us some sort of a clue?
What I notice is that whatever aspects of myself I have tried to edit out, whatever parts I am disowning or have no permission for in my life, whenever I see other people displaying those characteristics it stirs me up. Whatever I’m not accepting in me I will judge harshly in you. So if I grew up in a house where flamboyance was frowned upon then when I see someone being big and loud I will think to myself, what an attention whore. You might be sitting next to me witnessing the same person but because your natural entertainer was never squashed in your home you aren’t annoyed by them dancing on the table, you’re just enjoying the fun.
Think of the last person who irritated you, and think of the quality they were expressing. Whatever it was, do you have permission to be like that in your life? We all contain the potential to be everything, including greedy and selfish and needy, but these darker parts of ourselves have become so judged, so unwelcome, so rejected, that we have learned to deny our own parts, never let them be seen, and when we see others behaving that way we judge them, as if we ourselves are never like that. But it is nonsense, when you look at it, because we are all a bit greedy sometimes, no? Did you never take more than your share? Or want to? We are all a bit needy, we’re all a bit selfish, and because we have no permission for these qualities, seeing others with those qualities feels painful. We feel the shame and the pain of where that unaccepted part lives in us.
So from one point of view these are annoying people, but when we reframe the experience as ‘life illuminating us’ we see that every annoying person is giving us a living menu of all the aspects of ourselves that we are not accepting. With this framing, the unending list of numbskulls who cross our path is really an educational list of all the ways we are rejecting ourselves, and if you’re a willing participant on this journey back to wholeness, it is a list that is useful to have. When we frame them this way, then what used to be annoying people ruining our afternoon becomes a vivid series of illuminations. Instead of being a downer, the experiences give us a chance to be powerful. It depends how you choose to look at it.
Like Me!
Have you noticed how often you make judgements about other people, whether just to yourself or in conversation? For one day, I want you to practise the habit of adding ‘like me!’ whenever you hear yourself say anything about anyone, good or bad.
For example: ‘He’s such a great guy, but not always completely honest . . . like me!’ ‘She’s so talented but a bit of an attention-seeker . . . like me!’
It is so liberating.
We can create a lot of false separation and alienation when we describe or pass judgements on others, as if we ourselves are ‘not like that’. We separate ourselves from them in our definitions. The truer and more intimate way to live is to shout ‘like me!’ each time we judge something in another. We all have the potential to act in the darkest and lightest of ways and one major reason we judge is because we want to distance those ‘unacceptable’ qualities from ourselves. Joyously announcing one’s fallibility at every opportunity dissolves this false separation and creates oxygen for everyone to be their perfectly flawed selves without feeling the need to live in hiding.
Once the separation is dissolved, intimacy naturally arises . . .
If you want to see this menu of your disowned parts in action, for one full day, keep track of each and every judgement you place on someone else and every time add the ‘like me!’ phrase at the end. It will also give you a tidy list of numerous ways you’ve not, until now, been in acceptance of yourself, and if you’re in the mood to be diligent, with a little enquiry, you can dissolve them one by one.
FEEDING MEAT TO THE DEMONS
Life is doing its best to reunite us with all of our disowned parts. They need to find their expression somewhere, hopefully not too destructively in our lives. They are alive, you can’t amputate them or ‘get rid of’ them. So, to avoid them leaking out and sabotaging us or festering away deep inside us and turning into illness, we need to find safe places for these characters to play and breathe and express. The Tibetan Buddhists call this ‘feeding meat to the demons’. How can I find ways to play with my deviousness, my violence, my meanness, without actually causing harm to anyone?
There are many realms where this can be explored and played with. Musicians are lucky that they can write a killer punk rock song and express the rage that way. Have you ever met a punk rocker? They’re the gentlest souls alive. Why? Because they’ve channelled all that rage into their art so they’re not being yanked this way and that by their anger in their everyday lives. Music – creating and listening to it – is a great tool for enjoying emotions that are less welcome in our everyday lives. Three quarters of all pop music is wallowing in co-dependent love. ‘Baby, I need you, I can’t live without you, I wanna be the only one to hold you, don’t leave, baby, come back . . .’ You would never allow yourself (unless totally desperate) to express yourself in such an unbelievably needy way as those lyricists do, but getting swept away in the music of it gives permission to feel those parts of ourselves safely and without shame.
Movies are great for this, too. Of course it is not attractive to be vengeful, but how delicious it is to totally give ourselves to a cinematic story where there’s an awful, cruel villain getting his or her comeuppance! We follow a carefully structured path of events, all perfectly timed to deliver us the greatest satisfaction as we witness the baddies getting exactly what they deserve. Those characters are servants for our denied lust for vengeance. Also, literature can perform the same function. I’m reminded of our dear, sweet housekeeper as a child, the nicest, politest woman you could meet, who, once her duties were done, would curl up with a chilling murder thriller.
And, as we’ve established, it is not only our dark sides that we hide away and disown. Many of us have no permission for our power and heroic natures, too, as if it would be arrogant to stand up and lead. Our inner heroes and heroines have fallen into a bit of disuse, languishing in the shadows as we watch Harrison Ford and Angelina Jolie act them out for us. I love this quote by Marianne Williamson which was included in Nelson Mandela’s inaugural speech:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? . . . Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
THE VOICES IN MY HEAD
It is healthy and necessary for us to follow the heroes and heroines conquering all adversity and winning the day, and it acts as a shadow-expressing exercise. We can vicariously enjoy the victories and bravery that we don’t feel ready yet to express in our lives. But art can only give us a watered-down version of our own shadows. It does not connect with all the parts in us that need to be fed, the parts we’ve determined are unsafe for public consumption. Similarly, shouting abuse at the referee at the football match every weekend does not quite do the job of fully releasing the amount of rage and injustice many of us carry. It is time to go deeper.
Because we cannot amputate these aspects of ourselves – we cannot fully get rid of the rageful one in us, the controlling one, the bitch, the critic, etc. – and because we work so hard making sure no one else ever discovers they’re there, the only place left for them to go is inward. So we end up with a whole legion of characters taking up residence in our heads and giving us a rich and compelling daily inner dialogue that is very hard to ignore. They don’t limit
