While most people consider stage seven the end of the process, some aren’t satisfied with returning to the status quo, they want change, they do go back to work and get on with life but carrying on isn’t enough.
Stage eight is where it can all come together and a new you can be born, or more correctly the original you is reborn. The real you, the untraumatized, uncompensated, unaltered you. So much good was repressed into the Shadow, along with the bad, we are amazed. Empathy, compassion, the willingness to understand, kindness, generosity, self-sacrifice, patience and tolerance, they were all buried in there.
When you look at our society, The war and the violence, the disparity and despair, poverty, hunger, homelessness, and no one seems to care, you wonder what happened, how did we get here, how did we become so indifferent. It never used to be this way. The American West was built by the barn building bee, community action, neighbor helping neighbors, the men built the barns while the women prep’d the food, and the children played nearby, it was a fun filled festive event. The same was true in old England where communities were interdepend. People needed each other to survive and took care of each other. Then came the industrial revolution and the age of mass production, followed very quickly by the engineered age of mass consumption. The Century Of Self (watch the “Century of Self”, on youTube) was created and community destroyed. The age of mass deception was created as the advertising industry was born. Capitalism triumphed, and benefited a few, at the expense of the many, people like me and you. People were transformed into consumers by skilled psychologists who exploited their vulnerabilities and exploited their inner sense of shame. We honestly felt we were never enough. Propaganda replaced the news. An illusion was created, called the American Dream, “Prosperity for All” was the promise and we became deceived. We were duped into conformity, we wanted it all, but our kindness and caring stood in our way, and we soon learned they must be put away. Selfishness, self-centeredness, Self-seeking are the norms of today, a manufactured epidemic of narcissism exists, dissatisfaction and unhappiness, a sense of dis-ease makes us restless and irritable and so hard to please.
Thank God this crisis, our impending doom has brought us to our knees. Our suffering our mourning was meant to bring change, if we’ve allowed the grieving process to continue unimpeded to this final stage joy and happiness replace bitterness and rage. Yes we are dying, it was so hard to comprehend, but now we see life was a journey meant for our growth. Everything we’ve experienced was the pathway to peace, all that we’ve searched for was always inside, all we had to do was put anger and resentment aside, freeing us to deal with our pride.
Early in childhood we had been traumatized, the ego convinced us we had been victimized. In the role of the victim we held unto our hurt, and it lasted a lifetime as we externalized blame, leaving us all, alone with our Shame.
The infant really believed it was to blame for the “Breach of the We”. The “We” was replaced with the “I”, and the “I” felt all alone and vulnerable. The ego stepped in to fill the void, and began to manipulate everything to get our needs met. Trust was lost replaced with mistrust and our fears were intensified. Eventually fear and shame dominated our core and we began compensating more and more. Our true Self got buried as a fully contrived other emerged and we were left feeling other’ed, never really belonging, and we kept on pretending just to fit in. If we were successful we gained the whole world and all it had cost us was the loss of our Soul.
Thank God for this crisis, we finally woke up, we peeled back the layers one by one, as we worked through the process right back to our core and discovered our wounded child waiting for us. We realized our ego had always been wrong, we were always enough, an infantile ego had perceived an illusion, and this was the source of our lifelong delusion.
All the mystics throughout the ages spoke of the Perennial Truth. Socrates said the unexamined life isn’t worth living, and Jesus said “Know thyself, and the truth will set you free”. All along we had an inner sense that there was more to life than the way we had been living it, but there was no sense of urgency to bring about change. We had become habituated and tolerant of our suffering, and therefore indifferent to the suffering of others, we had hardened our hearts, unconsciously increasing our shame. This crisis, our impending doom struck with enough force to crack open our hearts and release all the pent up pain, and this was what was needed to bring about change. Leave your heart open, let it drain, don’t seal it up, all over again. Leaving it open lets the light in and that is when compassion begins.
Sitting in silence, embracing the pain, watch it dissolve slowly all on its own. After awhile it’s all emptied out, and we are left open and free to receive all the blessings of “Being”, just “Being”, nothing left to achieve. We are United, we have become One. No longer divided and “Knowing” Our-Self, we understand suffering and everyone else.