Attitudes and A Path With Heart

Sometimes, playing the game feels very good. It’s like once we start, we cannot stop. A door opens in us, and all these aspects of us come galloping out and believe they can do so because they are coming out as “I am not me! – I am someone else because I am operating under the influence of the game!”

At the end of the day, though, it wasn’t enjoyable and, in our heart of hearts, we know it is both us running away from ourselves, and the expression of aspects of ourselves that are still locked away, still verboten, within ourselves. Still, getting up one more time than we fall down, causes more and more cracks to appear in the wall of immunity with which we have surrounded our authentic selves.

Speaking of walls, this is a good time to bring up the subject of who builds what walls, and when. Children are very forthright, and do not create a defense against something or someone until they have had their trust violated. A child’s trust is absolute and unquestioning, and so also is their response to the violation of their trust.

Just remember, it is violated a layer, an experience, at a time, until critical mass is reached, and then the absolute, and unquestioning, wall goes up. It is very painful to be treated as a specimen in a jar.

As children, our responses to the teaching of the game grew slowly. As adults, we are still busy recreating the wall scenario. It has been with us, around us, right from the beginning and it has grown is us – it was implanted, suggested, taught and trained in us, it was the very basis of the way we were treated, regarded and dealt with. It was both implicit and explicit in everything that was said, done and planned for us, and to us.

Through the whole course of our childhoods the comfort and convenience of those who taught us the game was paramount while ours was non-existent, and didn’t matter beyond social appearances and the token effort needed to convince themselves they were good and right in what they did.

As we heal each layer of the dynamics of the game, under each freshly healed one we find another one. Each one has its own identity, all them tied together into the dance of the game. It is fascinating to discover that it’s because we have been stuck back there in that place of infancy.

There is powerful magic to all what we have been doing. Powerful. And it is a “Close my eyes and it all goes away” level of magic – a “Hold my breath and control it” level of magic. Next thing you know, the word “shame” pops into mind as we’ve needed massive amounts of shame in order to meet our own picture of ourselves.

We begin to see that there are so many aspects to all this. The one collective answer to a bunch of personal problems. Or, at least, the one collective answer to a bunch of separate issues.

Playing the game insists we need to feel so many shades and variations of a spectrum of negative things. Nothing healed from childhood – each period of time in each period of growth bringing a set of problems and issues needed to be addressed and healed – none of them addressed and healed, and instead, suppressed and buried because we had no other way of dealing with it.

No one to talk to, show us, guide us, protect us. Nothing and nobody. And so they just kept building up, one on another until we could stand it no longer, until we capitulated, and gave up the struggle, and with that, the whole thing fused together.

All we have left is the shame and self-hatred we have felt ever since.
As long as we remain static, mute and docile, in terms of who we actually are, then we are doing exactly what is expected and demanded of us by those who taught us the game.

What we do, in effect, is to while our lives away by living in a mode of self-enforced, suspended animation – we mustn’t ever bust out of the small circle drawn around us – the small circle carved into our memories of how it is supposed to be in the world for us.

And every time we make a move against the game, another one of the layers which was previously marbled into the whole is now released, and brought to closure. Another aspect of our true self is released, and another small piece of poison is released from our hearts, bodies and minds.

It is very sobering to realize we have been wearing an emotional straight-jacket our whole life through.

Playing the game is also a way of managing large blocks of free time, the time when we are not busy doing for someone else. We begin to clue into the fact that the simple act of playing the game is the cover for some other huge agenda on our part, involving hopelessness, helplessness, isolation, powerlessness and fear.

By admitting we play the game, we start feeling “less powerless” – I’m not sure if this is the same as feeling “more powerful.” By the simple act of admittance, something seems to leave, even as something else is arriving, surfacing, returning or becoming active. Whatever it is that we’ve been doing to ourselves, it is huge.

The realization comes that we need to begin doing stuff for ourselves. Internally, we have been living the life of an abandoned child. We have been stuck in the place of being an infant, being unable to do or be anything other than a helpless infant, dependent on other people for anything and everything.
This feels like a lump of rock, such as marble, with whole striations and patterns running through every element and aspect of itself and themselves – all separate while all one. Admittance of playing the game lets us feel the helplessness.
It is not paralysis and it is not an unwillingness to take responsibility – it is just all about not ever having grown up to that place and level. I don’t know how to explain this better – it all feels so “young” to me.

