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I enjoyed your recent post about peering back into your experiences when in the womb. I’ll share mine.
I didn’t expect it, but my life split apart into multiple hells. It was the spring of 2000, my wife had gone into psychotherapy because of post-partum depression, and I was called in so her therapist could get a sense of me and my role in my wife’s situation. A few questions, from the therapist and I dissolved into tears.
I can’t remember the progression, but after a few more sessions of following memories and feelings of my past, I started to have this vague sensation that I had been sexually molested as a very young child. I had to keep sitting with these vague feelings and memories, allowing them to reveal themselves. I started to have this sense that it was my father or mother that had molested me. Oh, god, it was so hard, so horrible, to have, to sit and explore those feelings.
One day I came to the therapist with this recurring “memory” that I had been stuck at for the past few days: a sense of being sexually abused, in a tiled room next to a room with something that sounded like a washing machine or a furnace. The therapist looked at me surprised, and put in a tape of that exact sound! It was the sound that the baby hears while in the womb!
With that knowledge, I was able to explore the memory further, and it became me sensing my father having sex with my mother while she was pregnant with me. I know that my mother did not like sex and that my father did not like that she was pregannt with me, so those feelings from them lead to the feeling of me being sexually assaulted while in the womb. Remembering this now, I realize that it would be good to do more exploring of this memory, and offer it some kan and li medicine.
Later in the therapy (I only went for two VERY intense months) some other memory came up, and the therapist wanted to do a sort of rebirthing experience with me. She put on the womb-music again, buried me in pillows, and gave me specific breathing patterns. I ended up going for a short time into an amazing world, and part of me was this being, running very very quickly with a bunch of other beings like me, I was so excited about something! I ended up wearing wome yellow robes with a high hat (sort of like a KKK costume?!) and running faster and faster and then BLAM!!!!! I entered some black void. I can’t remember the next memory after that, but I do remember having a disappointed feeling of having been duped! I think my present-day self got too excited about the memory, stopped following it and added some control that made it disappear. My sense of this memory is that it was some soul-part of me incarnating into me in the womb. After that memory/experience, I was sooooo elated for days, brimming with energy and love for Being.
Now here is an instance of therapy at the right time for breakthrough. I hope your wife recovered- sounds like she did in her own way.
Interesting take on this feeling of abuse. With a lot of the public secrecy removing around this (and creating weird public boundaries of adults and children-ultra fear)many people do seem to imagine abuse not remembered.
I do. And I have so many stories of how this feeling manifested but most having to do with being sensitive and vulnerable and taking on something that belonged to another whether it happened genitally or not.
Ultimately it is this giving it back for integration whether through the energetics of kan and li or simple inner embrace and choice…or both.
Sounds like you were able to peel a bit more of that onion.
[ By the way, I wanted to ask if I could have your e-mail address. Occasionally I want to ask further questions that might be too much for the board- I mean too back and forth or specific not too deep- plus I may be in the Niagara region this fall and want to have your contact info in case we choose to cross paths.
I will leave my e-mail in the next blog entry if you want to respond. Thanks Chris, Barry]There is a lot to say about that…And I am not so sure if this the place to discuss this. I will throw a very little stone into the pond.
From my own and talking with a lot of women and men about it, I see two roads in this…
1. If there is a real abuse where a child feels it has no choice (being it emotional,physical,…)the damages are so deep that in many cases it is a life long scar that is causing friction within, somehow somewhere, definite.
2. Not all sexual contacts are ‘abuse’… I will explain this from my own experience with utmost care. As I recall from young age, the sexual contact was NOT abusive, only years later when I became old enough I started to create ‘guilt’ and ‘fear’ and ‘shame’ for something that was happened years earlier. The wounds were created afterwards, not on that moment because in my childly innocense I was completely unaware and even without any guilt about it.
It has been a very long inner quest on boundaries, sexuality and guilt. Cutting out all the religious BS and listening to MY truth. Restoring my inner earth was the only way to find a path I could walk on without guilt and shame.
And now I am dealing with my ‘anger’ transforming into strength and power, using my sexual energy to increase that strength. Learning to sleep with the devil, looking it in the eyes and make love with it… and feel a better person!
