GreenMan Substack Podcast

I am one of those Taylor Swift fans who doesn’t like her music, though I enjoy her generosity, outspokenness and strength. So you can imagine my surprise when I heard a song of hers that I liked, the moody This is Me Trying. It felt less polished and commercial. I liked the atmosphere, the pace and the vampy tone. But what stuck out to me were the questions it raised about life, relationships and our very solid ideas about what it means to succeed.

Most Star Wars fans remember Master Yoda beckoning to Luke: ‘Do or Do Not. There is No Try.’ This tough-love approach mirrors our classic American work ethic. We are taught that ‘trying is lying’ when we don’t live up to sales goals or get poor grades at school. We portray trying as an excuse and a failure. While I’m sure this motivates many, I wonder if we might reconsider our blanket rejection of trying.

The singer describes how her trying feels risky, and yet she moves past her comfort zone: perhaps for the first time. She is navigating old feelings, remorse and feeling stuck. This is a song about vulnerability and overwhelm, but also persistence. Perhaps trying is all we have. Maybe trying is trusting, letting in a little faith that things could be different this time.

Personal relationships are not sales quotas. Doctors can’t try to perform a surgery. They must succeed. But humans who seek a loving union must try. In such relationships, trying is succeeding.

Trying may take many forms in love relationships:

the willingness to trust again after being hurt

giving others the benefit of the doubt

leaving our comfort zone to risk rejection

communicating difficult feelings and expectations

forgiving transgressions

So as we look at our current and previous relationships, we can honor ourselves and our partners for the times where we and they were courageous and tried when so many voices inside protested.

When we put pattern recognition aside and trusted someone who looked and sounded like someone who hurt us

When we admitted we were acting small and didn’t know what to do about it

When we saw someone we loved give everything they had for us

When we accepted that someone we loved couldn’t try in a key moment

Trying is the point of departure. Trying is the gesture that says:

You’re worth the effort

You’re not a collection of your worst moments

I see how much you love me

I see your innocence and goodness

So when relationships end or fail, one or both parties have decided not to try anymore. Maybe their trying wasn’t being reciprocated. Maybe trying wasn’t enough. Perhaps the parties couldn’t align. Perhaps doubts or fears crept in. Old patterns and overwhelming life circumstances. Misunderstandings and unhealed ruptures. Bad timing.

A rueful insight that keeps coming to me:

Even when you have two kind souls with a sacred bond and loving intentions, there are so many pitfalls:

fear, lack of trust, misunderstanding, communication issues, external influences, and traumas.

No relationship is invincible. There’s no sure thing.

Another sad realization dawned on me:

In real ways, this was me trying for the first time in my life.

Nothing I have ever experienced approaches this level of pain and loss.

This is me trying to let go.

I remember a person from my youth mentioning that a tiger can’t change his stripes. I would debate them with the opposite point; I thought we were more affected by nurture than nature. Both sides of the argument have valid points. I see the tiger argument as being cover for a person who doesn’t want to change and thus has formed his beliefs around this resistance. “I’m just like this,” they might say.

My therapist in high school mentioned a useful dichotomy and it stuck with me: Trait or State? I love how a term can illuminate and expand the depth of inquiry. He was asking me about my depression and related behaviors. Are these core traits, or are they choices brought on by temporal states of consciousness? I didn’t know. Perhaps the curiosity it invokes is more important than conclusions.

Another question arises: what are the long-term effects of these states? Do states ever make de facto traits? Or do we ever get fooled into thinking something is a trait because we’ve been in a state for so long as to render it second nature? These questions are beyond my pay-grade. Again, perhaps the state of curiosity can suffice.

I point out when I see an error in perception. I want to map it so that others may avoid the pitfall. I need to feel more understood and put a name to a face. I seek a sense of beginner’s mind in my readers and myself. I love sureness, but we are so often artificially sure because we skip steps in critical thinking. I want people to arrive at sureness via open-mindedness, objectivity and close scrutiny of their thought and feeling processes. We can convince ourselves of anything, especially with the help of others, social media, and our old wounds. What happens when we question everything we profess to believe?

