Undefended Love

I had an extraordinary experience over the weekend. I went to a workshop called Undefended Love with Jett Psaris Ph.D. and Marlena Lyons, Ph.D. They have a wonderful book by the same name which was my introduction to the work. I will try to pass on some of what I learned. The location in a park overlooking the San Francisco Bay added to the richness of the experience. The towering strength of the surrounding redwoods helped me root more deeply in myself. 

The first thing I learned was about what they call one’s compensatory identity. Recently my friend Janaki from South Africa told me that it hurt her to see how hard I am on myself. I had heard that feedback before but the vehemence with which she said it made me pay close attention. Then someone else agreed with her. When one of my best friends told me the same thing a day latter, I knew it was time to saddle up the horse. They were pointing to something obvious that I just could not recognize. The saying comes to mind, “there are none so blind as those who will not see.”

So all the jagged edges of this flickering awareness came together at the workshop. The exercises helped us identify what it is we do in the world to feel good, safe, worthy, get attention. We named it and mine is called limitlessly loving. They called it the fatted cow, the thing you think will save you. Because of my profound commitment to Love, I had allowed a distorted version to usurp me. In this distorted identity I would be limitlessly loving instead of setting appropriate boundaries. I would “rescue” loved ones from their mistakes or from taking responsibility. If things didn’t go well I’d blame myself and try harder and harder until I was at the breaking point. And then is when we switch to our fallback identity. When our compensatory identify doesn’t get the results we want, we develop a fallback identity. I named mine Frozen Lava Houdini. I freeze, or I rage or I disappear, or some combination of any those. It was all so clear, as though the lens of the prism was turned so suddenly everything was in focus. Just lately I had actually witnessed myself raging internally. Given a “rage-aholic” father, I had stuffed that anger until it seeped out as oozing lava. Yet the force of those unmet needs and making myself responsible for things that were not really my business was creating a fire-pit of resentment and anger I would not allow myself to acknowledge. What an awakening, as though a veil had been removed from my eyes. Now that I see it, it is stunning that I could not witness it before. Under that we have what they called a cracked identity. Mine used to be that I was not loved. Since I healed that it seems to be something like I am powerless or incapable.

The other huge ahha moment was the culmination of the workshop. We were to dive into the black hole of that cracked identity. I really tried to go with the few triggers I had. First of all it was stunning to genuinely reflect on how few triggers I do have at this point in my life. But boy are the ones I do have red hot. I really could only think of a few. I tried and tried to dive in yet I seemed to have already plumbed the depths of them throughout the weekend and instead this joy kept emerging. I was fortunate that my partner trusted that I was not in denial or suppressing something or in resistance. He followed me into joy. I can not begin to describe what I felt, yet I will try. It began with this little tickle and a giggle escaped. Then a feeling of expansion as though my rib cage were suddenly two inches wider. Then the sense of a vast spaciousness filled my interior being, as though I had swallowed the sky. I began to laugh uproariously and could not stop. I laughed until I cried and saw the other members of my group were laughing to the point of tears too. I had sat with this group because I felt an inner direction to do so. I had surrendered totally to the moment, asking for inner direction. Usually I try to control this sort of thing, pick juicy partners, etc. In this case I ended up with an emotionally flat group, exceptionally unable to access their emotions. In the past I might have judged that or felt I was missing out. None of that arose now. The sense of absolute freedom was profound. I recognized that I did not need to control, that by surrendering my need for anything in particular to happen, I was having one of the most joyous experiences of my life. An assistant came over, convinced I was in denial and trying to get me to ground and refocus. I kept trying to comply yet would burst into peals of laughter. I had to slap my knee I was laughing so hard- it’s true, I never knew that. I literally felt impelled to slap my knee to try to  help contain the  laughter. To be free of my generally pervasive need for control- liberation!! To not feel judged or need to judge another- what exquisite joy! Then a member of my group interrupted, saying I wasn’t doing it right. This time a wave of sadness tightened the muscles of my back in a strangle hold of tension. At the same time I continued to swim in the ocean of self acceptance that preceded her statement. The ocean got deeper and wider and I WAS pure self acceptance. I experienced layer after layer of emotion and sensation. I felt tremendous gratitude, a self compassion I have never felt, a profound grief for all the times I had judged myself for doing it “wrong.” A line from a song kept running through my head, “this holy moment.” I felt bathed in a radiant sea of total self acceptance and gratitude with a warm nectar of the sweetness of my own love. I felt everything at once, woven in the most exquisite tapestry of joy. The lines of a poem come to me now “Oh dear friends, need I say more, to the brim...” The moments were absolute perfection, radiant euphoria.

The workshop ended with a ritual that continued to heal a deep wound from childhood. As a child,  I had come to believe that presents were the only way I experienced love in my life. This ritual clearly brought into to focus the awareness that the gift of Presence is so much more fulfilling then mere presents. I will not describe it other than to say I felt so seen, acknowledged, appreciated and blessed. I will leave you with my own celebration of how the intensity of my yearning is indeed doing all the work, bring me to the doorway of that for which I have always longed.