(no subject)
After something like 3 years of posting anonymously on this journal, and feeling kind of isolated about my spiritual stance, I've discovered a group of my friends and colleagues online, and I'm totally thrilled about this! *twirls*
So I'm, *ahem*, 'coming out of the closet', as it were. No, not like THAT!
Where was I? Ah yes, closets. One of the things that really stuck with me from my childhood was a strong sense of having been spiritually shamed. By that I mean, my parents were both intellectuals, so anything that smacked of the 'spiritual', anything to do with religion, spirit, even seeing phenomena in energy (which is a pretty common thing for children) was considered 'stupid' by my parents. Bit of hypocrisy there, since I was actually baptized, and my mother officially joined my dad's faith when they got hitched, but go figure. Be that as it may, I grew up without much of a spiritual or religious influence. Basically, the intellect was king in my home, and being smart and brainy was one of the only ways to get points from my folks. Well, that and doing what I was told.
Truth be told, my parents were both tremendous bullies (may they rest in peace, seriously). I won't go into detail; suffice it to say I didn't have a fun childhood. After years of being bullied in various ways, I've come to a point in my life where I am no longer willing to sit passively while people and communities I care about are bullied. For a long time, I would just step out of the line of fire, and keep quiet. Well I was trained to do that! Why go looking for trouble, right? Then again, if those of us who have been bullied won't stand up for ourselves, then who will? Stepping up and taking a stand can be a terrifying thing if you've been conditioned in childhood to submit, and I am in no way suggesting that people who are still stuck there should have anything to be ashamed of - I have nothing but empathy for someone in that situation. And yet, if you simply walk away from an incident, without ever directly confronting the person who bullied you, then you're kind of stuck somewhere in a grey zone of disempowerment.
If you THEN decide to fight back by means of gossip, talking behind the person's back, trashing their reputation, etc, then how are you any better than the accused bully? It might make you feel momentarily powerful, but you haven't really addressed the issue, you've simply jumped to a conclusion. The thing is, most bullies are that way because they've been hurt themselves - it's just an admittedly shitty way to make themselves feel safe. Most of the time, they are not even conscious of this, and would be horrified to know how often they have hurt people.
So next time you feel like you've just been bullied, take a moment (or a month, if you need it) to collect yourself, then go back to that person, and ask them, with some genuine curiosity, "Hey, I don't know if you realize, but I felt really bullied by that last exchange we had. Was that really your intention?"
Personally, I can attest that this approach is more constructive than running off and bitching to all your friends, because I'm one of those people who can have a tendency to be rather heavy-handed at times, without realizing it in the moment. It's not something I mean to do, and I am now able to catch myself more often than not, but I'm more grateful than I can even express for the friends who stuck by me and were able to confront me in this non-judgmental fashion. Because it gave me a chance to recognize a very wounded place in myself, a place where I was pretty shut down, and unable to see where I was basically being just like my mother.
This is why I get so irritated when I see groups of people ganging up and making accusations when I KNOW they haven't done their due diligence - in other words, they haven't had the courage and, let's face it, decency, to confront the people they had a problem with. I have a lot of sympathy for people in leadership positions - I used to lead a band, and let me tell you, I got accused of all kinds of crap. Some of it was justified, but a lot of it was pure projection and disrespect. What I discovered was that if my accuser was willing to face their own part in the interaction, then we could have a civil conversation and resolve the issue, but all too often, it was "all me" - of course, their behaviour NEVER had anything to do with my response.
Well let me tell you, there are always two sides to these situations. I may have been harsh with people at times, but what I realized (after I got done beating myself up about it) was that it never just came out of the blue. There was ALWAYS some kind of provocation. Now MY responsibility is in setting boundaries for myself so people will know what not to cross. If I do that, and they still cross it, and I snap at them, well, I don't have too much sympathy, I figure I had a legit reason to snap. If however, I never explain to people what is unacceptable behaviour with me, then I need to do some homework of my own first.
So what does all this have to do with closets, you might ask? OK, I'll tell you.
For the past several years, I've been a student and member of a spiritual and meditation group called Training in Power. In recent years, this group, and in particular the founder of this group (Faye Fitzgerald), have come under a great deal of criticism from former members. To make a long story short, we've been accused of being a 'cult'. This makes me laugh, because really, I've never seen a more diverse collection of rebels, individualists, and non-conformists ANYWHERE in my life. The work we do is pretty cutting edge, well outside the box of mainstream spiritual thought. And it takes years of dedication and commitment to really start to comprehend the depth of this work, although most everyone I know has seen pretty immediate results from the very first course they take. Still, it's not for everyone, and you know why? It takes more courage to face yourself than most people possess. That doesn't make them bad people, it just means they're not ready to do this kind of work, and maybe they won't ever be, in this lifetime.
What happens though, is that people hit this wall in their development - call it a spiritual crisis - where they cannot, in the moment, face the truths they need to face in order to heal. Usually it involves something along the lines of a serious childhood betrayal of trust. Hard stuff to explain without going on for pages (which I've already done, thank you for reading this far...), but the bottom line is when you get to that place, it can seem easier to just run away from it, to blame the pain you are feeling on some external factor - like, hey, that person is a bully! Waaaaaaaa! Then you immediately regress to early childhood, and feel totally helpless, and forget everything you learned.