I’ve presented this question as an error in judgment and perception. The error is assuming a person’s tendencies are ingrained and unchangeable. That assumption leaves out the conditions, what’s going on in their life. Can we contextualize the behaviors and believe that this person is capable of change?

If so, maybe we can come to believe that we are capable of change and growth. We can view our personalities and tendencies as fluid and mutable. And we can view others as dynamic instead of static. When we view others as static, we may be protecting ourselves from pain or from having to grow, change, or offer others a chance. We may protect ourselves from the vagaries of vulnerability, only to subject ourselves to the vagaries of loneliness.

We do this because our attachment injuries try to recreate the same familiar scenarios from our youth or relationship patterns. And we think, I’m just like this. I always screw up relationships. But we really just need to retrain our neurology, our behavior patterns, our attitudes and responses. Then we can have the love we want without losing ourselves.

Please check out this recording for a description of my interview series.

Episode 1 should land early next week.

Thanks to all my subscribers for reading my posts and commenting and sharing.

~Jason

In a courtroom, the accused cannot plead ignorance. We are responsible for following the laws of the land, even if we don’t know what they are. The onus is on us to adhere to the myriad laws of cities, counties, states and nations—all at once. We are at the mercy of the power society wields.

In our personal lives, we wonder at the very nature of reality. We may not know what we want, who we are and why we’re here. We may not understand the motivations of the people and institutions around us. We can feel lost in a world bustling with activity and enterprise. Are we violating unseen laws of reality?

I am reminded of an 80’s TV show called Greatest American Hero. The lead character had a super suit, but never got the instruction manual. So he would crash and spin and flail for the whole episode and eventually succeed and help the person who needed his heroism. This reminds me of our plight as humans: making do with our barely provisional understanding.

We don’t magically know what to become or how. We don’t automatically have needed skills, nor are we taught discernment. Armed with a minimal education, we are not taught how to find our way psychologically and spiritually. We are largely expected to just figure it out. The world goes on like this and seems to thrive, and yet, it’s chaotic. Some of us may have gone through much of our lives feeling lost, wishing we had that instruction manual for our super suit.

Spiritual traditions and religions abound. They can offer guidance but can be self-serving. So we either follow the teachings or we forge a path on our own. This can feel quixotic. One can emerge beleaguered from decades of disjointed searching for meaning, purpose, direction and happiness. We just don’t know much about this place and our place in it.

Why are we here? Who put us here? We seek meaning, togetherness and a better life despite or perhaps because of our relative ignorance about our very nature. We seek to create our art as catharsis and to help others. We do this not knowing where our efforts will take us or if it matters.

So when I speak of pleading ignorance, I mean it from the most humble and bewildered place. A place of wonder and genuine surprise. I didn’t know life was like this. I didn’t know I could waste so much time, or come to love so deeply. I had dulled my capacity to love and was unaware we could come back from such places, and that this return would bring such pain. I didn’t know I could want something so much until I experienced it and then lost it. I was so certain of my beliefs around such subjects. What else didn’t I know? How else have I deceived myself?

We speak of our inner child glibly, but no one ever verifies that we have one until things on the outside fall apart. How would we have known to learn about such things? We have cars and planes and an internet, but we’ve not even begun to meet ourselves. We, like the deep sea, are functionally uncharted and fluid. We are part of a grand mystery, and yet we are at the mercy of that mystery. We walk around like we know what we’re doing. We do what everyone else does, like the first day in yoga class. Go to your job. Go on vacation. Buy things. Talk about what people talk about.

I don’t seek to shirk responsibility by pleading ignorance. I see my errors, but most are the fruits of my misperceptions. Self-deception is just that: we don’t know we are doing it. We think we speak our hearts clearly, and yet can be fundamentally misunderstood. And the meanings morph as more events pile up and the days and years pass. This is where we are.

