I “sorta, kinda” relate to what they're saying, but it has a different feel to it.

Liz

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Anxiety for me - as I used to experience it before I learned to anaesthetize myself - was far from mild. It was a gut wrenching fear gripping my intestines. At risk of being too graphic, there was one occasion where I was so scared and rigid that even my vaginal muscles got in on the act, twitching and spasming. I stood there with a fixed smile on my face wondering “Can they all see that?” :D

but again as you say, move into it.

Juliee

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Hi Juliee,

I spent most of my twenties in a flat state, my feelings remote and seemingly inaccesible, my experience of life centered very much in thought. I didn't feel my own feelings much, but could access some emotional aliveness by exposing myself to others' feelings or to stories (movies, novels, songs). It felt so good when the feelings would flow, like the beginning of a great thaw. But most of the time in my day-to-day I was only really alive in the mental body – the physical and emotional were suppressed, beyond my conscious capacity to access at will.

I didn't realize how out of touch I was until I took my first yoga classes; at the end the teacher offered a simple guided meditation scanning the body and relaxing one body part at a time while we lay in savasana. The very first time my attention landed in my body like this, I melted into sobs. This went on during savasana for the next two months or so. It didn't translate into emotional fluidity in the rest of my life at that point… I didn't at that time have the tools or understanding to integrate what was happening, but I knew I'd stumbled into an opening that was profound, and I kept going to class, half dreading and half starved for the release that would inevitably come at the end of each class. Eventually it stopped, and while I was not in any way stabilized in a kind of fluid emotional openness, I had learned that my body was carrying the stuck emotions. And there had been some real healing. The terrain had shifted.

I began to get bodywork when I could afford it, and explicitly sought bodyworkers who were comfortable with emotional release. A couple years after that I found a gifted massage therapist who would end our sessions with an abdominal massage – physically painful for me and frightening, but she had a gift for working right at the appropriate edge, and always then tears would come too, holdings would dissolve, and something significant would shift. Slowly, I began to awaken emotionally. I also began to practice yoga regularly and most often on my own, at home in the evening, realizing that I needed to have a body practice that frequently (if not daily) invited me to become still and then to sensitize my awareness to the nuances of my physical and emotional experience. Sometimes in these practices I would have cathartic release moments; more often I simply grew very very gradually into an opening of bodily awareness.

I found other gifted body workers and also a therapist and therapeutic community that was quite fearless about shadow work and rooted it in cultivation of witness consciousness, another essential piece for me. And finally, I came to see the whole process of embodiment and emotional awakening as an essential part of my path, and my path had come to seem to me to be one of initiation into ever greater awakenings of consciousness.

The process to emotional fluidity was slow for me – more than a decade – but I didn't have a lot of resources financially, and for other inscrutable reasons have been on the slow road to late bloomerness; but I don't think the process needed to be so plodding. And certainly I have witnessed others rip through similar transformations in the course of a year or so.

All that is to say that I think the body is key. Your body will guide you into the opening of emotional flow and awareness of your feelings, if you invite it to, with skilled facilitation.

All the methods used by those who helped me most – the body workers and the therapists and the spiritual mentors – were eclectic, so I don't have particular systems to recommend wholeheartedly. Each of those individuals had developed their own approach, much as Robert and Diane have.

One of the most gifted healers I have worked with is in Portland, Oregon. His name is Todd Jackson, and he does craniosacral therapy along with biodynamic massage and somato-emotional release work. I know that's thousands upon thousands of miles from you, but perhaps his website might provide info that somehow guides you to a practitioner in your area. And I'll offer the information here also for the benefit of anyone who does live in the Pacific Northwest. Here is his website.

I also absolutely love the work of Mary McNab, who does work over the phone. Her work is esoteric and unique; I don't fully understand it. I know she has helped me make some deep shifts. She is a grounded and extremely intuitive guide, deeply gifted in helping you to see the “programming” that's running a particular pattern, and helping to facilitate the dissolving of programs that no longer serve, through bringing them to awareness and “hacking the code”. Fun stuff. She's here. And info about how she works is here.

