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This morning I am thinking about shame, or more accurately, shame is thinking me. For in truth, there is no thinker here, but thinking does indeed happen. And last night a friend was talking about how desperately she wanted to be seen by her father. And as she grew, she made herself into a tomboy so that she could be the "son he never had." Later, she used her body and sexual energy as a way to be seen by men. Later still, she experienced a lot of shame about sex and using it to heal this daughter-daddy wound.
Of course, like many little girls, I resonate with the invisible-girl-child syndrome - never feeling like I was doing enough, or doing something good enough. It created a louder, more expressive, performance-oriented version of Shelly. As a young girl, I took on the character of confidence and bravado. It got me lots of smiles and chuckles of approval from my Dad; I guess because he was a bit of a narcissist, he liked it when I acted like him. And perhaps it was a character, an energy, that he adopted as a way to overcome profound insecurity. I cannot know. From this, his daughter's perspective, it still seems that he was simply kind of a jerk. In any case, being more like him or adopting this character strategy, felt better than being frowned upon or ignored. As I grew into adulthood, like my friend, I began to feel ashamed of this bolstered character, this trying-to-get-Daddy's-approval strategy. Personal-Growth-Shelly was embarrassed that I was ever inauthentic and had succumbed to adopting such a gross and almost cartoon-like character. Spiritual-Seeking-Shelly was mortified that I ever "put on airs." Wasn't humility a necessary ingredient to being or becoming enlightened? And here's where it hit me this morning. I was feeling the urge to write or speak - to share. And I dove deeper into the wanting-to-share energy, suspicious, as I typically am, of what was driving it. Was I wanting to get my ego stroked? Was I wanting to bolster my sense of self by taking on the role of "teacher?" Was I simply bored and needed to fill a hole? Was I trying to use "sharing" as a way to feel connected to other people? Was I wanting to contribute something as a way to establish my worth? Was I being egotistical, as my partner once suggested? And somewhere, in the background, shame was tucked carefully within the character of Good-Person-Shelly, who thought, This is healthy - this questioning, this examining. This way I don't hurt anybody. This way I'm not using other people to get my needs met. And then I caught it, this sneaky shame energy: Wait a minute. Can shame actually be good? And once I got a glimpse of this layer, a deeper, less-acknowledged shame layer arose that said, It's good to always question myself because that way I'm less likely to behave in such a way that other people won't like me. And then I remembered an eleven-year-old girls' slumber party. One of the girls had organized a kangaroo court. Each of us was brought up on "charges," except her of course: She was the judge. (This friend-group tyrant grew up to be a therapist, which I think is kinda fun). We were given two choices as to how to atone for our crimes. I was accused of "bragging" about my mini-bike. I had gotten a mini-bike when I was ten and absolutely loved it. I rode all over the neighborhood on that thing and I guess, like horses, it gave me a sense of freedom. It could take me places faster and farther than I could go on my own two feet and its power became my power, which also felt great. I was absolutely blind-sided by this accusation. Had I really been bragging? I was so confused. Still, to this day, I can't remember bragging, but at some point I decided that it must be true and that there was something wrong with my enthusiasm, something wrong with how I "shared" my joy, something maybe about the intensity of it that was perceived as bragging. And of course I was somehow wrong or less-than for not being able to see it. Maybe I was stupid, maybe I was selfish. I wasn't sure. But clearly there was something screwed up about me or this wouldn't have happened. With shame, it seems, there's no way out. You're fucked if you do and you're fucked if you don't. If you don't express yourself, then you don't get seen or heard. If you do, you run the risk of being seen as egotistical or bad. This morning I'm aware of how shame checks me: Why am I doing this? What's driving my desire to share? To write? And underneath it, I don't want to be being bad and somehow not know that I'm being bad because that would be bad. I'll have to say that sharing in hopes to be seen or heard, never satisfies - not for long anyway. And this I've learned the hard way. But did I need shame to teach me that? Actually, I simply needed awareness - awareness of energy and how it feels in my body. When the impulse to share arises, it feels free and light - natural - kinda like riding my mini-bike, like something bigger than me is powering me, carrying me. But then what happens? Does my bodymind contract with doubt before I even get started? Sit on your hands and say, 'I hate