Last Sunday, a female pheasant flew into our yard and began eating the seeds on the ground, fallen there from the bird feeders we have hanging in a tree. We noticed her limping and detected an injured foot, though her wings were intact and she flew just fine. She has since stayed.
We see her every morning, as she comes out from wherever she spends the cold nights to eat her fill. There is plenty of seed on the ground, a thick carpet, tossed there by the smaller birds as they perch and peck at the feeders. The larger birds take advantage of this arrangement. Everyone is happy.
Carlos Castaneda once moved a small snail from a sidewalk and put it into the bushes on the opposite side, fearing that the snail would be crushed by someone inadvertently stepping on it, but he learned something new from his teacher that day. Here is what he wrote about the incident in The Second Ring of Power:
“Don Juan pointed out that my assumption was a careless one, because I had not taken into consideration two important possibilities. One was that the snail might have been escaping a sure death by poison under the leaves of the vine, and the other possibility was that the snail had enough personal power to cross the sidewalk. By interfering I had not saved the snail but only made it lose whatever it had so painfully gained.”
And so, taking such insight into consideration, we have chosen not to interfere with the pheasant. We have learned that it is better to let nature take its course unimpeded by human intervention. Of course there are always exceptions to the rule, but we have also learned that no matter what we do to help someone or something, in the end we really have little impact. We know that everyone will do what they want and what they are ready for, no matter how ardent, concerned, and loving our help or suggestions might be. We have experienced this often enough both personally and professionally. When people are ready, they will take the journey that is right for them to take.
So we watch the little pheasant with fascination, for her intrepid spirit, marveling that she found her way to our yard, and of course, wondering what it might mean for us personally. How could we not?
She offers us pause to consider other times when we have been put in similar positions, when the unexpected arrives on our doorstep, unbidden. Life is full of surprises. We get news of something, we get asked to do something, we get offered something. We must make conscious decisions.
Everybody’s happy with the arrangement… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Sometimes decisions come spontaneously, and whether they are right or wrong we act instinctively. At other times a decision does not come so quickly and we must ponder why. We must ask: What is the right decision to make and why is it right? Who will benefit or not, and to what end?
We are loving and compassionate people, but we also know that everyone has a journey to take, and that each person’s journey is unique and special. We know that each person must learn to make choices and decisions for themselves, that they will learn about life in both their successes and failures. Sometimes it is right to help; sometimes it is best to step out of the way. The decision to help and the decision to step out of the way are each difficult to make. Based on each circumstance, what we elect to do for another may propel them forward or keep them stuck. We want everyone to access the limitless resources within themselves and often the best way to do that is to step out of the way.
And so we watch our little pheasant with sheer pleasure. How resourceful she is! The cats that roam the neighborhood are no match for her. She is alert and quick. She flies up into the trees when danger approaches, fully capable of taking care of herself. She takes advantage of the sunny spots during the day. We see her sitting up against the warm brick front of the house, safely tucked behind the wall of snow that has formed over the past week by the gusty winds. She is, after all, a creature of nature and is instinctively drawn to the healing power of the sun.
She must be getting enough food. And although we give her nothing more than we give to the other birds we do send her our energetic intent. We send her our full energetic support as she takes her own journey. The outcome is up to her. We do not judge her choices; after all, she landed on our doorstep, and so we thank her for coming into our life, offering us the opportunity to observe her and to search for meaning in her visitation.
Synchronistically, and so not surprisingly, we find that we have been offered many opportunities over the past week to make some meaningful decisions. Is it time to help, or time to step out of the way?
Sometimes helping another living being means standing back and letting them take the next leg of their journey on their own. This might be the hardest choice we ever make. But we can send them off with loving energetic encouragement and good wishes that they make mature and reasonable decisions that will lead them beyond mere survival to new stages of evolution.
Basking in some rays… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
At some point we all have to choose a path, and so we fully support everyone’s search for meaning and for their own path of heart. Sometimes it’s enough to say: “Go ahead, you can do it! You’re on your own now! Good luck! Life is waiting to receive you!”
Letting nature takes its course without interference, but with compassionate detachment, Jan
Incredible lightness of being… waiting to be freed… – Photo by Chuck Ketchel
If we understand karma to be unfinished business, that which grounds our flight, then we can understand detachment as the necessary tool to free our incredible lightness of being to find fulfillment in this life and beyond. Detachment unhitches us from the energetic drains that keep us tied to people and situations that impede our freedom. Energetic drains take the form of intense emotional attachments, be they fear and hate or, quite the opposite, unrequited love. Either way, attachments keep us tethered, and, until released, we cannot journey deeper into life.
