WHEN THE ELECTION IS OVER . . .

Many of us – not just in the United States of America but all over the world – are now feeling like Abby Evans, the little 4-year old girl on YouTube who is crying and saying, “I’m tired of Bronco Bamma and Mitt Romney.” We have been stimulated and over-stimulated by media, ads, campaigns, debates, and more . . . for far too long. I don’t know the statistics, but perhaps this has been the longest election in history for everyone to be privy to. It certainly seems that way.

Many of us – not just nationally but globally – are concerned about what’s going to happen on Election Day. Many of us are concerned about what’s happened and what’s happening to the U.S. political system. And many of us are concerned about what’s happening in our world.

When the election is over, we will have a lot of feelings. Some will feel relieved. Some will feel happy. Some will feel scared. Some will feel angry. Some will grieve and some will celebrate. Some will feel it’s all over for four years.  But it isn’t.

What has happened in this election in the outer world is a reflection of what happens within people individually and thus communally in our inner worlds.

If you already do some form of your own inner healing work, you already understand this. If you’ve been receiving my newsletters for years, you already understand this and have been working with it, wherever you are geographically and wherever you are in your healing journey. If you’ve been reading my blog posts and particularly my election blog posts, you have had the opportunity to take in the seeds I’ve offered and hopefully grow them over time. And if this is your first time reading my blog, I hope you can allow it to help you get a bigger picture, a deeper picture of what is going on and what we need to do.

I’m going to repeat the essence in brief: Each of us has some way in which we were hurt, wounded emotionally and perhaps also physically, or traumatized as children. A child cannot tolerate that kind of pain, buries the pain, and reflexively creates immediate protections against the pain. Over time the immediate protections harden and get frozen and even break off from the original intention . . . and they take on a life of their own. When we get to the point of adulthood chronologically, the child we once were is still alive within us . . . even if we are not aware of it, even if we don’t want to be aware of it. And we hold onto our broken-off, split-off defenses for dear life. We believe it is life and death, even as an adult, not to feel what the child we once were, was not able to feel. And we continue to fight against our own feelings, perhaps now not just inside ourselves but outside too. We continue to fight to keep from feeling those feelings.  And the more we do that, the more walls we build to keep us from our real, true, authentic selves beneath the defenses. And the more we do that, the more we create distortions within us, around us, and the more we help to create distortions and destructiveness all over our world.

For example, if your parents believed as children that they could never have enough, very likely they made a decision in childhood that they could never have enough. As a result, they began creating their lives as though what they believed was true; they began creating their lives as though their decision was an accurate decision. And when you came along, they very likely interacted with you in such a way that you came to believe you could never have enough. Or even if they didn’t act it out with you, you watched them act it out in other areas of their own lives. So even if they made sure you had enough, someplace within them, they were torn – perhaps between I can’t have enough but some people can. And so you, in turn, found yourself split – maybe, for example, between I can have enough but not everyone can have enough. If you go out into the world with this split, you will interact with the world in this split way. But not only will you interact with the world in this way . . . your split will be poured into the communal consciousness – as though the communal consciousness were a big cauldron of thoughts, decisions, feelings, and energy – and feed the split. At the same time, everyone else with that split will be feeding the communal consciousness, too. And all those people will believe something that doesn’t have to be true. . . if we don’t create it to be true.

That was one example. There are so many others. I have written about them all through the election. When the election is over, we will still have a lot to do. Not just on the outer level, but even more within ourselves.

For today, tomorrow, and in the days to come, be aware and hold onto this . . .

Out of the experience of the past many, many months of the election process. . .
we see many distorted, destructive things that are coming out into the open from beneath our awareness, from beneath our consciousness –
both individual and communal.

We can simply bemoan these things that are emerging into the light of day.
We can be afraid of them, deny them, run away from them, numb ourselves in the face of them.
We can believe we are powerless, and in so doing, give up the power we have. 

Or we can see that these things are coming out and we can choose to utilize them and our own power
purposefully, consciously, and safely for healing.* 

This is my choice.
This is where my deepest, most important vote goes …
To our seeing them and committing ourselves to utilize them purposefully, consciously, and safely for healing –
our own individual healing and our communal healing, as well. 

