"Confession is good for the soul," they say. I brings the dark and buried parts of ourselves into the light, allowing us to acknowledge and own that darker part of ourselves and to release it of that powerfully controlling grip that it can have through our own self judgement.
I was chatting with a friend Wednesday when we careened into the topic of judgement, judgement we put on ourselves and on others. In truth the two are really one. I flash back to decades ago when I was going to a variety of al-anon groups and was introduced to the concept of "when you point a finger at someone else there are three pointing back at you." Initially a cunundrum that I couldn't or wouldn't fully unpack and yet couldn't let go of.
In time I came to see the painful truth of my judgements on others it it would take years before I could recognize that I was placing judgement on myself. I could only see the judgement I placed on others and more clearly the judgement placed on me. As we chatted Wednesday, something I knew came into a sharper focus. The judgements placed on me by my father and my mother and through them my brothers caused me to become bitter and resentful and unconsciously I accepted those judgements and perpetuated them on myself, ON MYSELF! I have been doing it to myself.
And in the reverse of that fingerprinting cliche, when I unconsciously judged myself I was extending it out to others, so full of resentment , doing a crazy two step dance of pushing people away by my bitterness and alienating myself as well.
Only as I have been peeling layers bak through the healing process, first relieving myself of the caustic anger to be caught in the horrific omnipresence of brutal, paralyzingly anxiety which has been always there underneath, I have come to learn so much about myself, so much about the human condition. And the most important for me now is seeing how I can now begin to shift away from this self accepted, self- inflicted judgement.
Being mindful of this pain is ridiculously hard. I tried for years but doing so brought pain I could not bear before. That pain was annihilating. But with the work that has taken me back to reveal the source of it all now allows me to feel it and hold it without being destroyed by it.
"Thoughts are real" Has a trite ring to it but it also stands on a strength of truth. But there is something deeper in there. Some of the power is before words or thoughts. That aside, the power of thoughts to harm, to heal is exactly where my focus is now.