Well I've been at this point, many times, and it's not a whole lot of fun. It's really tempting to take the easy way out and make it all someone else's fault. But the truth is, I'm only responsible to and for myself. No one else is gonna do this work for me. Eventually I'll buckle down and figure it out, as do most people, left to their own devices.
In this situation with Training in Power, something rather disturbing has started to happen. Instead of people being left alone to deal with their own spiritual crises, there is an external group that is preying on their vulnerability and gathering them all up to have a group orgy of blaming and accusing. Yes, it's all that nasty Training and that crazy woman Faye! It's all their fault! Waaaaaaaa!
This has been going on for a good couple, to the point where MY name has gotten dragged through the mud. Well, I was mad before, but the fact that now googling my name brings up a link to an anti-Training in Power cult alert web site, well THAT really makes me angry. It’s hard enough to be self-employed in the world today without that kind of crap. I’ve literally lost clients because they stumbled across that nasty piece of work.
Whatever happened to, “Check your sources”? Do people just blindly believe everything they read online nowadays? I don’t know, I don’t believe a whole lot of what I read anywhere lately. Everyone seems to have their own slant on things, so for my own sanity, I’ve had to learn how to trust my instincts. The work I’ve done with Training in Power has helped me hugely in learning how to do that, and more, but I guess most people are still quite easily influenced.
Anyway, I’m rambling (yeah, yeah, what else is new?) and my main point is, I’m finally ready to make my stand, and call this shameful behaviour what it is - bullying, plain and simple. Oh, they may dress it up nice, with fancy-sounding words, but it’s no different than the intellectual bullying my parents practiced on me as a child.
If you’re reading this and you’re in the middle of a spiritual crisis of ANY kind, remember, the only person that can know what is right for your spirit is you. Be very careful of anyone who appears to sympathize under the guise of telling you what to think. It can be very seductive, and it might seem like an easy answer is just what you need, but if the answer was easy, well you wouldn’t be having a spiritual crisis, now, would you????
The part that seems hard for most people to face up to is that sooner or later, we all have to face our fears. And that might mean you actually have to go and TALK to the person who you perceived as the bad guy, and find out what they really meant. Maybe you’re missing a big part of the picture, but you won’t ever know unless you communicate. And ganging up in an orgy of blaming and accusing is NOT communicating, it’s BULLYING.
I’m secure enough in my identity and spiritual orientation to know, I will not be bullied or intimidated into feeling ashamed about my spiritual choices.
*whew* Feels pretty good to get that off my chest. :)
So I'm, *ahem*, 'coming out of the closet', as it were. No, not like THAT!
Where was I? Ah yes, closets. One of the things that really stuck with me from my childhood was a strong sense of having been spiritually shamed. By that I mean, my parents were both intellectuals, so anything that smacked of the 'spiritual', anything to do with religion, spirit, even seeing phenomena in energy (which is a pretty common thing for children) was considered 'stupid' by my parents. Bit of hypocrisy there, since I was actually baptized, and my mother officially joined my dad's faith when they got hitched, but go figure. Be that as it may, I grew up without much of a spiritual or religious influence. Basically, the intellect was king in my home, and being smart and brainy was one of the only ways to get points from my folks. Well, that and doing what I was told.
Truth be told, my parents were both tremendous bullies (may they rest in peace, seriously). I won't go into detail; suffice it to say I didn't have a fun childhood. After years of being bullied in various ways, I've come to a point in my life where I am no longer willing to sit passively while people and communities I care about are bullied. For a long time, I would just step out of the line of fire, and keep quiet. Well I was trained to do that! Why go looking for trouble, right? Then again, if those of us who have been bullied won't stand up for ourselves, then who will? Stepping up and taking a stand can be a terrifying thing if you've been conditioned in childhood to submit, and I am in no way suggesting that people who are still stuck there should have anything to be ashamed of - I have nothing but empathy for someone in that situation. And yet, if you simply walk away from an incident, without ever directly confronting the person who bullied you, then you're kind of stuck somewhere in a grey zone of disempowerment.
If you THEN decide to fight back by means of gossip, talking behind the person's back, trashing their reputation, etc, then how are you any better than the accused bully? It might make you feel momentarily powerful, but you haven't really addressed the issue, you've simply jumped to a conclusion. The thing is, most bullies are that way because they've been hurt themselves - it's just an admittedly shitty way to make themselves feel safe. Most of the time, they are not even conscious of this, and would be horrified to know how often they have hurt people.
So next time you feel like you've just been bullied, take a moment (or a month, if you need it) to collect yourself, then go back to that person, and ask them, with some genuine curiosity, "Hey, I don't know if you realize, but I felt really bullied by that last exchange we had. Was that really your intention?"
Personally, I can attest that this approach is more constructive than running off and bitching to all your friends, because I'm one of those people who can have a tendency to be rather heavy-handed at times, without realizing it in the moment. It's not something I mean to do, and I am now able to catch myself more often than not, but I'm more grateful than I can even express for the friends who stuck by me and were able to confront me in this non-judgmental fashion. Because it gave me a chance to recognize a very wounded place in myself, a place where I was pretty shut down, and unable to see where I was basically being just like my mother.
