In the face of my relentless pressure toward positivity, I find my negative thoughts and beliefs are acting out more and more. It’s as though they are kids being shushed for being ‘bad’ while other kids are being praised for being ‘good’. The good kids beam quietly in the face of my approval, while the bad kids shriek ever-more-loudly, seeking my attention.

I thought I’d give my bad kids some attention for a change. Here’s what they have to say.

First kid:

It’s not enough! I never get enough and what I get is never right or good enough! Nobody likes me enough! I never get enough gifts or attention on my birthday! For every person who admires, likes or gives their love to me, there are five others I care about, that I give attention and admiration to, who ignore me and act like I don’t exist. I give way more than I receive when it comes to listening, attention and positive feedback. I don’t deserve this crap. I deserve better. When will it be my turn? When is somebody going to give me what I deserve? When does it start coming back to me? When is my investment in other people going to start paying returns?

Second kid:

Life is horrible and it must be all my fault. I’m horrible. I’m too old, too fat, too saggy and baggy, too weak and undisciplined. I don’t do enough to earn the praises and attention and money I want. God must hate me. Maybe there is no God. Maybe nothing means anything at all. Maybe there’s no point even bothering. Why do I try? My efforts are never good enough and I don’t have the energy and motivation to try harder. I try so hard I’m constantly exhausted but really, it seems I hardly do anything at all. I probably don’t deserve to live, even if life was worth living.

Third kid:

This is crap. The world sucks. The system is rotten, nothing makes sense, everything is backwards and inside out. My species is insane and anti-life and I can’t stand being human. I deserve to be dead, and so do the rest of us whackos. Just look at who we allow to make our rules and laws, and how crazy those rules and laws are. Look at the oppressive craziness of bureaucracy, the soulless mechanical corporations that run our lives, while sit on our fat lazy butts and let them. A blind moron could see that the life of any modern human is evil no matter how hard we try to recycle and be conscious. With practically every breath I am committing some horrible wrong. That cell phone case I bought at the dollar store today for $1.50 was made by some little kid in a slave factory in China. Every good deal has a dark side. Ugliness is everywhere. I refuse to participate in this madness. Let me out of this crazy world.

Fourth kid:

I’m too much, too intense, too full and nobody wants me, nobody wants what I have to offer. Nobody will pay me for what I do, yet it’s all I can do, so I can’t support myself in this crazy world. Nobody wants to listen to me or pay attention to me. This is because — (fill in the blank with variations on the first, second or third kid’s theme: ‘nobody likes me,’ ‘I don’t deserve,’ ‘the world makes no sense.’).

There are more, all crying, their tinny voices intertwined, mixing and matching and struggling for dominance.

What to do about these kids with their relentless resentment, self-pity and cynicism? They won’t shut up, they won’t go away. They mutter, shriek and whine in the back of my mind until I can’t think straight, while the sweet light children I prefer go unheard, their gentle song lost in the clamour. I must forcefully tune them out when I wish to turn to their siblings, to whom I listen intently, hoping they can help me feel better. And they do, while I can hear them.

Good kids (in chorus, harmonizing):

I am so grateful for today. Every breath is a blessing. I hear the birds and my heart swells. I feel the blood pulsing in my body in the rhythm of my heartbeat. This moment, here and now, is magic. I feel God here. Every day, every year life feels better and better. Miracles happen before my eyes. I look, and what I focus on brightens, sparkles and expands in my sight. I am a living, breathing, natural creature of power and magic and beauty. I see my beauty in the eyes of people I talk to sometimes, who look at me that way in response to something I say without even trying. I am wise, I am strong, I am creative, I belong. The earth is blessed, everything has a reason, and love is all that exists. I may not understand it, and I don’t need to.

I trust God, I trust Mother Gaia, I trust natural processes of evolution to unfold perfectly, and I trust the future to make sense of what may not be clear now. I release my need to know it all and I realize my potential for happiness now. I am growing stronger, I am better, smarter, more capable, more gifted and skilled every day of my life. I am attracting more loving, genuine, emotionally congruent people into my life who are more willing to love me back than I could ever have dreamed possible even a few years ago. I have more peak experiences, my highs are higher and my lows are higher too. Life is wonderful and becoming more so.

