I want to write a bit more about my challenges, which feels like a confession… and feels good and brings up some fear.
Earlier today, I talked with a friend who is a few years into her intentional explorations of her nature and how her humanness fits into it. I was reminded of several things in how I am in those conversations.
WHEN I FIND PEOPLE WITH GOOD SENSING
In general, it’s a big relief for this human self – and his psyche – when I find people who have good sensing and can see whatever awakening is in this system. It first happened when I was in my late teens when I met BH in my tai chi class. It was a more advanced class that combined two or more earlier-level classes, so I had not met her before. She had stood behind me and looked at my energy field and energy system, saw the oneness process my system was in, and decided to talk with me and get to know me. We had many long conversations about our processes, and she also helped me trust my sensing. For instance, we would sit at the train station, look at the energy field around people, and compare notes. We always saw the same.
One or two years later, I did a workshop in Oslo with a senior teacher (HB) from Vækstsenteret in Denmark. At some point, she literally ran up to me in excitement because she had noticed what was going on in my system, and also the healing abilities there. I had several long and good conversations with her too, and still feel some sadness over having left Europe and the possibility of staying more involved with that community.
When I had a long private conversation with Adyashanti some years ago, there was an immediate mutual recognition and a profound sense of one mind communicating with itself. We had a conversation that was life-changing to me, largely for that reason.
It’s a relief for me to meet people in this way. We have a running start. They can see where my system is, so there is no need to use words to explain that part of it (which I normally don’t do anyway). We can instead share our experiences, compare notes, and explore together, which is where I feel comfortable and what feels helpful – and often nourishing – to me.
WHEN I FIND PEOPLE WHO ARE IN A SIMILAR PROCESS
It’s similar when I meet people who are in a similar process, specifically when there has been a spontaneous1 and lasting2 awakening early in life. When our nature recognizes itself without any prior intention or interest or practice on behalf of our human self, and it keeps recognizing itself.
Here too, there is instant recognition and my human self really enjoys it. It feels comfortable and a familiar terrain, and it’s fun to compare notes, share experiences, and so on.
WHEN I FIND PEOPLE WHO ARE CURIOUS AND RECEPTIVE
It’s a bit similar when I meet people who are genuinely – viscerally – curious and receptive. One of the first I met in my life, after the oneness shift, was Marianne Ihlen3 who I met in the Vækstsenteret workshop mentioned above. We also had long and good conversations that this human self really enjoyed, not so much for the two reasons mentioned above, but because of her genuine receptivity and curiosity.
I felt a familiarity there too, and we could explore together in an almost childlike way. (At least, that’s how I remember it now.)
WHEN I AM IN A COMMUNITY WHERE PEOPLE EXPECT FAMILIARITY WITH THIS TERRAIN
There is another situation where I feel comfortable and able to be myself, and that’s when I am in a community where people are experienced and mature in exploring who and what they are, and expect the same of others. I love being in those kinds of settings, which I have mostly – or perhaps only? – found in the Bay Area.
WHEN I MEET PEOPLE OTHERWISE
What happens when I meet people in other situations?
My trauma response is to try to appear as bland and invisible as possible.
Many people in my life have no idea I am interested in “spirituality” or exploring my nature. If they happen to know I have an interest, I have typically only shared a few peripheral bits and pieces of my process according to what happens to fit what they bring up.
When I talk with people – and they don’t seem to have good sensing, or we don’t share the spontaneous recognition path, or they don’t seem super curious and receptive – I usually just match the other. I allow them to set the topics for conversation. I mostly listen. And if I mention something from my own experience, it’s in response to whatever topic they are already talking about. This is another form of hiding since they then get the impression that I am on the same path and timeline as them.
For instance, my friend that I talked with earlier today (whom I love and really enjoy talking with), has said a couple of times that we are on the same path and the same timeline. That’s not quite accurate since I have been in this process for almost four decades now, and much of what I see in her process has elements of where I was a long time ago. I see where she is in the process, and much of what she still has to mature into and discover, although I don’t mention that. She does seem to discover it on her own which is better anyway.
If I find a new group for meditation or healing work, I usually don’t share much if anything about my background or experience. The little things I share are usually my challenges and what’s unhealed in me. For instance, I started going to a Buddhist center in Oslo this spring, and I play the role of a novice and mostly listen and ask questions when I am there.
WHEN I MEET PEOPLE WHO SEEM STRONGLY ATTACHED TO IDEAS AND IDENTITIES
There is another broad category of meetings that is less comfortable to me. It’s when I meet people who seem mostly attached to roles and ideas about themselves and me.
In this case, my human self feels unsafe, and uncomfortable and often goes into some less healthy patterns. These are trauma responses and strategies to stay safe, and the main strategy is to contract and hide.
One way I hide is to fit into the role they seem to put me in. For instance, when I came to CSS in Oregon, the teachers seemed to expect me to be a novice with little to no experience. As far as I remember, they didn’t do an initial interview to map out where I was at4. At the time, I was about twenty years into the oneness unfolding, had a good deal of experience with different practices, and had read a wide range of literature on awakening from many different traditions. I mentioned very little about this and took on the role of a beginner in a conventional sense. I mostly asked questions and listened, which I find interesting anyway. It’s fascinating to me – or at least was at the time – to see how people phrase it. The drawback is that their initial assumptions get affirmed in their minds.
