A conversation I had with a colleague recently brought up some interesting insights into the subject of dealing with core issues. I’ve been asked to share some of my personal experience with this here.
A core issue has been explained as whatever it is that we’re withholding, either from others and often-times from ourselves, which ‘we’d rather die than face’. We all have something like this.
I don’t believe there’s anyone who’s exempt from this sort of deep fear-based issue. We’re so diverse that I don’t pretend to know what the answer is for everyone. I can only share what my own personal thoughts are.
It’s my view that authenticity trumps everything. What’s real and what’s true in any given moment have the power to do this.
No matter what else is said and done, until one is coming from an authentic place, a true place, particularly when going into situations that are looking for solutions to problems, there’s no place to go with it.
It robs everyone concerned of the ability to know what’s going on, and it clouds all the issues at hand, so the result ends up being that what we’re conversing and brainstorming about is about what ‘isn’t’.
The sheer amount of energy it takes to withhold what’s true and authentic is immense. It’s like an never-ending stream of anxiety over whether the secret whatever-it-is will be found out, and over the threat of the imagined consequences of what would happen if everything were known to everyone.
It’s a miracle we don’t feel even more exhausted than we do, given that this is what most of us are doing all the time. We keep the core issue pressed into the unconscious realms, as any thought that approaches this territory is bringing up a feeling like we’re going to die.
Authenticity has immeasurable power in the life of the person who dares to cast aside whatever fears are there as ‘reasons’ for there to be less than honest, truthful and transparent in relations, and it has the greatest power in the lives of those in relation to the people concerned as well. It reveals how it really is from the very heart and soul in the living moment of now.
No matter what this moment reveals, everyone concerned can now stop squandering all the energy it takes to deal with what isn’t, and can now deal with what’s actually true in that moment. All of it.
It’s been suggested that I have balls of steel. No wonder my pocket is jingling. But the truth is something quite different. The difference is in the foundation that underlies the choices I make and the value I assign to those choices.
The conversation that happened to bring out these insights was centered around me listening to a dear friend tell me the reasons that there would need to be great care given to withholding sensitive information about oneself that could possibly serve as a reason for someone to latch onto and use it against you.
It’s reasoned that this is necessary in order to protect those close to oneself as well. The thought here is that too much transparency could jeopardize one’s ability to complete the mission one came to do, that this sort of exposure is a weakening factor, and therefore opens one up to attack over whatever the judgment is about one’s character, habits, or past.
As I listened, I completely understood this line of thought. I recognized it as a portion of my own thought patterns too.
Who hasn’t been attacked? Who hasn’t had their intent questioned or their past flung in their face? There’s a part of me that wishes to protect myself and my loved ones from the possibility of attack and from any discomfort whatsoever. I get it.
Only, as I listened, I also knew that if I were to agree that this line of thought was a true and valid way to proceed in my life, then as a person who came here on a ‘mission’, as so many of us have, I’m personally finished.
I might as well pack it in and leave the planet. My personal history is such that there’s sufficient ammunition to take out dozens of people, not just little ol’ me.
Therefore, unless I wish to forget my promise and my mission here, unless I wish to go ahead and die, then the choice is clear, at least for me. And it is a choice. In my case, the fact that it’s a choice is plain, though it may not be so for others.
Perhaps there are ‘reasons’ truly out there that make it ‘reason’able to choose withholding what is authentic and true as the only viable option, and which makes this option or choice a way which has some chance of building a world that works for everyone. However, it seems to me that this isn’t so, particularly for those of us who are positioning to take more public service roles in this planetary paradigm shift.
We are all so used to being lied to, and to what we’ve been programmed to see as the necessities of dealing with a world where withholding is what we’ve had to do to get by. Take a look at any TV soap opera for an endless supply of story-lines with these ‘reasonable’ lies and withholds built into them. I think you get my point.
But even this skill we’ve learned for withholding (with the negative drama it always creates), is not enough to keep us, as beings, from knowing on some subtle level that this withholding is happening. It translates to the feeling that this isn’t going to work, and the worse part of it is that there’s no opportunity to even know why.
This is a large part of how we’ve learned to live in a world that doesn’t work for everyone. It’s as if we’re both hostage and terrorist all rolled into one. What we withhold is hostage. It’s the truth that needs to be set free and needs to be known in order to have a proper foundation in relations and in living. It’s the only way I know of to proceed from what is Real in this moment.
Continued in Part Two.