I make the following petition to the court of life:

I request the benefit of the doubt. I am innocent until proven guilty. I deserve grace, like the grace I willingly offer. I want my counterparts (inner child, friends, family, lover) to accept that I’m acting from a place of benevolence: an honest place. That I am a friend, not a foe. And to realize I need and deserve a chance to prove such things. And further, that when mistakes happen, that they are not a sign of malignancy, of ill-intent, or of deep character flaws. They are the errors of a loving and growing human.

To me, our innocence is self-evident. I can’t confidently say that I know everyone is innocent. But I can’t think of the last mistake I made that was not made innocently. I was mistaken about someone’s intent. I had bad information. I didn’t consider the consequences. I reacted. I panicked. I deceived myself. I’m still culpable, but I’m also still good. These days, I think we must be careful to manage and filter our beliefs around self and our innate goodness. We must be willing to defend ourselves and our character too.

We can unwittingly buy into character assassination, often in the form of generalizations about ourselves as an representative of our various subcultures. We can look to social media as one culprit. Often in our zeal to be accountable, we may self-gaslight as we try to fit in.

If we are fish and trauma is the water in which we swim, then we don’t see the water. It’s ubiquitous.

To question a person’s perception is not manipulation, unless you’re doing it for nefarious purposes. That’s the difference, the intent. We so casually buy into the oft-misleading messages of the meme we saw on our feed. Critical thinking can be easily bypassed by repetition. Some of us who remember a time before the internet may spot this more easily.

A level of sophistication is needed to navigate the pitfalls of this moment in time. We can look back on the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age and realize that some things never change. Some of those we follow on social media are grifters and charlatans. They play on our ignorance, our desperation for happiness, our limited attention span and our bandwagon tendencies. Sophistry abounds. But if we don’t keep a critical eye to manipulation or a fallacy, it’s hard to notice it in real time. Thus we risk our capacity to perceive our realities. This is propaganda in high tech. I seem to have a Spidey-Sense of such things, in retrospect, but am just as susceptible. I remember buying a Jordan Peterson book and acting like this guy had all the answers. Then I watched some videos about him, Mel Robbins, Andrew Huberman and others who are everywhere. I was astonished at the manipulative use of language, the appeals to authority, the mass hypnosis of it all. The shady deals and the dishonesty. We take them on faith because they’re rich and successful. Look what that has gotten us politically. We do this at our peril. The dividing line is awareness.

We’re so modern and yet we’re still rubes, especially because we can’t see it. It’s just human nature. We love when the snake oil salesman pulls into town. We love to be sold. We love the charisma, the theater, and the promise of a better day. We want to turn our minds off and to push that easy button. We could all plead ignorance and we’d be forgiven. And yet it’s not a question of absolution, but of survival, for our selves, our nation, and our souls. Can we see what is real? Can we decode the internal and external messages that bombard us? Can we maintain a greater level of awareness?

In the richest nation, we are all a paycheck away from disaster. In the Land of the Free, we fear rendition to a South American prison. In the 21st century, women don’t have the bodily autonomy they did in 1973, when you could smoke in an airplane or a hospital. We can send a probe out of the Solar System, but can’t stop the constant forest fires raging across the globe. We are awash in stark contradictions and social upheaval. The Pope is a White Sox fan. The President is a pretend TV show business man. And I’m sure when he’s gone his supporters will plead ignorance. And we’ll throw up our hands and let them. Not because of veracity, but because we have grace. This grace is the glue that holds our affiliations togeth…

I love etymology, the study of the evolution of the meanings of words. Such explorations can parallel and inform our search for a more personal understanding. When society offers ready-made explanations and well-worn paths, we may seek satisfaction in a search of our own. Redeem is a word layered in meanings and usage: one that we use in business and in personal life. We can redeem a coupon. We can trade this thing of value for something of ours, like a layaway, or for something we purchase.

We may also seek redemption in a personal or spiritual way. Our religions offer redemption through surrender to a higher power, following the rules of religious texts and discipline. Through such choices, many find greater joy, peace and community. They may swear off behaviors, addictions, and unloving attitudes. I honor this tradition.

