Understanding Your Relationships Using Universal Fears, Part 1

After another sleepless night, I was determined to discover what was causing the pain in my upper neck and the tinnitus that suddenly appeared after the “spectacular accident” a year ago, because none of the medical people, including chiropractors, osteopaths, and energy workers could help me.

I consulted Louise Hay’s book, Heal Your Body: The Mental Causes for Physical Illness and the Metaphysical Way to Overcome Them and read the “Probable cause” (thinking pattern) for those vertebrae responsible for tinnitus (at least according to the last chiropractor I visited years ago):  C1 and C2.  Here’s what I learned:

C1:  Fear.  Confusion, Running from life.  Feeling not good enough…Endless inner chatter

C2:  Rejection of wisdom.  Refusal to know and understand.  Indecision.  Out of balance with life.  Denial of one’s spirituality.

I realized that in my pain from the “spectacular accident” – body, property issues, and all that time to reflect on my life choices – I had given up and turned the responsibility for my healing over to those whom I perceive, essentially, as blood-suckers (medieval medicine).

BOOM!

That realization was a Cosmic Thump to get back on MY path, my desire to master my consciousness.  I’ve been in the “we create our reality” camp since the ‘70s, am a certified Minister of Metaphysics (who doesn’t practice or preach), and I saw the All That Is while camping with Huichol shamans in Mexico.

But my fear was much deeper than all that surface stuff like house issues and life choices.  And so, after checking Hay’s book, I revisited Greg Braden’s “Universal Fears”* that might be underneath what I was experiencing:

1. Abandonment and Separation
2. Self-Worth
3. Surrender and Trust

Even though I suspect my patterns of behaviors are masks for not dealing with all three, I’m only going to write about them one at a time, starting with the fear of abandonment and separation, as described by Braden.

Abandonment and Separation

According to Braden,

Almost universally there is a feeling that runs through each individual, of each family, in every culture, and society that we are somehow “separated” from the creative intelligence that is responsible for our being here in the first place.

(And I remembered being a tiny child, just able to see myself in the mirror of the medicine cabinet in our bathroom, wondering, “Who is that?  Why am I here?”)

Braden cites the common Western translation of our Lord’s Prayer as our consent and affirmation of that separation (emphasis, mine):

“Our Father who art in Heaven…”

while the original Aramaic texts offer a very different view of that relationship:

“Our Father, who is everywhere…”

For those who don’t remember their feelings of separation and abandonment or who have chosen not to address it, Braden stated that “there is a good possibility that your fears will express themselves to you in ways that you would never expect…through the relationships that you masterfully create in your life.”

He went on to ask, “In your personal relationships, are you the ‘leaver’ or the ‘leavee?’ ”

(Oh, yeah.  I’ve been divorced three times, and I was the “leaver” each time!)

I stared at the page and tried to understand it, but the words blurred.

Holy Mother!  In a flash, I realized what was happening.  I still hadn’t dealt with my rage against God for killing my daddy!

When the neighbor met me on the sidewalk as I was coming home from a friend’s house and told me he was gone, I went into the garage and screamed at God for a very long time.

Now I realize it wasn’t only God I hated.

On that day, I was supposed to go with daddy and my little brother to the farm, the twenty-five acres where our ponies lived.  But the most popular girl in school asked me (ME!) to come over to her house and listen to the radio dedications for Valentine’s Day. She was my first friend; this was my first social venture; I was twelve years old.

(I felt compassion for that little girl and wanted to hold her, tell her it wasn’t God’s fault, it wasn’t her fault.)

I left the church when I left home, eighteen years old.

Over the years, I joined other ones, but I never stayed in any church very long.  Five years tops, at the Presbyterian Church because my aunt, a surrogate mother, was one of their missionaries.

So despite joining the “we create our reality” club, which also sees Source (God) as the all-powerful, all-knowing force of which we all are a part, I saw them differently.  One was an old man in the sky, sitting on his throne, screwing up my life; the other was The Force, as in, “May the Force be with you!”  But a nanosecond later, admittedly feeling very stupid, I suddenly realized that it’s the same SOURCE!

OMG! Literally!

(What’s funny now is that I read Braden’s books so many years ago and am just now realizing he was speaking to me.  But I’m reasonably sure I’m not the only one.)

Now that I have identified probable reasons for the unbearable neck pain, I feel so much happier.  I know there is still more to do, and I’m so happy to do it.

Your Turn!

As Braden asks, “Are you the ‘leaver’ or the ‘leavee’ ?”  Consider his questions and decide for yourself:

• Are you the one who is last to know that your relationships are over?
• Do ‘perfectly good’ marriages, careers, or friendships crumble before your eyes, without warning for no apparent reason?
• Are you devastated as these relationships fail and break?
• Do you always leave the relationship (personal or career) when it is going great?

If these or similar scenarios are, or have played out in your life, there is a good possibility that they are your socially acceptable, skillfully and masterfully created masks of your fear of abandonment and separation.  Through living these patterns you reduce your level of pain to a manageable level.  The trade off is that the pain of the relationship becomes the diversion, your way of looking away from the core fear that you were left behind, separated and abandoned from your Creator.  Your healing will not be found in diversion. (Gregg Braden, Walking Between the Worlds: The Science of Compassion, p.93.)

Till next time, Please be kind to everyone you meet, for we all have our hidden sorrows. ~Tzaddi