WHERE HAVE I BEEN? WHERE AM I GOING?

WHERE HAVE WE BEEN? WHERE ARE WE GOING?

Hello dear readers …

I’ve been on a very different schedule with my blog posts lately.
It feels important that I don’t leave you wondering, but instead let you know why.

The last articles you received from me were
April 1st, June 15th, and June 21st.
Between April 1st and June 15th, I was leading my annual Sacred Circle 6-day residential intensive.
And . . . in the midst of the intensive, we experienced the tornado that hit my state, town, neighborhood, and my own home and grounds.
I felt I could offer you so much in a preview on trauma, as related to the tornado.
And then I sent you a more in depth article on trauma in our world today on the day of the summer solstice.

Since then . . . no blog post has come forth.
I have been witnessing, holding, and feeling what is going on in our country and our world.
I have been seeking within to find what is in truth and love to offer to you . . .
What would be most useful and valuable to you individually and to us nationally and internationally.

I have been consistently aware of the tale of the frog in the water.
If the frog were put in a pot of water that was boiling,
it would jump right out.
But the frog isn’t put in boiling water.
It is, instead, put in a pot of just warm water.
It stays there contentedly.
Gradually the water temperature is raised.
The frog is not aware of the impending danger…
until it is too late.

The tale of the frog is a mirror to us
to be aware of and to respond – from the deepest levels –
to the threats that have been coming gradually
in our lives, in our country, in our world.

As I’ve been attuned moment by moment to what is occurring …
my muse has helped me give birth to a book, deeply explaining how we really got where we are today
and what we need to do in response.
I’m in the midst of getting the book ready to make available to you and others all over the world.

Many blessings to you all until . . .
Judith

PS If you would like an inscribed copy of the book, I will let you know how you can make that happen
in my newsletter.  Sign up for it at:  https://judithbarr.com/judith-barr-newsletter/

 

 

 

For People All Over the World … Don’t Go Into the Voting Booth Blind!

There is so much to say, to teach, to explore about the elections and the process leading up to them. I could write every day, some days many times. But it hasn’t felt in truth to do so. You might get overwhelmed, and I don’t want to add to the election overwhelm. And … I would basically be saying the same things day after day after day that I’ve been saying all along. Things that relate to inner discovery and healing and its absence or reflection in our outer world.

As I sat with all this it came to me: Not much of the depth exploration has been said in the media, or in the public at large. But a lot has already been said related to elections right here on PoliPsych.

Through many election cycles I have informed you about the deeper levels of elections – for the election process itself, for the candidates, for you as a citizen, for our country and our world. So I’m reminding you: You always have access to what is actually right here to help you in your explorations.

If you are not here in the US, I hope you’ll open your mind and heart to this as well. I hope you’ll allow it to inform you that there are those of us here in the US who are working deeply to heal and transform this. And I hope that you will see the mirror of us in your own country … and in our world as a whole.

And as for the elections … I have made a list for you of some of the most crucial articles connected to elections. I have re-read each one, and believe me … no matter the year the article was written, no matter the election cycle it refers to, each and every article applies to this year’s election, too. In fact, they all apply to every election, by virtue of the depth to which they help you explore. And each one offers a different glimpse or a different depth than the others.

May the links below and the articles they lead you to help you find on the deepest levels what you can heal and how you can help our country and world heal, in relation to the election and every day.

And may you utilize these articles in Truth and Love for healing on the way to the election, for participating in the election from a deeper, more healed place within you, and for healing from the election forward …

Many blessings …
Judith

WOUNDED LEADERS – THERE’S SO MUCH WE CAN LEARN AND HEAL THROUGH THE ELECTIONS

ELECTIONS – YESTERDAY AND TOMORROW

ELECTION 2012: THE AMERICAN DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY UNDENIABLY REVEALED

IMAGINE IT’S ELECTION DAY – DO YOU REALLY KNOW THE PERSON YOU’RE VOTING FOR?

THE ELECTION THROUGH THE LENS OF POWERLESSNESS

WHERE IS YOUR VOICE?    

AFTER THE ELECTION: TAKE TWO

THE 2012 ELECTION: WHAT IS THE AGENDA…REALLY?

IT’S ELECTION TIME: ARE YOU A RESPONSIBLE CITIZEN?

© Judith Barr, 2016

We’re Forgetting and It’s Dangerous: Don’t Forget! Remember …

In these crucial times in our world and our countries,
and in this election time in the U.S …
there are many times between my usual once-monthly newsletters
that I feel called to write to you
for teaching, intriguing, inspiring, and awakening.
In these months you may receive more frequent articles,
as I am called to write them. 

I hope you will use these well …
for yourself and for our world.
I hope you will use these well …
to help inform, intrigue, inspire, and awaken others with me. 

Many blessings …
Judith

In a world that too often naively and carelessly, though authoritatively, tells us to “get over it” and “move on,” we each need to know how damaging that advice is and how damaging the consequences. If we ignore the damage, we will individually and together continue to wreak havoc in our world … in our own lives and in life on our earth. That is especially and more obviously true right at this point in our individual and communal crossroads.

One of the most vocal spokespeople for the importance of remembering has been Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate. When Elie died July 2, 2016, he left that responsibility to those of us who know the profound and crucial need for us to remember. The need for us to remember individually. And the need for us to remember communally. What we don’t remember, we will inevitably repeat – consciously or unconsciously; by ourselves or with others; intentionally or unintentionally; obviously or obscurely; right out in the open or under a guise.

This is a time in our world where the need to remember is perhaps more important than ever before … both in our world, and in our own countries. And certainly in the U.S.

Elie Wiesel spoke brilliantly about forgetting and remembering in his Nobel Prize lecture in 1986:

“Of course, we could try to forget the past. Why not? Is it not natural for a human being to repress what causes him pain, what causes him shame? Like the body, memory protects its wounds. When day breaks after a sleepless night, one’s ghosts must withdraw; the dead are ordered back to their graves. But for the first time in history, we could not bury our dead. We bear their graves within ourselves.

“For us, forgetting was never an option.

“Remembering is a noble and necessary act. The call of memory, the call to memory, reaches us from the very dawn of history. No commandment figures so frequently, so insistently, in the Bible. It is incumbent upon us to remember the good we have received, and the evil we have suffered.”*

And a student of Elie Wiesel, Sonari Glinton, wrote beautifully of the lessons he learned from Wiesel about forgetting (emphasis mine):

“I remember him leaning in and asking why I would want to forget.

Memory, he said, wasn’t just for Holocaust survivors. The people who ask us to forget are not our friends. Memory not only honors those we lost but also gives us strength. In those office hours, he gave me a shield, practical words and thoughts that would help me — a gay, Nigerian, Catholic journalist. He gave me tools that would aid me in an often hostile world. Over the years, I have found myself quoting Professor Wiesel to white people who want me to ‘get over race.’ ‘That’s old.’ ‘It was a hundred years ago.’ But Professor Wiesel had been emphatic: Nothing good comes of forgetting; remember, so that my past doesn’t become your future.**

This more communal understanding of Wiesel’s insistence is more common in our world than the individual. I have quoted George Santayana in previous posts to illustrate this related to communal history. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” ***

We need to awaken to that truth communally. But we also need to awaken to other truths that are intimately and intricately related to that one.

