Author: eirini

The “I don’t have a life” pattern

 

First off, let’s start with a higher truth about this subject: there is no such thing as “having no life”. If you’re alive, you have a life. Period. And more than that, you are actually meant to be having this exact life in your current phase, no matter how “wrong” it may look like to your conditioned mind or what you may consciously think you want.

The many experiences that constitute our lives are indeed happening, regardless of how they are being judged by the mental calculations we’re used to define our lives by.

So, what we’re in fact dealing with when we’re contemplating the concept of “not having a life” is the superimposed – and without exception incorrect – criticism of our lives (as given by generic societal measurements which we have automatically absorbed during childhood).

The process of growing up can be brutally unkind and failing to respect or even recognise the essence of life within a child.

This traumatisation is exactly what teaches us as children that supposedly “nothing” is happening when we’re not doing one of the specified “somethings” which our families/societies happened to deem valuable – which of course didn’t necessarily correlate with our soul’s inclinations.

When we feel like we’re doing “nothing”, it’s because we’re conditioned to disregard the subtle and distinctive elements that characterise each of our beings, as if they don’t exist at all, and then to replace those sacred and almost magical-feeling energies of our true resonances with adopted, foreign and irrelevant characteristics.

This type of upbringing of course causes a great deal of shame around the very nature of our beingness, halting what could arise from within it, and it is this multi-faceted wounding occurring in childhood that is now sounding in our current feeling of “I don’t have a life”.

Another way of saying “I don’t have a life” is “I’m a failure” and in this statement it becomes more obvious that we are talking about parental rejection (and the various coping strategies developed over it), rather than any external situation in our lives.

If we are infected by this pattern, it means that we haven’t experienced the feeling of somebody authentically caring about our lives – even if their words and actions looked “positive”.

This is an intensely confusing element of this pattern, because unfortunately parents who aren’t genuinely interested in their child’s essence will very rarely be transparent about it.

Therefore, while their verbal messages and symbolic gestures will don the appearance of love, the effects of their behaviours will reflect their neglect, leaving the child in a state of conflict between what they are feeling as a result of neglectful parenting and what they’re being told is occuring instead.

The truth is that it is impossible for an adult to conceive the notion that they “have no life” unless they have felt as children the lack of care towards who they actually were (and in extension, towards the natural development and blossoming of their life).

Therefore, this pattern is not at all about what we are doing in our lives, but about subconsciously adjusting to how our parents have felt about our (and really, their) existence.

We accept the idea that love must be earned through our doing – instead of naturally being given to our being – in order to match our parents’ negative perceptions of us.

This way, we maintain the illusion that we are eventually going to be loved by them, if we only identify with what we do and then manage to simply do “enough” and of the “right” things (which can never be achieved).

So, while this pattern markets itself as a supposed striving towards success, its program is actually to maintain a never-ending state of struggling/payment/punishment, because it satisfies the parents’ (subconscious) negative demands of us, which we emotionally conclude on from their various treatments that highlight our supposed “unworthiness”.

When we judge our lives as “non-existent”, what we’re doing is essentially agreeing with the lack of value our parents too showed towards our lives. If, hypothetically, we were to allow ourselves to feel valuable, it would then be an obvious contradiction to our parents’ previous behaviours towards us and such a state of cognitive dissonance simply isn’t tolerated by a child’s system.

Feeling valuable is directly disallowed by this pattern.

In fact, this pattern actually bids us to ignore, undervalue or discount whatever may be happening in our lives, by default, no matter what we’re achieving.

This is crucial, because it’s convincing to imagine that the way we’re feeling is due to what we have failed to manage in the world, but its root is in fact the pre-existing feeling of worthlessness we’ve been mentioning. Indeed the pattern sadly dismisses any achievements, because acknowledging them would put us in the awkward position of having to question why the love and sense of meaning we expect as a result of our successes still don’t come.

The self-recognition and natural valuing that would come from observing a positive completion of a goal that is important to us is simply a danger to our subconscious, because it threatens to separate us from the terms of our original relationships. In other words, we have had to choose between belonging with someone and feeling worthy as we were.

We may be subconsciously choosing to sacrifice the creation of our lives in order to stay safe within a relationship or maintain an idea of not being alone in our lives, simply because this sacrifice was the price of our inclusion in our family/community.

Nobody makes a child feel like a “loser” out of love. Children do not get treated like they’re nothing because they are not big enough (=adults). So the feeling of “not having a life” is not there for our benefit after all.

In fact, there’s this strong conscious mental aspect to this pattern and that’s the idea that it is there to motivate and alert us towards action; even that it’s the only system to rely on it in order to manage to go forward in life.

Though this idea was communicated to us as something addressing our supposed defective character, it was in fact a forceful (abusive) behaviour towards us (whether conscious or unconscious).

Therefore, the concept of harshness and judgment as a way to mobilise us is a manipulation which hides the reality of the lack of love towards us.

Pain is not a good motivator and does not produce positive (authentic) results.

At first sight, pain may seem like a functional avenue, as, of course, one has an incentive to run away from what can hurt, but our real purpose cannot possibly be nurtured by a wounding energy. In fact, this pattern pushes our true purpose entirely out of the picture.

Evidently, it is only love and acceptance first that would have made us naturally flower into our innate creativity (and we’d have all the energy to express ourselves in the world too!).

Moreover, it is not even possible to be pushed towards the correct direction.

If our purpose had been compatible with our parents’ desires, we wouldn’t have felt rejected by them in the first place and there wouldn’t have been a need for them to try to direct us at all.

As children, we’ve learned that our innate direction is not a trustworthy drive and that we should instead trust others above us.