Some of our favorite movies, mythological and otherwise, involve a person awakening to their faults, their past and their transgressions. We love watching them overcome the pitfalls on the road to redemption. To be redeemed is a rite of passage, a hero’s journey to wholeness and equilibrium.

I love redemption stories. I love the renewal they promise in the form of humility, accountability, change, growth and spiritual seeking. One might make amends and make changes. They may seek guidance about stubborn foibles. They may rediscover passions and connections. The lost are found via seeking and finding redemption.

In this case redemption means to purchase oneself back from the debt of negativity and a life squandered. It also means to re-deem, to look again. To take the measure of ourselves with fresh, loving eyes. What a powerful and courageous choice. Perhaps this is the core of the undertaking.

We must re-deem ourselves. Yes, we may undertake treacherous and painstaking work. But let’s try seeing ourselves afresh: celebrating our strengths, our talents, our innate goodness. Do we unwittingly dance to the typecasting of our inner demons and our external detractors? Will we re-visit our opinions of ourselves? Do we stand up for ourselves? Can we redefine our self-image?

I ask because I see a flaw in the apparent philosophy of the redemption theme: that we must act and change our way out of negativity. We are not enough until we do these acts and make these changes. We are not worthy. We must fix it. We must change for our god, our family, our business or our friends. And we may actually need to make major behavioral and attitudinal changes. But we may want to consider if unquestioningly accepting this initial premise may be a form of covert self-non-acceptance.

This is where we could get into the weeds. Are we removing a lifetime of programming, unknowingly downloaded from our families and societies? Of course. So the changes of which we speak may amount to a shedding of all that is not us: co-dependence, people pleasing, suppressed feelings, and other agents of in-authenticity. These and others abound in us and disrupt our experience of our essence. So let’s remember that the changes we need to make are the releasing/healing of faulty attitudes, misunderstandings, grudges and other forms of ignorance to which we are all susceptible.

I want to caution my reader friends not to use redemption as a tool for self-flagellation. We are so easily misled by our traumas, our families, friends, media, businesses and social media. Don’t blame yourself for being ignorant. It’s not your fault. But it is your responsibility. Don’t blame yourself for being negative. It’s hard to be sensitive in a society that is sick and on a planet that is being exploited. Join the billions of members of the stressed-out club. We are all like this. Those who are thriving despite all the pressures of the economy and personal limitations should be emulated. We can honor the path that they forge for us to follow.

Many use organized religion with its obvious strengths and pitfalls in order to seek redemption. I commend them. Others use more aboriginal spiritual endeavors, the arts, philosophy, love of nature, animals, exercise, music, and charity. We can mix and match to our liking. We can model the behaviors of those who are having success. Whatever choices we make, let’s make them in the spirit of self-love, not self-blame. Most of our faults can be chalked up to trauma responses, misunderstandings, and just plain human frailty. Letting ourselves off the hook for our mistakes and limitations may be the most important step on the path to a new life.

Don’t disparage yourself. Don’t help others define you in a negative light. You are not a collection of your faults. Swear off your previous transgressions against self and others. Make amends. But don’t let it take you down. Because you may come to a place where the burden is too much and it will sneak up on you. We are often all-too-ready to grovel and see ourselves as lowly. But this doesn’t help. It’s a fine line between humility and humiliation. The missing ingredient is self-respect. No creator and no one who truly loves us would want us to be unkind to ourselves.

The grave title evokes images of treachery, of pirate ships on the high seas and dramatic historical events. A mutiny is a violent act of rebellion and betrayal. And yet, some historical mutinies may have been justified or inevitable. I wonder if such metaphors can shed light on our inner landscapes and unseen internal power-struggles.

