from my journal for Wednesday, May 20<\/p>\n
I was feeling really awful yesterday.\u00a0 <\/span>It was like I had lost all the spiritual connection I\u2019ve felt over the past months.\u00a0 <\/span>Somehow I was able to trust that it was real, it was still there, even though I couldn\u2019t feel it.\u00a0 <\/span>Erica was a huge help.\u00a0 <\/span>She said she heard in my voice a weariness, not physical but emotional.\u00a0 <\/span>Trying out words she said \u201cbeing unmet\u201d and that resonated.\u00a0 <\/span>I realize that in some ways I have never been met.\u00a0 <\/span>I thought Dana met me, but then he failed to stay with it, he cut the connection.\u00a0 <\/span>Jalaja<\/a> met me, she saw who I was, and perhaps she also saw that I couldn\u2019t see it.\u00a0 <\/span>Yes, being unmet is a lifelong pain. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
So then, when Erica talked about the part of me that had to erase the experience of connection in the silence<\/a>, because the experience of deep connection, of \u201crefuge\u201d as Erica said, is founded on a healthy mother-baby connection.\u00a0 <\/span>That is what I should have had and didn\u2019t get.\u00a0 <\/span>The pain of that not-getting is so great, that the part of me that protects me has to erase it completely.\u00a0 <\/span>I end up in that terrible blank space where there is nothing<\/span>.\u00a0 <\/span>Erica said \u201cannihilation.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>Exactly.<\/p>\n
She used the word \u201cpendulation\u201d and initially I thought she was wrong.\u00a0 <\/span>Pendulation in Somatic Experiencing<\/a> is moving deliberately back and forth between the resource and the trauma.\u00a0 <\/span>There\u2019s nothing deliberate about this.\u00a0 <\/span>I gain the resource \u2014 Divine refuge \u2014 or maybe it is even granted to me by grace \u2014 and then my own dissociative defense whips me away from it and into the center of the wound.\u00a0 <\/span>I had noticed that each time I had a new spiritual realization, I would later find myself more completely lost in the traumatized baby state.\u00a0 <\/span>(Jalaja: \u201cthe depths to which you are journeying\u201d)\u00a0 <\/span>I failed to see that it\u2019s a mechanism I\u2019ve long been familiar with<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/span>When you complete a healing step, you feel great for a while.\u00a0 <\/span>But because you are now stronger, tougher layers of the wound rise up to be dealt with.<\/p>\n
Something else that happened yesterday was reading in Radical Acceptance<\/a>, where Tara talks about how it would be hard to feel compassion for a murderer, a CEO whose company pollutes the Earth, a child molester.\u00a0 <\/span>I immediately felt compassion for the murderer and the molester because I know they were both acting out of pain.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s a little harder for the polluting CEO, but I am starting to see that money and power addiction is caused by a hole inside that can\u2019t be filled by the material world.\u00a0 <\/span>And that these people are not happy, contrary to the myth that money and possessions will make you happy.<\/p>\n
So yesterday, after talking to Erica, I stopped paying attention to emails and let myself do puzzles and listen to sacred harp music.\u00a0 <\/span>Erica had used the words \u201cweariness\u201d and \u201cfatigue\u201d as she was trying to describe the quality of my voice.\u00a0 <\/span>I think I\u2019ve been suffering from \u201ccompassion fatigue\u201d \u2014 no, it’s not compassion fatigue but empathy<\/span> fatigue.\u00a0 <\/span>I don\u2019t need to read about the pain in the world to feel it.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s more tiring and frustrating because there\u2019s not much I can do about it.\u00a0 <\/span>I did send two small contributions along with a prayer to causes I really want to help.<\/p>\n
The sense I\u2019ve been getting lately is that the best use of my gifts is to send compassion to the \u201cbad guys,\u201d to Trump and his cohorts.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019m reminded of a quote from Elizabeth Goudge<\/a>:\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cSome expiation is made in experiencing suffering, but none at all in the infliction of it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
from my journal for Wednesday, May 20 I was feeling really awful yesterday.\u00a0 It was like I had lost all the spiritual connection I\u2019ve felt over the past months.\u00a0 Somehow I was able to trust that it was real, it … Continue reading