‘Wait until I come out’… I am out!
Last night I saved my inner children from drowning in a pond, I saved them, and we put a wooden floor on top of the pond, so nobody could drown in it anymore. And I was rebuilding and restoring the huge house that was on its side. On the floor we would dance, on top of the pond, dance and be joyful and happy, no more drowning, no more guilt, no shame, no death.
I am on the path of restoring my house…
Thank you Chris and Barry for your stories and taking this into the open, I would not started to talk about it without yours…
I don’t believe you know the cartoon Calimero, I think it was a cartoon in the low lands (Holland and Belgium) in the 70ths. About a little black chicken, his family members are all yellow, with an half egg on his head as its hat with a famous ‘annoying’ saying: ‘they are tall, and I am small, it is not fair’ looking sad…
When I go into my little sad me, my partner kicks me out of it saying I am suffering from my ‘Calimero syndrom’. I have to say it helps me to see how I crawl in my sadness and smallness, not being able to conquer the big wide world, scared to show myself and believing that the others are far more advanced, better, smarter, whatever…
The last time he called me Calimero was when on one occassion we were discussing our ‘divorce’ and where I felt small and weak.
Naming me Calimero I know it is time to pull myself and face my strength and my believe that I can do it. And I can do it!Past days I often think of Calimero and wanted to offer him to you in your inner struggle…
I hope the image is succesful…
The only cultural equivalent I can remember is the Little Train that Could. I think he was a small caboose which when needed had to pull the entire length of train himself.
But I prefer being called out as the Calimero.
These past days I have this incredible lightness of being. I leave in 4 days and already feel the power that comes from not being a part of someone else’s story so intimately. It is a new feeling.
I also feel very tender towards Ali as well and appreciate the connection we cultivated and which sustained us.
The next chapter will be on my own and I think strength and the can do spirit will be emerging.
Your support means a lot….because you are speaking from life… and to me..Barry
My mother had a miscarraige (considerably prior to term, I believe), prior to her pregnancy with me. Not too long ago I remember my mother’s emotions (which were easily mistaken for my emotions at time, since her blood was pumping through my umbilicus, that nourishment was being used to build this body, and I was too early in formation to have a human emotional set of my own). Her child had died in her womb: Unfathomable anguish and guilt (though undeserved), and fear (during her pregnancy with me, that she would lose me also). When first I remembered it, some short years ago, the wave of it was staggering.
There is real, earthy suffering that is a part of life, and everyone gets some. (I’m about to get all Buddhist, here.)
* wanders off in his own mind *“Grist for the mill of awakening.”
Roll that heavy dharma-wheel, brother, and we’ll all have grits.
🙂Trunk, thanks for sharing that.
It reminds me of my first child’s term. My wife and I were very careful about food and environment studying with Michio Kushi at the time who had a very practical taoist viewpoint.
However no matter how much we tried my wife couldn’t stop herself from reading one of the most bloody and tragic books about Nantucket life in the 1800’s.
Every night after rice and veggies and Prairie Home Companion husbands were getting lost at sea, women were strung out on laudanum and babes were miscarried or thrown into the ocean.
Only later did we discover in detail what was only known to us in bits and pieces. Her ancestors lived that hard life in the 19th century.
What’s gone around comes around no matter what we do, eh? (No report from my daughter on what effect that had 😉
PLease take with a grain of salt, as I don’t know your deal BUT
after reading some stuff from others here on the forum..
PLEASE don’t bog down with this stuff…
This older friend once told me all about how, in his twneties, early 1970’s, he started doing Merkabah and light body techniques, and would lie there for hours trying to do deep into his “memories” as he had been instructed..
within a few years he was so out it, spaced out, detached, caught up in his own dreary inner space that he didn’t even feel like himself anymore
he would try to go into his pain, and it just drug everything out and went no where..
people in therapy do this.. they end up jst wanting someone to talk to and start going in downward spirals where they blow everything out of proportion in their quest to unearththat lost nugget that will make them better..
sometimes they just need to get up and go on and get over it and block it on out..
Your warning is quite valid, but I think only for people who proceed with this work in a disembodied manner.
