Each of us has bits of us that we dont really like. Theres the bits of us that got damaged by our parents or family when we grew up, whether this was abuse, neglect, abandonment, the choices of our parents and the hurts of these. Theres the bits of us in school, the parts where we adapted, the parts of us that we’re wounded, hurt. Theres the parts of us that we’d rather not talk about in polite company, the parts of us that turned to sex or drugs or alcohol or something other to soothe the pain, or the parts of us that hid away, the parts of us that acted in fear, anxiety, acted in vengeance and transferred inner anger from parents or jobs, onto partners, children or pets. Theres the parts of us that made choices when in survival mode, choices to be busy, choices to give to others from neediness, choices to take advantage of others, choices not to view another persons dignity and humanity, only as a service t our own. Then theres choices and actions in denial, to run away from dealing with the pain, to avoid it, to hide it.
We all have them.
Your pain might feel huge. But you are definitely not alone.
All making our heart, our mind, our bodies…feel not quite right, or very quite wrong, or just stuck, or weary…
All with a root of shame, or guilt or anger.
And we would rather not go there.
Then theres that inner voice that accompanies them all.
Shame, Loathing, Guilt, Perfectionism, Control, Fear… all protecting the parts, all making a good argument for ‘not going there’ .
And so often the morality we encounter – the shame of what we encountered, or what we did, or what we didnt do, who we hurt… feels too much to accept, feels too much to be able to get real about.
We’d rather hide than face the truth
We’d rather mask and hide than go there.
We’d rather continue on, with that ache inside, than give light and warmth to a state of being thats hurting ourselves and others, yet its doing exactly that, and we’re spinning out of control.
‘So often… Morality is the Enemy of Growth’ (John O Donohue)
The moral obligation to look good
The moral obligation to be strong
The moral obligation to ‘battle’ through darkness (or sin)
The moral obligation to not feel shame, is to not feel anything.
Yet, as a result that ache and pain haunts like a shadow, becoming more and more entrenched when challenged.
I know. I didnt want to go there. Trying to keep a status quo whilst dying inside and running away from the pain, and the shame of what I was doing to soothe it. Until I cracked between it all, and lost everything, and yet…. realised that when everything was lost, I found something much more precious… eventually.
Because those parts of us we’d rather hide are like parts of a jigsaw, and along with our hearts, our minds and bodies, theres fragmentation and fracturing within, caused by all the damage, to us and by us.
And jigsaws, especially those with brittle edge pieces dont fit or mould together with force. Like trying to get two cuttlefish pieces to interlock.
Friend. It isnt an inner battle you have to win.
Battles are for armies.
It isnt a war on the inside between the parts, even if they are raging, and making a noise. Their voice is often so loud.
Your wounded parts are part of you, but they aren’t you.
You hold the blow torch.
Your heart is the gas.
Love is the flame.
And your parts and their raw, pained, rugged edges, mould together not with force, but with love, love that powers, love that emirates, love that emerges from your heart….once you finally, surrender, accept and listen to its call. Love from within resolves fractures and pain. Its warmth that melts the edges and aligns them into your soul and heart, its love that unifies your fractures and fragments, Its love that brings wholeness.
Being a friend to the parts of you, the shame of your past that you’d rather not admit to, is a path marked with the deepest, most passionate and erotic love you can imagine, making love to your inner parts, melting their pain away with tenderness that is possible, even if thats new.
Pain leaves with tears, leaves in a warm car, on the road to your own soul, to be met with harmony and kindness.
The darkness you’re doing a battle with, in that tough man masculine way, won’t leave until you and your armour back down, and instead surrender to heat, light and love, and yes, that means losing control.
But right now your pieces feel all over the places and control is an illusion anyway, shards of temporary colour disconnected, carried in a box that doesn’t want to be opened.
Dare you lovingly open the lid…. and may love guide you in the integration of your whole, melting, welding, searing and bringing you to a harmony within, harmony your soul is already grasping for in the moments of pain you’re trying to hide.
One of the treasures within each and every one of us is our hearts. You have one, as do I, and yet so often in our day to day lives our hearts, and the desires of them play a silent role in our lives. Advertisers appeal to our minds, our desires , our discontent and our wallets, our thinking is so honed and shaped that its the reason behind entire education systems, create knowledge, and experiences, so that you can work. Religion is not far different, belief is highly attuned to ‘thought’ and less about feeling (in some places feelings are derided or discarded within religion, for the sake of holding beliefs that are about facts) and I’m not deriding the pursuit of depth of knowledge or curiosity – our minds are important…but they are not everything.
But our minds can only do so much, even if our thinking wants to convince us that it can do everything – thats often the role we have given it, thats more our ego than our whole. But our mind knows things, it knows experiences, it knows, it calculates, it thinks, constantly, and that constant thinking, is often why the heart seems to be silent. Yet a life without heart, is a life on the move, an life on constancy, a life reacting to the speed of thought, where each curiously results in action, where layers of life build on each other.
One of the treasures is our hearts. It is where there is pure love, where there are feelings of anger, desire, passion, love, and where the channel opens to the soul , a place that can’t be thought into, it can only be felt, and have soft loving hands open the doorway, to a space of consciousness beyond, a place where there is harmony, security and the soft stillness of the inner love voice.
