X Pain into Ritual
The P in EXPAND
“We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.” Auden
Now that we see the barriers as energy-forms which enter our inner and outer stage, now that we understand “the problem,” the question becomes, “What next?”
As I will use the word “reflection,” I am referring to time spent with daydream, a withdrawal into the mind, or a reading of images laid out before us, or creating in collage or painting, asking questions of our unconscious, allowing sensations, thoughts and feelings to arise from within, playing outside of roles, stepping into the heart of another and into parts of ourselves. We are reducing projection perhaps but also getting to something that has a ring of deeper meaning, followed by a weighing of what we find, then welcoming further reflections leading to interpretations and insights. Greater awareness of the Inside-out or the Upside-down is a worthy and sufficient outcome for our reflections.
As I will use the word “ritual,” I am referring to a deliberate and creative response to what we come to know over time from our regular reflections. Not every period of Enlarging and X-posing Barriers requires a creative response. But, eventually, sooner or later, like the peeling back of an onion, X-posing reveals persistent patterns that have an inordinate influence over our lives. These powers can maintain their sway by being invisible to us. However deep and consistent our exploration is, what we do come to know is limited, of course, because we are limited beings; yet, with the help of Inspiration, we can know more of the reality that has shaped us.
Eventually, X-posing reveals a source of Pain and some realization of the unconscious reactions that have operated for our protection and self-delusion. We notice how traumatic “solutions” have involved forms of fighting, fleeing, collapsing, or submission. Traumatic action patterns give rise to narratives that are lies about us, tales that shame us, tell us we are bad or broken or less than. Through courageous inquiry we recognize our survival reactions to an unsafe world (usually arising from at a time when our world was unsafe), reactions that still have the potential to distort and limit our ability to be fully present, impoverishing the way we attend to our lives.
Rituals that we decide upon are not what the Fallen World tells us are “solutions.” The analytic mind tends to choke at the X-posing, as it tries to grasp and to “make sense,” explaining the Pain (dismissing it). But the Rituals cannot be a mind-full solution to an intellectual problem. There are deep mysteries that cannot be problem-solved. Wounds cannot be behaviorally modified, nor skilled out of existence. Only our Heart is up to the task of apprehending the drama, holding our awareness of the injury, exclaiming an intention to courageously protect what needs protection, bringing compassion, and imagining a ritualistic step (however small) toward healing.
Self-betrayal?
To what extent does a child have the agency to self-betray? Maybe there is proto-self-knowledge, a feeling in the mammalian heart/body between who we know ourselves to be, and what we know to be right, versus accommodations we make that abandon the deepest parts of us. To the adult mind, it might seem simply a question of cost. At some level there is a cost and consequence either way, whether you speak openly and stand in the clearing, or you gag your most vulnerable voice and exile it to the deepest thickets. But in our earliest and most consequential choices, we never had the luxury of weighing a conscious cost/benefits analysis. Rather we gave up what we love, what is beautiful, what is authentic, what is True, after a resistance that became so dangerous that we had to allow the killing of our innate Inspiration. The Inside out and/or Upside down scared us, pursued us, and shut us up until a switch occurred, and then this heart-betrayal was so powerful that the conflict moved quickly underground where we dared not trespass.
Until we X-posed the Barriers, when we looked backwards, we didn’t even see there could have been another path. We didn’t recognize a turning-point. We believed this is the way it is. Inevitable, A matter of genetics or growing up and being responsible, becoming a man or woman. Something that happens to us all with no one to be accountable.
The Pain we bring to ritual always has some shame like this and realization of our self-betrayal, even as we understand it was forced upon us. This can shake you to the core, though there is also—finally—a stance we can make that is life-affirming, self-loving.
A creative response
“Why was light given to man whose way is hedged in?” asks Job.
Our creative response, Pain into Ritual, seems simple to describe. It is an action that conveys our awareness of the injury, and it is an assertion of our authentic powers. This is not simply protesting the Barriers as we now recognize them. A victim can do that, often quite loudly. In the Ritual, we are proclaiming that we will not be treated in this way (even if the reality provided no other choice, even if we were hedged in), and we assert that we will work to invite a corrective experience.
The psyche is the starting point of all human experience, and all the knowledge we have gained eventually leads back to it. The psyche is the beginning and end of all cognition. Carl Jung The Quotable Jung, Chapter 1 the Unconscious, assests.press.princeton, Princeton University Press.
The Barrier is a deluded and ugly construct whether it is in the Inside-out or the Upside-down. Our Ritual response is True and Beautiful, both authentic and attuned. It is speaking aloud in a way that we could not during the time of the injury. A creative response, a heart-felt response, is not necessarily a plan of attack. Often, the only way we can reply to suffering, transgression, and violation is in metaphor, music, and poetry. Or, with a ceremony or celebration. We might reply to the drama by treating our body in a more spiritual way or changing our diet. Deep meaning could be conveyed through expressive art or a solemn act. Or playing a musical instrument or filling our house with flowers. A response is not tied to, and may not be “sensibly” aligned with, the injury. It is not an eye for an eye. Or a fix for the trouble. Sometimes it is a gesture that seems related, like helping those who have been similarly injured. It might be contributing to a community or to a rescue effort. We may dedicate much of our life to a cause. Or we may simply make a meal for a neighbor—which to the Upside-down will seem ridiculously small in relation to any horrific act of inhumanity or multigenerational depravity.