Footprints On The Way
Chapter Eight
What is it like to start on an adventure which could
last the rest of your life? And what experiences and landmarks might
we discover on the way? Perhaps, like explorers of old, we might find
ancient cities, treasures we can bring back, new lands or ideas - or
we might get lost! To be an adventurer you need to be made of the
right stuff, and you need to go prepared. Like Daniel Boone, maybe
that preparation was an inner condition which early life and
temperament had forged in him - a different breed of man.
If you start the inward journey, the adventure before
you can be that of journeying through and exploring your own vast
reaches of consciousness. The treasures you bring back are the
transformation of your body and soul, and the newness this releases
into your relationships, work, pleasure and to the world.
In my own, and in other people’s words, I am going to relate
something of this adventure and exploration. As you read, remember
that this is an account, not the account. It is a way, not
the way. The continent of ourselves is so vast, and the
starting points so varied, that your way may be quite different to all
others. These accounts are therefore given only as an encouragement to
show how ordinary men and women, opening to their own life process in
SR, can find transformation and the adventure of self discovery. I
have not used people’s actual names, even where they give
permission, to avoid embarrassment to members of family not involved
in SR
Beginning
There may be a point in time where either we begin to consciously
allow self-regulation to occur, or where it begins to appear without
our at first understanding what it is. Such a point in time is,
however, usually seen later as only one of the days on which we became
aware of an influence which, in fact, had always been at work in our
life, even though we did not know it for what it was. It is seen also,
that the fact we actually began conscious- SR could not have- occurred
at that moment in time if it had not been for many past experiences
and events which readied us for it. Or perhaps we push ourselves into
it by relating so painfully to our own life process it is either SR or
bust.
Self-realising, and the clearing out of the negative past is only a
step on the way to that. So throughout SR there comes the repetition
of a conscious awareness or unity with the nature of energy or life in
us. This becomes clearer as the negative aspects are dealt with, but
contact with it does not mean we have cleared all problems. It may
come right near the start as Ursula’s did, and arise again after
each new descent and cleansing occurs in the muck of the unconscious.
We can say we have consciousness, an unconscious and a core. The more
we clear the unconscious the more easily aware of our core or Self we
are.
Another aspect already covered in the other sections is
the changes in body which occur as energy blocks are removed. Ursula
experienced this as an immediate change in posture. During SR sessions
we are often led into pure movement which does link with past
psychological problems. We may, as described in Shaktipat, be led to
exercise, stretch and dance very energetically in ways we would not
have attempted outside SR This I believe is our energy gradually
moving throughout are being and rejoicing in its potential and
vehicle. John, a 54 year old, says of this process:
What self-regulation can do
“The body postures and movements were near miraculous to me
because during the previous nine years, two serious accidents and a
disease had resulted in five separate spinal fractures. For a period I
had been encased from hips to jaw in a metal and leather support
harness; for years I had endured great pain, and never in my prayers
for help had I really hoped for the return of mobility of movement
which was now shown in my childlike SR play movements.
The return of mobility is the only one of the blessings I have
enjoyed since beg inning self regulation. For many years I had
experienced consistently poor health; a lifetime of asthma, compounded
by TB in both lungs, and poor digestion with its attendant
consequences had all produced a dismal attenuation of minimal well
being with serious illness. In the first four weeks of my SR I felt
great draughts of air pouring into my lungs. At the end of eighteen
months my chest had expanded by four inches, which I discovered when I
bought new underwear. My spine was moving more freely than it had for
years; my indigestion, with its accompanying constipation, had
disappeared. I am fitter than I have been for the previous forty five
years.”
Ann explains some of these changes in more detail. I do not feel
that such changes are open to everybody practising SR Many cannot
learn to usefully apply this technique, but for those who can, Ann’s
experiences are fairly typical.
“After practising the action of self regulation for nearly 2
years there are considerable physical changes which I am aware of, in
myself They are not dramatic in the sense of “pick up thy bed and
walk” but have come about gradually.
I was always a very cold person - I felt shrivelled up with cold,
and wore numerous jerseys to keep warm. I ached with cold, and being
thin I felt these keenly. Now however I haven’t worn a vest for a
year, I am far more often warm than cold, and feel so much more alive
because of this -my feet were usually cold, now I always wear sandals
and they are warm - as are my hands. I feel so much more energy and
joy in living. I feel it flow through me.
