WHOSE LIFE ARE YOU LIVING?
Realising Your Worth
Newleaf
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Introduction
PART ONE SELF BEFORE THE ECLIPSE
Chapter One: Your Real Self
PART TWO PARTIAL ECLIPSE OF THE SELF
Chapter Two: People Blocks To Self-Expression
Chapter Three: Cultures That Darken Human Presence
Chapter Four: Hiding Your Real Self
Chapter Five: The Shadow Self
Chapter Six: Shadow Profiles
PART THREE TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE SELF
Chapter Seven: Invisible Self
PART FOUR THE EMERGENCE OF THE SELF
Chapter Eight: Journey Towards Self-Realisation
Chapter Nine: Realising Self
Chapter Ten: Enlightened Cultures
Chapter Eleven: Living Your Own Life
Also by Tony Humphreys
Copyright Page
About the Author
About Gill & Macmillan
INTRODUCTION
You were not born bad, ugly, stupid, slow, average, superior, inferior, depressed, anxious, useless, obsessive-compulsive, delusional, paranoid, aggressive, violent, passive, shy, timid, fearful, emotionless. Nevertheless, these are just some of the labels with which adults describe themselves or are described by others. Furthermore, apart from congenital physical conditions, the majority of us were not born sick; nonetheless, the rate of illness among adults is considerable.
Freedom to live one’s own life is a universal aspiration. The aspiration begs the question: What is it that is stopping you from being authentic? You may answer: ‘My parents or my boss or the church or my wife or my husband or society or my children.’ However, as an adult what mostly blocks you from being real is yourself.
No matter where you are, what you are feeling, how you are behaving, whether you are rich or poor, educated or poorly educated, employed or unemployed, married or single, atheist or theist, well or sick, young or old, living or dying, you have a self that is sacred, unique and ingenious. Sadly, a long, long time ago you began to hide away many or all aspects of your real self behind a screen, a façade of thoughts, feelings, words and actions. Depending on the level and intensity of the threats to your expression of your unique self, you may have lost either partial or total touch with your real self. However, there is a part of you that not only knows everything that has happened to you, but remains in touch with your sacred presence — this is your unconscious mind.
From your earliest days you actively found means to hide your real self from family, social, religious, political and educational forces that pressurised you to conform to their ways. These pressures accelerated as you got older. Whether young or old, demands that get you to suppress or repress your own spontaneity and wisdom lead to a crust being formed around your core self. You knew as a child and know now as an adult the dangers of living your own life. Examples of past and present pressures are:
‘Do as I say.’
‘Stay away from there.’
‘Don’t touch things.’
‘Sit still.’
‘Don’t think like that.’
‘Stand up for yourself.’
‘For God’s sake hurry up.’
‘Speak slowly.’
‘Shape up.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘Don’t let us down.’
‘Stop making a fool of yourself.’
‘You mustn’t feel like that.’
When shaken, hurt or abandoned, in order to survive you fashioned a false persona, a shadow self that would satisfy the expectations of others, particularly the significant people in your life. For the sake of conformity you hid away some or all aspects of your real self. In the place of your unique self — naturally intuitive, harmonious, different, dynamic and highly intelligent — a foreign self has been substituted. You do not rest easily with this false persona; in your innermost place you want to express your own true self. You may say, ‘Conformity is reality; that is how things are and there is nothing anybody can do about it.’ But I believe that the very resources you employed to hide away your true self can be employed equally to bring forward the light of your real self. Even though it is neither an easy nor a short journey, it is exciting and the prize is possession and expression of your sacred self no matter where you are, whom you are with or what you are doing. You will see things in yourself that up to now you dared not allow even yourself to touch into.
Contemporary society worships at the altar of success, and ‘having’ has become the sinister enemy of ‘being’. Our lives are pressurised and stressful because we have lost conscious sight of our true nature. Each day becomes a deeper hiding of our real selves. We depend on our parents, spouses, friends, lovers, children, employers to make us feel good, and when they fail us, we turn to medical, psychiatric, psychological and other helping practitioners. We entrust ourselves to others and are prepared to burden others with our lives, to the detriment of their well-being. Furthermore, when we give over responsibility to social systems, these organisations very often collude with our helplessness by primarily reassuring us and thereby repressing us.
Ask yourself the question: Whose life are you living? Are you living the life of your parents, your spouse, your employer, your lover, your children, your church? By giving up your freedom, you no longer belong to yourself. You belong to the powers and people who have lessened and demeaned your presence.
You need to belong to yourself. As you learn to deepen your contact with your unique self, you will discard the façades, the pseudo-images, the masks, the disguises and postures that have served to protect you but also prevented expression of your authenticity. Illnesses — for example, infections, colds, flu, stomach and bowel problems, tension and migraine headaches, back pain, high or low blood pressure — that were needed to reduce emotional and social threats will either be eliminated or reduced. You will discover your individuality, dynamism and vast capability to live your life from the inside out.