We need to awaken to the truth that what we repress and forget from our lives long, long ago, doesn’t disappear from our psyches and souls. And it isn’t without impact on us and those around us. In fact, it drives us from beneath our memory, to think, feel, act in ways we may not even be aware of. It drives us to repeat in our lives again and again, until we finally “get” the vicious cycle we’re in and find a way to heal it to the root.

We need to get that what we repress from our lives long ago is likely the memory and the trauma not just from our own individual ancient experience, but also most likely from the parallel experience in the culture. What is repressed and forgotten by individuals is then acted out in the culture; it is then normalized, repressed and forgotten in the culture; and that feeds its being acted out and repressed both in families and in the culture at large. It may be the extended family culture, the community culture, the state or area culture, the nation culture, or the world culture. Whichever culture it is … there is a definite vicious cycle from individual to culture to individual to culture … over and over again, until individuals start to change it in their own lives and birth that change out into the culture at last.

A brief, but blatant, example:

James grew up in an extended family where there was rampant abuse: physical, sexual, verbal, emotional. The abuse was mostly perpetrated by the men on the women and children. But in another family, it could be by the women on the men and children; or by the women, too.

In James’ family, the abuse was the weapon of the men. James was abused in all of the above ways by his father, who experienced the same in his early life, and then forgot most of it consciously and normalized the rest.

James suffered profoundly from the earliest age, when his father didn’t want to hear him cry in his crib; as a result, his dad yelled at him, threatened to throw him in the garbage, shook his crib wildly, and left the room slamming the door so hard that it came off its hinges.

James was traumatized, repressed the memories for his sanity and safety, and swore – once he was old enough to be aware – that he would never treat his children that way.

Yet, James grew up, married, and had a family. And sure enough, when his children cried (or even his wife), he would erupt into a rage and hurt the one who was crying. Rage at their crying expanded into rage at their expressing their feelings, telling the truth, holding him accountable for some hurt or mistake, and on and on…

James found himself at work trying to contain his rage when employers or co-workers triggered the same young feelings his wife and children triggered. And finally one day he attacked his boss in response to his being so deeply triggered. He swore it was a “current day” issue. He had forgotten its link to his childhood. He had no conscious connection with the link between his violent eruptive response at home or at work and the rage he felt toward his violent father from the earliest days of his life.

Too many in his life normalized all of his triggered responses, including the attack at work. Certainly his extended family did. Others weren’t so vocal about normalizing his behavior, but were afraid to confront him.

Eventually he gathered members of his family and a few co-workers who had grown up the same way he had. They all banded together to go after the boss, sure nobody could stop them. They had no idea that they were all going after their own abusive fathers, grandfathers, older brothers, uncles. They had no idea they were taking out on the boss, the abuse that had been perpetrated on them as children.

If only they had remembered what was done to them.
If only they had been able to feel the pain of what was done to them.
If only they had had the help they needed to discover which feelings to act on and which to simply feel for healing to the root.
If only they had had the help in their adult lives before the office incident.
If only they had had the help they needed as children.
All of them.
Not just James.
But even James’s having the help would have made a huge difference…
in his individual life; in his family life; in his work life; and in the impact his life had on the society.

We have to forget as children. That kind of remembering is too much for a child to bear. But when we grow up … we need to remember. We deeply need to remember so, to paraphrase Elie Wiesel, “our pasts don’t become someone else’s future.”

© Judith Barr, 2016

*https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1986/wiesel-lecture.html

**https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/07/14/484558040/forgetting-isnt-healing-lessons-from-elie-wiesel

*** George Santayana The Life of Reason: Reason in Common Sense. Scribner’s, 1905

The Election Campaign and The Mob Mentality

As the campaign for the Presidency has unfolded in our country over the past year, the feeding and fomenting of the mob mentality has been evident. To this date – as I write this article – never more evident than during the Republican Convention the night Chris Christie spoke. His “prosecuting” Hillary Clinton in his speech triggered an ugliness in the crowd, a destructiveness in the crowd, that resulted, right there in convention hall, with the crowd yelling “Lock her up! Lock her up!”

That’s what we saw in the convention hall. But who knows what dire consequences and acting out will occur in other areas of our country and world as a result of Christie’s feeding the fire of violence and destruction.

We need to wake up to this dynamic in the campaign and in our world. We need to look at what part we play in this, each of us … no matter what “side” we are on. We need to ask, “What within me has been triggered to cause me to become part of feeding a mob? To become part of a mob?” We are all affected disastrously by the mob mentality, even if it doesn’t appear so in the moment.

As a result of the mob mentality showing itself so “out there” right in front of us in this campaign, I am re-posting an article from a previous election. We may see some things differently in hindsight, but the causes and effects of the mob mentality stay the same.

****

The conventions are over, there’s a bit of distance from them, and as long as you aren’t someplace where a candidate is “stomping” right now … hopefully you can take a moment to breathe and a moment to be objective.

One of the scary and dangerous things about the election campaigns is the phenomenon of the mob mentality. People get caught up on a wave of energy and feeling … exactly the wave the campaigner intends them to get caught up on … and carried away to exactly the place the campaigner intends. In the midst of this mob dynamic, people stop thinking for themselves, and allow the campaigners to think for them. And allow the campaigners to get them, the people, to think whatever the campaigners want them to think. Carried away on the wave, people disconnect from their own moral compass and their true feelings and instincts, and can no longer sense when a red flag is raised or an alarm bell is ringing. They are so carried away, they cannot even tell when there is danger afoot, let alone respond.

This is one of the things that was of such deep concern during the conventions. The speakers were whipping up the crowd, one by one, building to a crescendo that they hoped would carry people, unwittingly, into their camp. If a convention was for the party you are not part of, it might have been very scary to you to watch that … whether you could name it or not. If a convention was for the party you are part of, it might have been very exciting for you to watch that … whether you could name it or not, and whether you could discern that the same thing was going on in each convention or not. Maybe it just felt less scary to you with the party that believes what you believe. But it’s not less scary really. For in either case, the people in the crowd have suspended their own good sense, thinking, awareness, instinct … and, consciously or not, have said ‘yes’ to being carried away.

Do you like a roller coaster? If so, it’s like you have said “Yes I’ll go on this roller coaster ride … never mind the consequences! Never mind the danger!”

But what happens when you find out the consequences of your having suspended your own thinking? Then what happens? Then do you realize that by saying “yes” to being part of the mob dynamic … You have contributed to the mob? You have fed the mob energy? You have added to the mob frenzy? You have been part of actions taken and actions in process that you never intended to have happen? And that you will not now be able to stop? You have been part of things that you now regret. Or if not now, at some point you will regret?

This can happen on a micro level, like in a family, or on a macro level, like in a society. This can happen to you, too … even if you believe it can’t. Many of us believe we’re immune to this. But honestly, who amongst us is absolutely, perfectly conscious?

Let’s look at an example of the micro-level*: Many years ago a very new friend of mine married someone she’d known since childhood. They had been friends, and their families had been friends for years. I was invited to the wedding and attended. I was also very uncomfortable. Something felt “off” to me about this “match made in heaven.” Some years later, my friend and I were walking, and she said she was getting divorced. We talked about what was going on, how she and her husband came to that decision, and how she felt. And then I told her I had been concerned from the beginning but hadn’t felt it my place to say anything since our friendship was so very new. With tears in her eyes she turned to me and said she wished I had said something. She shared that the families were so excited about the two of them getting married that she got carried away on the wave of the families’ excitement. She suspended her thinking, her real feelings, her instinct and let the mob mentality, so to speak, carry her someplace that wasn’t really good or true for her to go.

