Shame, not on me but in me

During the last practicum I started with how difficult it is for me to cry. I've long admired, even envied, women who could access tears so easily. And then there I sit. For years.

I've learned in childhood not to cry..."please don't cry"
I learned as a boy and young man that "men don't cry" and plenty of times it wasn't safe (accepted) OF course my golden hot button around acceptance sealed that one.
Then in a cult I learned to be happy, be full of joy, be in the joy of the Lord. So greiving was not allowed, let alone crying.

So when my fiance said, "I think I'm not sure that I want to marry you," I bucked up and I believed in a fantasy-faith that we'd come back together. Within a couple of weeks, while she was on a date with another guy, a drunk driver in a station wagon veered over the steel grated road bed of a bridge and slammed head on into the Volkwagen they were driving. The guy she was with died immediately having had the steering column driven into him. Kathy didn't die on the scene. In a hosptial she laid for days in a coma, her face so swollen that it was hard to know it was her right away. She had dried blood from her ears and moaned from time to time. I, still very much "in love," "bucked up," had to be strong and tried to comfort her, calling her by my nickname for her, "bunny-bear."

After 10 days she died. I went into some place between genuine faith--transcendent of the temporal world--and fantasy, that God would bring her back to life.

It was nearly 10 years later, after adding my father's death, and many other painful episodes that I had a very strange experience...or series of experiences...that were nothing less than miraculous. For a number of days I watched God's grace and love and I was a pawn (seer?) in the midst of it all. And in the love and in the grace my hardness thawed. The grace of God was greater than any possible idea of right and wrong I could have imagined.

And in my thawing all the pain came up at once. I call it a thawing but it was really a battle between the grace and the hardness I'd held. All the grief and suffering that I'd put off came up and I was beyong disoriented. Everything I believed in was up for grabs. So much so that I didn't know what to keep and what to throw out. It got to where I even started to wonder whether I could trust myself that a wall in front of me was really there.

I took a couple days off work. I couldn't really function. Then one day while staying home with my kids. I took a bath. I could keep an ear out for them in the back yard. They were fine playing and I allowed myself to take care of myself with a hot bath.

I turned on a radio and listened to a Christian music station. A song came on about a boy, now grown up, who'd lost his dad in Vietnam. He sang about how his dad would sing he and his brother cowboy stories, then in the corous he'd sing that in Vietnam his dad had, "laid down his life for his friends." In my hardness, my bitterness, I became cynical thinking, "how do you really know that? Maybe he was shooting up heroin. Maybe he did something stupid. How do you know?" My hardness was a protection--or so it would seem--from vulnerability. But I didn't know that. I was finding this song pathetically naive.

Then the lyrics changed. It told of how the wife, his mother, and these two little boy got word that their father was dead. The pain of that snuck up around my cynicism and reached into me with a smash. It didn't matter what had happened in Vietnam. What happened to this woman and her little boys was tragic. And it was undeniably painful. I started to cry.

I sat in that bathtub, on my knees in a fetal position crying for two hours. I would cry about all kinds of things. At times it mutated into a prayer for some friends who were in greater denial of pain than I'd been in.

At some point, my son--maybe 5 at the time--came in and asked if I was laughing. He looked a little concerned (what a heart!) I let him know that I was crying and that it was okay, no, it was good, for men to cry. He left and I continued to cry for some time. Eventually, I felt "clean" and asked God to take me. I didn't want to remain in a world where I could get "dirty" again with hardness of any kind.

Needless to say, I wasn't taken. And I'm not always sure remaining was the best thing. By the time I got out the water was completely cold...and I couldn't have cared less.

Over the years I would love any movie I went to that I could loose myself in it, suspend any disbelief, and get so in it that I could find my self and cry. If I left the theater with tears down my face...into my beard, it was a great film and I would either seeing again or buy the video.