Where your heart is there will be your treasure. Your life is ‘wholer’ when you can feel, and be grateful for being able to and safe to (Michael Singer, Living Untethered) and yet so often we live a life afraid of, in denial of, or ashamed of feelings, and the experiences in our lives that caused them. Spirituality is the task of loving softness on the parts we’d rather hide. ‘Morality is often the enemy of growth’ writes John O Donohue ( Anam Cara) Morality is thoughts and shame put together, often in institutional cultures and behaviours. Spiritual growth requires deep inner love, requires hearts, requires anger, requires the softness of the love that comes from the depth and mystery of our heart itself.
A heart that holds when life around us breaks into a million pieces. A heart that heals with tears. A heart that responds inside with softness. A heart that loves the world with bliss and connection. A heart that rests and the moment at the end of each breath. A heart that tells you ‘ I love you’, ‘Im proud of you’ , even if your thinking wants to tell you otherwise. Your heart will always be on your side. Your thinking has so often been placed there from other sources.
And when you find your heart, your life will shine with beauty.
And when you find the gift of your heart, it was your heart that found itself all alone. For it is love that carries you in love all along, to find that love that hides under that shadows of shame and pain, and guilt and perfection, until its gift is accepted, and its gentle hands are held, walking hand in hand in love.
Part of the beauty of the act of discovery is the integrity of its desire for wholeness. Your soul will not want to avoid of neglect the regions of your heart that do not fit the expected. When you trust yourself enough to discover and integrate your strangeness, you bestow a gift to yourself.
Rather than annulling a complex part of your heart which would continue to haunt you, you have thrown your arms around yourself to embrace who you are’
Ive been on what I call ‘Project James’ for over 6 years now, and in that time to heal from 40 years of manipulative abuse since childhood, including recovering from unemployment and homelessness.
Internally, breaking down behind the ‘I’m doing ok’ facade, pretend strength but hollow and hurting inside, that had been my survival strategy since childhood, one that I thought was normal, a lifetime of running, avoiding or soothing, in a variety of destructive ways, oh and hoping that Jesus would deal with it, fix it and that ‘church’ would be my saviour.
And thats just a summary.
In summary, then, the last six years has included
4 different bouts of therapy, including trauma therapy
Pages of journalling, raging and writing
Reading an extensive amount of self help books that encompassed:
Undertstanding narcissim, psychopathy and emotionally immature parents
Codependency
Self Understanding on Enneagram
Self compassion
Inner child work
Trauma – including Edith Eger, Victor Frankl, The Body keeps the score etc…
Spirituality, including Eckhart Tolle, John O Donohue and others.
Personal freedom, such as The four/five agreements, and The Untethered Soul
Walking and taking on a number of ‘slow’ hobbies
It’s been a lot. A lot to try and understand myself, alot to be able to become more and more safe for me on the inside to be able to feel emotions, to be able to regulate and to face the pains and damage from my abusers, and also how I internalised and survived it all, and at the same time, work, earn, live and exist.
Yet, when I think about it, it’s been a long journey, to make a small distance considerably more healthy and whole.
It has been a long journey, in thinking, feeling and experiencing.
To build connections where there once was fracture.
To heal the holes, brokenness and wounded-ness between my head, my heart, and my soul.
The distance from I to myself.
An extensive work to heal a small amount of space.
A journey I was putting off taking for far too long
A journey I invalidated and avoided
My thoughts that I believed, told me that I was too broken, too beaten, too frightened, to guilty, to shameful, too small, too weak, to make, and the journey
Too big, too exposing, too tiring, too massive, too encompassing, too hard, too challenging and was also too invalidated by those around me, or my own beliefs ( I needed more of Jesus, and not anything of myself….)
And a journey that didnt promise any outcome.
Didnt shout its reward.
Didnt have a map, or compass
Or sometimes any directions
It just needed to start.
And it started from being broken, started from the place of nothing.
‘For when she had nothing to lose, then she was free’ (Paulo Coelho)
It started as I changed, slowly, trusting in a moment of vulnerability,
‘I have no home, will you look after me’
When for so long I couldnt articulate weakness, vulnerability or be anything other than ‘the strong one for others’ …
The longest journey of the smallest distance started with being broken.
Started as my mind had run out of resources.
Coping wasnt living, especially wasnt coping in survival mode.
The packaging of life hadn’t fulfilled its ‘James hoped for’ expectations.
Because the landscape on the inside was a barren mine- filled land of fear, terror, a landscape I was afraid of, that was dominating every action, every moment.
What I was afraid of held power over me.
I couldnt go there.
And yet…. as soon as I started the walk….. the universe provided…. angels in the form of spare bedrooms, kind words, walks, safety… beyond anything… safety.
And slowly, slowly I began to tentatively see, feel, walk in the landscape.
It was and is the journey of a lifetime, for it has been a journey of life.
Maybe the longest journey is the shortest distance, and how this is navigated shapes so much of our lives.
There are times of deep searching, deep disconnection, emotions and fear, yet I have been open to the possibility of healing and growth within it all, for nearly all of the time, yes some resistance… but old habits change hard….
It was only the gap of the thoughts,
It was only the gap between heart and soul,
No distance at all…..
Yet an ongoing journey of love, of life and gratitude
It’s been a while since I’ve been here, sharing with you, and that’s been because I’ve been just doing life in a beautiful way, and being present, and also writing my book. However over the last few weeks I’ve noticed that there’s been more emerging words wanting to come out as I’m in a new phase of life and creativity.
Here’s the first one, a poem on being courageous to listen to our own soft heart.
More to follow…
Comments welcome…
And thank you x
Much love to you, and may the universe share its blessings with you today
James Ballantyne 