The truth of this belief is that its purpose is not to establish one’s path, but to redirect the child from its own selfhood to what a parent/society may prefer that child to be. Therefore, we are talking about control, even oppression; not guidance towards a “good life”.

Needless to say that parents and societies may not be aware of the reality of the effects of such behaviour. They may think they’re doing “the right thing”, but what they are actually doing is competing against the light, intelligence and natural beauty of the being in their care.

So, this rejection-based system does not produce individuals that are driven towards their path, because: One, such drive does not require building, as it is pre-existing, supported by the very life-force of our incarnation. And two, because one does not fully know another’s true path (nor is it necessary), as it is intuited in every single moment of one’s living experience and in accordance with one’s own soul.

Therefore, the case must be made that being scolded and disapproved of towards a successful life is neither needed nor effective. (Yes, it can produce a semblance of an approvable life-script, but it will not be happy nor will it be ours.)

When we feel that we don’t have a life, it also means we have been psychologically blocked from it (by someone else).

The pattern of “I don’t have a life” is always at the same time the pattern of “I’m not allowed to live my own way”.

Moreover, if this pattern plays out in our lives currently, this suggests that we may still be under the influence of an important figure in our lives, being either invisibly sabotaged or actively attacked on who we are, even now.

The final element of this pattern relates to our intrinsic need for a sense of achievement, which is a natural part of our communal and personal experience.

If we find ourselves plagued by this pattern, it means we’re in a state of profound deficiency of this sense of achievement.

However, this must not be taken as proof that this pattern is indeed useful nor that it can potentially succeed! It really cannot. Rather, this  is the result of not having received any confirmation or appreciation of our unique tendencies and abilities from our parents as children. Therefore, we feel this way not because we haven’t reached higher goals, but because our parents failed to see the value of who we were in our natural state and they didn’t respond with pleasing emotions when we’d be spontaneously exhibiting our everyday-life “successes” and creative expressions. 

And that’s essential to pinpoint, because the pattern wants us to focus on external results instead of admitting to this internal deficiency and therefore fails to address the issue in its right domain.

After all, the continuous hunting for the next, more impressive external status is a profoundly addictive state (aiming to fill up the gap that the missing love and approval towards our unconditioned selves would):

We rush to attach titles of gained value to our lives (including career advancement, relationship milestones and personal development) only if we are not aligned with ourselves and our innate life purpose, which would naturally produce the missing meaningful emotional notes.

When we’re being ourselves, we undoubtedly feel the value of our lives (and wouldn’t dream of trying to restrict ourselves through inadequate or irrelevant guidelines).

At the same time, purpose isn’t something as simply defined and it takes time for us to discern it, develop it and feel as if we’re starting to achieve it! This is important because “purpose” too can be hijacked by this pattern turning it into a yet again externally focused fixation.

All in all, the pain of rejection in conjunction with the disallowance of our own direction and the fact that it has been hidden from our consciousness through deflection, projection, enmeshment and scapegoating can understandably cause a pause in our activities.

However, that is a perfectly appropriate place to be in and for as long as it takes, until we feel ready to face the truth of what has happened to us -rejection- and gradually and organically regain our original directions.

The pattern is compounded by the fact that we’ve learned we must feel shame about being in this halted state, as if it were somehow proof of our inability or unworthiness, so we circle back to the abusive belief that only through self-judgment and self-violation can it be remedied, which will only make things worse.

The shame we now feel about “not doing anything” is in fact a direct mirror of our original wound, the one that found our real living (and in extension, purpose) as children, inadequate or incorrect.

But no, we are not betraying ourselves and we’re not “failing” at life.

Rather, there are various elements that have been affecting us, which we were not educated to recognise and in addressing these, we can ignite the change we desire.

In fact, it is this pattern itself that ironically plays a huge part in our immobilisation, because while we believe it to be there for the good of our purpose, it effectively positions us in an inhumane tug of war within ourselves, experiencing all at once the shame of where and how we are, the frustration of being blocked from our direction, while being abusively and ruthlessly pushed in the wrong direction through criticism and on top of everything also being overwhelmed by the confusion of it all !


As a result, due to this pattern, we find ourselves in a constant static form of stress which is invisible to other people.

The amount of energy this consumes is immense; it depletes and disempowers to no end. Therefore, the psychological effort happening under the surface must not be underestimated. This must always be remembered when we’re instructed to only look at the seeming “nothings” happening in our external lives. 

So, if you’re finding yourself in this pattern, let me be the first to acknowledge that what you’ve been going through is indeed a horrifying space to be in and to assure you that none of it has been proof of your supposed unworthiness or even your fault in any way.

And from here on, I invite you to allow yourself to openly question and redefine what “having a life” means to you only (and then to live solely based on that). Also, re-learn to include the following previously disallowed natural states of being, because they matter and will gracefully lead you to creating a life that truly matches you:

Rest – as long and as often as wanted.

Heal – which is going to be gradual and looooooong; and there is no rush, because needing or wanting to heal doesn’t mean anything other than that you’ve gotten hurt somewhere (it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you).

Identity exploration  — spend as much time and energy on discovering who you are and experimenting with aspects of yourself as you feel.

Playfulness – playing is God’s working. 

Various relating experiences – they matter and they deserve endless time and energy! Life is being with others as who we are. Life is love!

Your life is simply yours! So, no experience can possibly be a failure. You are honestly free to do with your life what you will.

So, if you ever still feel like “you have no life”, first ask yourself if this has emanated from your own thoughts and feelings or if it might be a subconscious strategy to get somebody else’s approval or inclusion. Then, ask yourself if it is truly necessary to view your life through that filter, and then proceed to directly feel your spirit and investigate the happenings (and non-happenings) of your life from their original source, your own soul.