My first wife of 25 years didn't see me cry until we were parting. The pain of it for me, even though I was insisting on the separation and eventual divorce, was overwhelming enough for me to cry. More to the point there was some combination of feeling safety/trust with her at the moment, and somehow moving beyond any notion of shame.

I could cry in a darkened theater. Or, very rarely I could cry alone. It wasn't until I was with Karen that two things happened. I started experiencing a phenomenon where I'd laugh in my sleep, usually waking myself up (or if not waking me I'd wake up Karen.) I'd laugh like a little boy, even giggle.

The other thing is that I would occasionally cry. IN the most momentous occasions I'd get edgy for days or weeks before I'd finally go over the ledge and cry. Karen would witness me with her compassion and empathy, but I'd be in the grips of painful shame, unable to look her in the face.

I held a post as volunteer "botha." A botha is dressed in black, padded, huge thick helmet and groin protection and assume the attitude of attacker against workshop participants for an entire day. All I gave any of them was a stare of disgust, or worse. And in my "method acting" state my words were poisonous. It was my job.

And as I did this job I would watch them. Some had little problem seeing through what I was doing. But there were others, usually those who'd been brutally attacked or systematically abused in their past, and they were utterly terrified.

And my job was to help them go back to the place they'd lost themselves, right to that very place, and find a way to connect with their power and ability... But until then I would watched them shrink, and I would up the ante. It was my job. Sometimes I made my self sick. It was my job to serve them by being their worse nightmare and all the time, beneath the mask I wore for them, I was paradoxically more in touch with empathy than ever before. Sometimes I'd barely have my helmet back on before I'd start to cry.

Without disclosing all the details of the finale, by the next day each of the participants would have seen me crying openingly in public, flooded with empathy for them...having held it in so long. And they--yes, even the one who while watching me stand off with another participant had shaken to the ground and wet herself--would come up to me full of gratitude, understanding who I really was and fully understanding that it was my intent that in the midst of each scenario we'd set up, they'd find an opening, get a bit of space and kick me in the head until I was dispatched. For some, truly reliving their nightmare, they went to places where they'd have killed another attacker. And that was okay with me. Rewarding in fact. They'd found a measure of their power again.

So, here we were starting our 3rd practicum and I'm very aware of how much I need to cry...Robert notes my flagility, but I can't cry. I half joke to Robert about males and their corpus collosum...you know we men are brain damaged prior to birth. okay, we're not, but it seems a good excuse. Males do in fact get an acid wash that limits the corpus collosum, that part of the brain that communicates between the two hemipheres. ...Robert didn't buy it. "Blame biology" he jokes with a knowing smile."

So all I'm left with is the teaching on shame...how it hurts with searing pain and how it binds me from releasing the searing pain. I can't readily cry because I'm ashamed to, and ashamed to admit that I'm possible defective. Vulnerability, the higher road to health, is not trusted in a world of shame...vulnerability is shameful.

And as I went through the curiculum weekend I would find where shame was intertwined withing me, layer upon layer, going deep, and parhaps back to the womb.

The legacy of our last practicum weekend for me is my ability to sit in the swiming head and searing pain of shame as it comes up here and there, amazingly--I'd been so blind to it--nearly everywhere in my interactions with others.

I need to cry. But I'm too bound by shame.

Paradox of Marriage

In going over my notes I read my notes of Karen's account she shared in practicum group of the couple weeks we'd gone through. This is when I "held onto myself" (self-soothed, feeling fragile myself) while listening to Karen's account of the 2 rough weeks we went through. I had experienced her as falling apart, blaming our marriage, and me--caught in my hot button of "shame based exclusion" fell down trying to have her see me for who I am and trying to reach her. I lost myself trying to "show" her either myself or herself. It can't be done. So I followed her falling apart. Interestingly, when she left in the middle of it to spend a couple nights at a gals birthday party overnight (rented home on waterfront) I felt instant relief as she left. I regained myself...the self I'd lost trying to see myself in her. I think I was tasting a morsel of what she was probably going through in large doses. Within minutes of her leaving I felt settled, felt in my body again, and had my creativity and sense of humor return big time.

