ah.... Sealynx, hello! I have a soft spot for zen koans, stories... and also Sufi teaching stories. The butcher's explanation makes sense, in that he had mastered both meat's characteristics - those lines of separation and the use of the knife in his hand... and his ability "to know" the different meat: the muscles, sinews, where the joint/bones are... allowed him to become "the knife"... or the meat, as the need presented itself.
In order to learn, to practice long enough to master a skill and knowledge, it sure helps - as Hops' says - to be safe. Helps the concentration!
Separation of child from mother is a natural, expected outcome... as the child matures, right? There is always the teenaged rejection of all things associated with "parents"... at least in outward appearance. But under the surface, the child/adolescent is learning to fend for themselves - to create their own "safety", right?
To become independent. I never really went through that phase... unless you count smoking. I was the household "cinderella"... and the one doing what my mom should've done... and I was ONLY SAFE... if those things were "done".
Anyway, this kind of separation isn't that related to this idea of "joyful abandonment".
I got interrupted yesterday afternoon. Let me explain...
I've had this inability to form an intention and carry it out, on anything related to self-care. Give me something big, extremely challenging that involves other people, and hey - even moving heaven & earth or society - and I'm in my element, making measurable progress. Let me care for others and I'm right there... and I'll make a beeline to success. So why is it so hard to do this for myself? Not just hard - it's impossible; IT DOESN'T HAPPEN for more than a day or two.
It would appear, after long, long reflection that this "problem" of intention is directly related to things that were projected "out" from my mom, onto me. Those gollum-whispers said that "this is who you are", "the way you are; the way you've always been". Unfortunately for the whispered voice of self-abuse|sabotage|limitation|defeat... I have a lot of contradictory evidence; actual proof that the whispers are not true - of me.
The revelation in my reflection on this, is that they weren't so much lies about me... as they were those projected things that my mother couldn't bear in herself (at the time); there was TRUTH in those statements - but only if my mother were the object of them. She didn't/couldn't take care of herself - she looked to me for that. And it was the truth in those statements that confused me at the time; abused kids can smell truth/BS like the faint odor of baking cookies from afar. I mean, I was 12 - about to be 13 - and I was prohibited from reading adult non-fiction, especially in psychology, at the time. Not for lack of trying to sneak into that room at the library, though... so I'd never even heard the definition of "projection" in that context. Such a possibility didn't exist in my world. Brainwashing & propaganda did, though... this was experienced as more intense & painful than that. I heard the "truth" and applied to the wrong person, in that sick, sick dyad.
So during the full force gaslighting/brainwashing/projecting campaign, I heard a lot of these whispers... I knew there was truth in them... and though I struggled to say no - this isn't me - eventually I was overcome/I gave up (sort of both at once)... and began to believe that these things were true of me. And it was complete and total agony: mentally, emotionally, and even physically - that was the genesis of the psychosomatic symptoms. In my child-mind the only thing I knew that could describe this, was "possession" - like the Exorcist. Something "invaded" me... I was "possessed". And it was evil... made me do things that I'd not ever thought of before... think things I'd not ever thought before... FEEL things that weren't ME. I thought maybe I was schizophrenic - in the old sense, of having multiple personalities. And well, I lived 365|24|7 with mega fear.
Fear that someone would see through my over-compensation and find out I was REALLY all the things that the whispers said I was - or that I feared I was. Oh yes... and shame... just as ashamed as I was of my parents... I now directed that at myself, too. Or worse: that I really was possessed by something evil............ well, children are very adaptable, as my mom still likes to tell me. I did find a way to adapt - staying forever "busy" until I finally slept from exhaustion - because the nightmares were so intense; I took so many HS classes each semester - and even summer school - though I was an A student... so that I could graduate the spring before I turned 18. I was leaving, when I turned 18 - one way or another. My mother is stupidly proud of the fact that I never came back, too.
Ever since, I've been trying to outrun this "thing in my head"; the projections. To find a way to "make it go away", turn it off, kill it. Spiritual traditions, psychology, intellectual reasoning, relationships, travel, distance and "withdrawal" - hiding out from my family. Even the excess verbiage I've posted here, is one way I try to run away from it. To be safe... and JUST ME. Therapy was a huge step forward... and gave me the skills I needed to finish the work, myself.
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What I needed was an exorcism! In the sense, that I needed to stop believing the "whispers" - now and forever more - and BANISH them from "me". I needed to ABANDON the idea that this absolute, unvarnished, stinky, ugly, bullshit -- was true about me. All this comes to me after the fact, of several things coming together over a short period of time... one being my BFFs mentioning that she'd just seen the Exorcist on TV one night... and reminiscing about how we'd gone to see it... and she still has nightmares about it. Well DUH... she knows me - the real me - better than anyone else... and she's also quite observant (another artist)... and she also knows my mother quite well. There was a huge emotional catharsis for me, while I stayed with her a couple of weeks ago... nonverbal type of catharsis. And since then, I've been processing and putting it all together into "coherence"...
crying myself to sleep that night... I began to say goodbye to the whispers... to abandon that projected "self" that wasn't me... in pre- or non-verbal emotional ways. It is finally SAFE, Hops, to do so.
So, for me... "Joyful Abandonment" is like pulling off the projected, duct-taped, paper doll definitions of "who I am" and even tho' the tape is sticky and it hurts sometimes.... I am in a frenzy, manically pulling it ALL off, just as fast as I can.... as if it's all leeches and I'm dancing around in a strange jig... laughing... and saying: OOOh... get it OFF!
And the only thing that CAN come off... are the projections. Everything else is JUST ME... and that includes "Twiggy" - all grown up, now... and she's quite pleased that I finally "get it"... and will let all the old, sad, hurtful things go... so that we can go play and dance.... an amazonian revelling in "Joyful Abandonment".