So it becomes time to grow up. It becomes time to expand into our true size in all ways. It slowly dawns on us that we have been living a life of hard core survival, and acting internally as if it is all so real outside of us. We start to become aware that we have been massively living inside our own heads and so avoiding the actual world outside of our skins.

We do this primarily emotionally and creatively, isolating ourselves, our inner child and actual self from contact with outside life in every respect. The only way we can achieve this is to live as an emotional recluse, cut off from our feelings. All very painful and disempowering, which after all was the corner stone of the whole issue right from the beginning, was it not?

Once we face the fact we are playing the game, we begin to realize that our present attitudes demand the perception and presence of a huge drama in order to “prove” and so justify their existence. We discover that a very fundamental part of us has not grown up yet, and needs to do so urgently.

Giving up the game means we will be open to the world, and maybe even torn to shreds by all the conflicting demands that will be put on our time, attention and focus. What did we do before we played the game as adults? We did other, just as childish and magical routines.

The game works for us as adults whereas all the other stuff wouldn’t, just as the game wouldn’t have worked when we were still children. It all has to stop, and the living has to start. It’s been a big cover-up for some reason. All some big deal. For some fear-filled, terror driven reason we make a mountain out of a molehill sized issue.

Stopping the game means facing the very things we fear the most. Usually we fear feeling the most, so this what we run away from the most. We have become terrified of our own feelings, and therefore feel terrified of ourselves.

It is the feelings we have locked away – the wondering, the waiting, the absolute unknowing of what the next moment will bring. The blow that never lands, the screaming that never comes, the one thousand and one events that never happen.

We are free, we are grown and adult and now need to touch these feelings that beforehand we kept bottled up and hidden away. All the huge things we want to run away from are only memories, thoughts and feelings.

They sit right behind the belly button – right behind it – a mass of knotted up feelings such as fear, confusion, anger and self-hatred. It is fascinating to experience how that with which we terrify ourselves calms us, really calms us, as soon as we begin listening to what it has to say.

On the spiritual level, we already love ourselves enough to carry this forward and see it through – this much I know. There isn’t even a need to know how to proceed further, beyond the fact of keep putting one foot in front of the other. Keep doing this, and any terror in us will turn into confusion because suddenly we feel lost within the vastness of ourselves. Our inner selves.

It is stunning to become aware that there is all this inside of us. The biggest thing about admitting to ourselves that we play the game is to discover we have to figure out and energize ourselves, to learn to be here for ourselves, instead of for everyone else and their dog. We learn about boundaries and about our importance in the world.

It is disconcerting, even while it is fascinating, to suddenly realize that our lives have worth, value, meaning and direction. There becomes so much to let go of, so much to change and so much to pick up. We discover there is a huge emptiness inside us, along with a fear and reluctance to look at it, into it, a fear and reluctance to touch it, to find out what it feels like, looks, sounds like.

We come to learn about our childishness when it comes to learning, boundaries and results. We learn about the feelings of powerlessness in us, and about the belief in our own helplessness and impotence. Yes, we were helpless, impotent and powerless in those days of being a child.

The trouble is, that emotionally we have remained as a child, believing and investing in the magical thinking that we have remained impotent, helpless defenseless, weak and without resources.

Once we start confronting the game, we begin to experience a clarity of mind we just didn’t have before. An edge of fear disappears. It seems as though we start zooming up through the years. On the one hand, there is a sadness we cannot even begin to recount, while on the other hand there is a beginning excitement that is startling in its intensity.

Again, until we confront the game, the odds are against us all the way, and until we make that confrontation a cornerstone and benchmark for how we proceed in life, and perceive ourselves in life, not much will change.

By admitting the game to ourselves, we walk through a huge doorway into another world. We become of age – we go through a huge amount of growing up. Beforehand, we were locked into a shadow-world of make belief, where we so mightily pretended we were not the strong, clever, capable people we really are.