Is it any wonder that I prefer these ones? Their song is easy on my ears, they make me feel good to hear. What they say feels true to me, so I intuitively respond to their goodness. The ranters chanting nastily and hurtfully in the background, conflicting with and contradicting each other, can’t compete with their sisters and brothers. I resist them, I push them away, so that their voices are raised in hurt and blame. I feel bad for rejecting them but I can’t stand to listen either.

What is the solution here? Where is the balance? I turn to the middle ground, the empty place between the poles where I am blind, and this is what I find:

There are no bad kids and no good ones, merely differences in point of view. Some parts of me see a truth that is beautiful and pleasurable, and these parts agree with each other, so alignment and harmony comes easily. It is natural to prefer harmony to discord, but that doesn’t make the discordant parts wrong or bad. The so-called bad parts see other kinds of truth, darker and more emotional viewpoints coloured by past experience that was not accepted and embraced at the time, and therefore remains stuck there, and these are not beautiful and not pleasurable. Yet, because these points of view do not tell a story that aligns with the truth of the present moment doesn’t mean they are not valid points of view. Theirs is a truth that can evolve when it is accepted, embraced, allowed to vibrate and change to be replaced with true understanding.

True and lasting change can come only when I give these parts the floor, listen and feel their point of view compassionately without judging or rejecting in favour of a different, better-feeling truth. The truth is that my sensation of discordance is a judgment, and even more negative feelings are caused by my conscious rejection of what I judge to be discord. I want everything to harmonize in a way that feels good so I try to edit out and erase anything that disagrees with the pleasurable truth that feels good to me. But that does not allow the whole truth, it does not allow me to learn the deeper truth that includes shadow as well as light, it does not honour the beings who hold pieces of truth that I reject and deny. It is my own rejection and denial, my own resistance and rigidity that makes it feel so bad to me. If I continue to reject and refuse, I can never know how it might feel to embrace those points of view within the context of acceptance and inclusion rather than struggle, discord and rejection.

The truth is that I have always suppressed certain voices within me because I didn’t like what they say or how they make me feel. That can change, and in fact, it already has. Most of the light voices began their journey as part of the dark and painful clamour, and my self-acceptance and embracing of their point of view has allowed them to evolve. Without that, I would not be who I am today, nor could I be having the beautiful experiences that I do have. I would still be trapped in my dark past, repeating the patterns of my history.

Here is how I have done it: with help. I remember how, now. It’s always a struggle to remember when I forget, which is constantly. And that’s okay.

First kid:

I never get enough.

What do you need? What would help you feel like it was enough?

I don’t know. All I know is I’m always hungry. I am empty and gnawing and aching and hurting and I want help.

That must feel awful. I’m sorry you have to feel that way. How can I help you?

Stop pushing me away. Stop hating me and making me feel bad about feeling bad. I can’t help how I feel. My feelings matter. I’m real. I hate you for making me hurt so bad.

I’m sorry. I was wrong. I shouldn’t have. What do you need from me now?

PAY ATTENTION TO ME!! Love me! Notice me! Listen to me!

Yikes. This kid is an endless black hole of need. I feel it sucking the life out of me. When I focus on her, I can’t love her. She is hateful, angry and too hurt and hungry to believe. What can I do now? As I ask the question, I know the answer.

Ah. Okay. Hey, Big Wholly Mama. There’s a kid in me who needs more than I can give. Will you help?

Yes.

Hey kid. Here’s your mom. See you later. Good luck.

————————–

Okay, maybe not that last bit. I need to stay present with the whole process, no matter how uncomfortable it gets. But I trust – I DO trust – that with Big Wholly Mama’s presence making me bigger inside, I can be enough for myself. I am enough for myself. Whoo hoo.

That’s the trick. I think. These aren’t simply bad feelings that I can push away and suppress. They’re parts of me. Kids, hungry hurt ones. And I’m not big enough to parent them all by myself. I need help. I am asking for the help I need, not to get rid of them, but to help them get their needs met. I know that when they are fed and listened to, cared for and allowed to cry their tears and express themselves to their heart’s content, that they will be able to show me who they really are.

And oh yeah, how good it feels when they add their voices in harmony to my chorus. They make it gutsier, edgier, tighter, more vivid, more real.

Rock and roll.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 13th, 2008 at 7:17 pm and is filed under truth and strangeness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.