But what are the nuts and bolts of detachment? Often enough, Jan and I write about the formal process of recapitulation to free and reclaim all the entangled energy knotted in the lives we’ve lived. Love and laughter are tools at the heart of the recapitulation journey.
Prior to his assassination, Gandhi had expressed, “Even if I am killed, I will not give up repeating the names Ram and Rahim, which mean to me the same God. With these names on my lips, I will die cheerfully.” He also said, “If I am to die by the bullet of a madman, I must do so smiling. There must be no anger within me. God must be in my heart and on my lips.”
Rahim also means compassion. When Gandhi was actually assassinated, he raised his hands in front of him, in a common gesture of greeting to his assassin. And he did call out to God, according to some accounts, speaking the words “Ram, Ram.” In speaking these words, and with this final gesture, Gandhi forgave his assassin, leaving this world completely untethered to what his assassin had done to him, but also thanking the man for delivering him to the next stop on his journey.
Jesus similarly cried out to God while on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” He also left this world completely untethered to his accusers, who delivered him to his future.
From wherever we come, we land; we move into life on this earth. It’s where we are now. If we turn around we turn to stone and can move no further, according to a common concept. Recapitulation, however, requires us to turn around, but with the intent of removing all the energetic strings that keep us bound in regret, anger, sadness, longing, and hate. In retrieving these energetic strings of self, we can turn to the unfolding awesomeness of continuing our journey untethered.
Buddhist wisdom guides all who leave this world to glance only briefly at the bardos of their discontent and stay focused on the light. To remain attached to the emotional ties of our life, loving or traumatic, forms the seeds of our karma and interrupts our journey to spiritual wholeness and enlightenment. Gandhi was well aware of this, as he faced his assassin in the common greeting of respect, namaste, meaning “I bow to you; I bow to the God within you.”
We all travel in and out of the light and the dark all the time… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
To release emotional attachment to those who harm us frees our karmic load. We are then freed to proceed into new life unburdened by emotional heaviness. Karmic attachment requires us to stay put, until we can free our spirits to move into new life.
The love or compassion that Gandhi and Jesus portrayed transcends the attachments we have to our lives, interrupted as they are by our assassins. Instead, it accepts the reality of our unexpected launching into a different journey. Those that launch us must then grapple with their own karma—for the choice made to act from the dark side. We can extend the love of compassion to them, as they continue their journeys into that karma, and appreciate our own opportunity to free ourselves, at their hand, from attachment to the dark side that would have us stew in powerful emotions. If we look instead to the dark side and send it love—the last thing it wants—it releases its talons from our light being.
Laughter, like love, is equally freeing of energetic bindings. The Shamans of Ancient Mexico discovered that the greatest hook to our energetic selves from the dark side is self-importance. When we are offended by another, or by life circumstances, we are drawn to the seriousness of anger, pain, and resentment. These emotions, though transiently valid and necessary to encounter during recapitulation, are equally capable of keeping us attached to the dark side, for the dark side looks for ways to hook us, to entrap us indefinitely by feeding on the energy of our fixated, negative emotions. We can completely break the chains of these offenses by learning to laugh at ourselves.
We can laugh at our attachment to seriousness. We can laugh at our own human frailty. We can laugh at our tendency to judge the self and other. And we can laugh at the frailty and foolishness of others. If we can find our way to the divine comedy of self and other, we are freed of all karma associated with the injustices we have engaged in and those that have been foist upon us—however serious!
Can we learn to laugh at our predicaments? – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Love and laugher are powerful tools that, when genuinely engaged in, free us from the binding attachments that tether our fulfillment to our karmic lives. As we exercise these powerful tools, we offer ourselves the opportunity for new and different outcomes. Love and laugh! Try it, and see what happens!
There is beauty in the darkness too… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
It can sometimes be difficult to know what to do when someone we care about deeply is suffering. We want to rush in to help, to fix or to alleviate the suffering in any way we can. We often have a clearer perspective, looking in from the outside, and so we might want to advise or prescribe what we think needs to happen. It’s hard not to judge, criticize, or blame others and think that only we are right. In some cases, however, it’s pretty obvious that help is needed, that immediate attention is called for, and it is appropriate then to give it, but more often than not our input rarely helps. This is a hard fact to accept.
