The Binds that Tie

As editor Mary points out, there are ties that bind, but there are also binds that tie. Our core issues are binds that tie us in knots.

They’re binds in the sense that we find ourselves propelled in directions that once may have been useful but now, much later in life, are no longer so.

We find ourselves in a bind, feeling loyal to these dyed-in-the-wool ways of being, which we sense more and more no longer serve us.

I had a personal reading yesterday with AAM in which a team member asked me to ask if Feb. 10 was an unusual day. She found herself and many people in her locale in crisis on that day.

Archangel Michael responded that it was a “null zone” and many people would have found themselves in crisis as their core issues rose to the surface. I think this rise of core issues is a prelude to the tsunami of love.

All of mine rose to the surface on that day as well and I’m still dealing with what I learned.  Let me elaborate.

There are various views on core issues. Some people think we have only one, or that there is one core issue that we agreed to take on for the collective eons ago, or that one core issue underlies all others and is the “head vampire.”

I saw the core issue that I agreed to take on eons ago, and I saw several others as well, one of which has stubbornly resisted processing.

So I guess I fall into the camp that says we can have many core issues. The human mind is ingenious and does not respect limits so why could we not have many?

In working through each of these core issues with the help of a competent friend, I saw both the issue and the flip side.

Linda Dillon has called core issues “motivators” because they send us in certain directions. They also have a “flip side.” That is, we find ourselves in an issue relative to ourselves, but it propels us to develop certain qualities relative to others.  The flip side compensates for the issue.

Apparently I took on eons ago the core issue I call “unforgiveable.” I walk around with a residual feeling playing at a low level that I am somehow unforgiveable, and therefore unloveble, etc., etc.

I have no recollection of anything that I’ve done in this lifetime that would give rise to it and I have tried to “source” it for some time now, without success.

The reason I can’t source it, apparently, is that this is an issue I took on in the distant past to handle for the collective.

The flip side is that, apparently, I’ve developed what Buddhists would call a paramit, virtue or quality of generosity. I can’t actually say I’ve developed a paramit of forgiveness.

I was actually known as a person with a long memory rather than a short one in that area, which relates to a core issue I’ll get to below relating to the family.

But nonetheless the development of generosity on the flip side of or out of response to this vague, low-level feeling of guilt and shame that comes with feeling unforgivable is a blessing.

I was able to source or complete the core issue of unforgiveability.

But more and more issues presented themselves in the course of this day in the “null zone” and the day that followed.

You already know about the issue “Nobody listens to me,” which arose from being the runt of the little whom no one paid much attention to. That one yielded to processing.

The angry person who had watched domestic violence and been the victim of it I mentioned yesterday too. That’s the one that caused the long memory. And it’s the one that had me become the policeman of the world. Let me come back to that because that has not yielded to processing and I’ll tell you why.

Another core issue I had identified months ago: “I don’t need anybody.” Out of that one I became a loner. That one I traced all the way back to the womb, where I listened to my Mother and Dad fight and decided I’d rather stay where I was.

And it was amplified by nights in the crib with my arms tied to the side so I wouldn’t scratch my excema, crying while no one came to see to situation. I decided I didn’t need anyone in life.

The flip side was that I’m not a needy person. If a person is busy, I have no problem letting go of a request for contact, etc. I can always accommodate people needing time or space to themselves so I can be a good, non-demanding friend to have around.

Another is “I won’t keep the family secrets (lies).” My family had really bad arguments and then put on a false front that we were one happy family (we were not). I found that so repulsive that I promised myself I would not keep secrets.

The flip side was that I became transparent and refused to lie about how things were. I was able to process that one as well, while still keeping the gains made on the flip side.

Another was that my Dad, colorfully, used to call me a “lazy, no-good, good-for nothing.”

The flip side was that I became the world’s most prolific producer, a workaholic, a person for whom his output defined who he was (as you can see by the library attached to this site and this site is just one of a few).

Steve, when are you going to stop?

So our core issues are a negative attribution made of us by ourselves or others which we compensate for by developing qualities that are usually the opposite or the flip side of the negative attribution.

Both the negative attribution and the positive flip side shape our characters. Now we need to let go of the negative attribution, which we’ve internalized. But we don’t need to let go of the paramit or virtue that we’ve developed.

In fact the value of having chosen before life to place ourselves in a situation where this negative attribution would occur is that we wrote into the script the circumstances that would motivate us to develop this paramit or virtue and to put it into practice.

So now to the last core issue I saw in this chaotic “null zone.” I sum it up as “Don’t mess with me.”

I was the youngest of the family and got kicked around a lot. I was a bright young student with an October birthday so I was usually the youngest in my grade … and got kicked around a lot.

My Dad made me a target, he told me in later life, because I looked like my Mom and so I became the stand-in for her. Sort of like kicking the dog.  Or he might take something from her, but not from me.

Any way you look at it, I agreed to subject myself to a fair amount of violence.

At the same time my Mom also sustained a fair amount of violence and I promised to help her one day.

So this desire to protect myself, and what later became expanded to “women” rather than just my Mom (who by that time had taken leave of the planet) became mish-moshed together, which is one reason why I have difficulty sourcing it.

When I try to let go of the anger that arises in me, I come up against the fact that my being the policeman of the world shows up like a sacred vow I made to my Mother at age … whatever. 7, 8, 9, 10. Every time I feel the need to let go of my anger and vigilance, I see its existence as part of a sacred promise made to my Mother.

Last point: Certain circumstances can complicate the processing of a core issue. In my case I was dissociated from age 7 to 42 because my Dad shouted at me from such close range that I shattered as a personality early in life. I became the Humpty Dumpty man.

There were two “me’s” who didn’t know each other existed.  They met when I was 42 because a friend said that I had the profile of an abused child.

The two me’s raced to the foreground at the same time to say “yes” and metaphorically looked at each other and said “Who are you?”

I erupted in a volcano of anger at that moment, probably anger I had stored up for thirty-some years. It took years to complete the process of putting Humpty Dumpty back together again.

The upshot was that there was no one person “here” who would take responsibility for me and my core issues. Moreover there was not a stable personality base, no one strong enough to take the reins and see to what I needed to do. I lacked confidence as a result, direction, motivation, etc.

But there again, the flip side was that I attended one growth course or workshop after another and learned the skills of the growth movement.  The writing I do today derives from all I learned there.

The angry edge I had lies below so much that is “everyday” for me. I was talking to my bank manager yesterday and heard it at a very deep level. And I believe he recognized it too and shied away from me.

It colors so much about me. And it has long, long ago outlived whatever usefulness and survival value it may have had.

So I plan to do a kind of sacred ritual and ask my mother formally to release me from my vow to continue protecting her and hope that removes the lynchpin that keeps me being policeman to the world.

I don’t feel totally complete and won’t until I source the residual anger I feel that still colors my self-presentation. But I do feel years younger from having sourced the other core issues.