The Work of Coming Home to Yourself

OUR BASIC NATURE IS GOODNESS

Here’s what I believe to be true:

I like to think that every human being is good at the core, and wants to do good. 

That’s the real deep-down bottom line. That’s home. And I do believe this is originally true for every single human being. Yes, some make it quite difficult to see through their acts.

And some humans do seem to be far-removed from their loving core.

How come?

When growing up, we are all destined to experience some hurt, shame, or other painful events.

They are an unavoidable part of life. 

And they are not inherently the problem.

We have the power to recover from painful experiences and to stay open to life.

Our in-born human emotions and nervous systems are designed to support us in that.

Emotions help us digest and recover from painful experiences. 

In a sense, they are natural waves of energy to restore us to equilibrium and goodness.

If during or after a painful event we are safe and supported to fully-experience adequate emotional reaction(s), we will likely recover better, and the scarring will likely be less drastic.

But that is very often not the case.

Many caretakers, out of ignorance, don’t support healthy emotional self-regulation.

Showing anger, fear, sadness or just shaking uncontrollably is often discouraged.

Or worse, these natural and healing bodily reactions were actively inhibited, shamed, or punished.

In that case, we will develop a stronger need for protection from future events.

Here is a simple example:

If you are little and your beloved pet dies, this is a painful experience. Sadness is the built-in reaction and remedy for us to deal with loss. If you are supported to be sad, and to grieve, and perhaps be angry that animals die, you will eventually get over the loss. You will likely be open for a new loving connection to arise again one day, with another animal.

But if your parents told you that “it’s not that bad”, or “boys don’t cry”, or gave you other messages that didn’t support the wave of sadness, the painful experience will not be digested too well. And you will likely begin to protect yourself from having similar painful experiences.

Maybe you will not allow yourself to love another pet again like this one.

BUILDING A DEFENCE

So it’s not just hurtful experiences that we want to protect ourselves from.

We also want to protect ourselves from our inability to cope emotionally. 

If we are unable to cope with a painful experience, naturally, we want to avoid having similar experiences in the future. And that’s when we build barriers and stray from our core.

Let’s say we build protective layers.

These layers are a combination of (mostly unconscious) physical holding patterns or tensions in the body and accompanying thoughts (or beliefs) that shape our mindset and ego identity.

Let’s get back to our example from earlier:

To avoid feeling sad, we needed to contract our body and close-down the channels to our emotional core. This will come with accompanying, protective thoughts like “I am just not an emotional person” or “I am tough, and love is for suckers”.

This helps to prevent us from being hurt in similar ways in the future.

But we also disconnect ourselves from our loving core. And we invest a lot of energy into keeping-up and fortifying our defences.

We often create very static characters for our definitions of ourselves, and carry a lot of armour in the forms of attitudes, beliefs and tension.

That is when life begins to seem like a drag, that we somehow just have to survive our life. 

WAKING-UP FROZEN EMOTIONS

Whenever a human being experiences contraction, I think there have to be at least two emotions present: fear and anger. Fear because you would not contract if you were not scared. And anger because you probably don’t like that you had to contract to begin with.

And there is also likely sadness for having lost contact with your core.

Of course, in reality this is complex, highly personal and idiosyncratic to every being. 

What I want to underline, though, is this:

The natural human state is one of goodness and kindness and relaxed presence. If we experience life in a very different way to this over a long period of time, we lost contact with our core. This is likely due to painful yet unresolved  imprints of events, leaving us with frozen emotions that simmer underneath our masks. 

TRANSFORMATION WILL TOUCH SOME PAIN

To me, Radical Honesty is a journey back home to a state of greater presence, love, and awareness.

Now, if we want to come home to our natural state, we will have to pass through ourselves. It can’t be positive vibes only. Along the road, you will have to intentionally experience the limitations of your current character.

This means going inwards and back through your own defences, blocked emotions and the impulses behind your image. Here you inevitably encounter that which wasn’t complete on an emotional level. 

I’ll even go as far as to say:

If you don’t contact any fear or anger or grief, you are digging in the wrong places.

Loving awareness, presence, and real kindness are not new things to learn. You already have the resources. How can you learn what you already are at the core?

Radical Honesty is the work of undoing the protective layers you have build around that core. It involves staying in contact with how you contract, and, literally, re-sourcing yourself.

Moment-by-moment, you communicate from the closest place you know to your core. And with practice, you come to speak directly from it, your true home.