How many times have we told so-and-so that if they don’t stop their destructive behavior they are sure to suffer irreparable damage, even death? Have they really listened, taken in our advice, and changed in any way?
How many times have we been confronted by the dear one who can only whine and blame others for their difficulties? Does it really help to point out to them their own part in creating their suffering situation?
How many times have we sent a needy individual money, only to be called upon again and again with increasingly unrealistic reasons for the monetary need? We have to wonder if we are only enabling them, keeping them in a state of infantile entitlement for our own purposes. We might find it hard to let them fail, but in so doing we are holding them back from creating their own fulfilling life, far beyond anything we could ever provide.
When we rush in to help we often alleviate only our own discomfort and in the process take away from the loved one the full responsibility for taking control of their own lives. We take away their joy in accomplishing what once seemed impossible, what they dream of. We take away their opportunity to encounter what lies deep inside them too, the issues that produce their difficulties and their suffering, what they must face to become mature beings in the world.
Doing the busy work of taking responsibility… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
If we attempt to solve or fix the lives of others without their full participation, we take away their own responsibility for creating their own lives and taking their own journeys. Often they will fail to fully launch into life. They will remain dependent and needy and thus in our rush to help we have in fact done them a disservice. We deny them the opportunity to experience and face their own troubles as we have had to experience and face ours, for these are the things that help us mature into responsible human beings.
In looking back over our own lives we can track where we too had moments of suffering or crisis and how in dealing with them maturely we have moved beyond them. We had to learn the hard way that if we face what comes to greet us each day, with maturity, sobriety, and pragmatism, we learn that we can handle anything. And that is empowering!
In reality, we are personally better off letting others sit and contemplate their own dilemmas until they get to the moment of decision and determine their own course of action. This can be a tense time, but pretty soon all of our patient waiting pays off.
We might notice how life itself tends to the issues at hand in a most natural way. This natural process may arrive as a perceived disaster, but as things unfold we see that what once was thought of as disastrous is actually the very thing that offers the biggest and most lasting change. How many times have we heard people say that their worst experiences have led them to their most amazing experiences: to the meeting of their true love, to the discovery of their true profession, their true talents? Often our most painful experiences are our most enlightening, leading us into previously unimaginable new life.
If we remain stuck in our role of enabler then our energy remains stuck too. In serving others to the extent that we become energetically depleted, we allow them to take priority over ourselves, and that is not good business nor a good position to be in. If we are drained we have little to keep us going and even less to give. Our spirits recede, our involvement in life decreases and our motivation dies. If we are to remain vital, active, and fully participatory in life, we must take care of how we use our energy.
Energetically freed to really bloom! – Photo by Jan Ketchel
As we free our energy from perceived duties—duties that we have given ourselves for whatever reason—we are free to live our own lives. If we free our attachment to people, places and things that are no longer useful or important in the life we live now, our energy is returned to us in abundance.
In simplifying our lives by clearing ourselves of both inner and outer encumbrances, we also free others from having to be encumbered by us, by what we think they need or want. And then we are all freed to take our journeys to fulfillment!
There is always some energy-freeing to be done! Jan
Today we offer a powerful message of guidance from Jeanne in response to a question that Chuck asks. No matter what journey we are on, whether we are parents or solo journeyers, whether we are young or old, stuck or flowing, what she says is profoundly important. First Chuck’s question is posed, related to the blog he wrote the other day regarding some personal events, which you can read here, but really it’s a question for all of us who struggle, and then comes Jeanne’s response. Asked and offered most humbly, from all of us, Chuck, Jan, and Jeanne.
Out of the cocoon and taking the journey… as we all must do… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Dearest Jeanne,
As you are well aware, the sons we bore, in your life as Jeanne Marie Ketchel, are deeply challenged by their choices in this life. Most recently this resulted in near death for one of them and criminal confinement for the other. Given the public nature of their recent actions, I offered a commentary on their journeys in my blog, believing that their processes may be relevant to the greater journey of our time.
You live now beyond the sheaths of the human form, yet continue to watch over and guide seekers in this life. What message might you offer—from your perspective beyond the loyalty and emotion of human attachment—for all who struggle to discern their responsibility for the lives of others, particularly those closest to them?