No matter what age you are, you can bring the light of your real self forward and emerge from the darkness that has hidden you.
PART ONE
SELF BEFORE THE ECLIPSE
CHAPTER ONE
YOUR REAL SELF
IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE LIGHT
At a graduation ceremony for counsellors, some of the relatives of the graduates had brought babies in arms. While awaiting my turn to speak, I observed the audience of adults, children and infants. Everyone except the infants sat quietly, obediently listening to the speakers. Whilst not unduly intrusive, the babies ‘aahed’ and ‘oohed’, looked around them and gleefully responded to attention from their minders. Their curiosity and excitement was a thrill to watch. When it came to my turn to speak, I remarked, ‘how wonderful it is to have some free and confident voices in the hall, and I am not talking about the adults.’ I also expressed the wish that these babies would not lose their spontaneity, because my work in clinical psychology often involves helping adults, adolescents and children to rediscover their own voice.
Except for those babies who experience physical or emotional threats in the womb, infants are an amazing source of light in the often dark world of the people they encounter and the cultures they inhabit. Watch them — they are unique, spontaneous, naturally curious, adventurous, able to give and receive love, sure, poised, confident and remarkably good at making their needs known. They love life, are harmonious, vociferous, gentle, sensitive, expressive and separate. They are uninhibited; they enjoy their bodies and do not allow failure to block their progress, nor are they seduced by success. On the contrary, they trip, they fall, they fail to execute an action, they succeed, but they keep moving on to the next challenge. Progress is what drives them forward. Infants also enjoy time on their own and are masters at amusing themselves. What a contrast this picture of infants is to that of adults and older children, whose typical profile includes being inhibited, fear of failure, dependence on success, guardedness, difficulty in either giving or receiving love, worry about the approval of others, low risk-taking, lack of confidence, shyness, timidity, fear, aggression, insecurity and possessiveness. What happened to our light and how to become re-enlightened are the themes of this book.
The presence of each infant is unique, sacred and unrepeatable and takes expression in multiple ways — physical, emotional, intellectual, behavioural, social, sexual, creative and spiritual.
PHYSICAL EXPRESSION OF PRESENCE
Every infant has a unique physical presence and is different in size, shape, colour, skin texture, movement, bodily expression and physical intelligence — the infant’s body knows when hunger and thirst are there and not there, and the foods that best suit physical development. The infant’s body will rest and sleep when necessary and be active when energised.
No matter what movement, facial expression, body posture or illness symptom the infant shows, it is important that parents and others see that these physical manifestations are always right. The baby may be communicating hunger, thirst, physical discomfort, need for attention, depression, need for stimulation, fear of abandonment, anxiety, excitement, sickness. Furthermore, physical explorations of their own bodies and those of parents, as well as of their physical environment, are all intelligent attempts by infants to know the physical worlds they encounter.
EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION OF PRESENCE
When it comes to emotional expression and receptivity, babies have been seriously maligned. For too long, infants have been seen as egocentrics who believe the world revolves around them. My own observations and the reports of parents, particularly mothers, suggest the opposite. Not only are babies good at receiving love, they are equally involved in giving love. I believe that when babies reach up to adults, they do so to be loved and to give love. Love is a two-sided coin, and all human beings have an innate drive to love and be loved.
In the same way that the infant’s body is always right, so too are the infant’s feelings. Feelings are generally regarded by most psychologists as the most accurate barometer of what is happening to a person at any one moment in time. Whilst I agree with this belief, I also contend that every bodily movement, thought, action, dream, sound or creation is an equally powerful and accurate expression of a person’s present state of well-being.
Babies can demonstrate a range of feelings that reflect the presence of inner security: contentment, affection, peacefulness, excitement, joy, wonder, humour. When insecure, as a result of hunger, thirst, pain or threat, they manifest feelings such as fear, alarm, frustration, anger, rage, grief, sadness, depression, apathy. It is vital that these wonderful emergency feelings of infants are responded to immediately so that the dark clouds of unmet needs do not gather. I call these feelings ‘emergency feelings’, as they are an attempt to alert the self and others to the presence of some threat, real or perceived, and they need caring and effective responses.
Not only are infants marvellous at emotional expression, they are equally impressive when it comes to emotional receptivity. Babies are wonderfully receptive to affection, warmth and fun, and will very quickly pick up tension, crossness, anger, uncertainty, nervousness, frustration or depression in the adults who take care of them. Whilst the presence or expression of emergency feelings in adults puts babies’ security under threat, compared to adults they are unconditionally loving, understanding and quick to show love when their distressed carers are ready to receive it. No enduring sulk or withdrawal or aggression results; a willingness to return to a state of equilibrium is always present.