Over time, the main focus of my writing has shifted from the macro to the micro, from politics to the personal. In Singular and Collective, I argued that we are a collection of memories and of genetics and attitudes and bacteria and organs. We see ourselves as singular creatures and yet we are a collection of oft-competing voices. We are also singular members of collective entities like couples, families, companies and nations. The more we heal and embody ourselves, the more these other affiliations heal and vice versa.

As I consider what’s behind our relationship struggles, I have landed at attachment theory. In my recent essay, Externalizing the Voices of Maladaptation, I explored how we tend to identify as the thoughts and stances of our attachment styles. We take for granted that we are in charge, making our personal decisions. But I argue that instead of ‘we,’ what often runs the show may be more of a collection of attitudes and trauma responses instead of our true adult self. These programs become second nature and limit our interactions, especially if we are unaware of their existence and unseen influence on our choices.

So the imagery of Mutiny on the Bounty is a furtherance of the ideas I presented in the aforementioned essays. The mutiny in question is one where our core wounds take over. Some core wounds you may recognize: abandonment, mother wound, father wound, worthiness, etc. Core wounds are the result of early childhood trauma. Be it neglect or abuse, we develop these core wounds as a result. We then get triggered by events that remind us of those previous events and which then alerts our amygdala to have a fight/flight response. For some of us who are easily triggered and may have been triggered for years, we may be ruled by our wounds. We do need to externalize the voices of maladaptation, but the attachment style is not the source of the problem. It’s the symptom. The problem is that the core wound is using the attachment style as an interface by which to control us. Because the core wound knows that if we unmask it and do the healing work, we will functionally kill the wound. We will wrestle back authority over our lives and reintegrate the energy that was being used by the core wound. So, I posit that our needs and those of our wounds are at cross purposes. This is the cause of the cognitive dissonance we experience.

We have been operating under the assumption that our core wounds and, by extension, our attachment styles, are trying to protect us. But perhaps our core wounds are trying to stay alive themselves. These mutineers have hijacked our minds. If we are not careful, they will steer our lives over the cliff. They have mutated from a child’s defense mechanisms to a sub-entity, a thought form, a ghost and a pseudo-self. We talk about the wounded self or wounded child, but I think the key word is wound. The wound is in charge. The wound has infiltrated our personality and, in my experience, is constantly trying to distract me from this truth.

This insight was powerful for me for a few reasons. First, recognizing that the core wound serves its own interests helps explain why getting control over my mind is so difficult. The wound is constantly distracting me with fears, worries, sadness, the past and negative feelings and thoughts. These in no way help me. But as long as that wound has me believing it’s me that is sad, me that is broken, then I won’t threaten its existence and its place in the driver’s seat every time I’m triggered. And for some of us, that state may be more common than we know. We may think we are not triggered most of the time, but I’m wondering if we might view such states along a continuum as opposed to an on/off switch. If we have multiple core wounds, it’s possible to be under the influence of multiple wounds at once. Clearing or releasing one may initiate relief and instill the false sense that we are now not triggered.

Earlier I mentioned how certain real life historical mutinies may have been justified or inevitable. I wonder if the mutiny of our core wounds was and is inevitable. If we were traumatized at an early age, then we didn’t develop certain skills and facets of ourselves. The wound may have protected us, but if we never develop in that area and choose to unwittingly self-abandon, then it seems only natural that the wound would step in as a pseudo-self. This would explain its relative sophistication. It may have been impersonating us for years or most of our lives. This works just fine as a provisional solution until new stressors come along and demand more than this stilted version of ourselves can handle.

Then we have to go in and do the work. That work may include therapy, somatic work, meditation, EFT, attachment work, journaling, shadow work, inner child work/reparenting and more. And it is not for the faint of heart, but neither is living under the mutiny. Neither is running away from or driving away those we dearly love. Living in fight-or-flight is not thriving.

If you like my work, please consider sharing it, liking it, subscribing, or being a paid subscriber. I hope this writing helps you recontextualize your life issues and brings you hope. Since I often write about the darkness, I want to include something positive for my readers. Please remember that your essence is loving. It’s ok to need love. It’s also ok to have made mistakes in your efforts to seek love or to have hidden from the overwhelm of its apparent demands. Getting better at this is possible. Soon I’ll be embarking on a course of study where I’ll be learning how. More on that later.

