All posts by Chuck

Chuck’s Place: Strengthening The Present-Adult-Parent Self

Meet present-adult-parent self

The present self is our conscious self, the self we have forged through the years of challenge of life thus far lived. The present self is an evolving self, a self that grows as it forms relationships with parts of the self that live outside of consciousness and as it integrates long forgotten or stored away parts of life experiences into consciousness. The present self also grows as it takes in knowledge and experience from the outside world that broadens its ability to navigate life.

The present self is therefore our most adult self, the most grown-up part of our self. This is also our true parent self, the self we trust to keep us safe and secure, and to make the myriad of decisions that guide our actions each day.

The present self is essential to recapitulation. When life events trigger the surfacing of traumatic material, it is the present self that must take up the challenge. Very often the triggered material is extremely emotionally charged, threatening to overtake our calm, our focus, and our ability to stay present and in control. When triggered, we might become overwhelmed by debilitating psychosomatic symptoms, like extreme pain. We might suddenly find ourselves outside our bodies, viewing life at a great distance. We might also become overwhelmed with nausea, dizziness, and the growing feeling of disintegration.

The ultimate goal in recapitulation is to fully relive an experience with the full presence and attunement of the present self. This ability to remain fully present through an experience that once overpowered and fragmented the psyche is a major step toward stripping the experience of its disruptive power and beginning a process of integration that eventually renders the experience emotionally neutral, becoming a significant but now non-disruptive fact of life lived.

During the recapitulation process, the present self becomes the parent we never had, the one that can hear and feel the complete truth without judgment, as we identify and release our myriad of feelings frozen in the memory. Our grown-up, adult self helps us sort through our confusions as we continue to unravel what really happened in the incident under experience.

The key to this healing process is not recovering lost memory. Memories will come of their own accord, either through triggers or intent. The most important factor in recapitulation is the ability and strength of the present self to stay present and receive the emotionally charged lost memory as it arrives. For this, we absolutely need our present self to be the adult, the parent we can trust to see us through the journey of recapitulation and recovery.

Centering

We strengthen the present self through mindful practice. Mindfulness asks us to gently and persistently practice centering and returning our awareness to our place of inner calm. That place is unique to each person. For some it may be in the heart center, for others in the feet, and for still others in the vibratory sounds in the ears. Some find that calm in their breathing, others in images of safe places or in mantras and prayer. Mindfulness practice asks that we train our awareness to increasingly find its way back to our calm center as we navigate through all the events of daily life, whether taking a shower, walking, driving, eating, working, sleeping, sitting alone or in company.

Constantly, but calmly and gently, we notice where our awareness has strayed. We acknowledge what it has landed on, and push nothing away, but neither do we attach or continue to freely associate. Instead, we gently return our awareness to our calm center and engage in calmness. And, in so doing, we strengthen our ability to find home base again and again.

By constantly anchoring in calmness we develop and strengthen the ability to stay present and observant, to feel but not be submerged when infinity decides its time to present us with a golden moment of recapitulation, asking us to retrieve and free another lost part of ourselves. Though dizziness, disorientation, and emotional tsunamis may ride in on its wake, our present-adult-parent self remains fully present and attuned, tracking the unfolding storm like a keen observer, seeing the fuller picture for the first time. The present self stands by the younger self, modeling the ability to bear the full intensity of the recapitulation experience, as the fears and anxieties that have held revelations in check are dismantled and the truth is revealed.

In full awareness, the present-adult-parent self, well trained for just this moment, listens and clarifies for the younger self all its confusions about what really happened and why. Clarity brings understanding, as shame and blame are replaced by acceptance of the massive challenge once encountered by the younger self. This is what happens during a recapitulation experience when the formerly frozen, split-off younger self is securely welcomed into the arms of the evolving present self, released now to enjoy a fuller, more complete life.

Mindfully view, listen and clarify

Mindful practice is an ongoing practice that is available to the present self at any moment of the day. We needn’t wait to set time aside to practice, though that kind of discipline is also valuable training. However, for all practical purposes, we can practice mindfully throughout the day by simply bringing our awareness to our calm center over and over again.

Each morning as we arise, we might pause and ground ourselves before we start our day. As we go about our morning ablutions, eat our breakfast, plan our agenda, go into our work day, make decisions, daydream, ruminate, obsess, we might suddenly become aware of where our awareness has strayed, gently acknowledge it, and invite it back into our calm center, even if only for a moment. This is mindful practice. Each time we do this throughout our day, we strengthen our present-adult-parent awareness. Eventually, seemingly without effort, we find it fully present and ready for its encounters with infinity, as it comes beckoning us into recapitulation and evolution, enticing us always toward greater wholeness.