INTELLECTUAL EXPRESSION OF PRESENCE
The intellectual expression of infants has been gravely underestimated, mainly because of our society’s confusion of intelligence with knowledge. One of the first challenges that infants face is learning the foreign verbal and non-verbal language of their carers. They do this in an amazingly short time and without any formal education. Moreover, during that learning process they have their own physical language, which they employ ingeniously to communicate their needs. They also learn to read the body language of adults. In contrast to adults, infants are highly developed in reading non-verbal communication.
Of course, it takes babies time to build up knowledge of the physical, familial, social, educational, religious, political, sexual, emotional and creative worlds they have been born into, but they possess an incredible capacity to make sense and order out of these complex worlds. They also have a natural curiosity and an eagerness to learn. It is in these early years that human beings learn more about the world than at any subsequent time.
BEHAVIOURAL EXPRESSION OF PRESENCE
Behavioural expression is the baby’s attempts to learn the skills required to survive and progress in the social systems they inhabit. Their behavioural repertoire will always reflect the culture and sub-cultures of which they are members. For example, babies born to traditional Javanese families rarely, if ever, cry; they do not need to as their carers detect their needs at a much earlier stage of expression. In Java, infants are physically carried for the first twelve months of their life and the language of tension in their bodies, or restlessness or coldness or rushes of heat, is picked up in the physical closeness with their carers. Western babies have to resort to the more urgent voice of crying to get their needs seen and met.
What is astounding is how speedily infants adapt behaviourally to the settings in which they live. They also learn to read the faces and eyes, bodily movements, tone of voice and body posture of adults, and they choose protective actions to reduce any threat that is present.
As with feelings, every behaviour a child exhibits always makes sense. No action on the part of a child is stupid, negative, nonsensical or insane. But many adults are not in a position to appreciate the wisdom of infants, and for their own protective reasons they choose to react harshly to certain behavioural expressions of their offspring. Key opportunities to deepen the security of children are missed when parents have lost the realisation that all human behaviour makes sense.
Much has been made of children’s capacity to imitate adults, but what is often not seen is that such responses are creative attempts to get to know and adapt to their outer worlds. Not to adapt would mean appearing alien, and babies are not fools when it comes to knowing what the consequences of this could mean. A clear distinction needs to be made between intuition and learning. Intuition is an innate knowing that puts infants on the alert when any threat to their well-being is present. Learning arises in response to the intuitive knowing of what range of behaviours would serve infants best in their home and other environments. Infants are well ahead of adults in acting out from an intuitive place.
Infants and young children also put adults to shame when it comes to honesty, spontaneity and openness. One four-year-old’s mother continually complained that she never had any free time. She was astounded when her little daughter said with some exasperation: ‘Mum, I think you’re going to be dead before you find free time.’ How accurate was the child’s observation. Another story involves a single woman in her mid-thirties who was attending a family function, which also included her young niece. This woman’s brothers and sisters, all married with children, were being photographed in their separate family groups, but no suggestion of photographing the unmarried sister was made. Much to the woman’s embarrassment, her little niece very assertively insisted that her aunt be photographed on her own. What a pity it took the child to make the adults aware of the importance of affirming each person’s particular state of living.
Adults often do not see that each child in a family will find a unique way to behaviourally express self. Apparently, when I was a baby, my twin brother would continue to suck his empty bottle, whereas as soon as mine was empty I would pitch it out of the cot. As we grew older the behavioural differences became more marked. He became an expert at extroversion, humour, creating friendships, charm and roguery, whereas I became more academic, homebound, caring of others, introverted, shy and honest.
SOCIAL EXPRESSION OF PRESENCE
Have you ever noticed that in a group of people which includes a baby, the person whose social presence stands out and attracts most attention is often that of the baby? This phenomenon is not due to the obligatory noises adults make around the newcomer. No, there is an ancient recognition present, a suppressed or repressed memory of adults’ own infant experience of freedom to express fully one’s presence. There is the added factor that a baby’s aura radiates a healthy and non-threatening invitation to make contact. The social presence of the infant is unique, special, unrepeatable, individual, beautiful, self-contained and wonderfully expressive of and receptive to unconditional attention. Invariably each baby finds their own way to make their presence felt — the smile, the eye contact, the peaceful countenance, clapping, pulling, rocking, sighs, ‘cute’ mannerisms, attraction to colours, shiny objects — no end of ways.
The light of infants’ social presence is maintained when others around them worship their unique presence and do not compare them with others, but rather celebrate their difference.
SEXUAL EXPRESSION OF PRESENCE
In contrast to many older children, adolescents and adults, toddlers demonstrate great comfort and ease with their bodies and are not shy in exploring and experiencing pleasure from their erogenous zones.
Their sexual expression is natural and is not split off from the other aspects of their being, as it is so often in adults. Infants do not fragment their presence, and they move through the different expressions of their presence as needs and drives arise. Fragmentation follows admonishment, violation or exploitation of children’s particular ways of being.