I also believe that praying/communing with the Source and expressing your intention to get the juice flowing and to open to feeling is important. I ask for whatever I need to support growth and opening and integration to be present, and express my willingness to receive the support and guidance. (It's not about asking God for the red sports car, and knowing it will be provided… it's about recognizing that immense support is there now and that I need to align myself with it. Over and over again. Because there's deep habit and big-time egoic programming pushing another agenda – that of keeping me disconnected and “safe,” secretly intending the perpetuation of the status quo of my current self-sense.)

For me, that experience of feeling for and with others was also a window into owning and embodying my own feelings and juice. Anything that made me feel that fullness of life flowing as an emotional or sensational experience was an opportunity to begin to turn towards my own feelings and bodily experience again.

I think the readiness and desire are key. And remembering that breakthroughs are often sneaky and have their own mysterious timeline. If cathartic release isn't imminent, it doesn't mean important shifts aren't occuring. It may point to ways you have conflicting commitments – one part of you deeply committed to continuing to “feel very little” while another part of you is ready and eager to let that way of being go. Becoming aware of our many (and often conflicting) deep commitments seems essential to any transformational work we are doing, yes?

I hope some of this might be useful to you. Thanks for asking such a juicy question. Thanks for your sincere longing and sharing it with us!

Much love,
Lauren

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

I so want to participate in this discussion, relating to at least one thing that everyone’s posted. These are things that I hadn’t had the sense of self-worth to even allow myself to investigate. The clenching of the teeth, the unexpected tensing up during massage, the overemotionality in regard to others, cathartic release that didn’t seem to matter, generalized anxiety; geez, it just goes on and on. I don’t know if it’s the area I live in, or that I’m still not ready to bring these realizations into the “real” world (a combination of both more than likely); but I so appreciate you all and your willingness to share your experiences in opening these doors. Sounds really sappy, but I don’t feel so alone anymore.
Namaste,
Chris

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Juliee, your question seems to have struck a real chord with people!    Great responses, everyone.  I'm digging this thread.  :)

namaste,
Arthur

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Yes, it is an amazing thread.

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Liz I think we were both typing similar things at the same time there!

Julie

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Right beside you Chris.

Julie x

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Oh Lauren thank you so much for that.

I'm starting the practicum in November and there's an element of bodywork involved there, I also see a Gestalt therapist who I think is doing further training herself on embodiment work linked to early childhood stuff (from what I understood) and I intend to ask her to move more fully into this during our sessions, so far we have stayed largely in the mental (paced to my reality at the time). Where is Portland in relation to Ashland? I could arrange something whilst I'm over there doing the practicum. Having said that - its very odd - I got an email this morning from one of the RAM workshop participants learning the same work as Todd Jackson and asking for people to practise on! I also practise yoga and teach a class, I could certainly introduce a more 'felt' element to what I do and see what happens. The only 'emotional' release I have felt during yoga was doing work with Sofia Diaz last September, tears ran down my face during several of her sessions.
And praying/communing with Source, yes that's where I feel this latest phase of breaking out started, in the early summer attending a Mass celebrating the retirement of a teacher I've worked with. The hymns opened something deep and raw and uncontrollable.

I had the first chance this morning since returning from the workshop to talk to my husband about my work as I see it now. To describe the perspex layer flattening down me and my feelings and that my job now is to lift that perspex and that it might get messy and emotional. I described sitting and holding all that emotion in watching Scrubs and he said “I saw that, saw you trying to control it all. There's no reason you should have do that, you're in your own home.” So next step is to 'warn' the boys, explain why, reassure them I'm not 'hurt' just letting out stuff held down for so long. I suppose it also sets an example for them of a healthier way to be.

So much of what you've written connects. Thank you for helping me see a pattern in my wanderings.

Julie x

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Perspex = plexiglass.

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Juliee, I had been thinking your initial post was a question to Robert, but re-reading it, it actually seems aimed at the sangha-group here.  Did you want me to send it in in the next set of questions?  I haven't sent it in as yet.

Also, you mention practicing and teaching yoga - are you familiar with Bija Bennett's Emotional Yoga?

Emotional Yoga: How the Body Can Heal the Mind, (Simon & Schuster, 2002) is a groundbreaking new book written by Bija Bennett that takes full advantage of the mind-body connection. Based on the principles of Viniyoga, Emotional Yoga is a unique approach that adapts the ancient tools of yoga to the needs of the individual, and integrates diverse practices for self-discovery and personal transformation.

