In True Self in the Real World I analyzed the social construction of identity in order to show that the person we play on stage and the stage itself are neither true (self) nor real (world). True Self and the Real World are, in fact, screened from our awareness by a conditioned preference for becoming somebody special.
It’s more accurate to say “becoming” rather than being somebody special, given how the fulfillment of our ambition is constantly eluding us. We can always be more special – recognized, accepted, approved, and admired by more people, or by more important people.
And in our pursuit of this impossible goal, we end up pushing down and hiding away parts of our true Self that others aren’t ready to see or don’t want to.
Putting on suits (roles) and playing to the expectations of society, all the while sticking more of our light inside the closet so as not to risk being judged, ridiculed, or rejected: this is where we can spend our one brief lifetime, never coming into contact with our soul-centered identity (true Self) or the Reality beyond our beliefs (real World).
In the present post we will go deeper inside this delusion, to a particular interaction on stage that, more than any other, is the cause behind the felt need to hide our light. I’m talking, of course, about the Family Triad of Mother, Child, and Father, which is the most primitive and universally constant theme in world mythology, where they are appreciated as archetypes (“first forms” or original patterns) that most powerfully shape our human experience.
To prove this point, I will refine our focus for the following meditation, from a general reflection on the universal human experience to the experience you are having and where you are on the journey right now. Admittedly, what follows also applies to me and to everyone else, which is what makes this dynamic universal.
The objective, however, is for us to understand it at the general level so we might convert these insights into intentions for living a more liberated and luminous life.
“Once upon a time” (so begins your personal myth) you were a Child. Using the standard archetypal configuration of the Family Triad, you were born of a mother and to a father, coming out of one and taken in by the other. Likely with little awareness that they were local incarnations of the Mother and Father archetypes, your actual mother and father stepped instinctively into their respective roles.
As archetype, Mother is the Source, Ground, and Womb of life. She is the power of unconditional love and abundant generosity. In Her you found security, comfort, and nourishment, a safe place to surrender completely and relax into being. After forgetting your lines in the school play or falling off your bicycle, She welcomed you into Her embrace with the assurance that “It’s okay. Just relax and let it go.”
As Her counterpart, Yang to Her Yin, Father is the archetypal Other, the mysterious Outsider, a Beyond-in-the-midst, the One who confronted you from His transcendent center of otherness. He is the lure, the love of benevolent power. From Him you felt challenged and encouraged to try new things, to step into the proving circle and test your abilities, demonstrate new skills, and exercise your will. After forgetting your lines in the school play or falling off your bicycle, He exhorted you to “Brush it off. Face your fear and try again.”
Now, it’s not highly likely that your actual mother and father channeled their archetypes with consistent perfection. There’s a decent chance, in fact, that they fell short more times than not, partly because archetypes are ideals designed to attract and focus aspiration, not goals to be achieved.
The other reason your actual parents “missed the mark” (the definition of an ancient archery term, sin) was that they were dealing with, and compulsively playing out, the consequences of having had parents of their own who were sinners – and on up the generational line to the original mythic couple, El the Sky Father and Eden the Garden Mother (see Genesis 2:7ff), who didn’t get it quite right with their children either.
Our purpose here is not to place blame, but rather to understand how the degree in which your actual parents embodied or obscured the archetypal Mother and Father had the effect of motivating you to let your light shine, or else hide it in the closet.
If your parents were distant, demanding, hard to please or abusive, then you learned how to stay out of sight and keep the parts of you they would not accept off-stage and packed away.
That was your adaptive strategy in childhood – again, individualized to some extent given the unique history and special circumstances of every actual family. Now as an adult and living your own life, you still are not free and clear, for the child you once were is now your Inner Child.
Those same strategies for gaining acceptance, earning approval, winning praise, and staying vigilant to reduce the risk of losing any of those things, are what I call neurotic styles: episodes where your Inner Child rants, rages, whines, sulks or shuts down when you don’t get your way.
When that happens, it’s because another pole in this bipolar personality dynamic, called your Inner Parent, gets activated and goes to work issuing judgments, threats, and accusations against your Inner Child. Instead of self-compassion you hear self-criticism. Instead of self-encouragement you hear self-recrimination. You’re no good. You’re not worthy. You are unacceptable. You have nothing important to contribute, so keep silent.
Remember, you are saying these things to yourself by a socially programmed habit which follows a script that is likely many generations old.
Your actual mother and father were also agents, in a way, of their own generation’s philosophy of parenting and its views on discipline, family roles, and identity. It was inevitable that you would internalize your early experience as this inner dialogue between a part of you that takes the role of Parent and another part that takes the role of Child.
At some point you open the closet, snap the threads of threat-and-fear, accusation-and-shame, judgment-and-doubt that weave the heavy shroud of your shadow, and take back the light it has held for so long. In a Spirit of renewal and wholeness, you rise into your Higher Self and begin to live a more liberated life.
It is time.
Tracts of Revolution 