Enmeshed? You bet. What was different, however, between her and myself is that I could quickly relocate myself. I think this points to the depth of her process. Nevertheless, it was painful to watch Karen continue to not differentiate her experience...her feelings...and me. This was why I "held onto myself" (around the pain) of hearing Karen's inner experience in our practicum group.

My opinion in retrospect is one of paradox. When a committed relationship provides safety and heart we open up to what we haven't been willing to face before. The sludge from childhood, perhaps abuse (or in my case, neglect of parents who are stuck with very limited capacity), may now surface. And when it does--I've experienced this firsthand at certain crossroads in my life and somewhat this past weekend around shame--it returns as the shadowy mess that we once had to force into the recesses in the first place. When the sludge arises--certainly for me--it is experienced from within the sludge.

For example, on Saturday night when Karen helped me with some breath-work I returned to elementary school and all the shame I experienced. As it came up I felt as it I was there again...just as ashamed as I turned to Karen to tell her the truth of where history intersected the present: "I don't know how to need another." "I am fucked up such that I either become ruggedly independent or I get "fuse-y," either aggravated with expectation from another or clingy. Both loaded expectation and clinging are dependent in such a disgusting way." At this I felt extreme shame and had trouble looking Karen in the eyes. Fortunately, she called me to look at her. She loved me enough to see me. Although I was experiencing myself in horrible, black and white terms, Karen could see my heart and courage to go to this place and own my shadow. Trust was, paradoxically from my perspective, greatly enhanced.

You see, in my opinion our marriage was healthy enough to allow our crap to surface and be dealt with. And that doesn't necessarily feel great at the time. In fact, we may become scared and get lost for a while. I think that Karen's stuff around an abusive mother surfaced, I was clueless as to how to help and instead made things worse, and Karen couldn't differentiate between what was surfacing from a horror in her past and the present. That's my best take on it. I can say for sure that I've done it myself--collapsed distinction in the midst of surfaced old stuff--many, many times.

And Kurt, this guy who was up against challenges in his life, feeling overwhelmed with performance anxiety all out of the fear that "failure means exclusion." Fearing shame, perfection had raised it's head. And Kurt could not differentiate between his surfacing past--some emptiness around sense of self confidence--such that he could not differentiate between his shadow and the present. Karen's process, requiring her to pull in, to re-establish independence, looked, smelled and tasted like distancing...exclusion, Kurt's perfect trigger.

It seems to me that this trust and heart and opening of real relationship that paradoxically leads us through the shadow-lands is not for the faint of heart. I'm thinking that what we see everywhere is the immature notion of the perpetual honeymoon. And that is why marriages fail, or become completely stale-mated.

Case # 061106INT At Large (debatable say some)

RCMP most wanted list. All points bulletin: This person last seen stealing linen napkin from resaurant in White Rock. Armed and dangerously good looking. May toss napkin at you without notice! Not known by name or alias, but rival gang leader, Cindi Kanz, while fleeing to Alberta, said this: "I'll get even with him! I'll scream while squeezing the living daylights out of a pillow!"

Telling on Myself

I watched subtleties where I get my sexuality mingled with emotional pursuit. It isn’t clean, it doesn’t work. I so love it when it’s free and open for whatever form of sweet or powerful passion that shows up…but it’s authentic!

It’s so nice to be able to have Karen tell me that she needs me to just hold her. I can’t imagine anything I’d rather do.
Then after so much relational maneuvering—and going to “love me” at our practicum, it is so nice—even if I’m still uncomfortable with it—to simply tell Karen that I need to be held.
Silly me…so many times I get anxious or grumpy or whatever when all I need is to be held.

I need to slow down, quiet down, and trust my intuition more often.

It’s so easy for me to sit in judgment of Karen, her places of “fusion.” Then, months later I wake up to find that I’m fused around Karen’s fusion—real or perceived.