Emotional Yoga offers a broad range of simple mind-body techniques that can positively affect your emotional well-being, including the dynamic interplay of movements, breathing exercises, meditations, lifestyle skills, rituals, gestures, and healing sounds.

Her endorsements page includes this comment by Ken Wilber: “Emotional Yoga…helps you unlock your deepest potential and takes you to higher states of health and well-being.”

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

*Sharp intake of breath*

OMG that is so spooky…you took the thoughts right out of my head…”I wonder…is there such a thing as emotional yoga, if there isn't perhaps I could develop it.”

I'd love to borrow the book  - thank you.

And yes, by all means post it as a question - I get the impression the reply will be of interest to many.

Juliee

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Excellent!  I love synchronicities like that.  :)  Remind me to bring the book or I will likely forget - I'm even more distracted than usual lately, which is saying something!

Here is Robert's answer to your question:

Juliee asked on Oct. 13, 2008: The work I've been doing over the last few months has highlighted that I live in this flat world where most feelings of my own are seriously depressed, I feel very little. On the other hand the pain or joy of others I feel intensely whether real people around me, news reports or films and stories. I'm readily moved to tears for others but not myself. Albeit silent shameful tears.

So on the convoluted journey home from the RAM workshop I was mulling over
Robert's often repeated suggestion to get in touch with these feelings, to relate to them not from them; break the skin of the berry to get to the juice and wondering…but HOW? How do I do that when I feel so little?

I'm interested in how others have made this break through, broken the skin of
self protection to come alive again.

~

Robert Augustus Masters answers:

How do you do this when you feel so little? I suggest that you begin by taking your awareness — which is not so little! — into that little-ness, deep into it, until you are unmistakably feeling it from the inside.

As you do this, hold that little-ness the way you held your children when they were very young. Tenderly, lovingly, securely, steadily. And then, without any hurry, allow that little-ness to have a voice; let it — her — express whatever is there, with words or not. Let her sounds come, and let them come forth more and more fully, without losing any contact with your heart, your belly, your being.

This may be very a quiet process, and it may be a very noisy one, or both. Let it come, let it be birthed. In this you are both midwife and newborn.

- Robert Augustus Masters

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Ha…and there it was..when I feel so little…so small…so inconsequential…so unwanted…as just me.

My parents rang last night, a couple of hours after I meditated on 'feeling so little'. They ring when they want something and every time, every fucking time my father manages to say something that hurts and infuriates me. And this time I really feel it. I'll meditate on that feeling today.

I can feel an explosion brewing. I'm going to write it all down.
And now I'm wondering whether to ring them back and expand on my responses last night or wait until they return to the UK and do it face to face.

Julie

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Good choice, Juliee, I always write it out first. It gives me a chance to really say what I want to say, to really organize it so that it expresses exactly what I want. On occasion, the letter/email even gets sent. More often, it helps me to really focus where my anger is. The side issues and distractions fall away when I write. I can get to the core better than if I'm talking to the person.

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Their love is conditional upon you giving them what they want.

It has always been the case but I'm only now seeing this.

I have a phone call to make to them today.
For six years we have let them live rent free in a house we have for six months of the year.This has allowed them to live their dream of living in France whilst still maintaining a base in the UK. It was always meant to be temporary until my father's pension came through but somehow it has become the 'expected' .They now want to spend more time in France and less in the UK, reducing further any contribution they make (paying council tax and bills when they are there).
The second property was part investment (an alternative to a pension fund for me) and part escape route for my father, who I feared was going to have a breakdown or a heart attack when all this started.
So for a while now my husband has been saying they need to start paying rent, I've resisted, feeling that we could afford it, and it would be wrong to take money off them even though now they probably can afford it but choose to spend their money on other things (won't bore you with the infuriating details).