What choice will you make?
Where will your deepest vote go? 

*From the Prologue of Power Abused, Power Healing . . .
“Power is like fire, lightning, wind, ocean – like life itself – a raw, vibrant, force of nature. It has the potential for great harm and the possibility for magnificent good. Each of us chooses, whether consciously or unconsciously, how we will use the power of our own life energy.” 

© Judith Barr, 2012.

THE 2012 ELECTION: WHAT IS THE AGENDA…REALLY?

Merv’s father may seem like a god to him. He may worship his father, idealize his father, turn himself inside out to please his father and make his father love him and be proud of him. He may bend over backwards to help his father accomplish his goals, to endeavor to succeed in any of the areas where his father suffered failures, and to make his family name a proud one. From the place of the child he once was – still alive within him today – he would do this rather than displease his father for a moment. Rather than lose his father’s love or pleasure in him. He would do anything at all . . . rather than feel the loss of his father in any way at all.

Bill’s father may seem like a god to him, too. A god missing in action. A god who was absent but for a brief time many years too late. He may make up a myth about his father’s greatness. He may bend over backwards to incorporate little things he experienced of or with his father into his life. He may turn himself inside out to do great things in spite of his father’s absence, and he too may work extra hard to compensate for his own father’s failures, humiliations, and shortcomings. From the place of the child he was long ago – still alive inside him today – he would do this rather than feel the loss he already experienced. He would do anything at all . . . rather than feel the abandonment by his father in any way at all.

When examining politics, people look for the politician’s agenda. What is the candidate’s agenda as he or she campaigns for office? Or . . . when in office? We might think the agenda is one thing on one level of being. Like, for example, raising taxes, cutting taxes, or leaving taxes where they are. Or another example, helping the poor, helping the rich, helping everybody, helping nobody at all except yourself. We can point to parties that advocate these agendas. We can cite philosophies that support these agendas.

But what if these are not the agendas at all? And what if the real agendas aren’t what we think they are? What if the thing we keep missing – if we refuse to truly understand the psyches of human beings to their root – is the unconscious agenda of the psyche? What if the thing we keep refusing to know is that people will do anything to hold their early pain at bay? To keep it away? To keep it buried? To never ever feel it? And that unfortunately our society supports and normalizes this, causing great harm to our society? (But that for another time.)

What if the descriptions of men above are characterizations – however accurate or inaccurate, however complete or incomplete – of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. And what if their real agendas – perhaps unknown even to themselves – is to keep at bay feelings and fears of the threat of loss of father’s love and or father himself . . . or the actual loss of father’s love and of father himself?

What if these men’s political agendas are reflections of these primal root agendas? Now how do we – as citizens, as voting citizens — think and feel about their agendas? Now how do we, as voting citizens, think and feel about their candidacy? Now . . . how do we discern how our own primal agendas affect our choice of a candidate with his primal agenda? And how do we do this exploration now . . . in the time left between today and the election on November 6th?

Can you see this crucial picture? How we decide who we’re going to vote for depends not only on the primal agenda of the candidates . . . but also upon our own primal agendas. Or more importantly, if we are to be able to truly know and understand someone else’s primal agenda, we’re going to have to truly know and understand our own.

How are you going to explore this before Election Day? What you choose to do – or not do – will have an effect on you, your family, your community, our country, and our world for generations to come.

Imagine what our world would be like . . . if we were to even begin to cultivate and co-create a society in which we reach for and work for deep self-awareness instead of denial . . . healing to the root instead of normalizing and the status quo . . . transformation toward and into our truly greatest potential instead of dumbing down and numbing ourselves and each other.

© Judith Barr, 2012

Election 2012: The American Dysfunctional Family Undeniably Revealed

The 2012 Election process – every moment since the campaign began and even before – has revealed in glaring light not only the dysfunctional political system we live with, but also . . . and actually even more important and basic . . . the dysfunctional personal and communal aspects we live with and act out in our lives.   