 

 

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True Masculinity Does Not Ask You To Follow Or Obey

 

Masculinity is evolving.

And through that journey, both men and women have been struggling to differentiate between the new, wanted masculine from the dysfunctional, abusive, old one.

Granted, through the process of the feminine’s empowerment (feminism), we have truly denied men some -if not near all!- of their legitimate masculine traits and that is a sad and devastating truth of the otherwise truly needed path towards the reinstatement of the feminine.

Masculinity is indeed pure and positive by default. We should never have vilified it as a way of avoiding being caused further imprisonment and pain. It mustn’t be seen as the focus of blame. It’s just that this, evidently, was the pendulum swing that needed to happen in the unpredictable process of our collective gender-polarity evolution.

The unforeseeable attacks that the masculine has indeed suffered have made it so that we now find ourselves in a state of confusion and intense starvation for this unique fire of masculinity. We have effectively neutralised half of our force in our effort to remember the other half.

However, while we definitely should not be accepting this loss of the masculine as collateral damage, we shouldn’t be looking backwards at the familiar models of patriarchy to reclaim it either!

It’s understandable to lean towards doing so, of course, yet we must be cautious to not choose the previously traversed path, as it has proven incomplete and hurtful (and it is part of what has created its opposite reaction – the disowning of masculinity altogether). So, even though observing the past surely does seem to be working for accessing a man’s lost sense of masculinity, we also need to be asking ourselves, what kind of masculinity is that?

Fortunately, we are no longer restricted by having to choose between either preserving masculinity or avoiding patriarchy’s obviously negative effects.

Because the issue of patriarchy is not masculinity itself, but the denial and exclusion of femininity – which creates monsters and victims out of people.

What is missing in the equation of healthy masculinity is the valuing of and trust in the feminine’s natural powers of perception and reflection.

This is what will differentiate the pure, new, masculine energy from its rigid patriarchal memory.

Patriarchy has been the expression of an old perception of masculinity that stems from a threatened state of being (but which is veiled) where a man does not feel worthy, confident or driven unless others submit to his will and accept his supposed higher status.

This is rooted in the superstitious distrust and exiling of femininity (within oneself and others) – as graciously provided by religious indoctrination and societal power games.

This created the outdated model of the patriarch, who needs to be constantly fed with positive reflection, no matter what the actual effects of his choices are. He needs to receive a “yes” for everything and doesn’t understand “no’s” as anything accurately reflective of his own behaviours. According to this limited and fearful understanding, he then perceives, acknowledges and desires the feminine only as a passive, agreeing, allowing, yielding energy (which it isn’t!).

Femininity is alive, responsive, multidimensional and wise – which means its reactions will differ according to its stimuli.

So, due to these misconceptions, patriarchal societies have expected their women (and children and employees and people of other sexual orientation or class or race or species etc) to follow and to obey, as a sign of respect and honor towards the masculine, but without it having received the feedback of the feminine of those “below” it.

This has been masked as part of how the masculine takes care of his people, however giving does not require any control. Only needing to be seen unconditionally positively and having no opposition to one’s will does. Why would acting for someone’s benefit or protection demand subservience anyway? One wouldn’t need this kind of loyalty if their actions were undoubtedly in the other’s best interests. Receiving those actions would naturally find no barriers, it would be seamless. Why would there be any need to question something that is surely desired?

So it must be recognised that when the feminine denies or distrusts a type of masculine energy, its reasons matter.

This is the misperception that patriarchy has been operating from: that trust towards a man is a moral, emotional and personal matter rather than a practical one; in other words, that trust should naturally be given to a man simply because he is one, no matter what.

This, in reality, is tyrannical, not masculine.

Trust does feel good to receive, for sure. And it is indeed necessary for the unencumbered flow of masculine expression too! And of course a man can be trusted. But that obviously cannot be imposed.

Patriarchy has treated this potential lack of trust as a petulant, unfair or irrelevant reaction towards a leader/man, when it has clearly misunderstood the feminine’s natural responsiveness and denied its powers (of sensitivity and energetic perception).

The feminine’s reflectivity should never not be listened to. It’s a tool, a positive power, not a spiteful challenge.

This of course does not mean that women should be blindly trusted either. It’s just that patriarchy has been operating from a general attitude of assumed trust towards masculinity and automatic distrust towards femininity. This is the change needed, to see the feminine for what it is and not for what it has wrongly been believed to be.

The fact is, that (healthy) people neither need to nor want to be ruled. We may have learned that’s the only way to receive desirable masculine energy, such as in the form of love, advice, assistance, support, protection, witnessing etc, however those have merely been the decided terms, not a set, normal way of relating.

Nobody actually wants to be led. What they want is to be loved, and without having their own selfhood diminished, bypassed or replaced.

So, what can seem to feel good about being “led” is in fact only being facilitated towards the fulfillment of a pre-existing desire – through having been seen into and attuned to!

This means that what is appealing there is that we are being known and somebody else is putting energy towards our actualisation, and with us. It’s not the old patriarchal recipe of being led by someone who supposedly knows better than us how to live and what to want, as if we’re empty beings in which somebody pours their own self and direction (for their own narcissistic reflection really) that exiles ourselves from our own body and life.

Yes, we want the force of masculinity, we want initiative, spontaneity, action, but we don’t need to be told who we are, to give up the ability to make decisions for ourselves or to not have purpose of our own – which by the way isn’t to be a secondary, supporting role for a man’s life – even if it might be at home for those who truly desire it!

