helpless

The kid was bullied so many times as a seventh grader and up, that he crouched, cowered, and shut down in defeat. His parents tried to help by placing him in a 2-year program at a local school for the deaf; a pilot program for all kinds of ‘misfits’ as he called them. He eventually found it easier to be a misfit then to fit in at ‘regular’ school, although his math and sciences ‘tanked.’ When the two years came to pass, he dreaded the impending return to regular school, experiencing panic attacks and sleepless nights as he recognized that lingering feeling of helplessness. The bullying picked right back up and he regressed to an all too familiar state of weakness and rejection.
Years later as a married man he often felt assaulted when his wife expressed her emotions in what he called’ a more dramatic way.’ He had a more subtle emotional experience that was quite different from hers. In fact, her behavior caused him to feel impatient along with an urgency to be right, while also feeling unseen and disrespected. He could not witness his woman feeling and expressing, as her behavior seemed to rob him of a sense of order while unleashing an ancient rage. All his spiritual training reminded him that this unruly rage was inappropriate, but his body begged to differ as he efforted to maintain control.
This rage felt self-centered and arrogant, and so strong that he felt ready to fight, to destroy! So, he plotted and planned, but never dared to take action. He was trapped, feeling an empty void in his upper belly like a hidden sensitivity filled with the agony of being overlooked.
He questioned how to deal with this inner chaos and loss of freedom. His quest led him to Peru where he was fortuitously taken in by a Peruvian family. They gave him a plot of land so he could grow food and participate in weekly ceremonies with their family’s lineage of making ayahuascua. For this young man seeking peace, these ceremonies paradoxically offered him opportunities to meet the destroyer energy within. This archetype embodies repressed rage about structures and experiences that no longer serve life. And he was forced to meet his inner structure of rage and hurt created by the ignorance of kindness around him.
The young man was led to offer space for this inner structure of sensitivity, tender and hollow. With no bypassing or hiding, this sensation had plenty to say. The strength of his quiet words was saturated with self-worthiness and the need for respect. This truth was intermingled with hurt and the full feeling of retribution, the longing for justice and the need to feel safe and treated fairly. And this allowed his whole inner structure to soften, the feeling of dominance dissipating in the energetic reality of wholeness. He could now imagine his wife expressing her own inner chaos without it triggering his own inner defense. It took welcoming, allowing, and integrating this energy fully to reconfigure the inner networking. God knows he had tried to override this in so many ways, mostly positive, just incomplete.
In retrospect he remembered that his mother was a warrior, dominant, controlling, sensitive and reactive while his father was submissive, often retreating into his art. He could see that he was called to find a different way than his father had demonstrated by honoring both the helplessness and the power within. And that this pattern fully played out for resolution in the consciousness of his evolving family lineage. He could see the bigger picture and how these bullies had helped him evolve out of retreating and into the authenticity of warriorship and authority.
He also understood that none of these stories were real for his true Self. That the living energetic structure of his past made living this truth challenging. He was truly intent on healing since he was often hijacked by this perception of being attacked, even when it did not exist. In truth, he understood the value of ‘waking down,’ the awakened journey into the knots and lessons of life. He was not only awake, but a hero and a warrior in his individual story here on Earth.
* I offer virtual one-on-one sessions anywhere in the world. You can contact me at amulya@thebreathingspace.org