Shame On You!

I was way ahead of my time! Who knew salty chocolate would become so popular?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Shame is multilayered and multifaceted. It may be aroused by the thoughtless, unfeeling actions of another, or taken on due to a distorted, untruthful view of the self, the world, and reality. It may be instigated by a part of the self that knows better but goes ahead and does something shameful anyway.

It might only show up occasionally, when one is reminded of something one has done, not done, or had done to one. It’s an amorphous, shadowy, dark thing that’s hard to shed, and even harder to reckon with. It’s a bit like wrestling with an invisible opponent, because who can really see it? Except when it shows up, it is largely nonexistent, but say the word, “shame,” and you can feel the red heat of it spreading like wildfire.

In the story I am about to relate, having to do with a death and a chocolate cake, my own actions led me to the awareness of a deeper part of myself, a self I was not fully aware of, a part that apparently wanted me to know of its existence. In deep shame, I discovered something about myself that was shocking, abhorrent, sinful, despicable and mean, the epitome of sinister—all living within me!

Last week I wrote about the thief who lives inside me. It’s funny but I never felt ashamed of her, nor did I suffer shame around her actions. She was pretty straightforward and known, active often enough. I knew of her, the opposite of my good side, as we lived pretty much side by side, navigating life together, making decisions and choices, trying to figure out how we were going to reconcile with each other. The image of a good angel on one shoulder and a bad angel on the other comes to mind, both of whom constantly vie for attention. What I write about today is more covert, darker, hidden in the recesses of my soul.

It was 1966. I was 14. A good family friend had died, a man, an artist whom had taken an interest in me for my artistic abilities. He had a wife and a daughter. The daughter was 13 years older than me and also an artist. I considered her to be a mentor. When I heard that the man had died I was sad and wanted to do something for the family. It was in my nature to be generous and giving to others, in small personal ways, sending letters, making paintings and drawings, giving little handmade gifts.

At the time of the funeral I was visiting my cousin. She and I were not invited to the funeral; no children allowed. It was to be a small affair with the mourners invited to the family home afterwards for refreshments. My aunt, my cousin’s mother, would be going to the funeral and to the gathering afterwards.

I suggested to my cousin that we bake a cake for the gathering. My aunt thought it was a very nice idea and agreed to bring it with her. My cousin didn’t really understand my need to do something for these people whom she had no personal connection with, as I did, but I insisted. I had to do something, and in the end she was willing to join me in the project. So we set about making a cake.

We picked a recipe for a chocolate cake made from scratch. I was in charge of reading the recipe while my cousin got the ingredients together and measured everything into the mixing bowl. Everything was going along well enough as we came to the last ingredient in the recipe.

“¼ cup of salt,” I read to my cousin.

“Are you sure? That sounds like a lot of salt,” she said. I looked again.

“No, that’s right,” I said, “¼ cup of salt.”

“Check again,” she said.

I did. I saw the same thing every time I looked at the list of ingredients in the recipe: ¼ cup of salt.

“Okay,” my cousin said, a little warily, “in it goes, ¼ cup of salt!”

We mixed everything together, poured it into a baking pan, licked the beaters, and gagged! It tasted horrible! Too much salt! I went back to the cookbook, sure I had gotten it right, only to discover that I had read it totally wrong! It actually only called for a ¼ teaspoon of salt! My dyslexia had screwed things up royally.

We didn’t have enough eggs to bake a new cake, nor did we have the time, as my aunt would soon be heading off. We made an executive decision to bake the cake and see if it improved with heat. No deal! What should have been a thick and fluffy Bundt cake came out as flat as a pancake, looking more like a brownie than the grand cake we had envisioned! We debated over whether to cut a piece and taste it to see if it had indeed improved with baking.

“Do you think anyone would notice,” my cousin asked, “if we just cut a little piece?”

“Yes,” I said, “it would spoil the whole cake. We can’t send a cake with a slice taken out of it. Let’s sprinkle it with confectionary sugar and just hope for the best. Maybe no one will notice.”

For good measure, I topped it off with some purple violets, picked from outside the kitchen door, poked into the center of the cake. When we sent it off it looked perfectly fine; though a thin, dense cake, it looked rich and dark.

For the rest of the day my cousin and I were in agony. Though we laughed hysterically and somewhat meanly at the thought of people actually eating it, gagging as we had, we also knew what we had done.

Would they actually serve it? Would anyone eat it? What would they do or say if it turned out to be as bad as we expected it to be? As generous and thoughtful as the gift of a cake had originally been, we knew we had decided to test the fates, that a part of us was willing to risk all for a bad cake!

It did not go well. My aunt returned and confronted us. No one could eat the terrible cake. Did we know we had made a bad cake? We pleaded and pretended ignorance. But we knew what we had done and we also knew we would have to live out the consequences of our decision.