I was often sick with diarrhoea for 48 hours - several times during
the year - but not since I began SR because I feel that the sickness
and diarrhoea was a form of tension release for me, which I no longer
need in this form.
My throat was permanently sore and red inside, sometimes it hurt a
lot, other times not so much. There seemed to be no cure for it. Now
the soreness and redness has gradually disappeared. This also I feel
was a great tension area for me because I was afraid to speak my mind.
Now if my throat feels sore and tight I am being told that I am
withholding my speech. A lot of my painful throat tension was due to
being very verbally suppressed as a child.
I released my feelings
As I released my feelings in words through sessions, this tension
gradually drained away, and I was often led into singing and chanting
quite clearly and strongly in sessions. I felt my throat to be much
freer and purer sound could come forth. I am not completely free in
this area yet, but this will take time. My voice is already lower and
more relaxed than it was.
I had a habit of tilting my head on one side when I sat still- many
people noticed this, more than I did. This has vanished now, of its
own accord. I believe that I always leaned my head to the left because
I was so strongly emotionally motivated - that as I began to develop
the capacity for receiving insight into my behaviour patterns - that
as I grew in confidence - and I was more able to talk and discuss
things, that I became more balanced and my head straightened.
I used to keep my shoulders permanently raised, accompanied by
breath-holding. This became my natural position especially in times of
stress. Gradually over the two years my shoulders have dropped and my
breathing is freer. Yet I do not consciously remember this change
taking place. Now, when I raise my shoulders and my breath on purpose,
I am amazed to realise that I used to live like this most of the time.
In watching myself more closely over the year I notice that I have
dropped another habit of keeping my hands clenched. Again I didn’t
especially notice that I stopped doing this, but I have. It was
another ‘holding on’ tension. “Keeping a grip on myself”.
I no longer need to do this, so my hands remain open.
In none of these examples did I set out to ‘try to stop doing
them, or deliberately alter my physical pattern. These changes
occurred as I opened more to myself in SR.
I have always suffered from constipation since childhood. It has
been a great inconvenience, and in recent years I resorted to using
suppositories to assist elimination. This was coupled with a lot of ‘wind’
and internal discomfort. Now I do not suffer from these troubles. I
find that I can digest raw vegetables and fruit skins easily, and
because of this I eat and enjoy more useful foods - it is a circle now
which has self-regulated, from being a tense viscous circle before to
a freer, more open circle. Yet again it happened over two years -
which perhaps is not really slowly, when I had been suffering for
nearly 30 years as my memory recalls. I was literally ‘tied up’
inside - full of nervous tension and ‘holding back from life’.
My eyes used to water, and feel weak often, especially in times of
stress, also a long-standing habit, now they are getting stronger as I
am ‘seeing’ myself more clearly.
I considered myself to be a ‘normally functioning person’
two years ago - not a freak. Probably few people would have noticed
anything amiss. I had perfected excellent camouflage, and I handled
myself well. Now I can look back and - amazed at how strong human
beings are. How I could have gone on year after year, imposing such
strains on my system. But I did, as many of us do. It was not until I
had self regulated for two and a half years that I begun to understand
fully what real living is. Not being manipulated by fears and tensions
-’not pushing on’ a self in the morning - dropping those
many ‘Self’s. The ‘coping self’ - there are so
many - and then the let-down when it didn’t always work out -
when things went wrong.
Living from the intuitive centre
None of these tensions are necessary. Now that I live more fully
from what I call my intuitive centre, I find that increasingly I self
regulate in situations. I instinctively know what is needed and follow
this.
Sometimes I find myself ‘off centre’ but I know when this
is happening so can watch to see why - this may take a few days or
weeks if a big block is coming up.
Best of all is MYSELF which is so wonderful.’”
Some SR experiences are not simply movements to mobilise the body,
or sounds to mobilise expressions of feelings and thought. For some
there are sessions in which they express in voice, inner feelings and
body movements, being a Negro, an Indian, an Oriental, European or
Arab. Or else there arises very clear feelings or being a dog, lion,
pre-historic man, snake, etc. Sometimes these are definitely linked
with a problem such as is seen with Reich’s patient being a fish,
but that is not always so. Mark describes one of these sessions like
this:
“Started this session very quickly, singing in some
foreign language, and foot stamping. The song wasn’t really
coming out very well, but my right arm began to swing round and round,
and this seemed to lead through bark-like sounds to full African
singing. I don’t think I have ever sung as noisily or as lustily
as I did in this session. Gradually the singing chant became more and
more forceful and fluent. Now I was surrendered into it deeply, and a
torrent of words and chant poured out. I really felt like an African
Chief chanting to a great crowd of people, not only in the sounds, but
in my feelings flowing. The chant became even more forceful, filling
the hall with sound, and finally in a tremendous roar or bellow, I
called out, just as if warriors had been roused up and up, and the
roar sent them on their way to battle.”