In one way or another I have been writing about this since I began writing and then published my book, Power Abused, Power Healed. I have certainly been writing about it in my newsletters, blog posts, and newly in my videos on YouTube.  I just haven’t utilized this title as the umbrella theme.

If I did organize everything under an umbrella title about our dysfunction nationally – and even globally – I could pull together everything I’ve already written, and then I could continue to write ten thousand more hours and a hundred thousand more pages, and still not complete looking at every facet of the dysfunction amongst and within us that we need to see . . . and, of course, resolve and heal.

I am going to take the next step, though, and look at our dysfunction from one perspective . . . through one lens.  I hope you will open your mind and your heart to this, allow it to enter your consciousness, and let it inspire you to take a step in your part in the national healing. 

I’m presenting the picture as many in the media have presented it for the past week plus . . . Not as a partisan statement, but as an example of a mirror for us. If the media reports are accurate, they will offer an accurate mirror. If they are not accurate, they will offer an example of a possible mirror.  A mirror of how to end blame, and instead turn our fingers and our insistence on accountability away from the candidates alone and away from the candidates as they are portrayed to us  . . .  and onto ourselves. We need to look at ourselves. We need to look at our part.

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

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It’s debate night. The debate has just taken place. One candidate seemed to be again and again in a most animated way, revealing the dishonesty in his verbal contradictions and in his eyes. The other candidate was flat, not very lively, and barely looked his opponent in the eye, if at all.

It’s an hour after the debate. A day later. Four days later. And more. The media people are giving us their perspective: talking about how the enthusiastic one who lied won the debate, and the one who didn’t confront him lost it. Yet another day and the media representatives report the polls and how the “animated liar” is winning now, while the “passive non-confronter” is losing now.  The media folks pretend to be reporting what’s happening. Don’t they see the part they play in the dysfunctional family of America? They are shaping the results, under the guise of reporting them. They are swaying people.

And don’t we see the part we play in this dysfunction? 

Here’s the picture we need to see . . .

It’s time to stop pointing our fingers at the candidates for president (or any other office, for that matter), and look instead at ourselves. (I’m not saying we should be blind to them, just that for right now, we need to look at ourselves.)

Let’s look at the presidential candidates as the two parents of our family. We won’t say who’s the mother and who’s the father. Just the two parents. The two parents who have been deeply, profoundly influenced by their parents. But that story for another time. For the sake of brevity and to avoid any confusion below as I make the bridge between candidates and parents, I will use the pronoun “he” for each parent.

The family’s all together for a big family dinner. One of the parents is very excitedly and animatedly lying about himself and what he’s done, is doing, and is going to do. The other parent is flat, affectless, non-confronting, albeit not silent, not voiceless.  Each, in his own way, is competing for the power. Each, in his own way, is competing for the favor of those in the family.

And what about the other members of the family? Well . . . what if there aren’t many of us in the family who are conscious of what’s going on? No one, after all, is perfectly conscious. Let’s look at two of the main possibilities.

The first possibility . . .

Most of us, somewhere within us, want to be with the winner. Want to be on the winning team. Want to be a winner. After all, who doesn’t want to be a winner? However distorted or not. Especially in a culture that too often teaches win/lose instead of win/win. Most of us, somewhere within us, want to have the power. Given that we were all once babies and therefore we all know what it’s like to feel powerless…who doesn’t want to have power? At least some of the power? And perhaps all the power, however distorted or not. Especially in a culture that too often teaches and models “power over” instead of “power with.” Most of us, somewhere within us, want to have the favor – the love – of those in the family. Who doesn’t want at least some of the love? And perhaps all of the love, however distorted or not. Especially in a culture that so often teaches distortions of love.

If it looks like one of the parents in a family is the strong, powerful parent, winning the competition . . . from someplace inside us – even if we are not aware of it – we will want to side with and perhaps even be like that strong, powerful, winning parent, even if that parent is lying. No matter what else that parent is doing.

What if you are not aware of this and have been swayed over to this parent’s side? Perhaps by the parent himself? Perhaps by seeing other family members being swayed over to this parent’s side? Perhaps by hearing people talking about what’s going on in your family and declaring this parent the strong, winning, favorite?

