InnerVentures

Tag: wounding

  • Men’s Rights of Passage

    Exposed chests
    drip fresh blood
    to the earth below.
    The mirror smashed;
    red dark cave of
    grief and despair.

    Alone together – in silence,
    sweet surrender.
    Let this death sink in.
    Scars on the inside
    release the puss
    of ancient wounds unseen.

    Transition through
    my cut skin,
    symbolic yet real,
    take my body down,
    slowed and released
    from its habitual pain.

    Stories worn thin
    no longer serve;
    innocence lost
    to abandonment
    overwhelm,
    devoid of love.

    We are victims again;
    no perpetrator now.
    Bitter-sweet grief
    of our choosing.
    Trust the shared
    safe circle of men.

    Purging the blocks,
    releasing emotions,
    rage, fear and hate –
    Welcome the death.

    Out of oblivion
    we begin life anew.

  • Caught in the Headlights – Boarding School Wounds

    I feel the piercing eyes of the school master boring into me, transfixing me, demanding an answer. Not just any answer I might blurt out from fear, but the right answer, the one and only answer that will allow me to escape from this terrifying predicament.

    I have witnessed this scenario from the outside enough times to know what happens next; the two possible outcomes. The poor victim either gets the answer right and the teacher moves on, or he gets it wrong and the teacher shouts in anger, pouring on as much public shame as he can for good measure, to ensure that the lazy, ignorant pupil learns his lesson and pulls his socks up in future.

    Its hard enough to be a witness to this familiar scene, but this time its me in the hot seat, the shame bucket. My paralyzing fear brings me close to tears of self pity. Then suddenly my fists clench, signifying an angry defiance that brings me a feeling of welcome power and protection.

    “I refuse to give you anything. You can put me on the spot in front of the whole class but I will NOT succumb to your cruel games. I will NOT let you see my fear, my tears, my anger. I cannot win this battle you have forced on me, but I will NOT let you win either. You can hold me captive for as long as you want, but you canNOT take my inner pride from me. You will not humiliate me and make me wrong. I defy you by giving you NOTHING! NOTHING to get hold of, NOTHING with which to turn the screw and hurt me more than you have already”.

    It is indeed a battle I cannot win, because I cannot be sure that the answer I could give would be the right one. This I dare not risk. So my childlike mind has found a strategy that allows me not to lose, in my own mind at least. That way I get to keep my inner flame alight, my soul intact. My stubborn determination holds a secret power and this saves me from feeling the destructive effects of exposure and victimhood. It feels like it saves me from the risk of annihilation.

    What I am describing worked for me at the time, age 9. It was a strategy I had learned in the first days and weeks of being sent away to boarding school to overcome the emotional pain of parental loss. It worked for me up to a point through my teenage years, through the years of psychological abuse I suffered at boarding school. It made me strong in one sense, in the words of the old adage I learned back then like a mantra; ‘sticks and stones may break my bones but words alone can’t hurt me’. But I was a sensitive boy and the effects of this strategy (trying to overcome fear and stay safe in threatening situations) were deeply damaging to my emotional body. The words did hurt me, but by refusing to show my feelings, I was not just hiding I was actually shutting down my ability to feel my emotions. Numbing out became my norm.

    This self protection was an armour I wore all the time in case it was needed. I was always on duty, on guard. It became my default position. Tragically, I was not only cutting off from my anger and fear. I was inevitably cutting off from my ability to be spontaneous and open, to take risks, to experience passion, to feel unbridled joy; and I have been wearing this armour ever since.

    This morning S helped me to reach down into my feelings via my body’s wisdom and to relive my child’s angry defiance in the face of the original teacher’s cruel interrogation 55 years ago. It only took a few moments of recall and I found myself sobbing tears of compassion for that plucky 9-year-old boy that was me, who had to go through such suffering, who was so brave, whose defiant inner power I could feel alive in me now, including his anger towards his parents for abandoning him at such a young age. I felt I could have cried for a long time; tears of unexpressed grief which tell me my buried anger and grief are big. So big.

