Principles of Reconstruction: Surrendering to Connection
“Health arises from an intuitive perception of the universe any all its inhabitants as being of one fabric. Health is maintaining communication with the animals and plants and minerals and stars. It is knowing death and life and seeing no difference. It is blending and melding, seeking solitude and seeking companionship to understand one’s many levels. Health is seeking out all of the experiences of Creation and turning them over and over, feeling their texture and multiple meanings. Health is expanding beyond one’s singular state of consciousness to experience the ripples and waves of the universe.”
The untethered free-fall that comes with un-coupling one’s sense of belonging from the structure of an established institution - be it a school, university, hospital, prison, religious group or even a marriage- can usher in a corresponding collapse of the old vision, the old roadmap, the old purpose we had assigned our lives.
This is disconcerting indeed, and the remedy for it is found inside of the second principle of reconstruction - connection. We are not able to move into real connection until we have begun the first stages of commitment to embodiment, which is why I have structured these pieces in this sequence, though there is some commerce between the two. Being fully present inside of our own energy and becoming comfortable in our own skin is the required foundation from which to let go of the trap of rationalising, intellectualising and remaining inside dualism and the false sense of security it offers.
These steps require more and more courage as we go on.
At the first stage, the question is “am I brave enough to return my energy and externalised identity markers to my own soul, to become sovereign and fully embodied?”
Embodiment is no joke. I get it. To be really at home inside our own energy inside our own bodies is to come into the holy of holies. It feels like it might kill us, the thrill and the beauty and the awe of the whole thing. Much of this work can be done alone, in solitude though. The real risk comes in the next stage.
At the second stage, the question becomes “now that I am learning how to belong to myself, where else can I now belong? And to whom?”
This is the point at which archetypal frameworks come into their own, because they give us such helpful, dynamic and rich narratives from which to make sense of where we have come from, where we are at present and gives us some clues at where we are probably heading. The Enneagram is a widely used archetypal tool to help us make sense of this, the ‘why’ we do what we do, and the ‘how’, as well as some useful pieces of data about moving into health and integration and what to watch for when we slip into fear and disintegration. There are other ways of learning our own archetypal story, but they mostly require initiatory work - as the Enneagram also used to back in the old days. Most archetypal frameworks carry inside of them a signature of painful learning. I did not fully embrace my own archetype until I had tried outrunning it, shedding it, ignoring it and dismembering my own selfhood to attempt to dislodge it from my blueprint. The acceptance piece probably took over a year. I do have a particularly painful archetypal blueprint, so I have a lot of compassion for why I did this now, and a lot of patience and compassion for those who I support and work with who also share my blueprint. Every artist, prophet, priest, heretic, activist, martyr - will tell you that when they try and not be who they are, it hurts. It causes physical malaise, as well as a deadening of the soul. I also found this to be true.
Archetypal blueprints give us clues as to our belonging - which is medicine for the soul which no longer feels at home inside a church community. The energy we are in now, which is why I have timed the release of this post in this period of time, is very supportive of our human quest for authentic connection inside of our true soul-tribe, our communities where we will be embraced and seen and known - all the way through. Not just the parts that appear to be acceptable and palatable to the masses. In order to find this powerful acceptance and belonging, which is the end of loneliness (though not necessarily of being alone) we must find the courage to speak with vulnerability, from the heart.
For many of us, this is the bridge we cannot cross.
This is where people get stuck.
Why?
Because when we speak the truth to another, the deepest truth about who we are, what we are longing for, what we know to be our strongest and most powerful desires (which are always sacred, if we are living in the light - but that is a story for another day), we risk losing two things:
Leverage
Control
When we speak the truth, we put ourselves in the hands of another, and allow them to decide what to do with us.
For those of us who carry the trauma signature of intimate annihilation, where those who were entrusted to meet our formative needs for connection and security betrayed, wounded, abused or ridiculed us, this feels tantamount to dying.
It feels like dying because our central nervous system, the most instinctual and animalistic part of us, screams to us that we must - at all costs - maintain leverage and control because those were the only tools we had to begin to create safety for ourselves when we were profoundly unsafe. The incredibly sad part of all of this is that while we remain bound to leverage and control to keep us safe, we cannot actually connect with another. We are unable to learn from this place - how to really love and be loved. How to let love in, how to reciprocate and love another. Love feels dangerous. Control feels safe. This is the lie, but we live it because we have trauma - not because we want to keep Love at arms length. The human heart is wired up to crave love and connection, it is our most primal need. So when someone is stuck inside this place and they can’t let it in, we must proceed with absolute compassion, understanding and patience. Love is the strongest force in the universe; control and fear and maintaining leverage are no match for it, in the end. And we can trust that.
This is the point in reconstruction where many choose to return to the institution they left in the first place, because the facade of belonging which we can have at a superficial level when we identify with a structured system can feel like a safer, albeit less satisfying option.
This is also the point in reconstruction where some give up altogether, and just get progressively more and more unwell, isolated and numb. It is not until we heal these primal trauma-wounds in the spiritual body, that we are able to find the courage to say who we really are, to those who most need to hear it.