Please enjoy the following song about love by one of my favorite artists:

What was so compelling about the movie, Bladerunner? I was changed by this movie, despite rewatching and finding it slow 25 years later. I'll blame screens and my ADHD. Obviously it was well cast and acted. There were huge, memorable scenes and much novelty and exposition. The Film Noir feel set a gloomy mood: darkness, rain, endless night and disconnection. An urban future dystopia that spoke of a worsening decay, an exaggeration of the problems of today.

But the movie asked philosophical questions centering around the need for and lack of connection with others in an atomized world. Also, the film pondered the questions, 'what makes one alive?' What makes us real? What makes us legitimate? And thus, what is a real connection when we don't know if the other is real? (and by extension, if we are truly real).

BladeRunner posits that life begins when we realize how fleeting it is. This is epitomized in Rutger Hauer's scene 'tears in the rain,' which he rewrote. I was devastated and transfixed. I'll never forget that scene, and yet, through much of my life, I didn't let its message inform my decisions.

He was motivated to forgive his enemy and to save life in his final moments of life. Impending death brought meaning, purpose, inspiration, and appreciation, even to a man who was a machine. He had gained perspective.

He spared Deckard's life and this prompted Deckard to value his remaining time and to speed away with his woman who was no woman. It didn't matter. His and her lives were fleeting and they had a deep connection. The only consideration was getting to safety and spending whatever time remained together.

Because the distinctions didn't matter. Who was human and who was a machine. This was the red herring that dominated the movie and distracted the viewer. Robot or human can be stand-ins for gay or straight, black or white, citizen or illegal, protestant or Catholic, and on and on. We focus on the surface, the label, the differences, the apparent mismatches, at our peril. Our fascination with binaries wastes our precious time. This is the time where we could be loving our lovers, and living our lives.

As we approach this computerized future where giant businesses dominate and liberty feels quaint, we must do as the unlikely heroes did in this love letter to courage; we must feel for one another. We must see past arbitrary labels. We are alive now. Life is precious. There is no time to waste. All we have are our selves and our soul connections. Togetherness is what makes life worth living.

That movie came out when I was a child. I first saw it as a 25 year old adult. I reveled in its high drama. And then I fell asleep for 25 more years. And here I am sitting in the full catastrophe of its meaning. There is nothing but the urgent task of loving those we love and living our truth. And then we're gone.

I’ve been writing essays for ten years, 5 in earnest. I began writing about insights that came through me. Some inner voice would urge me to speak on a subject; politics, our culture, the arts, philosophy and personal development were the main subjects. I see how we exchange ideas via social media and other interactions. We often adopt ideas and stances when one of our preferred thinkers presents us with a novel idea.

This exchange can be powerful and helpful, accelerating our development, our connection to others and to new information. But the results of such exchanges can also be deadly, spreading misinformation about cures and viruses, autocrats in savior’s clothes. We are amazing creatures, and yet we’re not great at discernment. Each of us falls prey to propaganda, fake news, and quackery constantly. We think in fallacies and are influenced by unseen biases. We also fall prey to a cynicism that all unfamiliar ideas must be quackery unless and until our intellect is satisfied. We can wall ourselves off from useful information that might help us. Such is the nature of our myopia.

I have been circling around attachment theory for maybe 10 years. Initially a friend used it to explain my behavior in a relationship that was not working. I began exploring the concept and the vast implications of this important work. As the years have passed I believe that attachment theory is a deep-dive most of us need to take.

The idea is that we have mal-adaptive stances toward bonding and relationships based on early childhood neglect or abuse from our caregivers. PTSD, from this perspective, is omnipresent, not just for survivors of natural disasters and war. Early life and relationships later on affect our capacity to give and receive love, to trust or conversely, to be alone.