For too long have we accepted that in order to be at the receiving end of this amazing force, we need to be blindly acquiescing to its whims.

A man who finds no opposition is not a strong man, he is an enabled, potentially ignorant, addicted person (to the drug of having access to the feminine without boundaries/requirements).

So, the new man must become masculine again, yes, but he needs to include the feminine in his power, in that he needs to have the equally important strength of meeting the reflection of his being, instead of excluding, ridiculing, ignoring and punishing it instead – both in himself and in others.

Masculinity should not be preserved at the expense of femininity anymore. It should simply welcome its lost half back into the fold. That’s all. That’s the only thing that needs to happen and it makes all the difference in the world.

 

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6 Myths And Tips About Healing

Myth #1: That needing healing implies there’s something wrong with you.

This equates being in an “unhealed” state with something shame-worthy. Only…we’re all “unhealed”. To some degree or other, in some area or another. One could even say that life itself is a constant process of “healing” (or evolving!).

This attitude towards healing and the accompanying pressured rushing towards it are primarily a disguise of self-rejection. This unfortunately does not serve much other than the temporary relief from shame; it does not tend to provide any substantial mending of the wounds we have suffered from – which is our supposed desire in healing, is it not?

Consider it, what is so pride-worthy about overcoming something that we are not at fault for to begin with? Nothing! Right? There can be no correlation between the two. We’re either culpable, therefore we are responsible and able to achieve correction or we’re irrelevant, therefore we have no relation to the resulting state. So this concept is an illusory expectation of power where we are in fact powerless (victimised).

By seeing ourselves as capable of extinguishing our wounds – almost in a way which implies choice in having “allowed” abuse to happen in the first place – we grant ourselves the artificial peace of believing that we were somehow creating what we did not wish to occur to us. Thus we adopt the easier-to-deal-with shame regarding being unhealed. In other words, it feels better – though it seems counter-intuitive – to feel shame about what is out of our control, rather than accepting that we hold no power over what has been done to us (or what might be done in the future).

So being in a situation that wounds us isn’t in fact shameful, therefore requiring time and process for it is normal.

This is the primary painful misconception about healing: that we are somehow faulty and guilty about needing it. As if our “character” could have avoided it. As if our “strength” could have already made it disappear. But emotional wounds don’t happen relative to these elements anyway and healing does not conform to those ideals. Nor should it, because it is simply the progressive loving of ourselves and of being loved.

Tip #1:

Treat healing like a process of love, which it really is. Every part of you that surfaces and requires healing needs to be received by a compassionate heart. Maybe yours. Maybe also others’. Every place in us that is asking for healing is just asking for love. Why is it such a problem to require that much love? Why shouldn’t we be seizing every opportunity to provide even more love?

 

Myth #2: That healing is driven by willpower and it should be done as fast as possible.

While willpower is indeed an aspect of healing, we have a tendency to grossly overestimate its importance. And that is in fact a damaging tactic because it creates forcefulness, which is in essence violence and thus opposite to what true healing requires, which is honest understanding, timeless acceptance and loving compassion, none of which occur speedily or recklessly.

By considering healing the sole result of our willpower we regard our unhealed state as something deeply unwanted, when it is instead just our own victimised self, innocent and sweet as the day we were born. Being wounded does not diminish the beauty of our human selves nor our worth.

When we make healing a shame-based goal of achievement, we lose both the point of it and any potential functional avenues towards it. The choice to engage in the healing journey must be only an act of love towards the self and cannot succeed (long-term) from any other base.

So exterting our willpower over less seen-into aspects of ourselves only serves to alienate and hurt them further. Even worse, the identification with a “healed”/”evolved”/”transcendent” persona within our consciousness only suppresses those wounded parts of ourselves deeper. Again, being wounded is not some kind of proof of weakness nor something we should be running away from.

Willpower’s role extends only to our genuine intention to traverse the path of healing and the graceful stamina of continuing it. Indeed, there is a fine line between utilising appropriate, attuned willpower and bypassing the unique natural boundaries of each of our healing journeys.

Healing has its own timing. Its cycles are generated by the subconscious and by the soul and no matter how much we may wish to just heal, there is a pace through which maturation happens, both unpredictable and magical, and we cannot simply decide to skip forward – nor do we need to nor should we wish to…because this precisely is the process of living!

So, expecting ourselves to heal purely on the basis of our desire to and regarding that stance as the “empowered” or “capable” course of action, actually strongly produces further shame.

There is, however, still a beautiful spiritual element in the power of wishing to heal and believing ourselves healed, which utilises the unseen creative energies of our spirit and can facilitate and guide healing very expertly. However our human parts’ adaptation must also be taken into account – because it can be profoundly painful. Therefore, the timing of healing isn’t drawn out as an annoying, unfair or useless universal condition; it’s gradual and incremental, only because the human experiencing of healing is difficult and can be shocking and exhausting.

Tip #2:

Re-educate yourself to perceive where you are the victim as a natural aspect of the reality of being human. There’s nothing self-pitying about understanding victimhood. Accepting where you are wounded is absolutely necessary to find out how to heal (where you need love and what kind of love you need).

Myth #3: That having emotions means you haven’t healed and that you require healing.

The human experience is based on emotionality. Emotions are indeed our individual guidance, our compass through life.

This damaging concept that feeling something translates to being unnecessarily affected comes from an illusion of invulnerability that we expect of people, akin to a badge of ability, strength, maybe even intelligence.

However, that is an inhumane ideal and it is destructive, because being affected is a receptive state that yields unique and precious data. Without being available towards feelings, we cannot access the reality of the effects of our choices or the knowledge of who we are and wish to be. Feeling isn’t an illness.