From that calm center,

Chuck

Chuck’s Place: Thoughts about Shame

The gift of the movie Shame is the clear and brutal exposition of a path deeply hidden yet commonly taken, the path of sexual addiction.

At its heart, sexual addiction shares with all addictions the expropriation of an instinct, in this case the sexual instinct. Other addictions, such as food and chemical dependency, are more associated with the hunger instinct. Addiction numbs, soothes and keeps at bay the underlying challenges of self-knowledge, self-acceptance, integration, and true intimacy.

The sexual instinct, fully wrestled with and realized in maturity, brings in its wake bonding, union, love and new life. In addiction the sexual instinct is choked into compulsive release, offering little more than deepening alienation under the ever-present shadow of death.

Choked in shame!

The storyline of the movie gives us little history, but enough to know that life lived must be kept at bay, frozen and unprocessed. Human contact—seemingly at its most intimate in the sexual act—must be completely devoid of connection and feeling. Sex is completely severed from even a hint of love. The slightest hint of feeling renders the phallus flaccid, plunged into yet deeper shame.

And with shame comes the opportunity to be with the pain, to find the tearful circuits to emotional release, to begin to melt the frozen islands of fragmented self. But, as with all paths, sometimes the shock and pain of knowing the truth, and feeling it fully, sends us back into addictive behaviors and release, the wheel of groundhog days. Though this repetitive cycle appears to offer little resolution, in actuality, it allows us to engage in a truly instinctual/spiritual process, as we return to accrue more energy in the form of frustration and discontent, energy that one day will help us awaken and realize that we no longer need to stay on that wheel. We are fully prepared then to step beyond the path of shame into deeper connection and fulfillment.

The movie leaves us hanging, in an unresolved land with some painful truths revealed and many still deeply hidden. It leaves us uncomfortable, confronted with accepting the fact that we all face addiction of some sort in our lives, as well as some sort of shame.

Though addiction comes in many guises, at its core it nonetheless asks us to face the same things within ourselves as the protagonist in Shame is asked to face within himself: the uncomfortable truth.

Can we enter that land of truth? What do we stay addicted to that keeps us from not only facing our deepest pain but from going deeper into where it is instinctually guiding us? Can we allow ourselves to accept that in facing our truths we really will step onto a path of change? Can we bear the tension of that journey of change that seeks to lead us to true union?

Jan: Self-portrait at age 18—still asked by spirit to face truths in the light of day

Lift the veil of shame and see what’s beneath it. The ultimate realization is that we’re all on the same path; we’re all beings on our way to dying. Choosing addictions equals choosing attachments. How long do we really need to hold onto them? How long do we need to keep at bay the real truths of who we are, the truths of our lives lived and the truth of our lives yet to be lived? Can we stay open to our fullest potential—fulfillment in a life we can’t hold onto anyway? Because we do have to die.

The real question is: How do we want to live?

And the real crux of sex and love is: Can we allow ourselves to fully open to love in a life that will one day end? Can we join the spirit of love and fully merge with another human being? Can we love someone who may leave us and someone who surely is going to die? If love is spirit and sex is matter—which is transitory—can we allow ourselves to drop all addictions and attachments, and all our shame too, and truly merge the two?

Full union of spirit and matter is letting love in. There is no shame in that.

Chuck, with love and thanks for some expert editing by Jan.

Chuck’s Place: Crossing the Bryant Park Bridge

I awaken from a dream crossing and can’t wait to ask Jan if there is in fact, somewhere in Brooklyn, a bridge called the Bryant Park Bridge. “Does it exist?” I ask, as I tell her my dream of crossing into New York City on a bridge of this name. She smiles, reminding me of the main library at Bryant Park in the heart of Manhattan. And then I get it, my dream bridge was the crossing to true knowledge, only to be obtained by daring to pass beyond the massive stone lions guarding its entrance.

We are all challenged to pass by the lions at the gate of true knowledge at some point in our lives...

We cross the ethereal Bryant Park Bridge whenever we allow ourselves deeper knowing of our multifaceted selves. The lions at the gates of each facet of true knowledge generate the emotional fires we must encounter, the proving grounds we must traverse to reach the truth at the heart of ourselves. Bearing that emotional energy, those fires of intensity, absolutely requires that our adult selves, our present selves, be fully present and aware.