The story of the bad cake did not end there. The widow wrote my cousin and I a note thanking us for sending the cake; it had meant a lot to her that we’d been so thoughtful. She had served it with whipped cream and berries, but no one could eat it. “Was that some kind of joke?” she wrote. When I read her note I could feel her pain. I could see her preparing to serve the cake, all dolled up with cream and berries, triumphantly placing it on the table next to the coffee and tea cups, a nice gift from two sweet young women, and I felt terrible.

I was old enough to know that my actions had hurt a family that was suffering greatly, people I truly liked and admired, people I really did care about. What I had done had put them in an awkward, uncomfortable, if not mortifying position at a time when they were deeply grieving the loss of their beloved husband and father. It was a cruel joke to play on anyone, because the truth was my cousin and I did treat it as a joke, and a very bad one at that.

I don’t think the story went much beyond that small group of people who actually tasted the cake or were present at the cake eating. I have no recollection of being scolded by my parents, as would surely have been the case had they known about it. But I did have to live with what I had done, with the sinister character who lived inside me and did mean things to other people.

As I recapitulate that day, I realize it was mostly my decision to send the cake off, clothed in its beautiful sugar and flowers, like a poison apple looking all shiny and delicious. I truly did want to be generous, but there was another part of me, an imp in me, who was angry for not being invited to the funeral. I understand now how she was compensating for my ego attitude that said I must be gracious and giving when in fact I was really pissed. A year later the same family had a wedding, the daughter got married, and once again, no kids invited. Once again I was pissed, though I did not make another cake!

I came to recognize and know this dark little imp better over the years, as she popped up often enough, a troublemaker, an energetic entity who lived inside me and was daring enough to do some pretty harebrained things. She pushed the envelope on many an occasion, challenging me to go beyond my normally good self, granting many exhilarating experiences in return, those blissful moments of highly intense energy like nothing else in the world, and her voice inside, goading me, saying, “Are you going to do it? Really? Come on, do it! Do it!”

Yikes, the shameful things I have done! And once done there were those deeply embarrassing consequences to contend with as well.

The imp inside me is still active and she can still lead me into bad places and many experiences that I would otherwise avoid. But I am thankful for her now, grateful for how she leads the way into those numinous experiences of joy and excitement, those exhilarating experiences of life that I would otherwise never have had the opportunity to taste. Oh, the lessons I have learned!

And I deal with the consequences of my actions in a more mature way now too, seeing how everything that I do, good and bad, offers something, is part of the whole package of who I am in this lifetime. It’s all  part of the grand unfolding of me and my life, leading me toward the greater fullness of who I really am, both good and bad.

When C. G. Jung had to face the impish side of himself he just allowed himself to cheat! He was known to cheat at all the games he played with his children, and even some adults. He couldn’t help himself!

If you want to achieve any kind of wholeness you really do have to live the fullness that you are!

Recapitulating the shame of it all,

Jan

A blog by Jan Ketchel

Author of The Recapitulation Diaries

Soulbyte for Thursday August 31, 2017

Do what needs to be done with certitude. Hold yourself accountable for the decisions you’ve made and without blame finish unfinished business before it overwhelms you. That which is left undone remains energetically attached to you even though you may not realize this. It is responsible for your moods and tempers, for your tiredness and inactivity, for your cravings and desires. Free yourself of your burdens one at a time by fully confronting them, taking responsibility for them and for getting yourself moving forward in life. It’s never too late to shed the old and begin anew, to get up and get moving in a new direction, with new plans and a new outlook, but you can only do that if you fully release yourself from the old. That’s how you really change, one day at a time, responsibly shedding one old thing and taking on one new thing. Isn’t it time? And don’t forget, you have all the power you need within!

-From the Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Chuck’s Place: Father, Mother & The Road to Maturity

The Archetypes as they might appear…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Father’s sperm sows Mother’s egg. Mother’s body fleshes out Father’s spirit. All human life issues from this primal happening. The basic archetypes of mother and father traverse the full breadth of human life, from creator to created to beloved.

Children first encounter these powerful building blocks of human life in their personal parents who generate, sustain, and protect their lives. Freud enshrined this primal nursery scene of dependence and love upon omnipotent parents as the core playing field of life, such was his conviction of the immutable powers and attraction of one’s family of origin.

Jung went on to demonstrate how the mother and father archetypes are projected beyond parents onto gods, the sun and the moon, kings and queens, presidents, authority figures, friends, lovers and spouses. As children grow, the numinous energy of the mother and father archetypes extend into encounters with people and objects in the world beyond the family crucible.

With the dawning of adolescence and the emergence of sexuality young people begin to experience desires and compulsions that generate fixations of falling in love. The object of these projections, the one wanted, is imbued with the numinous energy and need that harkens back to the primal archetypes of life: Mother and Father.