Even when we experience recognisable emotional triggers (the re-surfacing of stored emotions), our old emotions still should never be considered dysfunctional. The attitudes we may have adopted to hide those emotions or attempt to deal with them can certainly be inappropriate, however they should be assessed separately than the emotions themselves. This is essential because we really must start accepting emotions as a healthy and normal part of life if we wish to be ourselves and exist in a world of love.

Tip #3:

Your emotional journey is simply your unique life and if others can’t deal with that, then they aren’t ready or willing to deal with their own life either. Just know that it is your right to have all of your emotions and to share them all with other people. Let’s just be our full selves and remind each other how normal it is.

Myth #4: That unless you’re healed, you cannot be happy.

It’s understandable to feel overwhelmed with the “amount” of emotions/issues you believe you have to “solve” before things get “good”. But it’s not necessary to finish everything in order to have access to positivity.

Attaining complete healing is not something we need to be concerned about, because happiness is not an end state. Healing works itself anyway; this is how human life is designed – we’re always drawn towards healing and it’s a subconscious, complex, constant and beautiful process.

So including healing as an artistic part of the process of discovering ourselves and life is the way towards peace of mind and a feeling of acceptance of ourselves in these varied, colorful shifts of our experiencing.

We agree with this premise of needing to heal fully before we can feel good, not because we truly believe we cannot be happy unless we have no wounds, but only because we’ve experienced our emotions as unacceptable to those around us. Children – which is the true nature of adults as well-  famously can shift from negative to positive emotion or vice versa seemingly instantaneously! So can we.

But, we naturally want to belong and to be loved by other people, so we adopt this attitude towards emotions as a self-rejection for the sake of that belonging.

We’ve simply been conditioned to tie happiness to deservingness, thus we learn to focus on earning it instead of letting it flow in. We believe ourselves unworthy because we are “unhealed”. And what does “unhealed” mean? It means emotional in all the ways that our original environments did not want to have to deal with.

So what stresses us and what blocks us from allowing happiness is not the actual “unhealed” states, but the desperation to reach belonging (which cannot really come at the expense of our truths).

Another reason why we may be feeling overwhelmed about healing and racing towards its end could be if we’re carrying others’ emotions – usually as a way to “save” them from their emotions in lieu of a relationship or as a way to neutralise their emotions so they don’t explode on us.

However, the truth is that each person is going through life/emotion in their own unique way, they are not incapable of doing life (through their own feelings) and if the relationships they create with us feel unsafe or non-nourishing, we are not required to stay in them. 

Tip #4:

Positivity is created by both positivity and negativity. At all moments we have access to pure positive creation and when we feel negatively, we have an opening to heal deeper, which in turn brings in even more positivity.

 

Myth #5: That healing is solely your responsibility.

Contrary to the fashionable, yet superhuman, societal expectation of  independence, there is no real benefit in it, nor is it really possible. The only reason we look up to this ideal is because it mirrors childhood messages passed on by emotionally irresponsible parents. Not relying on others can only be presented as a good thing if those others or don’t want to be relied upon.

Besides, we cannot heal relational wounds independently. And all of our wounds come from relational experiences. Why? Because we are all born perfect. Therefore, everything painful that we end up feeling, including in the very relationship to ourselves – which is also a reflection of how primal figures related to us – is learned, never inherent. This is why we can all potentially eventually reach an enlightened state if left in a safe place by ourselves, while in our relating with others (unless we keep the shield of our enlightened ego between us), we again experience our old triggers.

So every wound is ultimately inter-relational. This means that while being alone may very well be a great choice for certain stages of our experiencing, in the end, relational wounds can only be recalled and thus heal through our relating to other people. Plus it feels good!

In the end, healing is not only an experience that happens within connection, but it’s also ultimately a collective one. There are cycles of healing that we as the whole of humanity undergo which create and affect everyone within it. We are much more interconnected and influenced than we think.

Tip #5:

Who says we should do life the hard way? Who says it matters more when you do it alone? Life’s beauty is in connection to others, to the world. There is nothing sweeter than healing with others.

 

Myth #6: That you can know when you’ve healed (and that you can heal completely).

First-off, as we’ve well established, you needn’t be concerned with achieving full healing. Because it happens anyway, gradually, throughout life. When, how or who first don’t really matter. That would be that enlightened ego again, which may just be hiding what it doesn’t like.

This concept that it’s possible to know that you’ve fully healed is not only ego protection, but also naivety. Yes, you can know that you’ve healed something, it feels good to experience a shift; and to acknowledge it. But you can’t know that you’ve healed anything completely or that you’ve healed “everything”. There are always more layers. Or not. But we cannot know. Because there’s always more life to live. Always more evolution.

So the question becomes, why would we need to know? And of course the answer would be because it feels bad or we think it’s bad to not be fully healed. And if that’s the case, we’re caught in self-rejection for the sake of love again, so completed healing isn’t really the issue!

You can indeed be loved in an unhealed state – why don’t we call it what it is: human! – and you can certainly allow yourself – because it is a matter of allowance after all – to love yourself there too.

Tip #6:

Look at healing as an evolution, like the evolution of a species, rather than something flawed towards a never-achievable perfection. Wounds, after all, are just where we need love. And where love feels the most significant is the kind of love that we haven’t received before, the kind of “food” that we are the most starving for. You don’t need to wait for the end of healing. Life is ever-growing and you deserve all of its love in every moment of (y)our evolution.

 

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Emotional Parentification And How To Heal From It

 

Ok, so first things first.

Emotional parentification only happens when a parent doesn’t really want to be a parent.

