Being there is the first step, and recognizing the presence of the other is the second step. To love is to recognize; to be loved is to be recognized by the other.
Thich Nhat Han
Thich Nhat Han
On Loving and Mattering
There’s a new story that’s emerging from the future and it’s changing everything! It’s a story of us. All of us that can see the birth of an interconnected, co-created, living, breathing world of pure potentiality, and it includes all of us who have not yet seen it! It is a world that pushes away nothing, embraces everything, and practices being firmly focused on what is, rather than living in the remembered past or imagined future. It is a world of loving presence and the recognition that we all belong, here, at this time in the evolution of humanity!
For the last hundred years, it’s been percolating in the mysteries of quantum thinking. It has been hidden in plain sight in the thoughts of mystics, medicine people, and enlightened beings for tens of thousands of years. But, now at this very moment, it has arrived and you are part of this miraculous transformation. The objective world of separation is dissolving, the foundations that have supported the old world of drama, greed, separation, and control are crumbling. This new worldview may seem like a distant dream, but it is right over your shoulder, waiting to be embraced.
When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
Max Planck
Max Planck
About forty years ago, Stephen Karpman, M.D., developed what he called the “drama triangle”, which identifies three key roles, the victim, rescuer, and persecutor. This view is often a hand me down from our family of origin, our caregivers and ancestors, and accompanies most suppressed and unintegrated trauma. It is often hard to see when we are in one of these roles. They are reinforced by others in the same role or those in the counterbalancing roles. The “victim, rescuer, and persecutor” refer to roles we unconsciously play or try to manipulate other people to play, not the actual circumstances in someone’s life.
The stance of the victim is “poor me!” Victims see themselves as victimized, oppressed, powerless, helpless, hopeless, dejected, and ashamed, and come across as “super-sensitive.” They can deny any responsibility for their negative circumstances and deny possession of the power to change those circumstances. A person in the victim role will look for a rescuer, a savior, to save them (and if the other refuses or fails to perform that role, they can then quickly turn and now perceive the other as a persecutor.) Victims have real difficulties making decisions, solving problems, finding much pleasure in life, or understanding their self-perpetuating behaviors.
The stance of the rescuer is, “Let me help you!” Rescuers work hard to help and caretake other people and even need to help other people to feel good about themselves while neglecting their own needs, or not taking responsibility for meeting their own needs. Rescuers are classically co-dependent and enablers. They need victims to help and often can’t allow the victim to succeed or get better. They can use guilt to keep their victims dependent, and feel guilty themselves if they are not rescuing somebody.
The stance of the persecutor is, “It’s all your fault!” Persecutors criticize and blame the victim, set strict limits, can be controlling, rigid, authoritative, angry, and unpleasant. They keep the victim feeling oppressed through threats and bullying. In terms of resilience, persecutors are unable to bend, be flexible, vulnerable, humane; they fear the risk of being a victim themselves. Persecutors yell and criticize, but they don’t actually solve any problems or help anyone else solve the problem.
Can you see yourself, or any of your family or ancestors in these roles? Bringing awareness to them will help you to define the story or narrative that is living you, and perpetrates habitual behavior that keeps you from being fully present and connected to the world as it is, and as it isn’t. These roles shape the way we meet the world and keep us doing the same things over and over again, expecting different results. I’ve found that the best way to transcend and transform these roles is by doing authentic group work in a safely held environment. This is why I continue to create groups to work with trauma, dissociation, and soul loss.
The stance of the victim is “poor me!” Victims see themselves as victimized, oppressed, powerless, helpless, hopeless, dejected, and ashamed, and come across as “super-sensitive.” They can deny any responsibility for their negative circumstances and deny possession of the power to change those circumstances. A person in the victim role will look for a rescuer, a savior, to save them (and if the other refuses or fails to perform that role, they can then quickly turn and now perceive the other as a persecutor.) Victims have real difficulties making decisions, solving problems, finding much pleasure in life, or understanding their self-perpetuating behaviors.
The stance of the rescuer is, “Let me help you!” Rescuers work hard to help and caretake other people and even need to help other people to feel good about themselves while neglecting their own needs, or not taking responsibility for meeting their own needs. Rescuers are classically co-dependent and enablers. They need victims to help and often can’t allow the victim to succeed or get better. They can use guilt to keep their victims dependent, and feel guilty themselves if they are not rescuing somebody.