my mini-bike' ten times, was my punishment for the crime of sharing my joy, my full-tilt exuberance. And so still, I sit on my hands, not hating my mini-bike, but hating myself or parts of myself - hating or at least being suspicious of energies we might call excitement, pride, expressiveness, celebration, intensity, and even joy and happiness. Shame tells us that these energies are bad or might be. But how can they be bad? Like my friend who realized that sexual energy wasn't any more "bad" than hunger energy or tired energy, I'm reminded that none of the energies that make us human, including shame, are bad. They are simply energy forms, whose quality of contraction is the only thing that distinguishes one from the other. Shame energy is getting special attention today, because I'm realizing more clearly that it's an energy that follows most of the others - like an obedient dog it says, Whatever feeling you feel, I'm gonna follow, adding another layer of contracted energy to the contracted energies you're already feeling, so that you feel so weighed down that you can't ride that mini-bike or write this piece or share it anywhere - in case you're seen, in case you're not. So sweet shame, it seems you are with me. But I see you more clearly: You are not me, just what's happening. I write today with much less bodily tension than I would have a year ago. I write today with much less second guessing than I would have last week. And this we call growth and say that it's good. But maybe what happened before wasn't bad: It was just different, different energies happening - in the form of memories, in the form of bodily tension, in the form of emotions - and how fun it is to notice, to ride these energies freely, to be ridden by them freely, and to share the joy of mini-bike-freedom, with you.
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They'd been married for 36 years. They each had successful careers and had raised and launched two children. But she came to see me in tears. She'd tried and tried to get him to understand, tried and tried to say things the right way, with the right tone of voice, at the right time, so that it wouldn't turn into an argument - the same one they'd had over and over again for years. The specifics might be different, the context might vary, but the pattern was the same. He would comment about something she was doing or the way she was doing it, she would get defensive, he would resist her defensiveness by getting defensive himself, she would get angry, he would get angrier, and then she would shut down and become very small.
Then one day, in the heat of one of these arguments, he asked her, Why do you get so upset? You act like I'm doing something horrible to you? . . . "It's because my father beat me," she said, simply and softly. Thump. Stunned silence. And then, What? and he stepped to her and held her, I'm sorry. I didn't know. What is it about the raw, unfiltered, non-blaming, organic truth, when it comes from the deep dark recesses of forgetting, that cuts through the layers of defensiveness, and opens us to compassion? The thing is, on some level, he felt it, knew all along there was something there. We are feeling, sensing beings, and even the most unaware of us, can sense energies we don't understand or don't necessarily stop and take the time to pay any attention to: There's so much busyness, so much mind-clutter that gets our front-and-center attention. But in the space of feeling, when talking and feeling go hand in hand, when the what's-happening-now is all that's here, something beyond our mind-made preconceived notions and perceptions can arise. And I think of Rumi's poem, Ali In Battle. Just before he's about to fatally slay his opponent, Ali's opponent spits in his face, and Ali, the great wise warrior, steps back and withdraws his sword. His opponent is shocked and asks why he has spared him. Ali explains it this way: "Your impudence was better than any reverence, because in this moment I am you and you are me." Rumi suggests that like Ali, we learn how to fight without our egos participating. As "God's lion" Ali "did nothing that did not originate from his deep center." We are all One energy. One Life. When the unarguable, fully-embodied truth is spoken, it resonates with the listener and the listener recognizes it as truth. It's not the mind-fabricated truth of opinion. It's not the truth of projection. It's the truth of life as energy, expressing through one, and felt, as energy, by the other. But how can an energy really belong to one, if it can also be intuitively felt by another? Doesn't the other carry the same energy? Wouldn't he have to in order to recognize it? It is this we-are-one-energy recognition that heals and transforms - not as a spiritual concept, but as a felt experience. When we meet each other naked, on the open clear battlefield of energies, and bring those energies forth as divine expression, we level the playing field: Neither of us is better than the other, we are the same - both feeling energy beings, recognizing ourselves in the other. |
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