This may sound harsh, and to an extent, the parent themselves may not even be aware of it, nevertheless it is a reality that we need to see if we want to make sense of and save ourselves from the results of emotional parentification.

The burden of emotional parentification cannot happen unless the parent feels entitled to do so and if they do feel entitled, then it must mean they are not taking care of the child purely out of love (if at all).

One common subconscious and unhealthy compulsion towards becoming a parent when the person doesn’t really want to be a parent has to do with feeling blocked from having one’s emotional needs fulfilled as a child.

This kind of pattern forms like this:

When these parents were children themselves they were treated as if they were “too old” to require what they did, as if their needs were “too immature” or maybe even “insatiable”.

Thus by the time they literally became “old enough” -adults-, they found it perfectly logical to believe (but only due to their conditioned sense of “logic”) that they were then entirely exiled from the opportunity of getting those pending emotional hungers satisfied.

Finding themselves in that predicament, they could easily end up feeling drawn to having children in an unconscious effort to complete their own missing needs.  

So the potential space of their relationships with their children becomes the only remaining possibility for their subconscious, which still needs what it needs just as much.

The period in which these children heard that their needs were supposedly no longer appropriate was a purely manufactured landmark, when in fact they were absolutely still needing them.

Society largely denies the most profound and basic emotional needs to adults too, precisely because of this childhood pattern of the supposed appropriateness of age regarding emotional needs.

The reality is rather simple; when a person feels they need something, they just do. 

So as a result of this pattern, these types of parents carry and pass on to their children the false belief that their need for support, reliance, and dependency is “dysfunctional”.

An emotionally hungry parent who believes their needs to be wrong denies their child those same needs.

Emotional parentification also only happens when the parent does not have a present partner, emotionally or literally (with whom they could have intimacy).

Emotionally parentified children are primarily a partner replacement.

If the parent had originally received what they needed as a child, they would go into adulthood feeling naturally open to receive their adult emotional needs, which means they would simply be asking for them from other, actually able and available adults instead of their children.

So these needs find refuge in their relationship with their children, where they cannot be shamed or denied by other mature, independent minds; and there they hide in the warmth of the false morality of “love”.

Emotional parentification is narcissism dressed in the clothes of codependency.

The parent presents themselves as a person needing love from their child, coercing the child in a type of relationship they did not choose and have no power over.

The parent is actually being covertly narcissistic about their needs and sacrificing their child’s emotional needs in their place, attacking how the child experiences their own needs by painting those as narcissistic and so succeeding at reversing the perception of what is actually occurring.

The child’s mind is imbued with this false morality of “love” by being taught that taking care of a parent is supposedly loving and appropriate, accepting it as something to take pride over or with the positive label of being “equal” to the parent, or worse, through an image of their parent as something akin to a saint in the providing for the child’s needs.

Parental self-sacrifice is a tell-tale sign of emotional parentification.

So, through emotional parentification, the child learns that caring about the parent’s “emotions” requires not really having emotional needs themselves, but always prioritising the parent’s needs, so the concept of intimacy becomes only about giving support and taking responsibility, which is in fact burningly toxic.

Because of this facade of “love”, adult parentified children may be blocked from realising that they have indeed been emotionally parentified.

Coming to the recognition of this as an adult is the primary step towards escaping the pattern, because children that experience emotional parentification do not know the taste of what they have not received.

The basis of safety and love that they are lacking is meant to be the natural emotional and hormonal result of being bonded in a trustworthy connection. 

Children, of course, are not equipped to fulfil the parent’s needs anyway; childhood is just not designed that way.

Children are in the process of growing up themselves, they are just not ready to emotionally support anyone – not even themselves.

This does not mean that children are “naturally selfish” or that they lack empathy. It’s just that their systems are evolving into adulthood and only then can they possibly become able to share their emotional resources with others.

Expecting this of children would be like expecting somebody whose physical body is still developing to provide food for another.

The same way milk is meant to flow from mother to child, a child cannot provide for a parent’s emotional needs at all.

Emotional parentification is in essence “emotional rape”.

Exactly like physical rape, emotional parentification is imposed, one-sided, and predatory and it makes hell out of something that is meant to be an experience of love: intimacy.

This then becomes fertile ground for developing that sickly feeling of fearing “intimacy”, when it is not in fact intimacy that one is ever really afraid of, but the secretive violation and silent feeling of being burdened that masquerades as “intimacy”.

This pattern is a powerful factor in how a person may grow up to feel isolated and detached from the world around them.

So, emotional parentification is in a way even worse than physical rape, because it is invisible, impossible to verbalise, and firmly secured under the belief that it is somehow “love” – IT IS NOT.

Emotional parentification is thus a confusing and debilitating experience; potentially even a panic-inducing one, as the child not only finds themselves alone in their own care and protection – which is a powerless state that simply cannot be fully resolved by the child alone – but they also get drowned under the idea that they are responsible for taking care of their parent’s emotions instead.

This is why emotional parentification in essence feels like incest and also partially why emotionally parentified children may feel like solving this pattern by seeking to parentify their own partners or friends. 

Emotional parentification is in essence a (possibly subconscious) revenge by a parent who has been psychologically dominated as a child.

It’s that restricted, shamed aspect of a person (man or woman) saying: “Fine, you demand that I be disempowered and accept being a codependent in our relationship? Then all of my emotions will be assigned to you!”.

Patriarchy infantilises the “feminine” aspect of people.

And then it controls, marginalises, negates and never fully nourishes it.

When part of us becomes infantilised, it then seeks to parentifies another.