This is why I get so irritated when I see groups of people ganging up and making accusations when I KNOW they haven't done their due diligence - in other words, they haven't had the courage and, let's face it, decency, to confront the people they had a problem with. I have a lot of sympathy for people in leadership positions - I used to lead a band, and let me tell you, I got accused of all kinds of crap. Some of it was justified, but a lot of it was pure projection and disrespect. What I discovered was that if my accuser was willing to face their own part in the interaction, then we could have a civil conversation and resolve the issue, but all too often, it was "all me" - of course, their behaviour NEVER had anything to do with my response.
Well let me tell you, there are always two sides to these situations. I may have been harsh with people at times, but what I realized (after I got done beating myself up about it) was that it never just came out of the blue. There was ALWAYS some kind of provocation. Now MY responsibility is in setting boundaries for myself so people will know what not to cross. If I do that, and they still cross it, and I snap at them, well, I don't have too much sympathy, I figure I had a legit reason to snap. If however, I never explain to people what is unacceptable behaviour with me, then I need to do some homework of my own first.
So what does all this have to do with closets, you might ask? OK, I'll tell you.
For the past several years, I've been a student and member of a spiritual and meditation group called Training in Power. In recent years, this group, and in particular the founder of this group (Faye Fitzgerald), have come under a great deal of criticism from former members. To make a long story short, we've been accused of being a 'cult'. This makes me laugh, because really, I've never seen a more diverse collection of rebels, individualists, and non-conformists ANYWHERE in my life. The work we do is pretty cutting edge, well outside the box of mainstream spiritual thought. And it takes years of dedication and commitment to really start to comprehend the depth of this work, although most everyone I know has seen pretty immediate results from the very first course they take. Still, it's not for everyone, and you know why? It takes more courage to face yourself than most people possess. That doesn't make them bad people, it just means they're not ready to do this kind of work, and maybe they won't ever be, in this lifetime.
What happens though, is that people hit this wall in their development - call it a spiritual crisis - where they cannot, in the moment, face the truths they need to face in order to heal. Usually it involves something along the lines of a serious childhood betrayal of trust. Hard stuff to explain without going on for pages (which I've already done, thank you for reading this far...), but the bottom line is when you get to that place, it can seem easier to just run away from it, to blame the pain you are feeling on some external factor - like, hey, that person is a bully! Waaaaaaaa! Then you immediately regress to early childhood, and feel totally helpless, and forget everything you learned.
Well I've been at this point, many times, and it's not a whole lot of fun. It's really tempting to take the easy way out and make it all someone else's fault. But the truth is, I'm only responsible to and for myself. No one else is gonna do this work for me. Eventually I'll buckle down and figure it out, as do most people, left to their own devices.
In this situation with Training in Power, something rather disturbing has started to happen. Instead of people being left alone to deal with their own spiritual crises, there is an external group that is preying on their vulnerability and gathering them all up to have a group orgy of blaming and accusing. Yes, it's all that nasty Training and that crazy woman Faye! It's all their fault! Waaaaaaaa!
This has been going on for a good couple, to the point where MY name has gotten dragged through the mud. Well, I was mad before, but the fact that now googling my name brings up a link to an anti-Training in Power cult alert web site, well THAT really makes me angry. It’s hard enough to be self-employed in the world today without that kind of crap. I’ve literally lost clients because they stumbled across that nasty piece of work.
Whatever happened to, “Check your sources”? Do people just blindly believe everything they read online nowadays? I don’t know, I don’t believe a whole lot of what I read anywhere lately. Everyone seems to have their own slant on things, so for my own sanity, I’ve had to learn how to trust my instincts. The work I’ve done with Training in Power has helped me hugely in learning how to do that, and more, but I guess most people are still quite easily influenced.
Anyway, I’m rambling (yeah, yeah, what else is new?) and my main point is, I’m finally ready to make my stand, and call this shameful behaviour what it is - bullying, plain and simple. Oh, they may dress it up nice, with fancy-sounding words, but it’s no different than the intellectual bullying my parents practiced on me as a child.
If you’re reading this and you’re in the middle of a spiritual crisis of ANY kind, remember, the only person that can know what is right for your spirit is you. Be very careful of anyone who appears to sympathize under the guise of telling you what to think. It can be very seductive, and it might seem like an easy answer is just what you need, but if the answer was easy, well you wouldn’t be having a spiritual crisis, now, would you????
The part that seems hard for most people to face up to is that sooner or later, we all have to face our fears. And that might mean you actually have to go and TALK to the person who you perceived as the bad guy, and find out what they really meant. Maybe you’re missing a big part of the picture, but you won’t ever know unless you communicate. And ganging up in an orgy of blaming and accusing is NOT communicating, it’s BULLYING.
I’m secure enough in my identity and spiritual orientation to know, I will not be bullied or intimidated into feeling ashamed about my spiritual choices.
*whew* Feels pretty good to get that off my chest. :)