I’ve been so judgmental of “needy” people, of showing up myself “needy.” Now I’m beginning to see—with compassion—that “neediness” is legitimate need under pressure, where someone never got to be in need or have them met. “Neediness” is what you get when your not sure anyone will catch you when you fall.

Sometimes at the verge of breakthrough I am alternately “messy” and “raw-clean!”

I ran the Bare Bun Run, a 3 mile foot race in the nude! What I love is the innocence and openness—not just physical openness, but heart openness—at the nudist camp. It’s as though the lack of clothing drops pretense and defenses. So much friendliness and no perceptible sexuality. Children and obesity and the sagging skin of old folks. The freedom is truly amazing.

When I ask to be loved I face shame, embarrassment, shyness, then rationalizations that I am inconveniencing Karen…that she couldn’t love someone, particularly a man, who actually, outwardly needed and asked for love.
But then I sit quietly, knowing that Karen is still there.
Amazing. I was able to cleanly ask for what I needed and got it. And she sat with me, loved me, enjoyed loving me because it was so clean and pure and raw and open.

One morning of late I got up before Karen and found my way down the stairs an into the hot tub, sitting with the morning as it unfolded. My mind/emotions were quiet and when a bird sang it was as if I was within the bird’s song, within the sound and the joy itself. Pure joy. Then I looked up to see an airplane in the morning sun. My mind didn’t label it or anything about it. Instead I had a oneness with the sunlight on it and the air that flowed over it. Incredible.

When Karen opens up and tells me of her hidden places I melt. I don’t remember being so trusted. Dropping into compassion, dropping, allowing my heart to expand like a cloud of moisture. I couldn’t be more fulfilled.

Poem of the Dammed

Poem of the Dammed

I am hardened, reinforced with steel
I span the banks
Never moving, never compromising my
rigid boundaries

I arch my back to
Hold myself against the flow
Closed, not allowing,
Not opening, not open

Behind me builds this
Vast pressure, this
Great unrelenting burden
Yet I hold fast to my anchorage
Trusting my foundation
Unwilling to venture a peek, a spout
That would surely result in
My painful death

Holding fast, the rain
Continue to fall
And my burden grows daily
Straining me, torturing me

Though the reinforcement of fear
Is great
The strain-full suffering
Grows greater
Oblivious to myself I am parched, a desert
A living dilemma
My convicted contractions
Meant to protect me
Now hurt me with unbearable,
Strain-full suffering

Oh, that I were not
So strongly hardened
Oh, that I knew my gateways
Oh, that I were not a dam at all
That I might discover
My dreaded shadow—that
Ugly, filthy, dangerous and disgusting beast
To be no less than the
Waters of life

Oh, that I might break
The concrete and steel that
Surrounds my heart
Burst forth
And see myself for what
I was meant to be—
A part of the River of Life

The deserts and wastelands
Before me would again
Spring forth in abundance

Oh, that I might have the
Strength to let go of
What I take to be my strength
And realize the power and glory
Of my flow


Kurt Treftz 1999, 2006

Dream: My Grandson, Me, and the Warship

I have a sense of this being THE dream for me right now. Here we go:

Both I and my grandson (13 year-old Brennan) are in the navy and serving on a warship. The ship is big, complex with many decks and equipment. It is heavy, huge, massive and powerful, armed with great guns.

Brennan and I are both in service within the ship and it—we—come under attack. The ship is wrecked, not sunk, but ruined and we are among the survivors who have to struggle to escape the torn metal and flames.

I know I’m out, but for some time I can’t find my grandson, Brennan. I feel desperate and helpless. Later, he is found.

Much later we are assembled and waked through a ceremony to be awarded medals for our honor, our valor. I look at Brennan, both of us conscious of each other and the ordeal, we weep bitterly, amazed of the immensity of what we’d been through, the suffering, and the absolutely amazing relief. In the end we’re both okay, and more than okay. We’re together, we’ve made it, and we’re free.