This kind of thing happens all the time on a micro level … in families, among siblings, among friends, and so forth. Often with painful, sometimes even truly destructive consequences. Think, for example of a family bullying one of the children in the family.

Now let’s look at an example of the macro level: In the book The Oxbow Incident, three innocent men are hanged by a would-be posse. Although one amongst them tries to save them, being part of the mob carries the others away from truth and justice. Only after the hangings have taken place, does the mob discover that their supposed justification for suspecting and killing the three men had never occurred at all. A truly serious, destructive consequence of getting caught up and carried away by the mob mentality.

Or let’s look at how the charisma of Adolph Hitler – which could have been used for great good – was misused and abused to carry people on a wave to their worst instincts and intentions … without their even realizing it. And how the mob mentality turned into a riot mentality that caused the deaths of millions of innocent people, the torture of millions more, and destruction beyond comprehension. Yet we do need to comprehend that kind of destruction that results from being carried on the wave of the mob mentality.

One final macro example: As I write this article, it has been revealed that there have been riots in two Middle Eastern cities at the embassies of the United States. The cause: Someone in the U.S. put an amateur movie clip and trailer on the internet making fun of Allah. The effect: People in the Middle East who believe in Allah saw the movie and began to protest. The protest (influenced and manipulated by some or not) turned into a mob and then a riot. At least four United States embassy people have been reported killed (so far). This shows that the riot mentality can take place in person, via television or radio, and via the internet, as well.

As you prepare to vote in the election on November 8th… I urge you to search your mind, your heart, your soul. I urge you to explore within yourself … Have I been caught up on a wave of mob mentality? Have I been vulnerable in some way unconsciously to allowing myself to be carried onto such a wave? Have I suspended my own thinking? My own true feelings? My own best instincts? If so, how did that happen? If so, how do I get myself off that wave and find a grounded place from which to re-explore? How do I discover what it was in me that caused me to let go of myself and join the wave? What do I need to heal in order to prevent that in the future?

As you and we move toward the election, and a very important election it is … Whatever information you gather in the outer world, commit to find the truth. But most important of all … heal within yourself the place where you could be caught up on a wave of mob mentality, completely disconnected from truth. Completely disconnected from who you really are.

*I have full and generous permission from my friend to tell her story in its essence, in the service of helping us not be part of the mob mentality during this election process … or any time.

NOTE: Please pass this on to others you know and to places that support consciousness and truth. This is crucial for our wellbeing individually, as a society, and as a world.

© Judith Barr, 2012, 2016

THE TRUTH ABOUT FREEDOM …

It’s the day after Independence Day and we Americans think we’re so free.
It’s the day after an election and the winners think they’re free.
It’s the day after the Brexit vote and too many British people think they’re now free.
It’s the day after a terrorist attack and the attackers think they’re free.
It’s the day after a major Supreme or High Court case and the winners think they’re free.
It’s the day after a divorce, and the party who wanted the divorce thinks s/he’s free.
It’s the day after graduation – high school or college – and the graduates think they’re free.
It’s the day after someone’s finished therapy to get rid of symptoms, and the person thinks s/he’s free … and the therapist thinks so, too.

But who can be truly free when beneath our awareness we are unconsciously compelled to repeat the same patterns we have lived out all our lives up till now? Who can be truly free when this is going on deep down within us … even if we think we’re free? Even if we believe we’re free. Even if we would swear we’re free. Even if we would try to prove to you and even more, to ourselves, that we’re free. Even if everyone around us would agree that we’re free.

On the individual level … imagine a child who experiences some kind of trauma – it could be physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, or even the grief of losing a parent to death, to a sickness, or to a divorce. The pain of any one of those experiences will be unbearable for the child, who will grow up to, without even realizing it … re-enact one side or the other of the same or similar experiences again and again. If she was physically abused as a child, she may choose a partner, boss, or even raise a child who physically abuses her; or she may enter a relationship with a partner whom she physically abuses and have children she physically abuses. If he was sexually abused in his youth, he may, without realizing why, be drawn to partners who will sexually abuse him; or he may become the sexual abuser – the harasser, the molester, the rapist of others – his partner, children in his life, strangers old and young. This will continue on and on until someone stops him and makes it impossible for him to act it out. But stopping him will not heal it so that he would not act it out again. And he will continue to act it out in limitless ways, from the very subtle to the most obvious, undeniable ways.

Children who are deeply wounded will somehow repeat their wounding experience. They may do it by themselves. They may do it to others. They may even, in search for “family” and “connection,” join groups and do it with others.

So at the heart of it, these re-enactments will continue until the child-now-adult finally chooses to heal it to the root. To do the inner work to end the compulsive repetition of the wounding. To end a way of life in which s/he tries to stop the wounding by wounding again – wounding oneself, wounding others, or both. To end a way of life in which s/he tries to hold the early memories and feelings at bay, by re-enacting them – wounding self and other over and over again. By wounding people, animals, the environment … as an escape from the original pain and the layers and layers of pain created again and again with every cycle of re-enactment.  

Again, these re-enactments will continue till the adult person chooses to heal it to the root. And then each step in the healing process begins to help that person end the re-enactments. Maybe he’ll see the red flags that he couldn’t see before. Maybe she’ll be able to use the new red flags she sees to help her not get into a relationship with someone she’s attracted to (from the wounding) but isn’t good for her. Maybe he’ll be able to tolerate the feelings that emerge when he does something different to take care of himself, instead of just repeating the same old things. Maybe she’ll even be able to feel the feelings and utilize them to help in the healing of the early trauma.

One thing’s for sure … recreating the wounding in ourselves or others will not stop the wounding. It will only perpetuate it. It will only feed it. For example, if she physically abuses her partner, it will likely be part of a re-enactment for the partner, repeating in some way wounds from his/her childhood, and feeding the cycle once again. Or, if she physically abuses her children, they will likely take that trauma into their beings and then re-enact it in their lives … again either exposing themselves to abuse over and over again, or ending up abusing others repeatedly.

This doesn’t occur only on the individual and family level. It occurs communally, too. The individual re-enactments contribute to and even create the communal re-enactments. And unless we understand this, we will not only continue the individual re-enactments, but also the communal re-enactments.

On the national level … imagine a country that created itself by its people fighting against their original country, leaving it and moving away. Then fighting their old country in their new country. Fighting and killing to be free. And then fighting and killing the natives in whose country they built their own new country. Fighting against and killing to be free and to have power is a basic underlying dynamic in this new country. Of course, it probably was already an underlying dynamic in the original home country, too.

At any rate, the dynamic will be there under the surface, even when it’s not actively being carried out. Somewhere within the heart of the entity of the new country, and within her citizens, as well, the fighting against and killing to be free dynamic will be alive, simmering, and waiting to bubble up and get played out all over again in the outer world.