So now with things getting tight I need to make that call to tell them they need to start paying rent. They rang the other night ostensibly to ask how things were financially for us but in reality to let us know how tight a summer they'd had (bearing in mind the infuriating expenditure I won't bore you with!!!). My father asked 'So how's work for you?' and I said I haven't been doing a lot of paid work (see arpita's narcissistic thread on the questions for Robert board for why - OMG I'm so stuck in self justification mode!!) and his reply with a sneering/pretend joking tone was '”Things can't be that bad then!” It floored me.
I know they just won't be able to understand where I'm coming from, but I'm so mad now that I really don't give a shit. It is not my job to keep them in the manner to which they've become accustomed and I'm only just really accepting that.

Wish me luck.

Julie

Ha, my computer threw a wobbler before I could post this. So I made the phone call.

Liz you said

The side issues and distractions fall away when I write. I can get to the core better than if I'm talking to the person.

Once I got on the phone this is what happened, everything else is irrelevant; they need to pay some rent and start taking responsibility for their life style - they're consummate baby boomers.

Finding my voice - thanks to all of you for your suggestions.

Julie

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

oh, Juliee! 

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Wow, Juliee…and great feedback, Jane. 

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Yes Liz and they treated their parents the same way, one of whom I'm 'responsible' for in their absence here.

I sometimes wonder do they ever consider that I might one day treat them the way they treated (and are still treating) their own parents in their infirmity.

Julie

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

You're right Jane, the only person allowing this to happen is me.

And it isn't just with my parents, like you I'm an inveterate helper and fixer and complier (not a real word I know, but you get my drift!). But I'm getting there.

Julie

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

You and they statements are almost invariably a sign of projection that, when the emotion underlying them is rewritten or restated as “I,” show the very thing one is struggling to strengthen.  Typically what I've found, both in my own experience of “restating” and in watching others, is that the person before me with whom I'm struggling is but mirroring a personal weakness or undevelopment I carry.  Full responsibility for what one is feeling IMO recognizes that any such feeling carries information and energy about myself for my own growth, which energy and information is dissipated the very moment one says “you/they.” The turn inward from “you/they” to “I”—a very difficult process—loosens one from one's environment and holds the real possibility, in and as that loosening, of environmental, me-to-other freedom, aka acceptance: I no longer need you (person, dog, corporation, circumstance) to be anything other than who you are or choose to be.

So, yes, helper, fixer, complier: that be the locus methinks.

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Tom, I like the way that you have phrased this.  

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

In other words, even though I can 'accept you the way you are without being the least bit invested in whether or not you change', I also don't have to choose to accomodate or support 'you'….

Jane you put into words what I was wrestling with in Tom's post.

Julie

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Hi Jane, yes, that's an excellent way to put emotional freedom, which I'm glad you clarified.  It's not about dissociation or isolation, but finding in oneself actual flexibility and freedom to respond however one chooses to.  This freedom—pulling one's power plugs out from others, and putting them into oneself—is a necessary condition of love, IMO.  Interestingly, the etymological root of the word “free” means “to love.”  How profound.

Just to blah blah a little more about these matters, and to bring out a little more your reference to “growing each other up,” I remember reaching a certain realization in my own process regarding my parents that part of what I was asking for—part of what they never gave me dammit—was a form of loving that, so far as I could see, has never existed in my family line.  Of course, a few moments thinking makes quite clear that anything new appearing on the planet must by definition arrive unparented.  So there I sat scratching my head, wondering just how much of what I was wailing over fell into this category of something I knew I needed to bring forth as new.  But the eggshell had by then cracked, so I didn't spend much time on that form of parsing, the important point being that my wailing was in no small measure a form of kicking and screaming against birthing the new—of actually taking the birth pains in my body and experience.  The delay comes in by, for instance, calling folding the energy of that pain into “you should have,” which really amounts to an abortion. 

One is by one's being called to go beyond one's parents, which necessarily will lend to one's feeling about one's parents a sense that, to the extent of having gone beyond them, I become parent in relation to them.  But note that, because going beyond is necessary to evolution, it remains properly my “beyond” such that I do not act to pull my parents into it, though I can, with understanding and respect, offer it.

The same thinking can be applied to that very hot inner spot called, I was never seen.  “I” is by definition individual and particular and never-before-been, a thing that, in its core, can only be self-seen, ie, self-birthed.