But since the (direct or invisible) patriarchal power game cannot be resolved in the original relationship with the offending parent – because the dominating figure is not usually receptive to feedback -, the child gets stuck in a loop:

The child painfully bounces between the urge to fight that parent and their conditioned belief that they need to relinquish control to them to get what they need.

This then easily may transform into a covert desire for revenge as a (failing) attempt to accommodate for these two conflicting needs.

Thus, emotional parentification doesn’t happen purely because of unmet needs, but also because the parent who has been dominated as a child feels trapped in powerlessness. And in this case, they may decide to seek both the reclamation of their personal power and the satisfaction of their needs against someone they feel they can actually have the upper hand with: their child.

So, when such dominated parents end up emotionally parentifying their children, they will both project on the child the role of the patriarchal model of a parent (responsibility), because they’ve learned they must not embody that power in themselves, and at the same time they will oppose that power by taking revenge towards the parent who disempowered them, still in the face of the child, which of course puts the child in an impossible position.

The parentifying parent however is not only stuck in the unresolved pattern within themselves; they are also confused as to what they actually want because of that same pattern.

Parentifying parents cannot possibly find resolution through their children, also because what they are asking for is a false parental energy to begin with – in the same model which they have learned from their own family and culture.

Parentifying parents operate from the misconception that what they require is a “parent” to take over their will.

Hence, the parentifying parents’ inherited concept is that they need to place themselves in the position of “the child” (dominated) – but which they also resist (to try to claim their power back) – in order to receive their desired healing parental experiences.

And in the same way, their then parentified children learn that being parented is the solution they’re looking for later on in life, but while that type of parenting is already distorted.

Parents should never be figures of authority. That equals abuse.

What these parents did need as children was responsible and loving parents who would be able to combine their personal and practical life wisdom with accurate psychological attunement and genuine care towards their children; not someone to superimpose and force their preferences and ideals onto them.

Emotionally parentified children may feel like the only way to escape their predicament is to either reverse the roles – effectively parentifying their partner/friends in their place, which they feel as “relationship” – or avoid relationships altogether.

Parentified children feel frantically driven to search in all kinds of types of relationships for that daddy and mommy in disguise, in order to finally heal and fill in the gaps (regardless of whether they succumb to these attractions or avoid them.)

So, in these attempts, parentified adult children tend to imagine the solution of the double problem of emotional parentification – feeling responsible for others’ emotions and not having their own emotional needs met – as one, “perfect” person: they hope for someone that fully takes care of them while they adopt zero responsibility in the relationship.

However, they also instinctively feel that this ideal person cannot truly exist and thankfully, they are indeed right, but not because the situation is hopeless, but because their zero-responsibility fantasy is what actually stands in their way. The model they imagine would both exclude their personal power and require the other person to not have a self/needs (as a narcissistic remnant of their parent’s dysfunctional model), which would result in an enmeshed, codependent, and static space, where no-one really exists.

What the emotionally parentified child does need is the realisation that they’ve been conditioned to repeatedly give away their care to someone else as a pre-payment for what they need, but at the same time that they’ve learned that what they do need, they shouldn’t in fact need.

So, what the parentified adult child truly craves when they feel they need a parent, is just a figure that they can trust and rely on – not an actual parent – which just happens to be readily available to adults, as soon as one accepts the validity of their emotional needs and stops looking to false parental roles for rescue.

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Why We Need To Evolve Away From “Work”

Part 1: The Work Virus

I want you to imagine a world where the concept of “work” does not even need to exist.

…Where what is considered healthy is to naturally flow, fuelled by the desire, excitement and impulsiveness of creativity; where it is regarded smart, logical and efficient to succumb to and trust in the rhythm of life, as instructed by our very bodies’ expression; and ultimately, where quality of life is measured by how much individuals are thriving by following their inner guidance and thus being themselves.

You see, individuality is the treasure cove that harbours each human’s gifts. And the sum of our individualities forms our collective highest potential.

The world can collectively be only as happy as each person is being true to themselves.

If we do not value, honour, nurture and support the integrity and uniqueness of self above everything else, we are bound to unconsciously sentence ourselves to environments that feel wrong somehow. And while we may not be able to exactly pinpoint why our worlds don’t seem to be the utopias generations upon generations have fought (worked) so hard for, something about them just feels off.

Effort, seriousness, sturdiness, predictability, persevering, stamina, and mass results have been at the root of our old guiding principles. Yet these concepts have not, cannot and will not get us to a better, fairer, or more evolved reality.

We may have been able to rely on them until now for a certain kind of order, a guarantee of specific practical results, yet those advantages cannot substitute the true, multi-faceted brilliance of our freed expressions.

We’ve only been following these old paradigms on the seemingly logical assumption that moulding ourselves accordingly will somehow serve the good of the whole and/or that we need to do so for our survival.

Yet it is this wrong assumption that breeds and sanctions the unconscious dehumanisation, distortion and sense of futility that modern society suffers from.

We fight against ourselves and expect victory. We reach for “happiness” by destroying happiness.

And as for the argument that we must follow these principles for our survival, for one, we grossly underestimate the value of communal/tribal living, assigning to it traits that are pitifully projected by a self-proclaimed “superior and more civilised, first” world.

Additionally, we forget that the poverty, disease and struggle of many areas of the world are a direct result of imposed wars and imported religious belief.

Where indigenous people are left alone, they do thrive; perhaps not in the way modern cultures are familiar with recognising, but in their own distinct fashion they do.

While dogma may not seem directly relevant to our world’s success, underneath human suffering, there is bound to be a belief system that in some way or another praises and exalts exactly that: suffering.