Maybe the fighting that erupts into action will be against other countries. Maybe it will be against the natives of the new country. Maybe it will be against groups of the new country’s citizens. Maybe the fighting will start silently. Maybe in words. Maybe in actions, like taking groups of people hostage. Perhaps in actions like violence against them. Maybe in actions like blocking them out of the new country. Whatever action … this country and its citizens, once under the illusion that they were free, are now compulsively in the process of acting out their original wounds. The ones that were part of how they came here. The ones that were part of the country they lived in before. The ones that were part of the old country generations ago. And also, the ones that were part of the individual citizens’ minds, bodies, hearts, and souls for generations back in time.

And the country and its citizens, under the illusion of freedom – or perhaps under the guise of freedom – will continue to re-enact and act out the underlying dynamic in limitless ways, from the very subtle to the most flagrant, manifest ways of fighting against and killing to be free.

This doesn’t occur only on the national level. It occurs globally, too. The individual and national re-enactments contribute to and even feed the global re-enactments. And then the global re-enactments in turn feed the individual and national ones. It’s a vicious cycle. And unless we understand this, we will not only continue the individual re-enactments and the national re-enactments, but also the global re-enactments … and the vicious cycle, too.

On the global level … imagine the whole world is struggling with the same experience – re-enacting again and again what was once acted out and ended, but never really healed. World War II, for example, was an atrocious acting out of not only Hitler’s childhood waking nightmares, but those of other German children, too, who also had been horribly abused under the cultural guise of child rearing. And for each country and each people who became part of that torturous world war experience, it in itself was a re-enactment of earlier wounds. And although the horrifying cruelty and destructiveness needed to be stopped … each effort to stop the war, win the war, end the war was part of that re-enactment. But without healing what caused the war from the inside out, individually and culturally, we were bound to see new repetitions of the original wounding.

Even Churchill’s intention to have the European Union created to make sure European countries would never fight against each other again … wasn’t enough. As we can see, countries could always leave the union. But that isn’t the reason it wasn’t enough. The reason is – the healing on the inside didn’t happen. The healing of the root cause for each person and each country to be part of that re-enactment was not healed.

There have been many people, like Hitler, who became the leaders of their country as part of their own personal re-enactments and the re-enactments of their country and its citizens. And in the process, great cruelty and destruction have been acted out. Sometimes all through the country. Sometimes all through a continent. Sometimes extending even further to other continents.

And eventually it extended all over the world in groups that are not bounded by countries, but rather exist in different bases, in different locations, and invite and feed re-enactments through the internet. Not limited by time and space.

And our response is to fight against and kill them …
“the war on” cancer, drugs, ISIS.
And our response is to respond in the outer world …
And our response is to once again call them “evil” …
And our response is once again to feel the painful impact of the terror…
But our response is once again to turn away from the inner causes.
To turn away from the inner causes within them.
To turn away from the inner causes within us.
To turn away from the truth that on both sides, these are re-enactments of childhood wounds … childhood wounds, trauma, nightmares, and terrors.
To turn away from the truth that on all sides these are re-enactments of childhood wounds, trauma, nightmares, and terrors.

On all sides what is becoming more and more unbearable today is an ongoing series of re-enactments from our childhoods and the childhoods of those before us. We may not want to see it. We may not want to know it. We may not want to feel it. But if we don’t see it, hear it, know it, understand it, feel it … we will continue to be participants in the escalating re-enactments. But we will continue to be unknowing participants. We will continue to be unconscious participants. And as a result, we will continue to be disempowered participants, preventing ourselves from helping ourselves in the healing – our own individual healing, our national healing, our global healing.

Who can be truly free when beneath our awareness we are unconsciously compelled to repeat the same patterns we have lived out all our lives up till now? Who can be truly free if we refuse to become aware and conscious of what we’re doing beneath the surface?

We can’t stop the wounding by repeating it.
We can’t stop the wounding by wounding.
We can only stop the wounding by healing from the inside out …
And to the root.

And this is the hope –
We can stop the wounding by healing from the inside out …
And to the root.

It will take time.
It will take work.
It will take our investment.
A better investment than staying in the vicious cycle and watching the escalation.
And it will take our commitment.
A better commitment than the unconscious commitment to stay in the vicious cycle and feed the escalation.

But it is possible.
We can stop the wounding by healing from the inside out …
And to the root.
This is the hope.

© Judith Barr, 2016

 

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP KEEP OUR WORLD SAFE
FROM THE INSIDE OUT

No matter where you are in your life, whether you feel “free” or not in your own personal circumstances… no matter what area of the world you call home, whether you’re celebrating a “freedom” achieved long ago or a “freedom” recently decided upon … in order to achieve true, lasting freedom, we all need to do the inner work needed to explore and heal our own inner wounds.

As we collectively and individually contemplate what it means to be free, commit to explore your own inner “freedom.” What wounds are still alive within you that prevent you from teasing yourself free from re-enacting destructive or self-destructive patterns from your own past? And how do those wounds affect not only your own life, but also the life of your family, your community, your world?

Many of our wounds are so deep within, so unconscious, so delicate, that we often need the help of a caring, integritous therapist – one that won’t help us settle for quick fixes, but will truly help us fully explore and heal to the root.

No matter where you are in your life, commit now to not settle for temporary, partial “freedom” in the outer world, but rather to begin or continue the journey towards true, lasting freedom. Imagine what our world would be like if everyone – leaders and citizens – made this commitment!

NEEDED NOW MORE THAN EVER …
UPDATED THIRD EDITION OF POWER ABUSED, POWER HEALED

Recently, I shared the following news with subscribers on my mailing list. I now feel called to share this announcement with all those who read the newsletters themselves in my blog. It is my prayer that my book helps all of us to bring healing not only into our own lives, families, and communities, but also into our whole world.

When I first published my book, Power Abused, Power Healed, nine years ago, I knew that the hopeful, healing message in its pages was so needed in our world – a world rife with abuses of power in all arenas of life.

In that time, so many more abuses have come out into the open, calling for us to begin the journey – or go deeper into the journey – to heal misuse and abuse of power from the inside out. In response to this urgent call, I am issuing an updated third edition of Power Abused, Power Healed.

Sylvia Brinton Perera, Jungian analyst, author of Descent to the Goddess: A Way of Initiation for Women, said this upon reading Power Abused, Power Healed:

“Using Hans Andersen’s fairy tale about the emperor whose vanity lands him naked on parade, Judith Barr explores the stories of many kinds of power. While her accounts are mainly focused on power abuse in families and the helping professions, we know only too well how the same dynamics surround us. In politics, in the corporate world, in church institutions, even in our news sources, we can see many forms of abuse that distort reality, silence questioning, crush empathy, and build empires based on greed, power, and righteous self-aggrandizement. Because Judith Barr’s parables are enjoyable and deceptively simple, they help to raise consciousness in non-threatening ways. They creep under our defenses to wake us up. Thus they can be used by parents, family therapists, pastoral counselors, and group leaders in their work. They can also be used for self-reflection, for it is not hard to find aspects of ourselves mirrored in them.

I would also like to see this book as mandatory reading for politicians and CEOs. Everyone claiming authority needs to know the dire consequences to self and to others of the power shadow. When we are not aware, we may find ourselves parading our grandeur and goodness as foolishly as the naked emperor, or as cruelly as any tyrant.”

While most of the specific stories in Power Abused, Power Healed are about individuals, the larger context of the wrap around story is that of an empire – government, politics, and a whole citizenry – and about an emperor who is the head of government – even a dictator – who threatens anyone who doesn’t see the clothes. Those affected include his advisors, other government officials, and ordinary citizens. Their response mirrors a possible response of any citizenry in similar situations … a mirror that reflects much of what we see in our national and international political scene today.