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

that part of what I was asking for-part of what they never gave me dammit-was a form of loving that, so far as I could see, has never existed in my family line.  Of course, a few moments thinking makes quite clear that anything new appearing on the planet must by definition arrive unparented.

Of course Tom! I hadn't drawn that thought out quite that far, only to the 'they're repeating their own patterns of upbringing' point.

Julie

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Juliee, it was precisely that point that nagged me and that, when I really gave attention to it and what it implied, I was caught!  Game over!

I then soon saw I couldn't say “you/they,” in that critical, hurt voice, without dissipating the new.  I therefore saw that my own freedom, future and ability to love was at stake in resolving that very point.

Over time, I saw this emerging, non-dissipating orientation generalize, such that I saw myself, with some ease, able to step into each of those areas that, quite in fact, were not parented, and without that charged energy: “those parts should have been parented by them.”  Of course, “should” is a dead giveaway for some or another form of running away from self-dealing.

One more point, none of this should be taken to diminish the necessity of spending time in “they caused it” woundedness.  That, too, is part of the process and IMO should not be seen as illusion.  Birth pains are birth pains.  Full acceptance.

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

That is beautifully expressed Tom and thank you.  When we really get what you are talking about, it seems a great compassion for all the 'not-enoughness' offered up to us by parents, becomes possible when we realize we are on the frontier, on the event horizon, we are the newest thing emerging…..

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Jane, that's it: newest thing emerging, which invites a profound nurturing response.  When I investigated my own experience and saw that each of my childhood wounds was inextricably mixed with that prospective element—the new that was wanting to come forth—that I could not separate wound from birth pain, I had to throw in the towel.  This juncture, for me, represented the beginning of a long, internalizing process, the jewels of which are those precious degrees of freedom and love that emerge along the way.

Interestingly, the word “family” means “familiar,” which contrasts nicely with “new” … the familiar as the crucible for the new, one implying the other.

And there's nothing as natural as family: nature, fr. Indo-European gene-, “to give birth.”

Part of releasing another person in the manner of which you speak, Jane, is the correlative realization that they, and no longer you, are given to live the consequences of their behaviour.  Freedom is self-rewarding, self-justifying, self-satisfying.

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Jane, your way of putting, which I just re-read, is something I've been scratching around for for some time: does my healing depend on anybody else's healing?

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Tom,

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Oops, Jane, I meant to say, yes, “my healing doesn't depend on another's” is just the expression I've been looking for, ie, does my growth depend.  Thank you for that.  And, yes, being around healthy others is growth conducive.

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

does my healing depend on anybody else's healing?

or vice versa?

Whaddaya know! My father rang this morning, they've stepped up to the plate in a quite unexpected way, acknowledging that my call has pushed them to do something they would have had to do at some point, which is make a decision as to which country they will live in and 'own' it for themselves.
So they are going to live in France full time from March next year, leaving all their furniture for us so we can let the house out furnished.

So we're all talking to each other now as adults; just my sister to deal with now and we're going down there this weekend!

Julie

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Hey Julie, wow, great movement!  I've seen that happen more than a few times that, even without face or voice or other tangible contact between people, when one person changes something about their attitude or relation, the other likewise changes.  There must be a vast sea of connections between people we know almost nothing about.

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Way to go, Julie!!!

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:)

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Juliee,

Firstly my experience of you is you are extremely juicy and ready to pop!

The berry no matter how small has a huge power and potential partly due to the “boundary”  of the skin.The berry asks its self how to get to the juice but it already is the juice.
What does the berry do ?it waits and ripens till it is ready and then something /someone comes along and eats it up,enjoys it,it provides them with sustenance ,the seeds pass through the body ,they are shit out and the cycle continues :)
So my question would be who is going to eat you up? and how are they going to enjoy you and what will your seeds create in the future !
just ask your self what is the next step of the juicy journey you dont have to see the whole picture yet - you already know the answer !

I know this isnt what you were asking you were asking about our experiences but i have been thinking about you all week as i had a dream connection with you  that involved a basket of bread and fruit .

I too am loving this thread !

Steve

Re: Breaking the skin of the berry

Hi Steve

I think this is part of the next step of the juicy journey

and I was thinking of you too this week with a joint project in mind if you decide to do the next practicum.

Julie