Protection

I am shocked at the mind’s ability to manage, to compartmentalize, organize, to allow us to succeed brilliantly in one area, but also to hide away what we are not able to deal with and save it for another time when we have the skills to be able to handle it. There are things that others see that are hard for us to see ourselves. It is much easier to look in from the outside and see dysfunction, or places where there is vulnerability, to poke holes and make connections that other people don’t see for themselves. Maybe their mind has walled that off for good reason for the time being. The mind holds those types of things in a very primitive area, in the reptilian brain, that part is not cognitive. We might be totally unaware of what is very obvious to the people observing us and the closest in our lives. 

I think back to some conversations with a friend in the last few months. I truly believed in my core that I had done my introspection and peeled back the layers that I needed. There is always continuous work that we do on ourselves that never ends, but I really thought that there was nothing covered from my mind’s eye. I had done so much incredible work over the years, how was it possible that other people can see what we cannot see for ourselves after so much work. In the weeks that have passed the ice broke underneath my feet, a small crack became so large that I fell through and was submersed in the depth of what was previously covered. My mind’s eye allowed me to see what it had been protecting me from all along, the unaware and unseen reality. Truth is important to me, a core value of Sikhi. I felt embarrassed and bad thinking back to these conversations… I wasn’t trying to be deceptive. I just wasn’t able to appreciate it, take it in, look at it squarely, because it would have been unbearable at the time. It wasn’t that I wasn’t telling the truth of my reality 2, 6, 9 months ago when I spoke it. It is just that what our mind allows us to know can vary. As one Gurmukh told me, God gives us huge things in small chunks, that we are able to deal with. These “small chunks” might actually feel hugely insurmountable to us- they might not be termed small at all in western terms, like a horrible diagnosis. The relative word small comes from the fact that she was explaining that it is manageable, survivable, that it won’t wipe us out in one go. We have the ability to be resilient in the information that we know. I remember Dr. Gabor Maté coming to Prince George to talk about the illusion of the perfect childhood, and how that influences addiction histories. Letting go of the illusion of perfect, to accept the turbulence, uncertainty, and unbearable reality of the truth is applicable to various aspects of life. 

How can we open up to others what we cannot see for ourselves. Sometimes we have a small awareness, but in the act of sheltering those we love the most from pain, we hide. In that same act of shielding and “protecting” those we love the most from more pain, we numb ourselves from our own knowing and we simultaneously push them further away. We cannot be close to others if we do not also share the dark recesses of shame, self-blame, and fear. (This is the very basis of Brené Brown’s work as a shame researcher). In this way our past robs us twice, and feels like a double betrayal, one that took away our past, and continues to take away the present again and again. While it takes away each moment of the present, it robs us of our hard earned future. We work so hard to survive, to power through and fight in the struggle of this life, and it is unfair to us to lose the chance for joy, love and connection in the present moment. 

It really is impossible to do self-work all alone. Disconnection is interpreted by our nervous systems as life threat. It is visceral, it hits our gut when we experience disconnection. Our systems shut down and collapse (something described well in polyvagal theory). The wrong connections can also be life threatening, dangerous when we are rocky and people guide us in the wrong direction when we are vulnerable, or tip us the wrong way when we are already on a fine balance of survival. The right connections can be everything, the right people at the right times, the right words, or the right strategies, new ideas, can bring us a brand-new life. Yes we have to learn to navigate this on our own, but we as Sikhs have the guidance of our Sikhi. We have the guidance of our ancestors, survivors, and resilient Singhs and Singhniya. We have the guidance of our Guru. Connection doesn’t even have to be very big, it can be a single person that helps you navigate. Maybe you need a larger group of people to serve different functions and needs, most people do. We come to lean on our family members and various friends for different parts of our lives, but the warning will serve true that if we don’t see ourselves squarely and share the deep, we cannot cultivate real relationships.  

Stay safe out in that -40 weather!