To learn more, visit www.PowerAbusedPowerHealed.com, and to order your copy, visit https://judithbarr.com/shop/.

I hope you find Power Abused, Power Healed to be a valuable and inspiring resource in your healing journey, in your life, and in holding and helping to heal what’s going on in our world.

WHERE IS OUR SAFETY NET? WHICH ONE?

Nik Wallenda is a daredevil and a high wire artist. Part of the famous Wallenda family, originally circus performers, he carries on the family tradition by walking the wire across dangerous places at dangerous heights, for people to see both in person and via television. In recent years, he has walked across Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon, and the Chicago Skyline canyon of skyscrapers.

He walks the wire without a safety net!

Yes, he walks the wire without a safety net. And that’s his choice. But what about the rest of us? Those of us who aren’t high wire artists, and don’t choose consciously to walk the wire of life without a safety net?

We are born into many kinds of families … some families with, as they say in my field, “good enough” mothers and fathers. That doesn’t mean they’re perfect. It doesn’t mean they haven’t been wounded themselves in some way. It just means that somehow they have managed to be good enough parents, give their children a good enough experience in their development, and prepare their children enough to know themselves and find themselves when they lose their way.

How have the good enough parents done that? Maybe they’ve done their own inner healing work. Maybe they, themselves, have had good enough parents. Maybe they somehow have had a sense of responsibility and a sense of commitment that guided them to find out how to become a good enough parent – inside and out. Maybe a combination.

However the good enough parents do it, bonding with a good enough mother and being held by her physically, mentally, emotionally, energetically, and spiritually … is like being given a safety net. In other words, attachment to a good enough mother is a safety net – outer and inner. Most importantly it is an internal safety net that makes a deep and lasting imprint.

Although we don’t want to know it, don’t want to even imagine it, would likely deny it’s true for us … most children in our world today do not have “good enough” parents. And most adults in our world today did not have “good enough” parents, either. The history of wounding in our families in our world goes back more generations than the famous Wallenda family’s talent as high wire artists.

Family wounding can start in an instant – an instant of neglect, an instant of abuse, an instant of loss, an instant of abandonment, an instant of insanity …

It gets compounded generation by generation, as members who were impacted by that first instant carry it on through their lives, acting it out consciously and unconsciously – through repressing and defending against the wounding experience and its impact on their minds, bodies, hearts, and souls.

Family wounding starts in an instant, but it certainly doesn’t stop in an instant. Family wounding doesn’t stop even in a generation unless that generation doesn’t have children, and even then it still lives on and gets acted out by those who are still alive. But the end of family wounding can begin in a generation if that generation takes responsibility to end it, enters a deep process of psychotherapy to heal the family wounding to the root … and passes that healing tradition onto the next generation to continue.

The result of the family wounding … most children don’t have a safety net. And most adults – within whom the child they once were is still alive – don’t have a safety net either. And the safety net that was needed and either never existed or was shattered … that safety net needs to be replaced or re-created from the inside out. That takes time. It takes time individually. It takes time as a family. And it takes time as a community – local, national, and global.

It’s part of what I offer to help people do when they work with me … replace or re-create a safety net within. And then from the inside out into their lives.

To do that, they need to allow themselves to come to realize – if they haven’t realized already – that living without a safety net as a child led them to build a safety net themselves, as a child. So although they did the best they could for a youngster trying to take care of themselves, they built the kind of safety net a child would build – perhaps a 1-year old’s safety net; perhaps a 4-year old’s safety net; perhaps an 8-year old’s safety net. So the safety net may have helped them as a child, but it is a twisted, distorted, not really safe safety net for an adult. It has holes and knots in it and isn’t really very strong as a here and now safety net – inside or out.

Maybe a little boy had no safety net in his family. Maybe he was sexually abused as a child. Maybe he cried out ‘no’ when his abuser held him down, only to be smacked by the perpetrator in response. So in the face of no safety net, the little boy’s safety net in his mind became to never cry out ‘no.’

As time went on maybe he extended what he thought was his safety net to not saying ‘no’ at all. It might have kept him from being smacked, or worse, as a child. But it also kept him from saying ‘no’ or crying out as an adult at times when he needed to in order to keep himself and his loved ones safe.

Perhaps a little girl had no safety net in her family. Perhaps she was tricked by her family and then humiliated when she discovered she was tricked. Perhaps she built what she imagined as a little girl was a safety net – inaction. Just hiding out in her room and not taking action on anything when at all possible. It might have saved her from humiliation as a child, but as an adult, it led her into unsafety in ways she could have never imagined. For example, people could take advantage of her and her inaction. People could corner her and make her even more vulnerable than she already was and felt from childhood.

In these examples of safety nets lacking in childhood and built by children … we see a tragedy not only in the life of children in our world, but also in the life of the adults they become. Because growing in years and growing in size does not mean maturing. It just means growing in years and size. The child you once were is still alive inside you … needing help, needing healing, needing maturing, and needing real safety.

But who in our world offers to help children and adults create a new inner safety net?
A world so very focused on the external. A world so very focused on functioning. A world so very focused on symptoms. A world that supports the child alive inside, still starving for safety, to continue to use young ways to try to feel safe, and to find more and more ways to feel a respite from the unsafety s/he grew up with and the unsafety s/he still faces today. An example of this is the government suggested practice in the 1950’s of practice drills in case of a nuclear bomb – having children get under their desks in school “for their safety.” So … no saying ‘no’ and no taking action expands into addictions of all sorts to hold the pain and fear of the unsafety at bay. Drugs – street and medicinal – alcohol, television, politics, guns, football, sex, fights, and more. Even prayer and meditation can be misused to mask the lack of safety net that exists within and without.

Because we ignore the lack of safety nets we had as children … Because we ignore and hide from the continued lack of safety nets we have within as adults … Because we reflexively hold at bay the experience of young unsafety … we also hold at bay the experience of unsafety we live with today.

Unaware that any unsafety today will trigger our young experiences of unsafety …we are blind to the unsafety we live with. We are blind and deaf and numb to the truth that we have created the unsafety we live with today … out of our defenses against the unsafety we lived with as children. And we are blind, deaf, and numb to the awareness that the sense of powerlessness we feel in the face of the unsafety today is mostly the experience of powerlessness we felt in the face of unsafety as children long ago, being transferred by us onto today.

Perhaps we tried to get more and more safety by making more and more money, believing that huge amounts of money would one day make us safe. But then comes something like the recession of 2008 and … the safety net we tried to create in the outside world as a way to defend against the lack of safety net on the inside came crashing down. The safety net we tried to create in our late 1990-early 2000 world to defend against the lack of safety net in our world in the years of our childhood … disintegrated.

Maybe we tried to do all sorts of things, unconsciously believing they would create the safety net we didn’t have as a child, and hold at bay the pain and terror of that young lack of safety that still lives within us. Maybe we have destroyed our air and our water, destroyed our forests, our food, and our weather. Maybe we have destroyed our infrastructure. Maybe we have destroyed our travel. Maybe we have destroyed our health. Perhaps we’ve destroyed our politics, our government, our economy, our culture by indiscriminately falling for, accepting, and normalizing the destructive acting out by anybody at all – the lies, sexual abuse, cheating and stealing, bullying and threatening, and more.

Perhaps we have been unconsciously destroying our safety net in the outer world today as a result of trying to avoid facing the shattered safety net from long, long ago, still living in our minds, our hearts, and our bodies.

This is what happens when we defend against what lives within us instead of tending to it and healing it. What we originally defended against ends up being the very thing we create. Defending against a shattered or missing safety net, creates defenses that in the end create the very thing we were trying to defend against … a shattered safety net.

That’s what we’ve done in our world.
That’s what we’ve done in every arena of our world.
And no matter how big or how small, we have all played a part in it.
We all have to take responsibility for it.
We all need to take our part in healing and repairing it …
Starting with healing from the lack of safety net in our lives long ago.
Starting with healing from the lack of safety net still within our psyches and souls.
Starting with healing ourselves – from the inside out.

If we do not start from within ourselves, the safety net will never be truly repaired or re-created – within or without. Because we create from the inside out.
We cannot repair safety nets from the outside in and expect them to sustain over time.
We cannot repair individual safety nets from the outside in and expect them to sustain over time.
We cannot repair communal safety nets from the outside in and expect them to sustain over time.

Do you want a safety net in your outer world?
Then begin now:
Commit to get the help to heal to the root from the lack of safety net in your childhood and within yourself today.
Don’t be tricked by others who are also creating unsafety today by defending themselves against feeling the unsafety from their childhoods that still lives within them.
Don’t be duped or seduced into believing you can continue to hold at bay that painful lack of safety that’s been with you for years and years without consequences.
Don’t be fooled into thinking your holding your unsafety at bay will be safe for you, those you love, or the world as a whole.
It won’t. It isn’t.
Look what it has created in your world already.
Look what it has created in our world already.

Get the help to face it and work through it …
This is the real hope.
We all have this choice.
We all have this opportunity.
We all have this possibility.
And we all live with the consequences of our choices.
This is the real hope …
Choose well!

© Judith Barr, 2016

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP KEEP OUR WORLD SAFE
FROM THE INSIDE OUT

If you grow up without someone to welcome you, who you really are….
You don’t have a safety net.

If you grow up without someone to nourish and help you become more and more fully who you are, mind, body, heart, and soul …
You don’t have a safety net.

If you grow up without someone to nurture you into thriving as you …
You don’t have a safety net.

If you grow up with someone who interferes with who you are and who you are meant to develop into …
You don’t have a safety net.

If you grow up with someone who neglects the essence of who you are and your development of that essence into fullness …
You don’t have a safety net.

If you grow up with someone who colludes with someone else’s neglecting or interfering with who you are and have the potential to become …
You don’t have a safety net.

If truth be told, there are very few among us who had “good enough” parents who helped us to form a healthy, lasting internal safety net. And for those of us who didn’t … it is crucial we explore how our self-created safety nets were distorted.

Commit today to explore ways in which your own childhood experience affected your internal safety net. In the absence of the true safety net of attachment to a good enough parent, did you create your own distorted “safety net,” maybe one which led you to avoid owning your ‘no’ or led you to inaction, like the examples in the article … or maybe one which you act out in other ways, with the potential to create unsafety for yourself and those around you?

Working with your internal safety net can be very delicate work. Find a compassionate therapist, one who can safely help you explore and heal the wounding within, and help you create a truly healthy safety net inside.

Imagine what our lives, our children’s lives, the lives of our families, our communities, our world would be like if everyone worked to heal their inner wounding … creating lasting safety nets within themselves … and in doing so creating true, healthy, lasting safety in our world!

“We Need Mothers Who …” Mother’s Day All Over the World

Countries and cultures all over the world celebrate Mother in some way.
It may be a healthy way. It may be a distorted, ritualized, or even an unhealthy way.
Perhaps it’s the personal mother who is celebrated. Perhaps it’s the idealized mother who is celebrated. Perhaps the normalized mother. Possibly it’s the essence of Mother we need.

Our mothers have an impact on us as individuals and on us as a society … whatever society we live in. Both consciously and unconsciously, our mothers have an impact on our personal lives, and an impact on the life of our planet.

There is no perfect mother. We are all human, and we all make mistakes. If someone pretends to be perfect, she teaches her children they have to be perfect. Because they never can be perfect, she teaches her children they can never be good enough. She also teaches them there is no process in life or human relationship. The mother who is human – imperfect but a good enough mother in all the ways children most deeply need – teaches her children it is possible to make mistakes and create a repair for the mistakes they’ve made. She does that with them when she makes a mistake. She helps them do that when they make a mistake. This deepens their trust with her, with themselves, with process, and with life itself.

When have you seen that from a mother in public life? From a mother or a father in public life? It is sorely lacking. Especially in these times.

Just as important as that acknowledgment of a mistake and the repair that needs to follow, is the mother who realizes she has made a mistake out of her own wounding, acknowledges it, and gets the help to do her own inner healing work instead of continuing to act out her wounding with her children, family, and others. This deepens her own and her children’s faith in real repair – for their relationship with mother and for their ability to do the same. It is a profound and wonderful role model for everyone in her life who witnesses her in the process of healing inside and out.

When have you seen that from a mother in public life? From a mother? From a father? It is tragically lacking in our world. Especially in these times.

But … I remember a time not long ago, reading about two public figures who did acknowledge – to themselves and apparently to others – that the work they did in the world was an acting out of their defenses against their wounds. It was a good example of the possibility that we may do important work in our outer world, yet it may unconsciously be a way to hold at bay the pain of our wounding as children that is still alive in our inner world.

Gloria Steinem acknowledged that “being a social activist can be a drug that keeps you from going back and looking at yourself. You keep trying to fill up this emptiness.”* How courageous! How honest! How real! And what a model for our world. Was anybody listening? Did anybody get it? She was acknowledging out loud that she invested herself in a cause in the outer world to avoid the pain still alive in her inner world.

I once led a workshop called Conscious Activism from the Inside Out on the topic of outer activism as a defense against inner activism. As people explored how they used social and political activism to hold their inner world at bay, I was also helping them realize that it is possible to do the inner healing and also help in the outer world. And that it was of great concern how frenzied and distorted the outer activism can become as a defense against the inner. All we have to do to see an example of that is to look at the political scene in the United States today.

Betty Friedan offered an acknowledgement similar to that of Gloria Steinem in a later edition of The Feminine Mystique. She wrote about her hatred for her mother, and then admitted, “It was easier for me to start the women’s movement than it was to change my own personal life.”

These were the “mothers” of the women’s movement. Their acknowledgments don’t discount the actual good done by and through the women’s movement. But they may explain the roots of some of the harms. Here’s a perfect example of no mother being perfect. But by their taking responsibility for the deep roots of their unconscious intentions, these mothers of the women’s movement … freed themselves to do their inner healing and offered a profound model to those who came after them. Who knows how few or many of the “daughters” and “sons” of the women’s movement welcomed and utilized that model in their own lives and their own activism? This brings to the foreground the understanding that the unconscious intentions of avoiding their own inner pain contributed to the unsustainability of many of the outer successes they achieved.

For example, if each of them had first worked with the young pain of not having choices over their own minds, bodies, hearts, and souls … they would have modeled for all those who worked with them and came after them to do their own inner work and then the outer work.

How many other women have made these acknowledgments? How many men have done the same? How very different our political scene would be today if both women and men did their inner work before bringing their energies to such important arenas in our outer world!

But back to mothers … and a deep hope that more mothers – both in private life and public life – will do their own inner healing work for their own sakes, for the sake of their children, and for the sake of our world.

This is my Mother’s Day wish.

This is my Mother’s Day prayer.

© Judith Barr, 2016.

* from the synopsis for the HBO documentary, “In Her Own Words,” https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/gloria-in-her-own-words/synopsis.html

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP KEEP OUR WORLD
SAFE FROM THE INSIDE OUT

Whether we are mothers or not, whether we are activists or not, whether we are men or women, old or young, single or married … we all need to very carefully explore and heal the wounded currents within us that affect our lives, our relationships, our world.

This Mother’s Day, make a commitment to begin that crucial healing journey. Or to take that next big step in it. As you reflect on your own relationship with your mother – past and present – allow yourself to feel whatever arises within you … committing not to act out on those feelings but rather to feel and explore the roots of those feelings. What are the earliest feelings you can recall in relation to your mother? And … when in your here-and-now life do you feel those same feelings? About whom in your here-and-now life do you feel that same way?

When exploring, we may find we need the help of a skilled, caring therapist to truly heal many of our deepest feelings about our mothers. Even to bring into consciousness for healing feelings we can’t remember or don’t consciously connect with our relationship with mother. Commit as well to find that help when you need it.

Whether we are parents or not, we all need to do the inner work necessary to explore and heal our inner wounding…for the sake of our families, our communities, and the children in our world – and the adults they will someday become.

If I Were A Rich Man … ‘Twas the Night Before Tax Day!

‘Twas the night before Tax Day
and all through the house
not a creature was stirring,
not even a mouse
who could nibble at a dollar bill
and carry it to build his nest
or back to his nest already-built.  

‘Twas the night before Tax Day
and all through the house
all the creatures were dreaming
of what they would do with nests full of money.
Many dreaming, like Tevye,*
that they wouldn’t have to work hard,
would have big houses right in the middle of town,
and would be thought to be wise and powerful
just because they’re rich.
Many asking, like Tevye,
“Would it spoil some vast eternal plan.
If I were a wealthy man?”**

Any day of the year is a good day to learn about money …
To learn different things about money than they teach you at home, in school, at the bank, on the job, in an accountant’s office, and certainly in the media. To learn deeper truths about money than you learn anywhere else.

Tax day is a particularly good day.

With all the issues we have related to money in our individual lives, in our national economies, and our world economy …
And of course, in our politics …
The Fiddler on the Roof song and fantasy can help us dissolve the illusions we have about money …
And learn the deepest truth about what drives us in our relationships with money.

For example …
Just because a person is rich, doesn’t mean s/he has a healthy relationship with money.
Just because a person is rich, doesn’t mean his/her relationship with money is about the here and now, and not some other time long ago.
Just because a person is rich, doesn’t mean his/her relationship with money is that of an adult.
Just because a person is rich, doesn’t mean his/her relationship with money is really about money.

*****

As a depth psychotherapist and a financial therapist, I have worked with many people over the years to help them discover the roots of their relationship with money. Despite my numerous articles, the most thorough of which is my home study course, A Recession Regression – Finding the Root of Our Relationships with Money, people often, if not usually, have the misconception that if you’re rich, you have a healthy relationship with money. Not necessarily so.

Many people I’ve worked with who were not rich, knew their relationship with money was not good for them. Many even knew it was not good for their family or our world. But until they did the depth work, they often imagined being rich would fix their relationship with money.

Many of the wealthy people I’ve worked with knew something was distorted about their relationship with money and came to me for the help to discover what. Many didn’t know, and were very surprised and thankful to find out.

People willing to go to the depths of themselves consistently discover in our work together that it is the little child they once were – still alive within them – who is truly driving their relationship with money. Sometimes experiences with money as a child do form a layer of that child’s experience driving their financial life today. But almost always there is another layer of early experience that isn’t about money at all. It’s about something going on in that child’s life, in that child’s relationships, in that child’s pains or even trauma, that ends up being transferred unconsciously onto money.

Here’s a profound example that could apply to a child who grew up to be poor or a child who grew up to be rich. Sal grew up, the oldest child in a large family: mother, father, aged maternal grandmother and grandfather, and 8 siblings.  His father worked in a factory long, long hours. His mother took in sewing so she could also be home to take care of her parents and children during the day. They were far from rich financially, and he felt it. But the greatest deprivation Sal suffered was from not having enough of his mother. She felt she had too much else to take care of, and his being the oldest, she enlisted his help taking care of the other children.

Sal decided very early in his life … before he even had words to express his decision: I’ll never have enough. It was a decision that lived in his little heart, his little body, his little mind. Later he might have had, thought, and even said the words. Or perhaps not. If he did, it is unlikely he could have realized how powerfully that early decision would affect his life, even drive his life, from his unconscious self. One thing’s for sure: it definitely would drive his life in very profound ways from the underground labyrinths of his psyche.

For instance, with an early decision of I’ll never have enough, he might struggle and struggle and work so very hard trying to make a good living, and find that no matter how hard he works, he does, in fact, end up never having enough money. He fulfills the early decision by its coming true actually in his finances, followed by his feelings.

He might also find a way to earn a really good living, bring in lots of money, and still feel he doesn’t have enough. He might change jobs, start his own business, hit a jackpot investment, and still feel he doesn’t have enough, even though he has in the current day more than enough many times over. He fulfills the early decision by its coming true in his perception and most of all in his feelings.

In both versions of Sal’s here-and-now experience, he is always experiencing and afraid of not having enough. In both versions, he is blocked by a decision he made long ago in his childhood – the decision “I’ll never have enough.” He is blocked by that decision. He is blocked by his being unaware of it. He is blocked by his transferring an experience he had with his mother onto money. And he is blocked by his own not working with this issue in his life and not healing and resolving it to its root.

Furthermore, he is not the only one impacted by his early decision and his reactions to it – his internal reactions, his relational reactions, his financial reactions. This is one of those places where it is becoming more and more obvious that we’re all connected.

Babies are not born greedy. Babies are born innocent, vulnerable, needing. It is the experiences our babies have and the unconscious early decisions they make from within those experiences that end up driving them to become greedy – greedy for money, greedy for power, greedy for attention, greedy for love … or hopeless in relation to the same things.

When you come right down to it, most of the profoundly intense feelings we feel in today’s world have their roots in the experiences of the child still alive within us from his/her world long, long ago.

If only we would do our inner work to discover the roots and to heal all the way to the roots … our world today could be a very different world.

This is not work for just one of us or just a few of us.
Every one of us who does this work helps him/herself and contributes to the communal healing.
But this is work every one of us needs to find a way to do.
For our own sakes, for our children’s sake, and for the sake of our world.

© Judith Barr 2016

*Tevye is the main character in the popular Broadway musical “Fiddler on the Roof.”

**From “If I Were A Rich Man,” song from “Fiddler on the Roof.” © 1964 Music by Jerry Bock, Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP KEEP OUR WORLD SAFE FROM THE INSIDE OUT

As you begin to “wind down” from Tax Day – whether you’re rich, poor, or in-between … whether you get a refund or have to make a payment – take this wonderful opportunity to explore your true relationship with money.