This would mean you would side with the parent who lies, in order to be on the winning team; in order to be with the seeming powerful parent; in order to be with the one who appears to be favored and loved. If you look at such a scenario through a child’s eyes, you might make the very same choice in this situation. But it’s not a very matured way of resolving a family conflict or competition. And it’s certainly not a very matured way of resolving an election choice.

The second possibility . . .

Somewhere within most of us – hopefully – we feel empathy for someone who seems to be unable to stand up to an energetic, lively person who is lying. We can imagine what it would be like to be in that person’s shoes. Maybe we already know what it’s like to be in that person’s shoes from our own life experience. We have compassion for his seeming weakness, or his seeming powerlessness, or his seemingly not being in the favor of those around. We want to help that person. We want to support that person. We may want to protect that person. We want to hold them up and cheer them on. After all, who doesn’t want some sense that if in the same shoes as that person . . . someone else would support us?

So if it looks like one of the parents in a family is the weak, powerless parent, losing the competition, from someplace inside us – even if we are not aware of it – we will want to side with and perhaps protect and help that person . . . no matter what is really going on with that person. No matter what.

What if you are not aware of this and have been moved over to this parent’s side? Perhaps by just seeing the parent in his relationship with the other parent? Perhaps by seeing other family members being moved over to this parent’s side? Perhaps by hearing people talking about what’s going on in your family and declaring this parent the weak, losing, not-chosen one?

This would mean you would side with the parent who seems to be unable to stand up and confront, in order to help him; in order to be the seeming protector; in order to be the seeming rescuer; in order to be loved by the weak one if not the strong one. If you look at this scene through a child’s eyes, you may very well make the same choice.  But it’s not a very matured way of resolving a family conflict or competition. And it certainly is not a very matured way of resolving an election choice.

So here we are . . . the American family coming close to the election. The parents may be revealing their dysfunction. But if the election votes are cast by our looking at their dysfunction alone, we are in big trouble. Because to not look at our own dysfunction before we go to the polls, means we will be casting our votes as children, and not at all as mature adults.

Imagine yourself a 5-year old. Imagine your 5-year old self going into the polls, going into the voting booth, having to step up on a stool to reach the lever or to mark your ballot. Having to step back down off the stool and walk over to the box into which you put your marked ballot, and having to step up on another stool to enter your ballot into the ballot box.

No matter how old you are. No matter how big your body. There is a child alive inside you that is not yet matured enough to vote.

What will you do between now and election day to help mature that little child so you are not voting from dysfunction, and so that you are not voting for dysfunction?

Will you simply remain a child and let the media tell you what to do?

Will you just look at the candidates and at how they are portrayed and vote solely on what you think you see, letting your own childhood history affect your voting choices without even realizing it?

Or will you find a way to explore how to make your choices not from a child place within you, but rather from a matured, adult place within?

© Judith Barr, 2012.

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WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP MAKE YOUR WORLD SAFE . . .
FROM THE INSIDE OUT

As we get ever closer to the 2012 election . . . we all need to explore how our reactions to the candidates – and, just as importantly, the perception of the candidates that the media gives us – can be a mirror to our own inner wounding. This is crucial in all areas of our lives . . . but especially as we head towards casting our vote to elect our country’s leaders.

Ask yourself . . . how do I feel when I hear each of the candidates speak? When I hear reports in the media about how each candidate “performed” in the debate or how each is doing the polls? And who else in my life has evoked this same feeling? Trace back this feeling as far back into your life as you can . . . to try to find the root of your reactions to each candidate.

You may need the help of a really good therapist to help you explore and truly heal to the root so you can make clear, sound decisions. If you would like to explore how you can more deeply explore these issues in your life, I welcome your emails.

Here’s a list of other articles, posts, and videos that can help you as you explore . . .