    The traumas of moments like this classroom scene from my childhood, have left me vulnerable at any moment to debilitating fear, overwhelm and frozen confusion, especially when i am put o the spot. I haven’t trusted myself to manage many of the things I might have attempted to achieve in life, given the talents I have been blessed with. My childhood strategy has kept me silent and suppressed, unable to speak up and speak out, afraid to set boundaries, unable to ask for my needs and often unaware that I have any. I have been living a ‘half-hearted’ life, all conveniently hidden behind the convincing mask of a quietly confident Mr Nice Guy, who has been my strongest ally and yet the enemy of my truth.

    Up till now I have not managed to heal and change this self-limiting stance, in spite of years of training and therapy. Being aware of my outer persona and what goes on behind the mask is some help but real change only happens at the level of felt experience. That poignant moment of connecting the adult me with my child through those raw emotions today, lets me see where my locked up power has been lurking. It was there all the time. As S helpfully pointed out to me, it may not now take much to return it to its rightful place, so I can stand as Shiva in all my power and vulnerability as a man, enriched with the sacred masculine.

    I write this holding the tension between my fear of change and my deep longing for healing and wholeness. Can I give up my safety and risk ‘exposure’ in order to feel alive and free? Am I willing to feel the pain of that small boy and the grief for my lost years, in order to lead a whole-hearted life again?
    Can I trust the strength of this Shiva warrior who is emerging and offering me a new stance on life in service of me? My champion warrior …..who is he?

    If you bring forth that which is within you,
    then that which is within you
    Will be your salvation.
    If you do not bring forth
    that which is within you,
    then that which is within you
    Will destroy you.

    -The Gnostic Gospels

  • Invoking The Beloved

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    I sit cross-legged in deep reverence I feel a slight loosening of the bands that tie me to my ego’s trivial reality, as my heart begins to open to you, my beloved. Waves of emotion begin to flow through me. Mere ripples at first, like the surface of a lake ruffled in the breeze or the murmuring of the wind in pine trees.

    In this way I begin to sense you and offer myself for surrender to you whose love my heart longs for, whose reality is the deep ocean, the vast sky, the infinity of space – and yet so intimate, so close.

    I sense a fluttering in my chest and then deeper sighs of grief rise from my belly; from the tomb of those lost years in the lonely desert. And underlying the emerging light in my heart, a sadness for the many years of seeking in vain in relationship – my human experience of fear and blocked emotions, my self-made prison of numbness, my avoidance of deep connection for the sake of my wounded ego’s safety. A safety that only prolongued the pain of what my soul knew lay beyond its reach.

    Lower down in my second chakra I begin feeling the stirrings of a new aliveness, as you touch me, my inner beloved, as you come to me at last bringing the simple knowing of that deeper connection, filling my loins with the longing of divine attraction – body and spirit meeting in sacred union, as you come home to me or I come home to you. I visualize you letting me in, coupling in divine ecstasy.

    My heart is a golden cave made of light where you sit, my beloved – you who knows and adores me completely in all my glory and all my woundedness. You have always been there, my inner companion, guide and lover. My soul has longed for you always, yet you remained unreachable, blocked by the smaller me.

    Now I imagine resting my head on your soft motherly chest, relaxing into the total acceptance you offer me, the immense safety of your physical presence that holds me in your protective loving arms. My breath quivers as old grief shivers through me, melting the ice of those wilderness years of aloneness and separation from you.

    Be fully with me now, my beloved. Enter me, infuse me with your healing Shakti energy. Liberate me, as we meld together as one, inseparable in a timeless union of passion.

    I hover in brief moments of bliss as all becomes still, silent, barely a breath and only the subtlest presence of your love that bathes me, as it pervades everything that exists. Shakti and Shiva in divine embrace.