These experiences seem to be a way in which the many facets of our
energy and feelings move into a fuller, freer expression of
themselves. They certainly feel like exercises of the soul through its
full range of movement. Jung says our psyche is both male and female.
The man, he shows, also has a female side to his psyche. The woman
likewise has a male side. It seems possible that although we may be
born a white male, or a black female, we also have within us the
characteristics not only of the opposite sex, but also of the other
racial types, animals, plants, and minerals.
Spiritualist mediums of today and in the pest, allow these secondary
aspects of the psyche to dominate consciousness, saying they have a
Red Indian or Negro guide’. But in SR one experiences the same
situation, yet recognises these powerful influences in our
unconscious, simply as aspects of our own energy needing integration,
expression or recognition.
Of course, another simpler explanation may be correct. The
unconscious is so open to suggestion it may simply reproduce
energetically ideas and images which have entered it. But there is a
little evidence to suggest a more complex situation. Many people who
have never read or heard of other people’s SR experiences are
often led spontaneously into certain movements or experiences other
than psycho-therapeutic ones. One of the most common is the spinning
movement while standing. This seems to accomplish a disorientation of
the ego se the core can express more easily.
The energy of life
The fuller release of our internal energy also brings other
experiences which are in one sense much more easily understood, yet
also have an area of not being defined. This is no doubt because our
culture has so little experience with them.
Tom has had very clear experiences of this energy at work. He had
always since youth, been interested in keeping his body healthy and
mobile. About a year before he started SR he had this experience. He
says, ‘I had a peculiar conscious and semi conscious experience
without dream images. I cannot remember ever having had it before. My
hips and pubic area vibrated. Moved is not the right word, nor shook,
as the movement was as quick as that produced by an electric vibrator.
I have seen this movement, or something like it, on a buck rabbit
during mating. Not really a backward or forward movement, but a very
rapid vibration. This occurred with me quite spontaneously and I
relaxed and let it happen. There was no erection. It happened for a
fairly long periods four or five times, then as I became more
conscious, disappeared.”
Many people experience this vibratory energy during SR, but as Tom’s
experiences are fairly clear I will continue to quote him. After about
two years of SR the experience came back. Tom, in a journal of his
experiences says:
“Recently my body has been vibrating more consciously
than ever before, i.e. even in waking it has remained. Also, some
nights it feels as if it is flowing deeply into P’s (his wife)
being. Sometimes she is aware of this too.”
Gradually this condition of body vibration occurred very frequently
for Tom, he says, “Sometimes I am aware of my whole body
vibrating for many nights consecutively. This is not simply my own
impression, as my wife can actually feel the physical vibration. Also
it sometimes occurs that I experience this as an energy reaching out
to P. and weaving in with her own energy. This too is a shared
experience, though not always. As this has gradually developed I can’t
help wondering what the further stages of its development will lead
to. Sometimes in deep sleep I am aware of what this energy is doing in
my being, how it is flowing and where blocked. But for long periods I
then lose any awareness of it.”
The vibratory healing energy
Janov points out that his ‘post primal’ patients
experience a different, more conscious sleep. This is my own findings
in self-regulation. Gradually a different experience of sleeping
occurs. Sometimes one wakes up in sleep. That is, like Tom, although
deep asleep, there is an awareness of what is occurring in ones being.
How far this can develop I have no means of knowing, but there seems
from the evidence I have typified from Tom’s experience, that the
conscious release and experience of one’s core energy as we
contact it in sleep and waking SR, leads to quite a different sort of
relationship between the opposite and same sexes than we generally
know.
This came home to me recently when attending a week-end where most
of the people practised SR I noticed a very different sort of
relationship operated between some of the people. I will quote Tom
again to explain.
“I was talking to R. who I had never met before. We were alone
in the small hall as the others were outside eating. It seemed like an
ordinary conversation but suddenly my body began to vibrate and then
to shake heavily.
