There will always be challenges in Life School upon the planet Earth. That’s what you are there for, to encounter challenges, to conquer them and grow beyond them. Wouldn’t life just be pretty boring if everything was easy every day, if everything was the same every day? Accept that you are in human form for the duration of your lifetime and that you are bound to a certain intention. For most people that intention is to learn how to become more loving, kind and compassionate, and they are charged with learning those things through the challenges they face. You might ask yourself the following questions as you face the challenges that arise in your life: “How is this teaching me kindness?” “How is this showing me what it means to be loving?” “Is this event teaching me what compassion means?” “Am I getting the lesson of this challenge?” “What am I supposed to be learning today?” Keep in mind that if life on Earth is indeed a school of learning, then all of those questions are perfectly applicable to understanding the process you are undergoing, every day of your life. May you find your way.
When entering a new phase, a new season, a new moon, a new day even, notice how the inner self knows and automatically sets itself to the new phase, no matter what it is. The inner self is the natural self, affiliated with All That Is. It likens itself to the flow of energy throughout the universe, because ultimately that’s what it is. Within you, now captured in physical form, the inner self strives to help you learn the lessons of Earth School, to make good decisions that are appropriate for each new phase of life, to learn to be intuitive and connected to All That Is too. Each new day and in each new phase of life as it guides you, you in turn understand it a little bit more, how the inner self works, how it loves you, understands you and wants only the best for you.
Legions of souls have gone before you, trying to figure out the mysteries of life, how it works and why. True answers don’t arise until one is done but in the meantime curiosity can lead to experiential processes that are beneficial and give a taste of what true reality really is. Remaining fully conscious and aware that life is more than meets the eye is one good attitude that aids in the search for meaning and purpose. Keeping an open mind and heart is equally helpful, as is a keen desire and curiosity to learn and gain knowledge. Focus on being open and engaged in the wonders of life, without judgment.
Whenever you feel despair, or the burden of too much, remind yourself that you are a being in Earth School, there to learn, to grow, to give and to receive, to understand life in a greater way with each cycle through life. Return to your roots, to your spirit, and try to remember your mission, your core reason for being in physical form beyond the above mentioned universal reasons. Each being has their own personal mission. Search deeply within to find your answer, even as you seek it without, for the answer lies in both worlds, within and without.
Alice Miller’s books, on the impact of child abuse and neglect, evoke deep compassion for the wounded inner child. Healing from childhood trauma requires deep sensitivity and respect for dissociated child parts, along with their experiences of abuse and neglect.
Ultimately, complete healing requires full acceptance of everything one has experienced in life. With trauma, this includes releasing the full sensory and emotional discharge of stored reactions to the traumatic experience. With healing, those memories are no longer traumatic; they trigger no emotion or sensation. They are completely neutral.
Mentally, one is challenged to dispel beliefs that one was responsible for causing the traumatic encounter. Here one truly needs to accept that indeed they were a victim in an experience that was not of their making.
Healing also includes a vastly enlarged perspective of the experience, which includes the motives and circumstances of others involved in the traumatic experience. Ultimate healing also requires complete emotional neutrality toward one’s perpetrator.
To acknowledge one’s victim status is critical to healing and, yet, one cannot heal if one holds onto the victim status as an enduring identity. An enduring identity as victim reflects a personality construction with the wounded child in control of, what Winnicott called, the false self. This self is seen as false because rather than mature through the normal developmental stages of childhood, it mimicks adulthood while secretly dedicating itself to adaptive behaviors that protect the child from anxiety.
The false self is a commandeered adult ego state whose charge is to defend the child from any discomfort. The false self employs its resources to bury, in the physical body, the memory and impact of trauma, as well as to develop a rigid body armor to stave off the challenge of the outside world.
The false self often develops competency in a profession, which provides security for the child, but behind this seeming successful adaptation to life is a sense of self as a phony, threatened to be discovered at any moment.
I refer to this child state that controls the false self as the uninitiated child because it has failed to complete its rite of passage to advance beyond its victim status. Rites of passage are purposeful traumatic practices that societies once used to help children successfully advance into real adulthood. All trauma requires full recapitulation to complete passage into real adulthood.
Failure to advance can fixate the child in a narcissistic worldview of entitlement, protection and revenge. In her book, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child Rearing and the Roots of Violence, Alice Miller describes Hitler’s horrifically abusive childhood, that, left unprocessed, was projected outward in a ruthless quest for revenge.
These same dynamics are blatant in the cult of the child that serves the power drives of uninitiated charismatic leaders, who promise revenge upon the reigning adult authority figures in the present world. These extreme childish expectations of entitlement and protection have opened the floodgates of legitimization for the uninitiated, who blindly support these irreverent child heroes.
These extreme examples simply underscore how this developmental challenge of achieving true adulthood is the salient issue for the human race today. The hallmark of true adulthood is the acceptance of full responsibility for one’s entire life, including all experiences of victimization.
This in no way takes responsibility away from those who have victimized others. They must and will be held accountable for their actions. They will never be able to advance spiritually unless they fully feel the pain they caused and recapitulate all the pain of their own lives. These are the prerequisite rites of passage.
Ultimately, like Job, we are faced with accepting the fact that life is not fair, despite the echoes of our childhood socialization.
Ultimately, we are challenged to accept Buddha’s assessment that life is suffering. Earth School is a playing field for the suffering of attachment and loss.
The full mastery of Earth School is to arrive at the place of love, most especially for all those who had roles in our traumatic rites of passage.
Become the child acorn that advances beyond its protective shell, delivering its vitality to the mighty adult oak it was always destined to become.
Ultimately, the child’s destiny is to grow up and into its adult self, who awaits beyond its rites of passage. To that adult, bring a matured innocence, willing to journey freely in and, perhaps someday, beyond this predatory universe.