I did share this blog with one of the teachers at some point, and he seemed a bit angry and said he wouldn’t read it since I hadn’t written it. I assume that in his mind, there was too much of a gap between the novice he knew from our conversations and the one who wrote these articles, so it couldn’t possibly be the same person.
In their practitioner group, I spoke up a couple of times and approached the topics from other angles than they had addressed. The response from the members was to assume I didn’t understand and explain the basics to me. I stopped sharing since it didn’t seem to go anywhere.
THE SHADOW SIDE OF NOT SPEAKING UP
Not speaking up, and not making myself visible, has a shadow side.
It means that this human self continues to play the role of a novice, which is fine but also feels off.
There is some hurt around not feeling seen, and behind that, anger.
I miss out on a community of people I can more substantially explore these things with.
I miss out on the growth, maturing, and healing that can happen when there is an engaged and authentic sharing with a community.
I deprive myself and others of shared exploration and maturing.
When I hide, I teach hiding, which is not good for me or others.
When I hide, I teach myself that I have reasons to hide. I reinforce the painful stories in me that tell me to hide.
I reinforce the side that wants to stay invisible, which fuels the side that wants to be visible (and is suppressed), and the split between the two.
HOW HAVE I LIVED MY LIFE?
How have I lived my life from this trauma response of trying to hide, not be visible, and appear as bland as possible?
I abandoned my artistic path partly for this reason. I realized that being an artist would mean visibility, and I had some taste of that even in my teens when my art and I got into the mass media, and it brought up too much trauma and fear in my system.
I left my job as coordinator of the sustainability organization in Madison largely for the same reason. We were on the verge of becoming more organized and professional, and I received a good amount of attention and became a semi-public figure. (If I walked down the street, I would often run into people recognizing me and often thanking me for the work I was doing.) That too started feeling like too much, even if it happened at a relatively small scale.
I have avoided taking any public role in talking about awakening or healing for the same reason, and I keep this website mostly anonymous.
WHY DO I WANT TO HIDE?
Why does this human self want to hide?
There are several likely reasons.
One is that I did talk more freely and openly about this early on in the process, in my teens and early twenties. I did have some very nourishing interactions, as mentioned above. And I also had the exact opposite, including several people getting angry at me when I shared my experiences, including a Norwegian teacher at the Tibetan Buddhist center in Oslo. From that, I learned to be far more careful about speaking up.
In elementary and middle school, my class had an unhealthy dynamic. Several kids in class seemed to hate it when someone showed any kind of passion or interest for anything, and I had an immense curiosity about just about everything. I was also a good student and typically knew the answers to the teacher’s questions. When I raised my hand to answer, I would get dirty looks from those kids. (If looks could kill, as they say.) I learned to be terrified of speaking up and to show I had any passion for or interest in anything. I learned to hide to protect myself. (I suspect that happened to several others in my class too, and these kids gave my favorite teacher a nervous breakdown.) I got profoundly traumatized by this, and it’s still a part of my psyche.
The more essential reason, unsurprisingly, has to do with my birth family. Both of my parents have a strong fear of what others may think and say about them and have spent their lives living up to being a good citizen and avoiding anything that can be criticized5. I learned to be terrified of others and to appear as bland and unremarkable as possible.
Even my brother has said I have no opinions about anything, which is an impression he got since I learned to not speak up in my family. The times I did speak up in a vulnerable way – for instance, about how I experienced the dynamics between my parents which I did even when I was very little – I received massive anger and denial and a clear message to shut up.
NOTES
(1) It’s not really spontaneous. What brought it about – the movements in all of existence that led to this local shift – was not spontaneous, it has been in the working forever. It just seems spontaneous since our human self was not interested in it, often didn’t even know about it, and did no practices to bring it about.
(2) Lasting doesn’t mean forever. It just means that it has stayed for years or a few decades and still is here.
(3) I mention her name since she is a public personality, and she likely wouldn’t have minded. She died a few years ago.
(4) Several things puzzled me about their approach. They didn’t do an “intake” interview as I would expect, to map where people are at in terms of their process, strengths, challenges, and trauma, and to help clarify intentions and motivation. They didn’t seem interested in using more effective tools, for instance, the Big Mind process. They seemed to make anyone whose nature recognized itself a teacher, which I see as hasty and a bit irresponsible. And they didn’t address trauma work and trauma in the awakening process, which seems a major missing and important piece.
(5) I have later learned more about their respective family situations when they grew up which has helped me make more sense of these family dynamics. I learned about it from cousins since my parents never talked about it, and seemed so terrified of these topics that they likely never would. The families of both of my parents experience a lot of trauma around shame and judgment from their local communities. On my mother’s side, it was because her father left them and moved in with another woman. On my father’s side, it was because his father and brother were active members of the Nazi party in Norway during the war, and they were ostracized and shunned after the war. (My grandfather also went to a prison camp for a while for his Nazi involvement.) As far as I understand, they had to sell their house and move to another place where nobody knew them. They both lived in small communities where everyone knew each other, which likely made this even more traumatizing for them.
In their mind, admitting anything that could be even remotely seen as a weakness or something that could trigger judgment from others was worse than death. It could not happen.
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