Walking though that doorway lets us start looking at the effects, symptoms and results of playing the game. We begin to touch the emptiness inside us – the hollowness, the structure of pain, isolation and separation. We see how we chopped off the warm points of genuine human contact as soon as the reality of them began to encroach upon the dream we have been living.

To begin facing the game, we need some help. Some spiritual help. We need to admit some things, need to surrender some things, let go of some things. We need to let go of some pretends, some denials and some assumptions, such as “I’ll never grow old,” or that the status quo will never change.

We need to let go of believing we don’t have any problems even while we need to let go of believing we have no opportunities. The awareness builds up that we have been filled with an exhausted sadness, or is it a feeling of sad exhaustion?

Either way, the awareness also builds up of a conclusion that has long been inside us – it is time to move on from this place of playing the game, of acting small and powerless.

Some of the things we are forced to do as a result of side-stepping our own unique existence are – we could not really have:

• Dreams of our own
• Plans of our own
• Needs of our own
• Ambitions of our own

We couldn’t have stuff, money, power, friends, family, and the realization comes like a bolt out of the blue. We couldn’t have any real sort of recognition for, and as a result of, who we really are. Well, if it’s okay to be ourselves, then it’s okay to be ourselves and to do and have that which being alive as ourselves entails, holds and implies. Once we start dismantling the game as the basis for a complete way of life, things suddenly start to matter.

By playing the game, we wind up busily buying that which we have a natural, fundamental human right to, anyway. We all have a right to a relationship, to earn decent money, to have our own home. We have the right to walk, talk, speak, be heard, seen, and experienced for the unique human being we are. We have this right. And we can only exercise this right by accepting ourselves as we naturally are.

. Other wise, we achieve nothing except to come from a pain-filled place. It isn’t very pleasant touch touching this stuff and yet it is even more unpleasant to be keeping ourselves impotent, lonely, broke and isolated by turning ourselves into someone we aren’t, and so cutting ourselves off from the outside world.

So the game is just something we have always done. It is no different than putting a loaded gun into a toddler’s hand, show him or her how to put the muzzle in the mouth and say “okay, now just pull the trigger like I showed you.” it grows in us and with us as we grow, and have grown. It evolves with us as we evolve. It becomes as much a part of us as the wrinkles on our faces.

It has been so deep in us it has been the thing to do without question. It has been the natural way to think, feel and see ourselves. At the bottom of it, we are naturally to blame, and so it’s naturally our fault, therefore we are useless, worthless, unwanted, broken and to blame.

The game evolves from the showdown between our natural, childhood pride and strength, which was never honored anyway, and the evidence of our senses, which supported the message instilled into us. Finally, we had to choose, or rather decide which one was correct. Naturally, as children we pick the one supported by everything we heard, saw and experienced.

the game is always based on non-acceptance of ourselves as we relly are. Once we are aware of this simple fact, we slowly yet surely come to understand the process and the connection. We come to see that we made, as small children, the non-acceptance of others toward us our own.

In other words, everything about ourselves becomes unacceptable to ourselves. We make the non-acceptance our own, and use it as the basis for our self-concept. And so, slow yet sure, we disconnect from our feelings, and find things and ways of being that are acceptable to others… and so the game is born.

We invent a plethora of ways from which we learn to synthesize feelings. To realize what we have done, and are still doing, hurts a lot in the beginning. And yet it is a good hurt. It goes so deep in us we have come believe it is us. All we could do was act it out.

We have felt helpless in the face of it, and this is because it has formed the basis of our self-concept. The basis of “what” and “who” we are in life. It is quite a stunning experience to discover we are playing a game.

When we play the game, the trade-off we make is enormous. We wind up side-stepping our individuality. In other words, we stand on our heads attempting to be someone else. Of course, who this “someone else” is supposed to be, was never spelled out to us, so all we end up feeling is conflicted, defeated and deeply confused.

So we wind up acting neither as ourselves nor anyone else. In hiding our ourselves away from other people we end up hiding away from ourselves as well.

Once we become aware of the game, and choose to give it up, we start to do with ourselves what so many people have already done in the past, we start accepting ourselves for who we really are. As we begin to work with our own feelings, the emotions go through us like little electric shocks.

