It is an
axiom of modern psychotherapy, that who we are is to a large extent shaped by
our parents and by our upbringing. It is a cause-and-effect relationship that
you can spend years exploring in therapy. There is just one problem, which is
that I don’t think it’s true. At least, not nearly to the extent that we are
led to believe.
I first
encountered this counter-notion some years ago through the Jungian
psychotherapist James Hillman. He said that psychotherapy is predicated on the
idea that the earlier an event occurred in life, the more deeply it has shaped
us. He said maybe that is not true. More recently, I read Judith Rich Harris’
book The Nurture Assumption in which, using pre-existing research papers, she
showed that parents have far less influence over who we become than is normally
assumed. She is limited, though, by her own very modern assumption that who we
are is determined purely by DNA and environment. In her later book No Two Alike, she ties herself
in knots when trying to explain the sometimes big differences between identical
twins raised in the same family.
As a result
of these ideas, I have made a deliberate point of backing off from explanations
of who I am in terms of my parents and upbringing. Sure, I can find explanations
of, say, my anxiety, in terms of my father or my mother or my boarding school,
all or any of these. Our minds are creative, they make up stories, and that is
what these explanations are: stories. They may or may not be truly explanatory.
It can be hard to know.
I think the ‘childhood
shapes you’ axiom tends to confuse correlation with causation. Cause and effect
is a particular explanatory approach that works well for science. But I don’t think
it works so well in the much broader field of the psyche. Synchronicity is, I
think, a better model. There is, maybe, a synchronicity between your parent’s
marriage and the way your own relationships have turned out. It is useful to
take their marriage into account, don’t get me wrong. But it needs to be held lightly. There
is an essential, defining mystery to who you are in relationships that has nothing
to do with your parents or anyone else.
I am not
even talking about not blaming our parents for who we are. I am assuming we
have gone beyond that. There is a subtler level, where just the fact of
explaining who we are in terms of parental influence can still be limiting.
By
relegating this childhood-as-cause axiom, we may rob ourselves of
explanations of how we came to be who we are, and therapists of their livelihood. But it gives
us our soul back. We are no longer the product of something external to
ourselves, lost in the mists of early childhood. Our soul becomes fully our own again,
demons and all.
Who we are
is a mystery. Life needs to be lived close to that mystery, which psychological
explanations can take us away from. The 7th century Bishop Paulinus,
in his attempt to convert King Edwin of Northumberland to Christianity, likened
human life to a sparrow flying through the feasting hall. It was there for just
a brief time. Where it flew in from, and where it would fly out to, were a
mystery. Who and what we are is surrounded by mystery.
--------------------------------------------------
My book, The Medicine Wheel, is available on Amazon. If you buy it and leave a rating there, I will give you a free astrology or tarot reading. The same applies with my astrology book Surfing the Galactic Highways. Contact: BWGoddard1@aol.co.uk
--------------------------------------------------
And yes, we
do have demons that turn up and torment us. Coming into relationship with them
is an important part of life. It is, if you like, the central moral quest. It
requires honesty and humility and the ability to bear discomfort, without
reaching, too often, for the sticking plasters of alcohol, relationships, chocolate,
porn or whatever it is we use. Note I say not ‘too often’: we need to be human
and forgiving, as well as demanding, of ourselves.
We have,
perhaps, become soft in modern life. Amongst Native Americans, the teenage boys
were sent into the wilderness naked, with just a blanket, for four days,
seeking a vision for their lives. (There was an Elder looking out for them, but
they didn’t know that.) Contrast
this attitude with some US States, where it is now illegal to let your children
play outside unsupervised.
They also had
the Sweatlodge, in which the proud young warriors were prostrated by the heat. And
they had the Sundance, in which the flesh was pierced with sticks, and you danced
until you tore the sticks out of your flesh. As you surrender to the suffering,
so does a deeper relationship with the Spirit open up. For all its bloody and
fundamentalist history, Christianity, with its image of the crucifix, spirit
being nailed to matter, also understood this. There is a joy and meaning to be found in
this encounter with the Spirit that goes far deeper than the contentment
experienced through the satisfaction of desire. It is also the difficult but
ecstatic path between the East (Spirit) and West (the Body) of the Medicine
Wheel. In Astrology, it is Capricorn, the imprisonment in matter of the spirit sign of Sagittarius, as well as the traditional yearly sacrifice of the old king to ensure the fertility of the land.