CREATIVE EXPRESSION OF PRESENCE
Whilst creativity manifests itself in all expressions of being, it also has a life of its own. Babies, no less than adults, have an innate drive to express their uniqueness and individuality in creative ways as they get older. The means of doing that multiply — art, sports, dress, design, gardening, humour, drama, music, song, poetry, sculpture, pottery, mechanics, dance.
Even in the baby’s early days of creativity you may get glimpses of what is to come from his or her athleticism or absorption in certain activities or colour preferences or inimitable responses to music or dance or mesmerisation by certain stimuli, such as television, animals, toys, sounds.
There is a deeper purpose to creativity, one that is more often than not knocked as the child gets older, and that is to live out our own unique lives.
Each child within a family finds distinct roles, interests, hobbies, identity (for example the academic, the sensitive one, the athlete, the wise one, the carer, the joker, the mechanic, the artistic one), food preferences, friends, dress preferences. Children have an innate determination to express their unique inner selves and, in spite of many blocks to this expression of self, they individualise in creative ways the very defences that are there to shield their real selves from further demeaning.
If only adults were in a place to appreciate the creativity used by children to express their difference within the social systems they live in. Difference is a manifestation of each person’s sacred and unique origin, and its celebration would reduce much human misery.
SPIRITUAL EXPRESSION OF PRESENCE
In the beginning of their lives most babies (except those who experienced threat in the womb) are in the light of their unique presence and effectively are expressing:
I am a unique and sacred individual (spiritual expression).
My body is sacred and always right (physical expression).
I am unconditionally lovable and I unconditionally love (emotional expression).
I possess vast intelligence to make sense and order out of the people and worlds I encounter (intellectual expression).
My behaviour always makes sense (behavioural expression).
I am special, different, incomparable (social expression).
I bring a uniquely creative presence to this world (creative presence).
When light meets light, light expands. When parents, adults and other children respond unconditionally to the ways in which infants express their unique selves, then they give babies an enlightened world to be in and to explore. Sadly, there is nobody who has had that experience of total acceptance, but the level of appreciation will determine how much light children retain and how much shadow they need to hide aspects of themselves that are a threat to others. Only when those who are the carers of infants are in the full light of their own presence are they in a position to affirm the light of infants’ presence. Otherwise, to allow light to penetrate the darkness of fear, insecurity, terror, dependence and control of others would mean major risks to any level of protection that has been attained to date. For example, to move towards the light of independence from an over-protective parent could involve risking rejection and the parent plummeting into depression.
VOICES OF THE REAL SELF
Presence, real or shadowed, is concerned with the expression (real) or suppression (shadowed) of all essential aspects of self: physical, sexual, emotional, social, intellectual, creative, behavioural and spiritual. The expression or suppression of these several aspects of self can take myriad forms, which are unique to the individual person. The number, depth and breadth of these voices of the self are testament to the amazing power beyond measure that is present in each of us. These voices can be used to express your real self and also employed ingeniously to hide your real self, if threat is present. For example, language is a fascinating voice of the human being that can act to reveal or hide. An individual who is threatened by others can weave a colourful, endless tapestry of words when you are in their company and not allow you to get a word in edgeways. No matter how long you are with them, this continual verbal weave keeps flowing in order that your verbal voice is not allowed to threaten them. All the time they are hiding who they truly are behind the perpetual flow of words. Somehow this person has learned it is not safe just to be oneself in company. It is likely their early experiences were dominated by hypercriticism from one or both parents.
Body language is also a powerful indicator of whether people are being real or hidden. The body posture of the person who is true to self is sure, poised, energised, open and definite, in contrast to the person who hides his or her real self, with head down, shoulders hunched, low in energy, restless, uneasy. Similarly a person’s dress or use of colour may provide indications of how they are in themselves.
Some examples of the voices of the psyche are given below. What is wondrous is that human beings keep developing new ways of self-expression. The technological revolution that is currently happening bears witness to this.
VOICES OF THE SELF
Words, thoughts, dreams, imagery, welfare feelings, emergency feelings, laughter, humour, delusions, illusions, hallucinations, projections, introjections, silence, inspiration, creativity, music, poetry, art, sculpture, song, prose, eye contact, tone of voice, body posture, body movement, behaviour, energy, touch, sexuality, dress, pain, sickness, diet, career, interests, hobbies, athleticism, dance, work, relationships, spirituality, violence, passivity, timidity, self-mutilation, home, slips of the tongue, colour, medication, metaphor.
Each of the voices can be used either to express clearly your own true self or to camouflage who you really are. In the latter case, the protective use of voices can provide clues as to what lies hidden behind the false façade that had to be created in order to survive.
PART TWO
PARTIAL ECLIPSE OF THE SELF