The stance of the persecutor is, “It’s all your fault!” Persecutors criticize and blame the victim, set strict limits, can be controlling, rigid, authoritative, angry, and unpleasant. They keep the victim feeling oppressed through threats and bullying. In terms of resilience, persecutors are unable to bend, be flexible, vulnerable, humane; they fear the risk of being a victim themselves. Persecutors yell and criticize, but they don’t actually solve any problems or help anyone else solve the problem.
Can you see yourself, or any of your family or ancestors in these roles? Bringing awareness to them will help you to define the story or narrative that is living you, and perpetrates habitual behavior that keeps you from being fully present and connected to the world as it is, and as it isn’t. These roles shape the way we meet the world and keep us doing the same things over and over again, expecting different results. I’ve found that the best way to transcend and transform these roles is by doing authentic group work in a safely held environment. This is why I continue to create groups to work with trauma, dissociation, and soul loss.
Healing yourself is connected with healing others.
Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono
We think of people as out there, not part of me. This is what Alan Watts called, the “skin encapsulated ego”, and it is a product of our classical reductionist perspective of being separate objects in a world of objects. But, from a mystical or quantum perspective, you not only exist out there as a particle, but you also exist in me, in my nervous system, as a wave of feelings, emotions, and physical sensations that are moving, changing, and connecting interdependently with what’s alive and moving in each other.
What if the you in me became really interested in discovering and exploring the me in you? What if in every encounter, good, bad, or ugly, I reached out to know, see and comprehend the ways in which we shaped and influenced, and reaffirmed each other's beliefs, assumptions, and experiences of who we consider ourselves to be? What if every perceived difference was in fact a way we validated our strongly held beliefs about people like you and me? If we started to do this consciously, from a place of compassion, curiosity, and not already knowing, we would have an experience of what the Buddhists refer to as, interdependent co-arising! This is how new worlds are born!
What if the you in me became really interested in discovering and exploring the me in you? What if in every encounter, good, bad, or ugly, I reached out to know, see and comprehend the ways in which we shaped and influenced, and reaffirmed each other's beliefs, assumptions, and experiences of who we consider ourselves to be? What if every perceived difference was in fact a way we validated our strongly held beliefs about people like you and me? If we started to do this consciously, from a place of compassion, curiosity, and not already knowing, we would have an experience of what the Buddhists refer to as, interdependent co-arising! This is how new worlds are born!
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
Buckminster Fuller
Buckminster Fuller
What we are against can no longer define us in this emergent shifting into a new worldview. We must hold our focus on the world that is being born with every thought, choice, and action. What we value matters - if we stand for truth, love, connection, equality, interdependency, freedom, and the original goodness that we are born into - If we hold mutuality or love as our priority the old world will dissolve in the luminous power of our mutual light and love. What if the me in you could unconditionally accept the you in me? What would a world of true inter-being look like? Let’s imagine together…
In the end, it is all about love, about letting life live through us. We are not separate from nature, we are nature and our job is to grow, heal, and evolve. You really do matter and what you do or don’t do is a choice that affects the field of life and that’s how new civilizations are born… What’s happening sometime around now, is a sudden awakening to the beauty and perfection of it all, a cosmic dance of partnering with the universe. An allurement to discovering the unknown at the cost of relinquishing our strongly held beliefs, assumptions, and ideas…
In the end, it is all about love, about letting life live through us. We are not separate from nature, we are nature and our job is to grow, heal, and evolve. You really do matter and what you do or don’t do is a choice that affects the field of life and that’s how new civilizations are born… What’s happening sometime around now, is a sudden awakening to the beauty and perfection of it all, a cosmic dance of partnering with the universe. An allurement to discovering the unknown at the cost of relinquishing our strongly held beliefs, assumptions, and ideas…
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way.
On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
Arundhati Roy
On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
Arundhati Roy
Thank you for being a part of the Well of Light Family and working together to co-create a world that works for all life, with no one and nothing left out. Thank you for caring, loving, and mattering…
May your holidays be filled with peace, wellness, and loving connections with others
Know that your love matters…
With infinite love and blessings,
Michael and the Well of Light Team
PS.
May your holidays be filled with peace, wellness, and loving connections with others
Know that your love matters…
With infinite love and blessings,
Michael and the Well of Light Team
PS.
Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.
Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver
Buddha