“The Election Campaign and The Mob Mentality”
Article:
https://judithbarr.com/2016/07/21/the-election-campaign-and-the-mob-mentality-2/
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FBAySAmO8Q&feature=plcp

“It’s Election Time: Are You A Responsible Citizen?”
Article:
https://judithbarr.com/2012/09/04/its-election-time-are-you-a-responsible-citizen/
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqHjL_p-RM8&feature=plcp

“Imagine It’s Election Day – Do You Really Know The Person You’re Voting For?”
Article:
https://judithbarr.com/2012/08/30/imagine-its-election-day-do-you-really-know-the-person-youre-voting-for/

“Elections – Yesterday and Tomorrow”
Article:
https://judithbarr.com/2010/11/14/elections-yesterday-and-tomorrow/

Imagine what our country would be like if we all did our own inner healing work, and could choose our leaders from a place of clarity, rather than from our woundedness! And imagine the effect on our world!

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

Why do they lie? The candidates and their public relations people.
Why do they report the lies as though they’re the truth, with little if any fact checking at all? The media.

What does it say about our politics that there is so much lying? Absence of integrity.
What does it say about our government? Corruption.
What does it say about our country? Weaknesses coming out into the open more than ever.  It could mean deteriorating. Or it could be well utilized for healing and transformation. Which will you choose and participate in?

Now . . . what happens if we shift the focus of our questions?
What happens if we ask about ourselves as citizens?
What does it mean if politicians and government leaders lie . . . and we believe them?
What does it mean if the media reports the lies as though they were the truth . . . and we believe them?
What if the fact checkers expose the lies, but we, believing the lies, move on and don’t even pay attention to the facts?

What does it mean about us if we believe and act on those lies?
Does it mean we’re blind to lies? Deaf to lies? Numb to lies?
Why would we be unable to identify a lie?
Are we not fully present in the current moment?
Have we been triggered by what’s going on and, as a result, regressed to a young age? Regressed to the child we once were who’s still alive inside us? A child who couldn’t bear to know that Mommy and/or Daddy were lying?
A child who made up a lie about what was going on in order to bear the pain of his/her existence in a painful childhood home?

Does it mean we can’t discern the truth from a lie?
Do we just simply not want to know?
How many of us have pain and trauma in our childhoods that drive our lives from beneath our awareness?
How many of us have built defenses against that pain, defenses that we absolutely do not want to take down?
How many of us, if asked straight out, would say we just don’t want to know . . . the truth of what happened to us?
The truth of what we felt when it happened?
How many of us choose lies over truth as a defense against pain?

Does it mean we are “immune” to lies?
That we don’t let them penetrate into our consciousness?
That we don’t let them touch our feeling selves?
That we make ourselves believe they wouldn’t affect us, even if they were lies … but they aren’t?
Does it mean we have deadened ourselves to the pain and so we’re also dead to our own aliveness? And the aliveness of lies that deeply impact us and our lives?
Does it mean that our efforts to hold our pain at bay – both our young pain and that of today – create a blockage within us that keeps us from our true instincts, which could easily discern lies from truth?

Does it mean that our own fear of the truth still alive within us from long, long ago is being manipulated by candidates and their staffs?
Is being taken advantage of by those trying to get certain people elected?
Is being used against us, thus confusing us even more, seducing us and deadening us even more, distancing us from our instincts and wise choices even more?

More important by far than what the candidates and government officials are doing with their lies in so many different forms is what we are doing with ourselves to keep ourselves from seeing the lies, hearing the lies, feeling the lies . . . and knowing the truth. Our lack of introspection . . . our lack of truly knowing ourselves . . . more than anything else . . . keeps us from being truly responsible citizens . . . on election day . . . and on any day at all.

Which will you choose and participate in? Continued deterioration of our society? Or healing and transformation into what we have the true potential to become? The first requires nothing of you … except to purposely block your introspection, continue to accept lies as truth, say ‘no’ and ‘I don’t want to know’ to your part in what’s going on – your wounds unacknowledged, unworked with, unresolved, unhealed. The second insists on your putting your whole heart and soul into being in truth and doing the inner healing work to know the truth, work for the truth, respond to the truth . . . holding yourself and the process with compassion.

© Judith Barr, 2012