Jeanne responds: In all humbleness, and with great appreciation for the journeys that must be taken, I reply. Here follows my answer to your question:
There is great pressure now upon that earth for all to conform to a new idea of growth. This growth is not concerned with need or desire but only with an awakening to the greater meaning of life, as well as to the state of the world, a state largely brought about by the naiveté of the human population. Something has gone awry, and that something is a deep disconnect, a severing of ties with the spiritual self. Far more important has become the rational and the physical self, the desire body and the impassionate self-serving needs of the human body.
I do not blame or fault, but, in my assessment, this is a dire situation. In reality, however, it is in such times of dire circumstance that change happens. As specifically regards the sons we bore, their time has not yet come to advance, though they struggle at the very door of change. In my detachment I am offered the greater picture, the iconic image of the struggles of the human being to accept its place in the physical world, while simultaneously struggling to embrace its spiritual nature, its truth that it does not really belong there. In other words, the spirit self knows that life upon that earth is not the only thing, yet the human self adheres to it like glue, as if nothing else matters.
In truth, all must face the struggles of these two selves, and so as you, My Dearest Chuck, face the struggles of our two sons, so must you allow them to have their experiences, just as you have had your own. You know from your own life that your struggles have advanced you. This is what all must take into consideration as they face the judgments that arise regarding the decisions of others, for surely judgments arise.
Is it right to judge another, to decide that they are doing life wrong? According to whom are they doing life wrong? No one lives wrongly. No one is really making mistakes. No one should be judged for decisions they make and the situations they find themselves in. Yet, to step back and be compassionately nonjudgmental is one of the most terrifying and necessary moments in life. Especially, when looking into the faces of one’s children, one must look with openness, with open heart and open mind, and say: “Look at you, taking your journey, as I once took mine! Look at you!”
Our neighbor’s cat visits daily and is always greeted warmly, without attachment… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Outside of the physical pain lies another pain, the pain of emotional detachment, the most necessary detachment, the most necessary suffering of mature beings. For yes, even as those of you who have children must stand by and watch and suffer, so must you challenge yourselves to do as you request of others. You must evolve to a new level of freedom for the self and others by releasing judgments and emotional attachments, for the idea that you can control, or really even guide another, is quite absurd. I say that with all love and compassion, for I understand the role of parents and others who must stand by while seeing so clearly the futility of such struggles. But the truth is that no one can teach another, for lessons in life come only through experience.
Remember always that everyone learns in their own personal manner and an awakening, a knock over the head for one person, may be nothing more than an annoyance for another.
Value your own process now even as you look upon the processes of others. Know, all of you, My Dear Readers, that in the struggles of others reside your own struggles. Know that the compassion and concern and worry that you direct outwardly should be turned inwardly. Know that even as you intuit devastation and decline for others, so must you take that knowing inwardly. You must face what lies in your own future if you do not face your own struggles, both as they manifest outwardly and as they manifest inwardly in the physical and psychological pain that you suffer as a result of your life, mirrored by the lives of those closest to you.
No one can live another’s life. No one can learn the lessons that another must learn. No one can make the decisions that another must make. To aid too much is to inhibit growth, and so I advise compassionate detachment in the face of outer turmoil. Will you heed my advice? I know, as I have said, that no one can really help another, yet I remain committed to my assignment as guide and helper, just as you each do upon that earth, as adults, parents, and teachers. And so, from my perspective as a being no longer in human form, I advise that you seek this perspective of compassionate detachment as well. For all of you, though you exist in human form, are fully capable of accessing a higher state of being.
Within the body self lies all you need. Your core self awaits your recognition. No one is a superior being, yet in the reality of a spiritual self, all are superior beings. At the same time, no one is a lesser being, no one is a damaged being, no one deserves pity or fear, no one deserves more or less compassion than another.
Allow, My Dearest Chuck, and All of My Readers, life to unfold as it must, for the key to all of this struggling that you carry within your heart is the greater awareness that struggle is necessary for change to happen. If the seed did not have to struggle through the darkness of the earth to break open there would be no flower reaching for the sunlight.
The seeds sprout, the bees come and go, life in its unfolding… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Let the seeds lie upon the ground where they have fallen. Let them become the men and women they struggle to become on their own. Let their decisions take them to their next challenge. Let their circumstances crack their outer shells, so that roots and sprouts may occur, for it is only in the cracking that this will occur.