The old ways die hard, there is no doubt about it. There is no easy way through the forests and thickets of personal growth, especially once we start to touch the nitty-gritty stuff. I remember what it was like to play the game in order to get to what I was hiding away from by playing the game in the first place.

The prospect of not having some place to escape to, some place to go hide away in, feels terrifying. All we want to do is go hide away, go find a safe place to wait out the storm. It feels like being a defenseless and helpless child again who has nowhere to run, no one to run to.

Whatever game we play, we believe it gives us power, gives us life, gives us an identity. We believe it makes us worthwhile in the world, makes us whole, human, a person. We believe that without it, we are nothing, are nobody and have no worth or value in the world.

We believe we need it in order to function beyond that place where we have a role to play in doing things for others – for at the end of the day and when that role ends, we are nothing, we cease to exist and yet here we are, alive in the world, so the suddenly empty boat bobbing on the water needs an occupant and an identity, a someone who springs into being from the act and fact of playing the game.

Giving up the game means becoming aware of how empty we feel within ourselves. We feel ourselves hollow, empty, nothing but a vacuum when it comes to being a person and human being. We gradually become aware of how wrong it is for us to believe this, act and live this – how very wrong indeed. In the beginning, this is something we feel, far more than something that can be articulated, put into the spoken or written word.

You know, if we could just have a good cry it would help to turn on the tap to all the feelings we have bottled up for so long, for so long indeed. And this is it, we use our game to “manufacture” synthetic feelings because our own have been buried away, rejected, denied and disconnected from.

Slowly, we come to understand that this is the crux of the whole matter – that it is the process of denying ourselves access to and experience of our own feelings that perpetuates, fuels and feeds the daily cycle of madness. And it is madness in all senses of the word.

In other words, we indulge daily in our personal fantasy and act as if it is reality. Even coming to first realize this brings a huge sense of relief to us. To admit we are doing this to ourselves is huge, to have taken the responsibility and admitted it to ourselves before it was “discovered” by another party. It is even more shaming to have someone else discover what we are doing than it is to admit it to ourselves. It would have been far more damaging to an already very damaged self-concept. We can give the game up by starting to accept our own feelings.

These entries are from a personal journal that I have kept over a period of years, and which has served as an extremely potent tool for both personal healing and personal growth.

I wasn’t sure sure how to organize the material, except to present it here in the order by which it presented itself to me.

I’m sure that there will be something in here which resonates for you. I have written it down here as it came out of the pen and onto the paper, with only the personal (as in superfluous) details removed, and the minimum of editing to facilitate readability.
So here goes…

First entry -

How the hell I am ever going to organize this mass and jumble of material into a workable form of self-expression, I do not know. It just does not seem, at the present, to have form and coherence to it, although this has happened to me in the past, and some quite lucid writings have arisen from the ashes of the original notes, which were laid down in a blaze of initial enthusiasm.

A Word To The Wise
I did not know for years what to do with this accumulation of journaling entries. For so long it was too painful and confusing to think of them in any form that would conform to a logical and/or coherent fashion. Many of the early journals got shredded or burned. There were enough of them to write a small library of books, it seemed. It all seemed so small and petty, so self-ingrained and self-absorbed. At least, it did in the beginning.

Yet as time passed and the tumultuous feelings began to level off into some semblance of order and coherence, the essence of the stuff slowly began to make sense.

As well, a lot of the early entries were so full of what now I can lovingly describe as babbling – a non stop stream of anger, hurt, resentment, guilt and, most of all, a consuming confusion about who I am, what I am, and my place and purpose in the world.

I did not have, on the inside, a meaningful place and purpose in the world, except for what I had been trained to believe myself responsible for – groomed to be responsible for – and guilty of, and therefore needing to be punished for. And who better to punish me than myself? who could know better than I what transgressions I had committed?

Well, you know, as I journaled I stumbled across some amazing emotional facts – I began to acknowledge that other people actually did love, regard and have respect/accept me for who I actually am, rather than for what I could do for them in order to win some basic form of quasi acceptance. Man oh man, talk about giving one’s personal power away in spades!

Well, from there to here has been a long and difficult journey. And there are still a few more rough spots to traverse. So, like anyone else, all I can do is keep putting one foot in front of the other until I reach my goal. So let’s carry on.