At first I saw this literally. My grandson, Brennan, and I had always been close. I was the only one who could settle him, we were tight, we respected the sound of my voice. Six years ago I was married to Diana, and in our household we had 3 kids and two grandsons (from the eldest daughter.) Then, between launching a kid, a divorce, then seeing who could handle what teenagers, it was soon only myself, my son, Joseph, and my grandson, Brennan. After launching Joseph—by the time Karen came into my life—it was just Brennan and I and he’d had quite an emotional ride watching the family fall apart (not that it was really “together” before that.) But he and I had watched the destruction, if not sinking of the ship—our family as we’d known it.

But then Karen offered something that I missed entirely. Something that connected perfectly within me as I heard it: In the dream Brennan represented me, my child within. And I, as witness, watched the rescue and saving of my own “child.” The ship was my old “way of being,” with all it’s grand structure, bulk and momentum. I have been feeling so open and vulnerable lately. I’m out of the ship. My freedom is my reward for the valor of “holding on” and making it. Right now I just want to cry.

I've been continuing to let go of a way of being around achieving/doing and it is quite a ride. (NOTE: It's a long entry...the last paragraph is perhaps most important.)

Example 1: I have limited energy to run my business. Oh, I have some, but it's well placed these days...like I'm budgeting my energy there. Rewarding, yes, but I just can't pour in the hours I used to. This creates some conflict with my busines partner as she's not quite ready to let go of "busy-ness" and achievement....
Example 2: After starting flight training to gain current status (flight physical, flight time with rigorous maneuvers, book study) I just don’t have the energy to practice and train and study and keep it all up.
This creates some conflict with my busines partner as she's not quite ready to let go of "busy-ness" and achievement....
Example 3: I haven’t gone kayaking all year this year. I know I love it but my passion is elsewhere…I haven’t the energy.
Example 4: Backed off around real estate investing. I have some work to do there but not enough energy to really get it going…
This creates some conflict with my busines partner as she's not quite ready to let go of "busy-ness" and achievement....
Example 5: Hired my sone for $thousands to work on our house. Also hired a contractor friend. Just can’t do it all myself anymore…probably never could…just did it and suffered.

It’s not like I’m “getting old.” Shit, on my daughter’s birthday I was out late, had 7 shots of one liquor or another, and only felt a little tired the next day. I expected to be wasted the next day. I was as good as when I was a teenager. (Not that I wish to make it a habit.) I also ran the Bare Buns Run a week ago…a naked 3 miler, ½ uphill in the sun! I did fine.