Life, even in the form of solid rock, evolves as it wears down and changes shape, as it rolls and rattles about in water and wind, being sculpted by the turmoil of nature’s energy. Realize that the human being is only but another object in the turmoil of life’s energies. Tossed and jostled about, in meeting life head on, all that is offered will turn each one of you into new beings.
Even as a stone may one day stand as the cornerstone to a new structure, so must you carry in your hearts the knowledge that each human being will one day evolve into their own cornerstone. But this, for the most part, will only happen through discovering that the cornerstone one seeks is within, not without.
I ask, as you struggle with those closest to you, as you struggle to understand them and their choices, to drop all notion of helping. Take the small stones you carry in your pockets, the memories and knowledge of them as tender children full of potential, and lay them at the alter of life. They are showing you that they are, in fact, ready to more fully engage life now, for in their very struggles does life exist, pushing them now like you never could. They will certainly pay attention to life, though they may still resist you and your advice! Let life become their mother and father now. Let life, full force, carry them where they need to go.
I cannot do more than guide you to detachment. The struggles to achieve a place of compassionate loving detachment are your own. But I do wish to impart that life is not just what you observe and experience in your human form, but a most vital energy shared by all beings. Remember that even as you feel your own powerful life force, so does everyone else.
Awakenings come in many forms and to each person their awakening is appropriate. Even the awakening of death is not to be despaired or attached to beyond loving appreciation for life lived, because the one who has died has evolved to a new level, awakened to new life.
Hold your loved ones tenderly, and tenderly let them go when the time for their own maturity arrives. They let you know in their turning away from you, in their decision making, that they are ready to take on life on their own terms. You cannot outline or plan the life of another, so please step back from attempting to do so. Stand back in awe instead and watch them go into life, fully loaded with all that you once gave them, energized by your continued support in the form of powerfully positive intent that they go live their lives to the fullest.
Set the intent for calmness… in the midst of turmoil be like the eye of the storm… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Detach from worry about others and you release them. Detach from fear for others and you release them of your fears, as well as release them to discover, face, and conquer their own fears. Detach from controlling others and let them discover the seeds of their own intent.
Life wants to live. Let life have its intent realized to the fullest by standing aside. Let the seed sprout, let the stone roll, let the winds blow, let the waters flow. Do not stand in the way of life, and notice—as you step back and out of the lives of others, as you let them seek maturity and responsibility for themselves—how your own life begins to evolve at a quicker pace. In releasing comes release of new energy.
You are not responsible for the lives of others. Once your parenting is done, once the early years are over, the child must grow up. That can only happen by that child becoming fully responsible for its own life. One day you, and it, will realize it is an adult and fully responsible for itself. Then it will discover not only its power, but its passion as well.
The role of the parent is a difficult one, but it is no more challenging than the role of each individual to separate from the past and move on unencumbered by life to a new level of existence, energetically freed and energetically alive in a new way. It is the goal of each one of you, to evolve on your own terms. Good Luck!
We are travelers whose journey has been interrupted. Our world is like a crowded airport with grounded flights, journeyers sequestered, forced to stay put. We are guarded by sentinels, unable to move beyond the confines of the airport.
According to the seeing of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico, the guards at the airport, the guardians of our world, are an impersonal energy, not human at all, that has taken up residence in the brains of our species. Those shamans labeled that energy the foreign installation of “the” mind. We tend to call it “our” mind because we are helpless to know otherwise, so pervasive is its control over our lives. The effect of this control is universal. It can be seen everywhere in the form of self-obsession. We are a species so obsessed with the self that we are blind to the real interdependent nature of all things. In fact, our species’ obsession with self-interest has brought us now to the brink of destruction.
The truth is: If we don’t evolve beyond self-interest into a world that includes the needs of other—plant, animal, climate—we face certain extinction.
Perhaps a more benevolent interpretation of our predicament is one of necessary growing pains, for in truth we are a species bent on changing. Were this not so, we never would have left the Utopia of the Garden. Our need to grow, change, and explore got us expelled from the Garden and brought consciousness—the freedom to choose—into the brain, as we simply got bored with the known routines. Our growth, however, has once again become stunted and routine, completely swallowed up in self-absorption. We must crack the shell of this container of self-absorption in order to reopen the airport so we can continue our journey beyond the self.
Perhaps it was necessary to have this respite of selfhood—a fixed identity to hold onto for awhile—as we consolidated our evolutionary gains. But now that container can no longer serve us, as the reality of where we are now is forcing us to evolve beyond the obsessive absorption of the self or perish.