How I enter into all of this is starting with my body as it is – where are the pains, the joys, the vague feelings, the parts that don’t want to move, the parts that don’t want to thrill with the microcosmic orbit, the parts that scowl at other people etc. I engage with those parts, and sometimes they just vaporize, and sometimes they yield memories.
The end result of my process is ALWAYS a stronger, deeper and more connected embodiment of spirit.
That guy sounds my age too. Thanks for the reminder.
There are times in life when breakdown is important and appropriate- I am finding this out. Perhaps your friend didn’t know when to ease out of that intensity or have a method skillful enough so his present was enhanced.
To learn how that mechanism of being in breakdown works seems essential so when smaller shifts (or greater more shared ones) occur I am not caught in just blocking it out but can hold even this space. This seems essential inner alchemy and like you say is fraught with mind games.
Embodying is a big part of this descent that keeps it from a form of mind control and addiction to pain. The body needs communication especially if life has been lived with closed circuits.
For me it is better to have a relationship with suffering and not use it as another way to be small or self hurting. This is part of ‘my deal’. Blocking it out is not an option at this point but skillfully opening to all myselves is.
I am just a beginner. Barry
I mean come on..
when did all this my body is this my body is that junk begin to begin with..
when i eat too much fod i get fat
when i sleep to much i get depressedwhen i feel good i am sexy
when i exercise i am in good shape…
what is all this mind body dichotomy crap about..
i hear more of it hear from people who are supposed to be doing “embodyment exercises” so i guess most of you have dichotimized your body to some sort of vehicle for your multidimensional mind..
but who said any of that is valid?
someone needs to do a poll and ask americans, israelis, chinese etc if they think of their body as a separate entity to begin with
“body (to) some sort of vehicle for your multidimensional mind..”
yes…this resonates to some degree. Maybe not vehicle as much as more accessible place to explore with. I am not sure what upsets you. It seems your sense of beingness is different or your approach.
There’s room- I’m listening.
Are any of us in this day and age born fully embodied?
“but who said any of that is valid?”
I do but maybe I won’t next year…I don’t know. Barry
“As I recall from young age, the sexual contact was NOT abusive, only years later when I became old enough I started to create ‘guilt’ and ‘fear’ and ‘shame’ for something that was happened years earlier.”
Wendy, this took a few days to sink in not as memories for me as much as what I do when I am with children and others now and how quickly I assume I am going down an abusive path. It happens so quickly I don’t know where it comes from.
However just slowing it down and dwelling on your perspective brought me a new feeling of safety and trust of myself. I notice I meet others kinesthetically and energetically and this easily becomes sensual and erotic but there is no bad intent, no abuse intended and I cannot turn this part of myself off.
Again learning from others is crucial…thanks…Bar
what i am saying is that i know that i am not the only person who “sees” what i am talking about..
i really don’t want to hurt anyones feelings, just gest a bit..
remeber how people looked at the stoned out hippies? all spaced out, a little fuzzy on the processing end.. etc..flower powered, possibly without a wheelbarrow..somehow avoiding venereal disease
not to condone hippies, but i think that stereotype is both genuine and sometimes correct..
all i am saying is that there is a somehwat subtle stereotype that has developed of new age people.. flaky, potentially gay, daily affirmational.. etc
saying stuff like “we need to be in our bodies”when no one else ever thought they were somehow out of their bodies to begin with..
i may be stretching it a bit, but i know others have the same reaction i do..
it’s like when the new agers took the swords out of tarot and replaced them with crystals.. sheesh.. lets just yank masculinity out of it altogether then
it’s like the person who has never done a single chi practice and hears people saying their true self is golden light..
yeah right..
it sounds like a feel good placebo… i understand that its one thing to do the practices and mediatate on organ vibrations etc, but if you have never done them it sounds like total bs.. and so does amy proces sthat is supposed to reveal your golden light soul
but there is something more to it.. something like a general out there ness that just irriates the hell out of people..
it’s hard to pin down, because it’s like a monty python film.. it’s like being told to relax when stress may be the motivation you need..
or being told to accept when what may be needed is genuine judgement that cuts right to the root of the issue..
but still its none of those things..
i guess each issue has to be tackled for what it is..
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