In life, I always had a jab working the fight I often imagined I was in. This being, the fight to get my needs met. This contest has been a lifelong affair, me against the world, unconsciously waging battle, fighting from a preconceived belief that 1) there was never enough to go around and 2) I didn't deserve it if there was.
Being the youngest of three boys, the grab up of the food put out for meals often meant I got the least of the lot. At least I always thought I did, which in effect was the same thing. On a deeper level, I sense I brought this pattern in with me when I came into this life. I believe we carry the life or Soul lessons in with us when we incarnate into whatever form or situation we currently find ourselves. I believe it is by Divine design, all to assist our evolution and growth along our ways back Home. We come to clear, forgive, release and heal whatever things preventing us from Being more deeply in Love here.
I know this can be a tricky subject to explain, however I've come to know this to be so. The deal is in order to remember our true Sacred natures, we have to completely forget them first. Go figure. It's always a severe wake-up call to find ourselves cut off from That which we are, most often going through life without our higher facilities fully intact and functioning. Faced with adversity, any sensible person, a man especially, develops their own abilities to make it through their lives as safely as possible. This means you have to learn to protect yourself from threat and harm. In order to survive, you have to defend yourself as best you can.
In street speak, you better do more hitting than getting hit and in street fighting, the first guy that gets hit often ends up beaten. Thus, the left hand usually forces the action, always pumping in and out towards the other's face if possible. Because a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, the jab causes the most damage in the quickest amount of time. It almost always is the most important weapon in a fighter's arsenal and sets up all his other punches to be effective.
When I trained in boxing, my jab was fast, clean and hard. It arrived in a hurry and left a dent in the bag or face before me. It kept the distance between me and the other guy, allowing me to move around the ring, staying out of harms way, always moving in and out to get a better shot. I also lived my life this way, always working the angles to get better advantage.
Except life isn't a boxing match. It didn't have to be a fight all the time, with me feeling I had to constantly wage war to win in the ring of my life. And yet, somewhere buried inside, that same fight or flight mechanism was locked on 'threat' mode, with me always feeling afraid I had to meet my life as if I was still going toe to toe with anything and anyone who stood in my way.
In this regard as a child, I was often very angry at home. I was told I always answered back with a harsh reactive and defensive tone of voice. This was my jab. Again, being the smallest of my family, it served me in defining my boundaries and declaring my needs. However, also being the youngest, it never seemed to do either very well and was punished with consistent severity for my defensive, belligerent and passive aggressive behavior.
Growing up, I often felt like I could never really please my parents, my father especially. He always wanted more from me, holding me to the standards he held for himself. He being a Harvard PhD psychologist, top of his class type AA achiever, meant the bar was way too high for me to even see up to and yet, the drive he carried in himself, carried over to me. Believe me, this was not a good thing. Not at all.
His heavy handed form of dispensing discipline was old world in nature. He spanked with a sense of purpose which looking back, always struck me as strange, him being a head shrinker type. I thought you had to talk it out first to find resolution. Growing up is rarely a picnic even in the very best of situations. Eventually real life gets in the way. This growing up experience taught me to have a tough hide on my ass which of course, made me mad as hell. What kid should have to defend himself from his own father's rage? with so little to defend myself with ...
So I developed attitude and plenty of it. It served me really well growing up in a mostly black neighborhood in the 1960's. On the South Side of Chicago, you had better learn how to carry yourself or nearly endless ass kickings were a result. As most children do, I internalized my feelings and stuffed my anger. In my home, out of necessity, I buried my feelings not having a safe or constructive place to resolve or effectively vent them. Ha! This kind of highfalutin speaking and thinking took a few more decades to evolve and come into place or at least hadn't shown up at my house yet.
No worries. In time we all (those still standing anyway) come to develop our personal defense systems, all to meet the perceived and imagined dangers in our lives. Without these coping devices, we'd all be chewed up toast. Some of us actually are and a quick look-about on the late night subway platform will give you plenty of examples. We all do our best with what we've got to work with. The trick I've learned is in increasing the good strategies in life and letting go of the not so effective ones. In getting my needs met, that is.
Over the years, throughout my quest to consciously Awaken, often in healing schools or session settings that were created to activate this process, I often heard how my abilities were exceptional but my oh my, my personality sure got in the way. I got this a lot from friends who cared for me, albeit at a comfortable distance. I just came on too strong I was told, feeling I had to employ this approach in getting my needs met. This is great on the street, however wears thin when brought along into more rarefied circumstances, like relationships with mostly conscious women.
This it plays very poorly in. The thing was, I never really saw it for what it was and was totally blind to the patterns I was told were running me. My anger and resistance was so deeply embedded, I couldn't see over the walls of my fort that kept pushing Love away. The knee jerk reactions were so first in nature, it took years to begin to get the hints of what I still had to clear in my sizable pain body. A lot.
What it eventually came down to was seeing how my belief systems, telling me I was in danger, was a long hold over from however way back when in my history ... that in fact, my beliefs were holding me captive in my own prison causing all my significant relationships to crash and burn. I kept recreating the situations that told me there wasn't enough Love for me by me pushing away the Love that always ended up confirming my beliefs. Sound familiar, anyone?
Eventually I came to see how in order to get past this behavior pattern, I had to redesign my whole approach to living my life. This meant continuing digging away inside to get down to the very core nugget of my 'separation issues' - the emotional places we all have gone and beliefs built in reaction to the perception of leaving our eternal Home space - the Heart of God - to enter 3D form.
I had to get to where I always felt disempowered within myself and why I needed to force my way through to the buffet table, often pushing others away to yes, get my needs met. In truth, I had to learn to meet my own needs. Hello! This basic and enormous shift in my perception has made all the difference, let me say. The Awakened Sacred Masculine always looks inside first to meet his core emotional needs, attending to holding himself safely amidst the swirling movements of his world. By doing this, I began to disentangle myself from the webbing of my fear based belief systems which had indeed, been running me for all my life.
By letting go of my powerful jab, I began letting in the sweetness of life, of Spirit telling me all was well in my world. I didn't have to worry, to stress, to fight my way along any longer. The flip side of this being - I had to fully feel my feelings now and couldn't hide behind my defenses any longer. I had to keep my Heart open even in the storms that still pounded my shores. Like the Christ, I had to avail myself to attend to the moment at hand, living from my open and empowered Heartspace always.
From living in the Here & Now, there are no days off. At times, it's been crazy making not having my go-to pop, firing off my jab to keep away the ghosts before and within me. However the mirages eventually dry up, they did much faster when I stopped fighting and removed my self off the battlefield of my life. Yes, this has made all the difference my friends.
... to be continued ...
I work with people who are still fighting themselves and all others in their lives, helping them finally leave the war grounds within. I have successfully passed through the gates of my own fierceness to arrive on the sunny side of the street, where there's no opposition anymore. It really is a much better view all the way around. I can help you do this.
For more information on my work, please view my web site at heartantra.com or contact me directly at heartantra@yahoo.com
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