In my shift, my letting go of a “way of being” I realize how I’ve instead missed “playing” around other areas of my life:
--alcohol and recreational drugs, even if in moderation. And now more than ever, not being afraid to use something to “explore.”
-- smoking (I’ve realized that I actually use this “ritually” where I allow the feeling of vulnerability and come from that place rather than being defended. It’s even helped me “extinguish” a fear by realizing more about the feedback within my body on an intuitive level.)
--Dancing! (night club or ecstatic or…) Karen and I dance a daily Gabrielle Roth “Wave” routine for 30 minutes (body parts warm up, flow-feminine, staccato-masculine, chaos, lyrical, and stillness) and we’ve gone out once recently…and some evenings ago we danced together in our living room (and, importantly, when Karen sat down I kept dancing.) What was interesting that evening was that I’d hit a wall that afternoon, but was energized by dancing.
--self care and even pampering (spa treatments and massage.) I’ve lived less than 1% of my partner in this realm. I’ve invested in fragrances (facial mists, candles…) and I’m “allowing” myself to go to tanning booths or to just lay in the sun! For years I was so judgmental of others who “wasted” time laying in the sun!!! I was so very purpose oriented!! I’ve now been to a Korean spa twice…first angry with society (partly true in that men don’t have as much access, but I was projecting big time!) and when I first went it was like going to save some little boy who was crying, alone and I had to get to him to sooth him!
--crying and laughing. I’m want to open up my ability to be spontaneous. Recently Karen let me into her truth more and I got to have sequential days of heart-breaking-opening tears. What a joy to be free like that! Also, it’s so fun to laugh. More playing and teasing and being silly. (Not that the tough stuff is “bad” now…just that there’s more “lightness” to balance things.)
--hanging out. Karen and I have a new (couple months) ritual to sit and visit every morning while sipping coffee. I recall inviting a friend to go camping with me once some years ago and he looked forward to sitting in camp and sipping coffee…I thought he was crazy-lazy as I wanted to hike every hill. Recently while camping with Karen I sat still most of the whole time and loved it…watching mountain sheep, waking in the middle of the night to see a deer near us, muskrats and more.
--travel. I’d gotten as far as Bermuda (business, but much fun), Hawaii (several islands, including hang gliding), and the Los Cabos area of Mexico prior to being with Karen. I just couldn’t give myself permission to go and travel further…some had to do with getting away from a business. But Karen, with far less resources had been to India and Thailand 3 times, Tahiti, Fiji and the Bahamas. Of course, now we’ve done some incredible stuff in India, Thailand, and Costa Rica…
--Various Meditations and Therapies. I’m just learning of Dynamic Meditation, looking at getting more education in bodywork/massage, and have an interest in Rebirthing. I want to look more into shamanic traditions as I know there’s a part of me that I want to get back in touch with. But first I have to admit that I was too judgmental in the past around “woo-woo.” Yes, some of it can be ingenuine, but I threw out the baby with the bath-water!

The process takes me through an anguish of not having manifested or been open to these things…where I limited myself. Then as the anguish goes away, I feel small, “neophyte,” “less-than” as I let go of a way of being that buoyed my confidence in the past. In the past I relied on a “comparative enough” to be in the world. I drop from knowing into an extreme vulnerability of not-knowing…a scary place that most of us avoid. I know I did.

The Rip and Tear of Leaving a Way of Being

I have found myself with less energy to work on my business (it's there, but measured, has to be more fun...less driven or efforting, cant'do that), and even stuff like flying an airplane (don't want the hassle of bi-annual training, keeping current with flight time and reading, paperwork...if I flew often it would be "flowing" "natural" and worth it...otherwise, no), and remodling the house (I've done this for years, work all day then work on the house for hours. The house was a metaphor for "Me"...I can't fix "me" by fixing the house...but when I'm relaxed my creativity and work results in my(our) house and gardens to be an expression of my(our) inner life and that's good.)


After reading a bunch of writing of Almaas, I write the following:
So identified with "not enough support forthcoming from the mother or father (in childhood), this sense of smallness and dependency is experienced as helplessness, deficiency and inadequacy." I can see that, although I have also enjoyed "achieving" in life, so much of the way of being I'm "abandoning" or letting go of has to do with achieving in order to compensate for the above sense of deficiency.

Almaas writes:
"Since one deeply believes (usually unconsciously) that the inadequacy is not a state but a fact, and this causes a deep hopelessness about the possibility of expansion, one defends against this awareness by settling for a mediocre life. If there is any expansion it is small and usually only external."
...well for me I've expanded plenty in certain areas of my life, but to be more relaxed, playful...even silly at times, creative (again, as it would be a return), dancing, joking, laying in the sun (allowed beyond a heavy judgment of "lazy" for the first time in my life)...this is the direction of expansion that I'd not previously allowed.

A case cited by Almaas:
"Jordan's case:
He cannot stop doing one thing after another, managing so many jobs and commitments and interests that he now has no time to relax. None of his activities is particularly difficult, but to be involved in all of them is very demanding and takes all his time and energy. He does not truly need to do all of them, but he somehow cannot see that. He keeps complaining about how busy and hurried he is, but he will not stop. "
...reminds me of myself...although I've been releasing this over the past 10 years or so....I think I went back into this way of being when I remarried 3 years ago, knowing I had someone to provide for, to impress?, to be competent around (yup, that's to impress)...and when moving from family, friends, and her work left her depressed for a while I just redoubled the way of being to help us/her because I wasn't beyond it yet!