We’re all familiar with how our minds can play tricks on us. Our egos worry, blame, judge and envy others. They preoccupy us with shallow aims if we are not vigilant. We can and must develop the capacity to discern truth from fiction, in the world at large and in our own minds. We so often identify with anything our minds say and all feelings these thoughts illicit. We can become depressed or anxious if we identify with negative self-perceptions. We can generalize about the opposite sex or people of different spiritual or political leanings. Many of these stances are borrowed from people in our lives: our parents and siblings, teachers and friends. Clearly social media propagandizes us constantly. We are bombarded with an overwhelming cacophony of talking-points that illicit feelings in order to get us to vote for a candidate or to not vote at all. We are asked to: buy this product, trust my authority, keep up with the Joneses. We could be forgiven for wanting to collapse under the weight of these conflicting and demanding external influences. But as above so below; a similar manipulation is occurring within.

I posit that our personal attachment styles: anxious, avoidant, secure, anxious-avoidant, are as important to study as our favorite politician’s shady past or our tantric breath work Doula’s training. We take our own thoughts and beliefs as gospel at our own peril. We are misled by the cognitive distortions provided by our faulty attachment styles when we unquestioningly identify with what they tell us about ourselves and our lovers. I call this the ego’s ego. Attachment is an overlay onto our already complex nature that we must include and account for if we are going to truly learn to trust our discernment on affairs of the heart.

It’s not enough to realize we have an attachment style, to name it and accept it. We must be willing to question our every belief. Because intimate relationships eventually illicit these deep-seated trauma responses. If we identify as those responses, we will rationalize their whispers. We will reject those who are safe or seek those who are not. We will be unwilling or unable to be alone or conversely, we will run away from vulnerability.

Our attachment styles are rudimentary programs (created in response to childhood traumas) that have never been updated, never questioned and never externalized. We think they are us, but they are not. Second nature is not nature. We are the person in the jail cell, waiting to be free. We are the human that needs connection and safety, space and boundaries. We are the little kid inside who doesn’t notice how the fearful thoughts are not us, but an outdated program that has been protecting us since we were too young to know.

We can thank these trauma responses because they helped us survive. And yet we must externalize them, to not identify as them. They are no longer helping. We must see them as a faulty security system: one variety locks down the estate every time the wind blows, the other convinces us to abandon the estate in search of safety. And like a real security system, they can be updated, replaced or removed. Since these trauma responses are second nature, we can learn to see past them. One of my life goals is to continue to do this work and to help others in their liberation from the vagaries of complex PTSD and childhood trauma.

positivepsychology.com/attachment-theory/

People are dynamic. But deeper, people are a collection of cells, of bacteria, of memories, of the genetics of their forebears. We are singular and we are collective. Together we make couples and families and neighborhoods. We are part of counties, states, nations and a planet. All of these collections of people are entities themselves. They have collective voices and desires, trajectories and destinies.

As such, I say that these entities are organisms that need feeding and care. We neglect them at our peril. We can neglect the organisms by seeing ourselves as mere individuals, by not realizing that by feeding the entities of which we are a part, we nourish ourselves and each other in the process.

So it's with that in mind, we see the effects we have on each other when we perceive the other by their limitations, or conversely, by their essence. When we bring a critical stance to those with whom we share affiliation, we can make it feel unsafe to continue forging a bond and co-creating the entity of a couple, a family, a business, a team. We can poison the well.

Conversely, by believing in each other, we can assist those we care about in their metamorphosis and self-discovery. Our love and support can and does create seismic shifts in those we know, those who we take the time to affect for good. Those in whom we believe.

It's under these circumstances that we can join together and create art and music, safety, and bonding. We can look back on key figures in our lives that, through their patience, tutelage, care and respect, helped us chart the far reaches of our undiscovered inner selves. These people helped us believe in ourselves, showed us who and what we are.

That self-discovery is priceless. We can work alone in the peace and quiet of our inner sanctuaries, but we also discover ourselves through relation to others. Through that admixture with those who inspire us, who teach us, who demonstrate characteristics we wish to embody.