This numinous energy projected upon a desired other may be experienced as ecstatic bliss, terror, anxiety, paralysis or even aggression, the drive to conquer that which feels too powerful. Way beyond adolescence we may still tremble at making contact or feeling worthy enough to approach the one who embodies the god/goddess energy of these projections.

In ancient times rights of initiation to facilitate an individual’s ability to mature into an adult capable of making contact with a coveted other were commonplace. The Dionysian Mysteries of Ancient Greece and Rome were just one of the many cults serving this function.

In our modern rational world, we no longer value the transformative power nor the necessity of formal initiation rites to facilitate the maturity needed to take on the deeper challenges of meeting and fully connecting with a blessed other. The task of initiation in the modern world takes place in the inner sanctuary of the human psyche and body, often through the guidance and support of a knowledgeable therapist.

The call to initiation is frequently encountered in the anxiety, terror, longing, and excitement—all numinous energy—of a potential relationship. The stages of the initiation process are directed by the problems encountered in approaching a relationship.

Often, the first problem is the power of the projection itself. The desired other may be experienced as a god or goddess whose glow is so powerful that you feel unable to actually look directly into the solar rays experienced as emanating from this human form. Perhaps the heart pounds so hard it can be heard out loud; perhaps the vocal cords seize up, unable to make a sound. These are the presenting problems.

Perhaps this desired person appears in a dream with a loving, welcoming smile and you are drawn into sensuous embrace. Upon awakening you feel warmed, in a state of grace. Perhaps you spend the day immersed in the communion of the dream-memory, generating more and more fantasies of delight. Perhaps this secret romance goes on for weeks, a love affair with an inner god/goddess image in your private world of fantasy.

Suddenly, one night, this dream lover may appear in a new dream with another date. You are no longer desired! The impact: devastation and depression.

What is the lesson here from the god/goddess?

Perhaps you have been lured into the trap of feeling entitled to own this living figure whom you have enslaved in fantasy to attend to your sensual desires. Perhaps the god/goddess is teaching that this is infantile behavior, an adult expecting the one-sided attention appropriate only in the nursery.

Furthermore, the god/goddess may also be pointing out that nothing has really been achieved, as no real or substantial contact has been made with the human being so powerfully pined for.

Another dream may then issue forth that signals you to be a hero, to cross a raging river despite the odds. The prompting of such a dream might be challenging you to be your own hero, to shield your eyes from the overpowering projection of the god/goddess and actually make small talk with the real human person of interest, to go beyond your comfort zone and put it out there.

And so, the initiation proceeds with the waking task to approach the desired one, as well as the private task to cease indulging in infantile fantasy and face the reality that genuine contact with a human being requires getting to know them, in a down-to-earth way.

The various tasks of initiation are many sided and are determined by the specific needs of each individual unique personality. The temples of initiation are alive and active within our own inner beings. We encounter the gods and goddesses of those temples in many of our human relationships.

If we remain uninitiated we will experience ourselves as children, still needing the sustenance and protection of others. This returns us to the vicissitudes of Freud’s Oedipus complex, projected onto our adult relationships, which will continue to present us with all kinds of challenges.

Best to take up the journey of adulthood, launched successfully by an active engagement of ego with the vicissitudes of the primal archetypes that guide us all on the road to maturity.

That’s what it’s all about, folks!

Chuck

A blog by Chuck Ketchel, a man of knowledge; one who knows that he doesn’t know

Soulbyte for Wednesday August 30, 2017

Life asks you to come out and meet it, to make something of it, to begin where you are and create your own life with what is provided; little or much, it doesn’t matter, a bit of soil or a bit of gold, it’s what you make of it that matters. Though great suffering and loss occur during a lifetime the expectation remains the same, to make something of the suffering and the loss, to create anew with what is provided. In the darkest of times there is always a light, even if it is only in your heart. Live a heart-centered life, in both your outer world and your inner world, and embrace that life energy that constantly seeks creation anew. Make heart-centered living your daily practice and live life to the fullest, no matter what has happened or is going to happen.

-From the Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Soulbyte for Tuesday August 29, 2017

Set a goal and walk toward it one step at a time. Remind yourself often that each step itself is part of the process to wholeness. Small though it may seem it carries in it the whole journey, the beginning, the middle, and the end, the way a drop of water contains the whole ocean. One small step opens the door and off you go. When you look back in wonder at how far you have come remember that one small step and know its power, that it’s in you and that you can do it again and again. You can take many journeys in this small way, aware that they are already inside you, waiting for you to take the first step to their unfolding. One small step, it’s just the beginning of the whole adventure. Ready to begin a new journey? One step is all it takes.

-From the Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne