What has happened to my world?
There was a time when I was a young woman, when people were increasingly beginning to realize the truth. The truth about themselves. The truth about their childhoods. The truth about their families. The truth about their communities. The truth about their countries. The truth about our world.
They were more and more beginning to learn the truth about how real change is made. About really why we’re stuck. About how to do the underlying work to become unstuck for real – not as a band aid or quick fix, not as a way to get rid of symptoms, not as a means to just function, not as a guise, nor a defense.
It was a hopeful time, filled with possibility, because it was filled with the unfolding of truth.
What has happened to my world?
In those times, people were starting to grasp that they were living with wounds from long ago and with the consequences of those wounds. They were starting to grasp that the painful feelings they experienced when they were wounded were still alive within them. They were becoming conscious that their wounds and feelings were causing them to act in ways that were harmful to themselves and to others. Perhaps they were humiliating others as they were once humiliated. Or yelling at others as they were yelled at. Or smacking someone as they were smacked. Or sexually abusing someone as they were once sexually abused. Perhaps they were doing some version of these things to themselves – in public, alone, or just inside their own minds, hearts, bodies, and souls. Or perhaps they were allowing some version of these things to be done to them.
As much as people were beginning to realize that the buried wounds could be causing harm in their lives and the lives of others, they were becoming conscious that their early wounds and feelings were holding them back, keeping them from growing into the gift of who they really were at their essence. And they were getting glimpses of the reality that they could become the gift of their Self … if only they would do the exploration and healing that their own soul was calling them to do.
It was a hopeful time, filled with possibility, because it was filled with the opening of the passageways which people intended to utilize for healing.
What has happened to my world?
Back then, instead of banning the wounds and feelings as they had done involuntarily as children, and as the society was prone to do – since the same thing had happened to everybody in the society – people were beginning to explore their inner worlds to find and heal those wounds, to be aware of and feel those feelings more and more deeply – purposefully, consciously, safely, for healing. In doing so, they were beginning to learn which feelings were coming up from the past for healing (not to act out on) and which feelings were emerging in the here and now to act upon wisely.
They were recognizing that it wasn’t their responsibility that they were wounded, but it was their responsibility to do their own healing of those wounds.
It was a hopeful time, filled with possibility, because it was helping people become more self-responsible, live more consciously, and be more alive.
What has happened to my world?
In that same time, people were starting to recognize that no matter how much we took action in the outer world, if we weren’t aware of our inner worlds and how they drove us and our actions beneath our awareness … our outer actions could never fulfill our best hopes and dreams, personally, nationally, or globally. Or if they seemed to, those best hopes and dreams could not be sustained, until we found and healed our inner worlds.
And in that time, people were starting to realize that no matter how much we prayed, meditated, chanted, if we weren’t aware of our inner worlds and how they drove us and our actions beneath our awareness … our outer actions could never fulfill our best hopes and dreams, personally, nationally, or globally. Or if they seemed to, those best hopes and dreams could not be sustained, until we found and healed our inner worlds.
Yes, I have deliberately said almost exactly the same thing in the past two paragraphs. As I’ve said many times over the years: Outer action is definitely needed. Prayer in its many forms is needed. But so also is the inner work that is done purposefully, safely, with consciousness and commitment, for healing to the root. And in those times long ago, people were beginning to realize the truth of this. But perhaps they weren’t yet aware of the dangerous consequences of not doing the healing work!
What has happened to my world?
Somewhere along the line, people’s excitement and commitment started to dissipate and even dissolve. People were starting to become aware of their childhood wounds. Their memories were emerging, and with those memories lots of feelings. People were starting to know they had been abused, neglected, hurt.
People were starting to remember what had been buried. And people began to be afraid. How do they go to holiday dinner with family, when one or more people in those families had caused them so much pain, even trauma? How do they stay in contact with people who were cruel to them, without bringing it out in the open? How do they not show up for gatherings, or even one-to-one get-togethers, without talking about it? And what would happen if they did?
And what would happen if they did? Ah! That’s the question that changed my world. Whether asked consciously or unconsciously … that question brought up people’s primal fears. That question opened the wounds. And many people didn’t want to go there.
So the possibility that was right there in those questions, the gems of clues that were pointing to the root of the wounds … were left in the ground. They were left in the ground of people’s own beings. They were left in the inner ground of people’s own minds, bodies, hearts, and souls. And the people – too many of them – ran away. They moved on to something else. Under some guise. Under some pretense. With some excuse or rationalization … not only to others, but more importantly to themselves.
What has happened to my world?
Too much that people were afraid to know was coming up. Too much that people were afraid to feel was coming up. Too much that people needed to know, needed to feel, and needed to heal was coming up and then being dropped.
Too much childhood abuse. Too much childhood sexual abuse. Too much childhood neglect. Too much family dysfunction that came to be simply normalized. So much individual, familial, and cultural information started coming out into the open … but people didn’t want to know.
It was like the three monkeys: “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.” As though discovering and recovering the truth is evil.
Although there has been some awakening, there is still in our world …
more childhood abuse than anyone knows or wants to know. And it is normalized.
More childhood bullying than anyone knows or wants to know. And it is normalized.
More childhood sexual abuse than anyone knows or wants to know. And it is normalized.
More childhood neglect than anyone knows or wants to know. And it is normalized.
Most people don’t want to know. Most people still don’t want to know. Most people don’t want to know their part in it. And most people still don’t want to do their own work with what happened in their childhoods, and what happened in the lives of their children as a result.
All this wounding still alive inside us – feeds the abuse, bullying, sexual abuse, neglect, greed, terrorism and acting out that is going on in our world! And all the not wanting to know and not wanting to do the inner work feeds the acting out in our world – personally, nationally, and globally.
If we just look at the United States – only because I’m right here and I see what’s happening more clearly here than I do in other countries – the masks have been dissolving and it is much easier to see that there is deep, young wounding in our leaders and in the people who are running for leadership positions. It is so obvious in some trying to become leaders that often people find it laughable, although in truth it is tragic. Tragic that they are acting out their wounds on the political, national, and world stage. Tragic that they are causing so much harm to the process, the people, the country, and the world. Tragic that their wounds, like magnets, are drawing to them those who respond from their own wounds.
Tragic that no one is talking about this in the public space.
The masks have been dissolving and it is much easier to see that there is deep, young wounding in our economic realm. The greed that is causing so much suffering economically is obvious in those who have more than enough but don’t feel they can get enough. Their own wounding coming into sight. And the wounding of the people who really don’t have enough and don’t believe they’ll ever have enough is showing itself here, too.
The masks have been dissolving and it is much easier to see that there is deep wounding and subsequent abuse reflected in our insurance system, our pharmaceutical system, and the consequences for our medical and our mental health systems.
The insurance system, once intended to help people take care of their health, has been reduced to disconnection from that intention and from the people as well. The pharmaceutical system, once based on the longing to alleviate pain and suffering, has descended into a heartless, greedy money-making system. For example, charging $600 for a double pack of epi-pens, used to keep people from dying if affected by an allergenic substance – like a bee sting, peanuts, or anything else that could send them into anaphylactic shock. What early wounds in the pharmaceutical and insurance CEOs, boards, and staff are being revealed and acted out this way in their companies and on their society?
How many doctors do you know who not only respond to your physical medical need, but also ask you how you are? Talk with you about your life as a whole? Talk to you by phone if needed? Too many in the medical system, driven by their own early wounds, allow themselves to be driven also by the insurance system, and the economic system, to disconnect from the heart and soul of their patients – and themselves – and in that way violate their Hippocratic oath to do no harm.
And the mental health system – what has happened to my world? I’ve had so many people talk with me about their distress related to finding a therapist who’s a right match. And how they haven’t been able to find someone who would go to the root with them – not only mentally, but emotionally, too. The therapists they found used techniques and recommendations – and medical drugs – to get them functioning again. Perhaps the therapists they tried did care about their suffering; but they couldn’t go beneath the functioning, beneath the coping, beneath trying to remove the symptoms, to the heart of the suffering. The therapists couldn’t go to the source of the suffering deep within their clients because most likely they themselves were afraid of those primal places – in their clients and in themselves.
If people don’t want to know about their early wounds, if people don’t want to feel their early wounds, if people don’t want to face the feared consequences of bringing them out into the open – the very consequences they were afraid of in their most primal, vulnerable times as children – then people won’t participate in really healing themselves. They won’t participate in helping others really heal themselves. And they won’t participate in really healing the systems … even the mental health system, even the medical system, even the security and defense systems, even the political and governmental systems, even the family systems.
What has happened to my world?
Yes, I know doing the real, healing to the root is challenging. It’s both challenging and exciting. Both painful and joyful. Both deep within, where you may feel you’re trapped, and freeing beyond what you can imagine!
Here we are … we have co-created the things in our world that are most damaging and that we most fear. We may have co-created wonderful things, too. But we have all co-created the things in our world that are most damaging and that we most fear.
We can utilize all that we feel in response for our healing; or we can just keep on co-creating more of the fearful things in the outer world, in an attempt to avoid our inner worlds.
The possibility is here! To utilize what we’ve co-created for healing. But how long are you going to wait till you do your part in the healing? How long are you going to wait till you want to know? Till you you’re willing to remember; till you’re willing to feel; till you’re willing to use it all for healing in a safe and healthy way?
How long?
© Judith Barr, 2016
Excellent!
Dear Dr. Kerver . . .
I appreciate your response. What I named and expressed in my article needs to be said again and again . . . in the US and all over the world. I’m glad you understand and appreciate that.
Many blessings . . .
Judith