Explore how you felt doing your taxes, or having them done for you. Were you tense or relaxed? Were you angry? Sad? Elated? Scared? And take some time to explore as well how you feel in the wake of this Tax Day. How do you really feel towards money? If you could speak with money, what would you say?

We all sometimes need the help of a skilled, caring professional in the things we do … and the labor of love that is exploring your relationship with money is no different. When you’re ready to go deeper into yourself, and truly heal your relationship with money, seek out a caring, integritous therapist to help you find and heal your early decisions about, and wounding to your relationship with, money.

Imagine if we all, rich and poor, did the crucial inner work to heal our relationships with money! Imagine how different our economy – and our world – would be!

A Call to Healing in the Wake of Violence

A few days ago, there was violence at political rallies for Donald Trump. It was disturbing and heartbreaking to watch.

As we become aware of violent events – in the political arena and in any area of our world – we need to also become aware of an important truth: Violence begins within each of us.

There is a current of violence within each of us that we have the potential to act out on. That current can be provoked, triggered, fed, by anyone and anything. Sure as it’s sunny in the day and dark in the night, we are all vulnerable to that current being triggered. It may be triggered by our dreams at night, by our memories during the day. It may be evoked by something we’re aware of – like an interaction with someone close to us – or by something we’re not aware of at all. It may be evoked by our transferring onto a person or situation in today’s world deep experiences we had long ago when we were children. It may be triggered by someone who has no intention whatsoever for us to be triggered. And it may be triggered by someone who definitely has an intention to trigger us and get us stirred up … and then use us for his/her own agenda.

If we are to help heal the violence in the world, we need to heal the violence and potential for violence within us. We each need to find that current of anger, rage, violence, and work with it and through it. Each person who does this makes him/herself less vulnerable to his/her inner current of violence being triggered. And certainly less vulnerable to acting out on that inner current of violence. Every one of us who acknowledges, claims, owns the current of violence within, does not act out on that current, and, in fact, works through that part of us … helps heal the well of violence in the human community.

A clue: When we are stressed in our current day, we regress to the child within us still alive and needing healing. Different here-and-now stresses will cause us to regress to different times, ages, experiences, and moments of suffering in our childhoods. If we don’t know this, we believe we’re simply in the here-and-now suffering today. If we don’t know about our regression, we are very likely to act out with our big bodies today the little child’s feelings from long ago. We may, for example, have temper tantrums, hurting ourselves and other people

If those around us don’t know about the regressions in themselves, us, and others … they are likely to normalize the violence being acted out. They are likely to claim it is just about today because of something occurring today. They are likely to abdicate their self-responsibility in the situation. They are likely deny their part in the violence erupting. They are likely to refuse to own up to how they provoked it, triggered it, used it … even though it’s clear as day to others.

If we are to help heal the violence in the world, we need to heal the violence and potential for violence within us.

I have written about healing violence many times in my blog in the hopes that my posts will inspire us all to commit to heal violence from the inside out. You can find many of my past posts about the true roots of violence and how we can all help to heal it here: https://polipsych101.wordpress.com/tag/violence/.

“Why aren’t our efforts to end the violence working?

“Very simply, our efforts to end the violence aren’t working because we are doing things that don’t work, can’t work, and often include violence within them. For example, punishment for violence doesn’t work. Laws outlawing violence and then punishing it don’t work. Have they ever really worked? Look at our world today before you even attempt to answer that question.

“Gun control – although it may prevent guns from being used for violence in some cases – won’t work to end the violence. Someone who is defending against their pain with striking out will just find another way to strike out. And praying for violence to end – although it may be a useful, even necessary help toward ending the violence – will not work all by itself to end violence in our world. And though it may help on some deep level, some people who pray don’t commit violence (even though they may have it within them as an escape hatch), and some people who pray also commit violence. That may seem like a contradiction, but we human beings are filled with contradictions, aren’t we?”*

We say and maybe even believe that we don’t want violence … that we don’t contribute to violence … that we don’t co-create violence. We say and maybe we’re even sure –  in our own minds – that others have a violent current but we don’t. And we rip off permission to not honestly acknowledge the violence within us and its roots in the child within. And yet here is the violence right in the midst of us. This is a perfect example of the poison-is-the-medicine dynamic I wrote about in November. **

“We can attempt to end violence from the outside in …
And fail.
Or we can commit to heal violence from the inside out, to the root,
and over time succeed.” ***

Right now, we are failing.

It is my hope that my work will help you in your own healing journey, and that together we can help heal the violence so prevalent in our world today.

Blessings,
Judith

© Judith Barr, 2015.

* From my home study course Violence: Finding And Healing The Roots from the Inside Out, © Judith Barr, 2013, page 13.

** https://judithbarr.com/2015/11/19/grief-shock-another-tragedy-and-the-poison-is-the-medicine/

*** Adapted from the opening quote in my home study course Healing Bullying to The Root: A Unique Approach to A Painful Epidemic, © Judith Barr, 2013, page 2.

UNCONSCIOUS

I CAN’T PROVE IT TO YOU.
It’s a feeling.

I CAN’T WRITE IT DOWN FOR YOU.
It has no clear, definable voice – yet.

I CAN’T TELL YOU
what scientific principle
or mathematical theorem
supports it …
It isn’t guided by anything
that’s rational
or
logical
that’s been discovered yet!

NO! I CAN’T SHOW YOU PHOTOGRAPHS OF IT.
It isn’t visible in that way.
You can’t see it as clear, discernible,
duplicatable images,
but rather only as light and dark
inchoate forms.

I CANNOT SHOW YOU UNDER A MAGNIFYING GLASS!
You would not want to see it that large –
if it could be reduced to fit a glass.
Yet you recreate it large as life
day by day
and minute by minute.
Yes, you are recreating it this very moment,
between us and in our world.

NO! I CAN’T MAKE IT TANGIBLE –
But if you do not
acknowledge it and
the messages it brings …
You will, Oh my God! Oh my Goddess!
do everything you can
to make it tangible …
even create horrors in our
everyday world.

I CANNOT SEW IT INTO A FABRIC –
I assure you, however,
that it weaves a pattern
with threads so strong
they can never be
fully cut out from the weave.

NO, I CANNOT SHOW YOU UNDER A SPOTLIGHT.
It’s not that containable.
Though if you truly wanted to see it,
You would shine your own light on it –
the only way
in truth
it can be shown!

NO! NO! NO! I CANNOT GIVE YOU EVIDENCE.
This is not hewn of the stuff that
your laws and science are made of.
This is born of a deep Knowing,
of a deep and true reality,
That I trust from within my very bones.
A reality that has been washed
from both our shores
to other beaches
far ago and long away …

So far that we have
lost our names for it,
our voices for it,
our sight and our ear for it,
our taste and our feel for it,
our trust in it!

Yet there it remains,
hiding in a cave at the edge of a beach,
being battered and bathed
by the waves of
roaring and gentle oceans.
Waiting, waiting, waiting patiently
for those of us
who dare
courageously
search for it,
seek it out,
creatively find a way
to bring it home
to us again
and
befriend it,
help it heal and transform.

And … without it
we may or may not survive.
And … without it
we will not LIVE.
And … without it
we will not THRIVE.

Original version: © Judith Barr, 1987. Revised version: © Judith Barr, 2016.