The obsession that we are now afflicted with comes in many forms, ranging from extreme narcissism to near total self-abnegation. Do not be deceived. Self-sacrifice seeks its own rewards, even the prize of avoiding the truths of the self for a lifetime. Is self-negation not but another form of self-absorption, reigning all powerful, controlling life through avoidance of the most basic of needs?
The Shamans of Ancient Mexico ask us to not take personally the impersonal reality of our tyrannized relationship with the mind. From their seeing, this is a condition all humankind shares in common. There is no avoiding it. No one is to blame. But we must face that we are all in this predator’s grip.
It’s impersonal. – Photo by Jan Ketchel
The Shamans state clearly that the first tool to counter the tyranny of the mind is to suspend judgment. Rather than personalize everything, observe the self and others from a perspective of objectivity—no blame—simply an intent to see things as they really are, without the filter of self-interest. If we stay in blame, we evolve no further. We stay within the compound of the mind like chickens in a chicken coop, naively and happily enjoying our captivity.
The Shamans of Ancient Mexico had no illusion about the deadly power of the tyrant of the mind to absorb all our energy, as in fact we spend our entire lives in the prison of self-absorption. Nonetheless, they did see the value of using actual tyrants to their own advantage. They discovered that putting themselves under the control of an actual tyrant offered them the opportunity to break the tyranny of the self-absorption of the mind.
They discovered that in order to physically survive the brutality of a tyrant, it is utterly necessary to break through the veil of self-pity, self-worth, in fact self-anything. The tyrant cares nothing for the selfhood of its victim, and thus to survive the tyrant one needs the complete objectivity that only selflessness provides.
Many Shamans perished in their encounters with tyrants. Nonetheless, the rewards of success were so great and so meaningful that they risked this encounter with death, for success meant freedom from the human form of self-absorption. Success meant freedom to experience an expanded self, unburdened of the confines of self-importance; a self free to explore reality with far greater powers and clarity than humanly possible. To those Shamans, the risk was worth it.
This past week, the New York Times Sunday Magazine explored, in depth, the dilemma of child pornographic images continually finding new life on the worldwide web. How is a victim to heal or find closure when images of their abuse continue to be preyed upon, beyond their control, throughout their lifetime? These victims will indeed be unable to heal, as long as they remain attached to the self in those photographic images.
As I see it, these girls/women, though they didn’t choose it, have already had their own encounters with brutal tyrants like the ones the Shamans of Ancient Mexico faced. They have already survived those encounters. However, they must complete their interrupted journeys to freedom through a thorough recapitulation if they are to heal. They must fully relive their experiences with their tyrants and in so doing retrieve all their life energy bound to those experiences. And so, I envision a different scenario, healing by facing the tyrant.
Imagine one of those children mentioned in the article, now an adult, giving a news conference with all the images of their abuse plastered around them, as they calmly and with utter detachment describe the full truth of what happened in each of those pictures. Such detachment breaks all attachment to shame, blame, and victimhood—in fact any identification of self with the images presented. Nonetheless, the full truth of what fully happened in each of those images is fully known, fully owned, and fully released. The images no longer hold any energetic attachment or charge. This is healing detachment.
In such detachment there is no longer any emotional or physical energy attached to those scenes from the past. All energy has been retrieved for a new and evolving life. Those images are the shells of a prior life, but life has actually moved on. This detachment offers the means to completely break free of the predator’s grip—to be freed of the tyrant to control life—and to be freed of the self defined by the predator.
Free to fly at last! – Photo by Jan Ketchel
This kind of detachment is life freed from its absorption with the self of those images. From this place the predator has no home, and thus no power. This new self is not a victim. This new self has moved on. This new self is a fluid ever-evolving being now, freed of all fixated definitions.
This kind of healing that I envision for the young women in the NYT article, frees the old self in those images from static interpretations and judgments, all the fixations of the self-absorbed mind. The freed self exists outside the predatory confines of the mind, as well as all who seek to feed off the torment of the once victimized being. That victimized being simply doesn’t exist anymore.
In fact, the evolved being can look back with compassion at all still caught in the confines of self-absorption. That freed being is fluid, able to resume its interrupted journey, in its evolved state having moved beyond the guardian mind of our limited world of self-absorption, a world that even says no one can heal from such a thing. Such an evolved being is now a beacon of developmental necessity, a shining example of where we all need to go now.