"but if one goes deeply into himself, exposing the deeper layers of the ego structure, he is bound, sooner or later, to come face to face with this dreaded basic characteristic of his individuality. "
...yes, big time. And I refer to this, from Anthony DeMello, as Aloneness--that paradoxical place where as one fully embraces the aloneness and not longer "rush toward" or "cling to" another, one actually becomes free to intimately commune, even enjoy union, with another.

I totally love the affirmation within the following passage:
"Our exploration of the deeper layers of the normal personality reveals that these defenses are still present and are in fact employed extensively. They become more active, or rather more consciously active, in the deeper stages of inner realization, revealing, in the presence of every ego individuality, structures that are, or are similar to, psychotic, borderline, narcissistic and schizoid structures. "
(I added the bold)
...and...
"Basically, with this resolution, one attains a much greater measure of disidentification from the state of inadequacy. When the inadequacy manifests it is regarded as an emotional state, just like any other, that is transient and conditional on certain identifi­cations. One stops believing it is a true description of who one is. It will manifest whenever there is a major expansion, but it does not stop one's expansion."
(my underline again)

Kurt and his mother

Everyone saw me interact around my sense of lovability...and how I've striven to "make up" for any un-lovability. And you saw, I believe, how I "was" a little boy in that process. What only one or two people knew was that earlier I had connected around the image of Peter Pan...

I'd always been brought to tears with Robin William's portrail of an older Peter who'd left Neverland to live in the regular world. I suddenly saw why I was so drawn to that story and why it made me cry. You see, when Peter Pan went into the world he became very adult, a successful business man. But he lost his playfulness, he missed musch of his young son's life...his baseball games, for example. And, now as Peter Panning, he was so afraid of heights that he was terrified to fly in an airplane! I'd alway knew that I cried when he found himself again as Peter Pan, but I had no idea why. During our first practicum weekend I saw the achiever he'd become and the boy in himself he'd lost. I also knew what it was like to develope a fear of heights, even though I'm a pilot (very irrational fear...as I suppose they are.) How he'd given up so much in order to achieve was lost on me before...

Anyway, Wayne's process gave me permission to visit something that is an undercurrent in the Peter Pan story: "I wish I had a mother." As I repeated it I began to cry. I was grieving what I had never had in my mother. (For that matter, she'd never had it in hers either.) I somehow new I was onto something by allowing myself to grieve, not "loss," but absence. (It has shown up as clinging for acceptance and approval and fear of abandonement.)

This was where I was when Robert and Wendy led me into and through my valley of the shadow of death...and all of you were in front of me. I will tell you that I went to a state of near-no-mind...in fact I wasn't so articulate, nor did I care, for awhile. I went to a place where I envisioned all of my fellow practicum participates could go onto being the greatest counselors on earth and me do nothing at all...be no one special...and I'd be perfect just as I am. It was quite the state of beingness...

Well, about 4 days later I spoke to my mother on the phone. And she was contracted, once again by a criticism of someone...bound by her dependency on others for a sense of self, and I just loved her. Things that used to hook me just didn't matter. I didn't need anything from her anymore...I was now just there for her. I talked with her for quite a while, very willing to just drop whatever was going on in my day to be with her on the phone. Most amazing though, was a particular event. When I asked her a question and she in her typical fashion went off tangent without even beginning to answer the question...she caught herself and said, "I didn't answer your question did I?" And we both laughed about it. I, at that moment...the first for as long as I can remember...saw how cute my mother is. I saw "cuteness" in her "stuff" and I told her how cute she was.

For so much of my life I've made the fact that my mother is emotionally frozen at about age 4 or 5 into a problem. This day I saw how cute this 74 year old 4 year old really is. Her beauty is just there in her beingness. I couldn't see it so long as I looked for something else.

