Forgetfulness and Bliss
Today, a friend said: "Its so strange that it does boggle my mind how we go through so much stress in our lives, deal with the sickness, sorrows, deaths, and forgetfulness, and how we still are able to keep going and shrug it off like it was just water on our skin."
I thought: "Funny you should mention forgetfulness."
Over a decade ago, I watched my mother sink in to the depths of dementia and Alzheimer's disease. It was a horrible thing to see... to mourn the passing of a woman whose body was still alive, because her mind, heart and soul were being consumed by something we could not stop and she became someone I could not recognize. Nor could she recognize me. My husband experienced much the same with his grandmother, who was more like a mother to him, and one of the only women to have ever shown him true love and kindness, until he met me.
What could possibly cause something that horrible to happen to a person? Read on and you may understand.
I would say that it is a pretty safe bet that each one of us here have seen our fair share (or more than, perhaps), of stress, sickness, sorrow, death and so forth. I would even venture to add terror and abuse to the list of horrors on our resumes. And I don't know that we just automatically shrug these things off and forget them. I think we hold on to them all, but first we disguise them as feelings and then create judgments about them.
Some of us have addictive personalities and all that we have experienced, has cause us to delve in to the land of forgetfulness with "medication", either prescribed or otherwise, or we have shoved things that we would rather not think about, deep down in to the heart of our Selves. But did we ever really forget? I think not.
According to an author by the name of Karol Truman, who wrote Feelings Buried Alive Never Die!, we don't ever forget. In fact, we can pick up thoughts, ideas and judgments from as early as the womb. How? We hear our parents interacting with their environment. While we may not understand words just yet, the experiences of our parents translate in to feelings for our mothers. And because each new born baby is made up of the blood and flesh of his or her mother, we are literally still part of her body, until the day of birth arrives and we become separated (but not to the degree that some of us might think). So in that precious time of shaping and forming in the womb, we are literally part of her. And therefore, her feelings are our feelings.
Once born, we spend our time cradled in the arms of the people around us (or not). They may be our parents, grand parents, siblings, neighbors, aunts, uncles and cousins, or, depending on our experience, total strangers.
But as they hold us, the feelings that they share with us become ours as well, through a phenomenon called emotional contagion. Then as we grow, we hear things that translate in to judgments. And those judgments reinforce feelings. On and on this goes until we are adults. At which point, we have feelings, attached to judgments, that we didn't ever even consciously process. In fact, we don't even know that we have them. Nor can we explain them. And yet, we don't ever forget them.
As we go on to interact with other people in our lives, we create (and yes, WE do literally create) situations. And when those feelings run deep enough, they trigger responses in us that cause us to act or RE-act in a certain way. That way may be positive but very often it is not. And what happens? We create new judgments and feelings or we reinforce the old ones. And we repress them too and bury them some more so that one day, seemingly out of a clear blue sky, these feelings explode outwardly in a violently volcanic way, tearing apart our hearts, our feelings, our loved ones and sometimes, our lives.
Eventually, if left unprocessed and untreated, these experiences create more and more trauma that we want to forget, until we literally begin to forget everything that ever was, about our lives. We sink in to alcoholism, addiction, dementia or mental illness. We lose all of who and what we once were. And so do the people who love us.
The solution? Dig deep. Question every judgment until they are conscious choices. Then, with awareness, face every feeling. Bring them out of the darkness and allow yourself to experience them fully before they become toxic. Once experienced, they can be processed and released. And this, is true healing.
I thought: "Funny you should mention forgetfulness."
Over a decade ago, I watched my mother sink in to the depths of dementia and Alzheimer's disease. It was a horrible thing to see... to mourn the passing of a woman whose body was still alive, because her mind, heart and soul were being consumed by something we could not stop and she became someone I could not recognize. Nor could she recognize me. My husband experienced much the same with his grandmother, who was more like a mother to him, and one of the only women to have ever shown him true love and kindness, until he met me.
What could possibly cause something that horrible to happen to a person? Read on and you may understand.
I would say that it is a pretty safe bet that each one of us here have seen our fair share (or more than, perhaps), of stress, sickness, sorrow, death and so forth. I would even venture to add terror and abuse to the list of horrors on our resumes. And I don't know that we just automatically shrug these things off and forget them. I think we hold on to them all, but first we disguise them as feelings and then create judgments about them.
Some of us have addictive personalities and all that we have experienced, has cause us to delve in to the land of forgetfulness with "medication", either prescribed or otherwise, or we have shoved things that we would rather not think about, deep down in to the heart of our Selves. But did we ever really forget? I think not.
According to an author by the name of Karol Truman, who wrote Feelings Buried Alive Never Die!, we don't ever forget. In fact, we can pick up thoughts, ideas and judgments from as early as the womb. How? We hear our parents interacting with their environment. While we may not understand words just yet, the experiences of our parents translate in to feelings for our mothers. And because each new born baby is made up of the blood and flesh of his or her mother, we are literally still part of her body, until the day of birth arrives and we become separated (but not to the degree that some of us might think). So in that precious time of shaping and forming in the womb, we are literally part of her. And therefore, her feelings are our feelings.
Once born, we spend our time cradled in the arms of the people around us (or not). They may be our parents, grand parents, siblings, neighbors, aunts, uncles and cousins, or, depending on our experience, total strangers.
But as they hold us, the feelings that they share with us become ours as well, through a phenomenon called emotional contagion. Then as we grow, we hear things that translate in to judgments. And those judgments reinforce feelings. On and on this goes until we are adults. At which point, we have feelings, attached to judgments, that we didn't ever even consciously process. In fact, we don't even know that we have them. Nor can we explain them. And yet, we don't ever forget them.
As we go on to interact with other people in our lives, we create (and yes, WE do literally create) situations. And when those feelings run deep enough, they trigger responses in us that cause us to act or RE-act in a certain way. That way may be positive but very often it is not. And what happens? We create new judgments and feelings or we reinforce the old ones. And we repress them too and bury them some more so that one day, seemingly out of a clear blue sky, these feelings explode outwardly in a violently volcanic way, tearing apart our hearts, our feelings, our loved ones and sometimes, our lives.
Eventually, if left unprocessed and untreated, these experiences create more and more trauma that we want to forget, until we literally begin to forget everything that ever was, about our lives. We sink in to alcoholism, addiction, dementia or mental illness. We lose all of who and what we once were. And so do the people who love us.
The solution? Dig deep. Question every judgment until they are conscious choices. Then, with awareness, face every feeling. Bring them out of the darkness and allow yourself to experience them fully before they become toxic. Once experienced, they can be processed and released. And this, is true healing.