This may sound harsh, but I’m in no way implying that any being deserves suffering, nor that they are consciously bringing these results to themselves. I only aim to point out the cause at the root of this issue, so that we may untangle it and heal its damage.

I am also not advocating abandoning all the great creations of our technological innovations and scientific discoveries. I am only suggesting that we apply that same knowledge on a more advanced system of values; ones that actually foster happiness.

We sadly accept the misguided idea that in order to survive we need to follow this enforced giving of our energy (work), which is only an inherited, oppressive and destructive value system.

Combined with this, we also get conditioned to find it intelligent and evolved to distrust and separate ourselves from others, as if it was weak, shameful and the ultimate failure to rely on others, thus creating an antagonistic setpoint for ourselves.

We are the source of the problem we think we are trying to solve.

Survival, and indeed happiness, are only possible through (and blissfully enhanced by) interdependence.

In order to properly evaluate the state our world is in -and thus be able to effectively affect it- we must first reassess the tools through which we observe it.

Indeed it is the tools we’ve been using to make sense of the world and to interpret what we’re perceiving that are primarily what disables us from improving on the way we progress. These tools have been external, numerical, and generalistic. In other words, they account for quantifiable basic human needs that don’t necessarily include the subtler, invisible, inner needs that comprise, let’s say, the “souls” of its people. But why should we include “souls” in such an equation? Because we’re looking to create a world that doesn’t just “look” right, but truly is right.

The best lens to look through, if we want to direct ourselves towards a higher, next-level quality world, must be emotion itself.

So, emotion is indeed the most valid and objective tool to measure the world, because emotion cannot be denied or proven by anyone other than the self. And since happiness cannot be forged, emotions must then become the single point of reference when it comes to evaluating where we’re at.

The world’s success cannot possibly be defined differently than its happiness.

Do you see how in all of our old concepts around work, there exists an inherent violence against the self? That we are operating from a set-point that is misdirecting and even offensive to the human spirit?

Underneath all of our values around “work”, there is a basic false belief about human nature itself: That it is not naturally inclined towards love.

And what do we think we need the concept of “work” for, if not to ensure that other people provide something (and enough of it) to our whole?

 


Part 2: Realigning Our Direction

Thankfully, the belief that humans are not loving by nature could not be further from the truth.

In fact, humanity is so inclined towards love that it has been at the mercy of codependency for eons (joke!).

Codependency is in essence the sacrifices we make in the self, in order to achieve acceptance and safety with others. The beautiful, natural reality is that others matter to humans. In fact love is what matters to us the most. If it was not such an all-important motive, we wouldn’t be so susceptible to it. Yet, everything bad for ourselves that we do accept, we accept in the hope of love, whether that comes in the form of belonging, feeling valuable or receiving personal love.

“Work” is indeed a codependent concept (like all moral concepts are).

We do not need morality; our nature is even better than that.

So, if we took it for granted that people, by default, do desire to participate, to give of themselves, and in fact to gladly do so; and even more, that only in their freedom are they be able to produce their best, which would also not be measurable by time spent or amount produced, would we still feel like we ought to oblige people to “work”?

The problem isn’t in human nature supposedly not being loving, but ironically, in what we do to ourselves -and how we raise our children- operating from this false premise:

Believing that we need to mould, even punish our children into not being “selfish”, but towards being giving and performing “work”, we effectively withdraw our love from them.

Precisely because love is humanity’s most desired commodity -whether it can be directly sought after or indirectly pursued (ironically through competition, manipulation and hostility)- we unconsciously set a painful trap for our children.

To cope with this pain of love withdrawal, children will go either towards compliance (codependency)  –  which alters the authenticity of their individuality  – and/or towards rebelliousness.

And when they show resistance, we then take it as supposed proof about their (and our) nature. We don’t take into account in this false conclusion is again, the importance and value of individuality.

When we go against a child’s selfhood and they resist, their rebellion is not proof of how “lazy” and “selfish” human nature is; it is only their innocent and correct communication that we’re steering them wrong.

Forcing children through “morality” to push themselves to produce is emotional and mental violence.

If we do not allow our children the time and space to develop properly towards their unique goals, we never get to the proof of the existence of their intrinsic creative/productive power.

But if we were to respect the appropriateness of each being’s individuality, we would be viewing them as something new, and as something essential, with fresh, unfiltered, and evolved information and inspiration about how to live. We would not assume that children need to be taught who to be.

Instead of trying to direct children, we should be directed by their inherent personal power that guides them towards individuality.

And what could be occurring during every being’s childhood is this unencumbered process of progression that would eventually extend to (and only at the right time) the integration of the individual’s unique talents and offerings within its society, never having been infected by any reason to destroy and depreciate their originality, never broken away from love for any artificial measurement of “worth”.

Joy, leisure, playfulness, pleasure, and rest are our best sources of energy.

And, what do you know, they just happen to enhance our health and wellbeing at the same time too!

Funnily enough, we have forgotten how to be. We also seem to have done so in the name of (economic) progress, taking this manufactured calculation to mean an actual advancement of civilisation, while the obvious manifestation of our realities simply does not prove happiness.

So what does a child need to be happy? (The same as what an adult needs.)

They need freedom, to progressively discover and express their individuality, held and supported by the constant assurement that they will be respected, welcome and cherished, as they continuously explore and unfold themselves into more refinement, definition, intricacy and mastery.

If a child doesn’t naturally produce energy towards a specific goal, then it must be a goal incompatible with who they are here to be.

The missing elements of global happiness must be hidden inside every single one of the inimitable expressions that each being holds within themselves.

So let us imagine…the emotionally satisfying, beautifully abundant, unpredictably exhilarating, and truly alive world we are meant to create, TOGETHER.

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