We are
robust, we are ‘anti-fragile’, a term that has been invented to counter our
modern cosseting. It is important for our Spirit that we find what we can bear.
For we have to bear a lot if we are to grow, to create that deep foundation in
ourselves that only the ability to stay with our demons can create.
There is
always something to bear, that is the nature of life. But it is not just about
being stoic. There is insight into the nature of things to be found, as well as
a creative relationship with that which troubles us.
A more
indigenous attitude to our demons is to view them as not essential to
ourselves, but as visitors belonging to the universe with which we need to come
into relationship. I first encountered this approach in the work of Native
American writers Lewis Mehl-Madrona (Coyote Medicine) and Jungian analyst Eduardo Duran
(Healing the Soul Wound.)
Eduardo
Duran works with Native Americans, for whom alcoholism is often the issue. He
begins with a bit of smudge and ceremony to create the spirit context, and then
asks the person to see the alcoholism as a spirit that comes to visit them, and
to introduce themself to it. This simple step, he says, immediately changes
their relationship with the bottle.
I have been
taking this approach myself with anxiety. Certain practical money situations
can make me extremely anxious, out of all proportion to even the worst possible
outcomes. I have stopped trying to explain and thereby mitigate this response
through examining my childhood. Ax a result, I feel I own it more now: the simple fact is
that I have this response, wherever it comes from. Explanations are ideas, and
as such can take me away from experience.
Sometimes,
on my own in the evening, the anxiety can consume me. It sits there like jagged
lightning in my guts. And then I remember it doesn’t have to be in control. And
I begin to see it as a figure over on my right: the Horseman of the Apocalypse,
a mounted guy in armour. There is humour in this – and humour helps create proportion
and perspective – because it is as if the end of the world is coming, and of
course it isn’t, not remotely.
Lately a
teenage boy has been clambering out of his armour and off the horse, and I have
been embracing him for a while. I am the father that reassures him that the
world is not coming to an end. Much as he likes this, it is not his habitual
way of being, and after a while he starts wanting his armour back on. So off he goes and becomes
the horseman again. These things take time, and you have to leave the familiar
its place. Don’t frighten the horses, as they say!
But I can
feel my anxiety response slowly changing through this inner work, through
encountering this spirit and becoming intimate with it. It is slowly enabling
me to feel that I can stand fully upright and confident in the world in a way I
have never done (not that it is obvious to most people who know me that underneath I can feel unsure of myself in this way!)
There is the
well-known Leonard Cohen line, that there is a crack in everything where the
light gets in. That is what these demons are: gateways to the soul. Through staying with
them over time, at least occasionally, and getting to know them, not trying to
reduce them to just a childhood trauma (without denying the reality of that), a
mysterious alchemy gradually occurs, that enlarges us, that centres us in who,
in a sense, we always were. It is not ourselves that does the changing. Who are
we to know the purpose of these demons, or to judge them? They are what they
are. Our job is simply to get close to them so that Spirit can do its work.
Sometimes I’m
asked to do a bit of Soul Retrieval work for people. It is typically to help people address some troublesome bit of themselves, that stops their life working in a functional way. Sometimes I will say yes,
if I have the feeling to do so. But it is always in the context of people
becoming closer to themselves over time, and the Soul Retrieval is in order to
give that process a bit of a nudge. I like to spend time getting to know the
person first. I really don’t like the idea of someone turning up, me ‘fixing’
them with a Soul Retrieval, and then they go. Even two or three sessions isn’t
enough. I can’t rule out that way of working very occasionally. But as a model,
it is very superficial. It makes me roll my eyes. I think the major change
happens through long-term relationships with people, and it is a 2 way process,
both of us transform. Most Soul Retrieval, as we call it, happens spontaneously
and incrementally. It is a gift from Spirit that comes from living closely to
ourselves on a day-to-day basis.