We have long prepared for this encounter with the lions at the gate, as we have managed life across the bridge, back in Brooklyn so to speak—as in my dream—for decades. As adults we may finally find ourselves ready and willing to step into the fires, to withstand the tension, to breathe and release its bottled energy. Eventually, as the smoke fully clears, we are able to recover all the jewels, the diamonds of self awaiting discovery and recovery in the ashes.

Sometimes those fires that we must face are the feelings that were dissociated, cut off and walled off at the direction of the higher self to protect a younger, fledgling self from the shock of innocence interrupted.

The fires are always burning, awaiting our attention...

Sometimes those fires are the actual emotions and physical torments endured and, again, stored at the direction of the higher self whose sole concern is survival in the moment. This higher self is perfectly capable of discerning the capacity of the growing self to integrate, to fully know its experiences, and continue to grow. But it also knows that some things must wait until later, until another decade perhaps, when an older self has gathered the stability and readiness to withstand and release the energy of bottled emotion, finally ready to recover the innocent jewel of a waiting self.

Sometimes the fires to be encountered are the fires of judgment, shame, and blame that cast the self into hiding. Here the mature self enters that darkened courtroom and stands firmly with the sentenced younger self and, bearing all the feelings evoked by the judgments, allows the full truths to be revealed in the light of day. Those old judgments, fully revealed and fully felt, eventually lose their energy. This is the way to suspending judgment.

In the end, life lived becomes just that: the full truths of a life lived. Then we are freed to meet the living self that has stood waiting behind it all, anxiously and tenderly awaiting the moment of new life, in the library of true knowledge on the other side of the ethereal Bryant Park Bridge. This self has waited patiently for this moment, to be finally received as a genuine facet of the true diamond self.

Who knows when the Bryant Park Bridge will appear?

We accrue new facets of our diamond selves each time we dare to cross the ethereal Bryant Park Bridge, the bridge that appears when the triggers and synchronicities come to lead us into fuller recapitulation of our true selves.

When that bridge does finally appear and beckon us to cross, it is telling us that we, as adults, are ready to pass through the lions proving ground and pick up the treasures of knowledge that lie waiting. That is, the knowledge of our true selves, ready now to enter into new life…on the other side of the bridge.

At the library,
Chuck

Chuck’s Place: Here Comes The Judge

Sigmund Freud called the judge the Superego. For Freud, the superego is an amalgam of the significant authority figures in our early life—taken in, internalized as an active life force inside the psyche of every human being. The superego becomes the architect and active judging force that structures our experiences of right and wrong, good and bad. This judging function has its origins outside the human psyche—it is a Not I—yet, it is taken in and experienced as a formidable character, incessantly controlling and shaping the I of everyday life.

The Shamans of Ancient Mexico saw the Mind itself as the judge, an internalized entity of extraneous origin. Like Freud’s superego, those shamans see the mind as largely shaped by the socialization each human being undergoes from the moment of entry into this world.

Socialization formats perception into a uniform interpretation system. The mind shapes reality. The mind tells us what is real and dismisses, as fanciful illusion or imagination, all experience that does not fit its precepts. The mind acts quickly to reshape and dismiss any perception that defies its definitions of real and possible. In fact, the mind acts so rapidly to forget irrational experience that we are left helpless in its wake. How quickly we forget the experience of the dream upon awakening.

How dare you enter here!

The mind is actually a massive gargoyle that guards, through terror, the entry to the library of true knowing and seeing. Let he and she that transgress beyond its menacing countenance be forewarned: You are on your own! When you suspend the judge, you enter the theatre of the truly real. For the ancient shamans, the theatre of the real is interconnected energy as it flows in the universe.

I stepped out of my office on Tuesday night and into a dream. Almost immediately, a gargoyle appeared out of nowhere and embraced me, seeking my attention. I was caught off-guard by an onslaught of unrelenting intensity; the gargoyle in my face momentarily distracting me. The clock was ticking. I was aware, in some vague, deep place that I was on a mission. I had to gather my energy and maintain my focus. I stepped beyond the gargoyle.

For ten years now, I have not been able to fully recapitulate all that I experienced at the moment of Jeanne’s death. Others have dreamed that dream and reported it to me to jostle my awakening, but thus far my memory of that magical moment remains quite edited. On Tuesday night, I made the decision to go to the hospital to be with Jan. I made the decision to fully show up for death, the most meaningful encounter in life—to see what happens.