Dream...an incredible dream for me. A couple nights ago I dreamt of being on this street, a residential street...vague and shapeshifting street, but pleasant. And there were these two old men that I didn't know standing next to their bicycles. Then one of the old men mistakenly let his bike slip away from him and it started down the street. Somehow I managed to catch it for him, but not without it somehow loosing some of it's parts. After handing him the bike I searched for these parts, without which the bike--or some function of the bike--wouldn't work. I found almost all the parts and had returned them for him, but there was this small nut that held it all together and without finding that little nut it wouldn't work.

After trying and trying to find it...and realizing how much effort I was putting out for this old man that I didn't even know, I suddenly looked up to the sky and realized what perfection there was in helping this man. It was perfect. Life was perfect. There was no waiting to become, no waiting for and needing some "part" that will make it all work. Right now I was being a gift to another person and in that I and Life were perfect.

What was amazing was the feeling or actualy a state that I was in. It may have been a direct experience, although I'm not sure I've heard of having a direct experience while in a dream state. All I know was how complete and utterly peaceful and fulfilling it was. When I woke up I tried to return to the state, but couldn't.

Why "OpeningTheGift"?

OpeningTheGift is the Blog of Kurt Treftz showing process of the Integrative Counseling Practicum. OpeningTheGift is about discovering the gift that I am for myself, those I'm in relationship to, and the world at large. It is about opening my gift such that I can perceive another's gift, even help them open themselves as the gift that they are.

Honor, gratitude and the gift of opening in process

Hello everyone,

I feel a great amount of honor and gratitude working with you all, being allowed into your hearts and souls and shadows...and your holding me so respectfully as I open up and/or enter my own.

This is such a fit for me, an answer to how I want to work with others. (It is also such a fit for my own growth and for what I see is needed between Karen and I as a couple.)

I'm having an interesting time living with more "being." What peace, what "observer self" place, for lack of a better term. Then I also see--as does Karen when I have feelings come up--how some of my newness seems fragile, where I'm quite protective of my new territory. I shared how I achieved so much in life and not been okay with "hanging," not okay with "partying" much at all. Well, if I'm so judgmental of self this will certainly get in the way with both personal relationships and clients. Anyway, I feel protective of this new territory...to protect my "hanging" and "cutting loose." It's interesting to see how I protect "it" or myself as though I'm protecting a child. Anyway, I'm protecting the very thing I used to be so judgmental about. Interesting, as I believe that this is not only understanding that is opening up, but compassion as well.

A huge learning for me is how huge it is have someone be a listener, a witness of process. (Of course, as counselor we not only listen, but also evoke there very process and keep it on track.) A few weeks ago I attended a 7-day Enlightenment Intensive where, when taking my turn as contemplator, I could communicate whatever arose as a result of my contemplation. It was an enormous opportunity to both allow stuff to surface, to recognize it for what it is, and to let it go through the process of communication.

Then, one of my compatriots from that event shared (from a private experience), "...if (as a circumstance arose for you, or between yourself and another and) you had a committed listener and enough time to discuss absolutely everything connected to (whatever issue)--to dramatize it, feel all the feelings, say what needed to be said, shout, scream, whatever--you might get underneath it in a way which simply has it be gone. ...When it is gone, you are simply you, unbent-out-of-shape."

My friend's writing endorsed for me the freedom to have the necessary process I need at times. And, as I get clearer, cleaner experience I can better tell what is perhaps just venting reactive, stuck crap vs. emoting as I move through something. I'm also--sometimes painfully--aware of how some people are not open to my very needed "communication release." In fact, I'd say that it is culturally accepted that someone is suspect if doing so. It's just not understood for the healthy process that it is.

All of this speaks to both the great needs people have of this work in the world, the need for us to become clear in ourselves in order to facilitate the process, and how we can't really be effective without the requisite compassion.

Much love and respect to you all,