We may look back and wonder who we would have been had they never come along. How would we find our way? How would our home-fires be burning if not for the painstaking work and patience of those who saw us when we were extinguished and offered us a light?

We don't have to dwell there very long to feel immense gratitude. I look back and realize that I am who and what I am for my interactions with my heroes and friends and lovers and family. We only get the opportunity to shape others in this way when we fully humanize them. When we see them as dynamic and capable of becoming and fully embodying themselves.

We may struggle to do this if we can't or don't see ourselves as worthy and capable of change and growth or love. We may look around and ask who believes or believed in us when we needed it and how that propelled us to grow and change in the past. Hopefully we can fully accept the belief of those who see beyond our faults. We have to let it sink in.

And if we have been guilty of judging, blaming and criticizing those we care about, we must make amends. Especially when we discover that we truly do see their essence and that we adore that essence. The judging behavior can be a trauma response and a learned behavior. But we can replace this with acceptance. And our belief in them can assist their belief in self.

We can also discover our grace, our reverence, and our patience. We can focus more on becoming than controlling and getting. And when we bring these discoveries to our relationships we potentiate the growth of all involved.

As a nuanced thinker, I like to debunk false binaries. Memes can present us with false choices that can be socially divisive and easily falsifiable. Life is full of grey areas and context. And yet, sometimes binaries are appropriate.

Two books have had an outsize effect on me: Power VS Force and Love is Letting Go of Fear. Both books about binaries written by men who wanted to help show people the way to love, joy, success and peace. I felt changed after reading both of them.

Love is Letting Go of Fear states that we are in one of two states at all times: love or fear. This makes it simpler to navigate life. Am I motivated by love or fear? Is fear whispering in my ear? Am I trying to control or surrender? Even though there are only 2 choices, discerning the difference can be difficult. Fear can make a strong case, especially when we don’t see that it has infiltrated our capacity to make sense and distorted our discernment.

Power Vs Force describes a spiritual ladder of emotions and feeling states, from low to high. It prescribes letting go of the lower levels, like hatred, fear, and anger, in order to ascend to the next highest level. A lesson may await at each level and once it is passed, we can ascend into a more and more positive experience. So it's spiritual ascension, but he's making the same point as Jampolsky in Love is Letting Go of Fear. He's saying we can either employ power, which is loving, accepting, giving, and patient, or we can employ force, which controls and demands. One goes up and one goes down.

One book describes the mental-emotional states and their consequences in a self-help format. The other depicts an energetic presentation and the nature and experience of these options we have before us.

I bring this up partly because I never noticed how these books were similar to each other and how they both affected me profoundly. I don't read much these days and maybe I'm missing some similar illumination. But the books and insights that help us navigate life are always available to be revisited and reaffirmed.

I guess I caught myself wanting to control a scenario, to share the 'truth' with someone. I wanted to prescribe them medicine that they had not requested. I sense that the information is valid, but what was my motivation? What would the outcome have been had I shared it, impelled by my agenda? The answer is simple. I was motivated by fear. I wanted to 'force' the information, I wanted to control outcomes and serve my interests.

So the information can be loving. We can be loving overall. But that's not enough. We have to catch ourselves. Our minds are usually playing tricks on us. These books remind us that we are becoming. We are projecting and radiating a state of consciousness out into the world. That's really where our power is, not in trying to control and manage events of which we may have merely a passing and provisional understanding.

Recent events are showing me that I can focus more on the becoming than the getting. Or that becoming is the best way to get what we want and need. Let everyone else do what they will on their schedule. Allow for divine timing, or act as if. What I radiate, what I release, what I create, what I share---that's where my power resides.

Anything else is forcing and is motivated by fear. It might work for a while.

In our personal lives, we can attract instead of coerce. We can offer instead of convince. We can acquiesce and yet speak our truth. We can surrender in lieu of clutching.

Today I choose to radiate what I want to see and feel in the world at large and with the people that I encounter.