I exit the highway at the wrong Rinaldi Blvd. and enter the twilight zone. It’s dark, one way streets to nowhere appear. I’m caught in a maze with no reentry to the highway. I feel the clock ticking. I steady myself, drive the wrong way down a one-way street onto other streets that seem to lead back the way I’d come. Suddenly, I’m in the heart of Poughkeepsie and a sign appears: Rt. 9 South. Okay, let’s do it again!

This time, I exit properly and trace my way to the parking garage at the hospital. I’m met by a powerful river of cars and humanity moving in the opposite direction. I’m swimming upstream, against the current. Visiting hours are over. Will getting in pose a problem?

I enter a dimly lit, quiet lobby and proceed to the desk. Immediately a commotion breaks the silence. Gargoyle #2 is raging. His face is elongated, distorted, his eyes bulging. He cursingly demands drugs for his girlfriend, in pain, “improperly treated in Emergency!” he screamingly exclaims. The security guards and welcoming woman are pensive, seeking clarity, seeking to restore calm, unsure of his next move, seeking to avoid an explosion of lethality.

I remain completely calm. I give him no energy, simply stand quietly, awaiting my turn. Eventually, others engage the gargoyle and the shaken clerk at the desk informs me that, although visiting hours are over, she’s sure I can go up for a few minutes. A phone call is made; a pass issued.

As I get off the elevator, the sign for room 350 points to the left. I walk into a quiet dark area—Orthopedics. Something is not right.

I return to the elevator. The sign now points in the opposite direction. Though I now walk right past the room and must retrace my steps, I finally arrive.

Jan sees me. She is aglow, staring at me as if she has never seen me before.

“Oh my God! Look at you! You’re so young!”

I look back at her and think, “Her energy is amazing!”

We adjust our chairs and calmly await the miraculous. No words are needed.

I carefully listen to the breathing: I know how that works. My attention keeps being drawn to the feet: waving, jostling energy. Each time it happens, my mind wakes up and examines: “No. No movement, no activity,” it states. My perception is cursorily dismissed; my dream forgotten. But, it keeps happening! And each time the alerted mind steps in, reexamines and reaffirms its precepts: “This can’t be happening! Look again, there is no activity, only complete stillness, as expected.”

Soon enough, the final breath comes. Jan and I sit in total calmness, immediately recapitulating our shared experience of the energy body as it exited. The miraculous had occurred!

Carlos Castaneda once wrote that when he finally was able to see energy, he was amazed at the realization that we see energy all the time as it flows in the universe. But then—here comes the judge! And we remember only what it tells us “really” happened, as it rationally dismisses the magic of the real dream.

The mind persists in a steady effort to restore order, dismissing and forgetting what we really see all the time. It’s only through persistent recapitulation that we are able to change the mind, or, in reality, relativize its dominance.

The dream continues,
Chuck

See also Jan’s blog: A Clandestine Meeting, published earlier this week.

Chuck’s Place: Letting Go—Being With Without Grasping

Can we release the diamond in the mine?

Anything we hold within, beyond our knowing, we grasp at in unawareness. Our bodies cling to our secrets in symptoms and disease, seeking release in awakening awareness.

Letting go is actually letting ourselves fully know—all there is to know—to release all restrictions to the truth and let it be revealed.

To be in the full presence of the truth, to feel the full emotional experience of terror, fear, powerlessness, loss, abandonment, betrayal, hatred, and even love—the full multifaceted diamond of a life experience—is the heart of letting go. That is, letting go of the body’s need to grasp all that we couldn’t know is at the heart of freedom.

In the knowing, we are free to release the emotional energy the body once grasped at. Drained of its energy, we find ourselves fully present with fact—just the truth of what was once so viscerally true but now no longer holds emotional charge.

Sometimes we grasp at illusions to shield us from the impact of life’s inevitable changes: the loss of a loved one, the end of a relationship, the end of love. To allow ourselves to calmly be in the full presence of such truth, to feel what is or was without needing it to be anything other than what it is or was, is releasing the self from grasping that which is no more, self now freed to be fully present with the truth, freed to move on to new life.

At the heart of it all, can I let go?

Can I let myself know the full truths of self and other, and all we’ve done together? Can I be in the full presence of all that I truly feel? Can we pass each other, encounter each other, acknowledge each other, without familiarity, without grasping? Can we walk past each other, simply beings who shared a past, perhaps profoundly so but now totally freed, our energy now retrieved, fully available to new life in the full presence of life lived and unfolding life, without grasping? This is the essence of letting go.

Without grasping,
Chuck