When we heal the primal trauma-wounds we become deeply connected to the Universal Self, or Soul of the World, and from that place, we become indestructible.
A person in full possession and knowledge of their archetypal blueprint, healed and delivered from their primal wounds and ready to be vulnerable and truthful in an outward way is also ready to do away with the addiction to intellectualising.
I used to think I was so clever. I was arrogant in my book smarts, with my long words and fancy ideas and well-rounded academic training. My archetypal blueprint blew all that into a million pieces and I have never been more grateful. For in thinking I knew The Truth, I was unable to move into deeply truthful living. In assuming I knew The Way, I was perpetually lost. In believing I was living in The Life, the only one I had been handed, I was dead in my soul, a walking zombie. Absent to my children, to myself, to my deepest and most sacred Beingness. I did not start to surrender into real connection to the way, the truth and the life that Jesus speaks about in esoteric riddles in the gospels until I let go of my addiction to the monkey-mind, the trap of dualism and I was forced to let go of the last illusion of control. This was taken from me by force, I don’t believe I would have ever have been humble or wise enough to let go of it willingly.
Many of us can’t.
The Divine has a habit of allowing our lives to go up in smoke to force us into something deeper, something better, something richer. Or perhaps we have a habit of hanging on to the old so hard that we cannot grasp the new, and we are so loved that we will not be allowed to do that forever. Or maybe it’s both. This is a mystery indeed, and I tend to see it a bit like a divine dance - the interplay between free will and divine will.
The incredible thing is, once we learn how to speak the truth about who we really are, what we really want, how we really feel, what we really see - we are able to move into complete freedom.
Why?
Because that is the hardest thing. The final stage, the moving into power and learning how to use it - that is the joyful and fun part. These first two steps, embodiment and learning to trust heart-intelligence and honour our deepest instinctual and intuitive knowings, those are the hardest parts.
I will tell you this for free - the peace I wake up with most days now is the ‘peace that surpasses all understanding’. And it guards my heart and my mind. Because I have done the brutal work of embodiment and have agreed to allow my ego to remain disarmed, dismantled, a passive observer of my higher self, who steers the ship of my life - I have been able to move into fearlessness. I didn’t believe it was possible, but it is. The world needs a new generation of fearless people who live from a heart-connected place with vulnerability and truth-telling, if we are ever going to move out of fear-mongering, tribal turf wars and destruction. The only reason I have shared so much of my journey here for you is that it is part of my archetypal blueprint to do so, and because part of my job is to lay the groundwork, to hold the knowledge about how to bring into sacred union, that which appears to be diametrically opposed. It is not mine to enact, it is just mine to understand. It is also part of my archetypal blueprint to heal the un-healable wound, through breaking myself open to unconditional love and allowing it to turn me into an oceanic presence of Divine healing for others. In order to do this, I first had to experience it for myself. And I did. In the pattern of the Christ and Sophia. The Divine Masculine and the Divine Feminine principle in ecstatic dance opened themselves up to me and I experienced a crucifixion of my soul, and a resurrection from the dead. I only had the courage to surrender to this brutal process because I had so deeply studied the archetypal map of the Christ. By participating in the shame and pain of the cross, to be pierced and wounded and by surrendering to death, the Christ left an alchemical map for how to transmute suffering and death and deliver it back to the world as life, power, and ascension into ultimate Union with the Universal Self.
If you think you have undergone the ego-death and is has not felt like this, like an actual death, it has just been preparation for the real ego-death. The real ego-death comes when we let go of all our addiction to certainty, leverage, controlling the narrative, pride, and fear. This is the only way to enter into real connection with the Universal Self and others, and is not taught inside religious paradigms. Preachers love to speak about ‘dying to self’ but in my experience, no one really knew what that looked like. When I actually began dying to myself, most church folks were horrified and either voyeuristically tried to watch me in the same way that people slow down to stare at a car accident, or tried to tell me that I was sinful, wrongheaded, deluded or selfish. Many good church folks, dear friends - some who I had known for years - melted into the ether and just checked out of being part of my life. I don’t blame them. The ego-death is not understood by The Church because it is not compatible with the principle of Empire, which values maintaining the status quo over transcendence. I knew full well when I began choosing heart-intelligence over what I knew in my mind would be the words, actions, choices that could keep me ‘safe’ inside my old world, that it was going to piss a lot of people off.
That was a price I was willing to pay to live a coherent and honest life.
I would pay it again 1000 times over knowing what I know now.
These first two posts about how I have begun to understand principles of reconstruction have arisen from deeply studying patterns - not only in my own life (which is the only one I have the authority to speak about), but also in the lives of many others. I have studied patterns and frameworks of understanding from ancient and esoteric wisdom traditions, from various fields of study and from exploration of the spiritual life in the company of the Spirit. They are only my observations, yours may be totally different, and that’s ok.
Until next time:
Go with great courage into the cave you fear to enter, for as Joseph Campbell famously said, it holds the treasure that you seek.