These days the best myths and stories are when the one who might look like needs saving, saves themselves, whether they be male or female. Then our hero, heroine, rescue job and rescuer are free to just be whatever role or roles they want to be. Sometimes they live happily ever after together and sometimes, they don't. Usually self worth and assurance are hard won and bring a sense of being much more valued or loved. So our old tales of being are evolving around us. Culture is shifting.
Having to be rescued all the time is as wearing on the soul as much as the weight of being the rescuer can be. Anyone who has experienced burnout at work or at life knows this all too well. I don't think anyone enjoys feeling helpless and yet it is a powerful position to play in.
In our outside social circumstances of power and abuses that are coming into awareness it is reflecting our own arising interpretations and experiences of such. They are up for review these days. It is intense on many levels. We are individual and collectively powerful.
Knowledge is power. We are challenging and being challenged when we might not want to be in ways we don't like. Or, we may feel we are being forced to admit to having answers that we don't have or like. We each embody what we believe we are and that might take more honesty than one is used to.
We are in strip down mode. Our skills at making things okay when they are not is helpful as a human in the world. And, then it is not when it is a habituated experience of avoidance. Which is what many of us are finding it is inside.
Is there another way to realign ourselves in our roles as we explore our often hidden pains and slights of power and love? Can self knowledge be the gift and not a wound and painful to deal with?
Yes. Our inner truths are waiting to be defined and embraced. Not in righteous or blame states but in a state of grace and in warmth, support and non judgment.
We are self defining creatures equipped with a sense of self as consciousness that is malleable and mutable and always creative.
This means that there is no fault in how we show up. Our sense of humanity adds attachment as meaning to every thing we are involved in. We are relation based in orientation of identity. We so often find ourselves feeling the need to choose to think in terms of good/bad victim/abuser, light/dark as we are fascinated with contrast found in being in this physical realm. We choose to judge the relationships as described. Conflict with the contrast stated comes up when we have to reconcile both, not one or the other but both. It is challenging and we may fail. And life goes on. And we stay stuck reveling in our justifications no matter the outcomes.
As children we always wanted our fairy tales and sagas to have happy endings. As adults we still do and so we can be caught between belief and disbelief and we are left with confusion. In the fairy tales roles are clearly defined, positions of opposition strong. As we got older we learned from life that the fairy tales may have happy endings but life might not. In truth the stories of old about life were merely archetypes of behavior and roles to civilize us.
If I was to pick a fairy tale that seems appropriate to our times it might be the Emperor's New Clothes. Read it again if you have not in a while. It has like any great tale layers of meanings. We are witnessing a lot of the Emperor's New Clothes these days. And we each have within the fake weavers, Emperor, ministers and the child as we reveal what is inside ourselves in play. Self delusion is a very powerful state to be in no matter the reasons.
There is no need to feel bad about what you find inside. That is a choice of control and habit that you are making. Feeling bad is just a feeling, and an orientation. We have many feelings, other orientations.
Take some moments to access Heart Centered Awareness for yourself and let the fairy tale that comes to mind reveal to you what it has to share. Let yourself notice the stuff coming up from your deep and let it play out in helpful useful ways. Be your own child who speaks his truth, be your own hero in your own story.
Janet Barrett
Life in the Beyond/ Journeys Into Enlightenment
janetb@janetandbeyond.com
www.janetandbeyond.com