R. could accept this so I did not stop it as I could have done. I
sat holding R.s hand and it seemed to me as if my central being wanted
to express something to R. It seemed quite beyond verbal expression.”
Gradually this expression from the core defines for people. It is as
if our own released energy reaches out and calls up the other persons
life energy. If this happens it may not be pleasant to be near the
person. For our own energy to move in great excitation may be very
painful because our past agonies have not been cleared. One woman said
of such a contact, ‘It made me realise how I has thrown the
beauty of my life away along with the rubbish. This was so painful I
felt on the verge of tears all the next day. And when Andrew spoke to
me I couldn’t hole it back any longer.”
Another person describes it as follows:
‘The worst day for me was undoubtedly the one where A. letting
that other part of himself flow out to me, pushed me into the
appalling realisation that I’d been shutting life out and still
was. And for the rest of that awful day and the ones to follow there
was nowhere to hide, nowhere to go.”
One can only wonder what, in marriage, as a parent with children,
with friends and animals, it is really like to contact each other Core
to Core.
Sex Marriage and Children
Self regulatory experiences do not come neatly packaged into areas
of our life such as sex, God, growth and childhood. Anything we
experience in one area is very much to do with every other area. Then
Ursula released the hold her mother has in her, this enabled her to
realise more of her pleasure and for her posture to change. Mark, in
his thirteen year old struggle with masturbation and its resolution,
not only radically changed his ability to feel deep sexual longing,
but also his whole philosophical view of life shifted. In my own
re-evaluation of the anaesthetic as a child, my body changed in that
constipation disappeared. My energy changed because greater genital
sensitivity could arise which had been locked up in the anus. My
relationships changed because women ceased to be a threat of death. My
religious feelings changed because I realised I was not God in the way
I had felt myself to be.
Usually, however, we meet with experiences in SR which very directly
relate to our sexuality. Most people at some point in their journey
into self-regulation find, if they remain open, they are led to
masturbate. Few of us have in the prevailing attitudes of our culture,
properly fulfilled the urge to masturbate when it arose in childhood
and youth. As this urge arises and is fulfilled, and the problem
attending it worked out, a new feeling grows in us. It appears as a
string feeling of independence. The pleasure in fully released
masturbation is so intense and complete we realise we do not need
anybody else to fulfil us sexually. Out of this sense of independence
a lot of compulsive dependence upon others falls away. In its place
comes a desire to share out intense pleasure with someone of our
choice. We see this in Mark’s experience where the melting
longing feeling arose after his desire to masturbate. The desire to
share and give pleasure is quite different to the need for someone
else to give us pleasure.
I felt the need to masturbate
For some people this process is a great struggle and not aver
quickly. Just to permit sexual feeling to flow more fully is
difficult. Ann says of an early phase of her self-regulation: “At
first the new energy took the form of tremendous sexual feelings. For
three months I was engulfed in my own sexuality. several times a day.
I was quite overwhelmed by the strength of there feelings. It was a
relief when it died away, because I was not really ready to deal with
fly whole sexuality. However, by permitting the masturbation I was
allowing my sexual feelings to come through and leaving the door open
for what might follow.”
The lengthy persistence of Ann’s urge to masturbate is not
typical. We might understand it by remembering Rita’s insights
into her ascending - into compulsive eating - or descending - into
compulsive sexuality - energy. There is a world of difference between
basic sexual need and compulsive sexual desire. Rita had begun to find
that it was not simply a case of letting herself eat or have sex to
find satisfaction and self-regulation. The self-regulation had exposed
her compulsion not her need. Until she recognised it for what it was,
the problem behind it could not be felt.
This is one of the most basic things to remember when using
self-regulation. What emerges is often our problems and illusions.
Unless we pay attention and recognise them for what they are, we will
accept our illusion as truth. As Rita realised her sexual and oral
need was compulsive, and let herself feel these desires, and did not
suppress or act on them, they began to uncover their source, - the
need for mother.
A good illustration of this is provided by a woman who ate
compulsively. Her means of coping with it had been either complete
denial or giving in to it. I suggested she let herself fully feel the
craving yet not act on it. In a few days she wrote; “I did what
you said, and it produced the most pure mother hunger primal
imaginable.” Perhaps Ann could have dealt with her desire to
masturbate in a similar way. The same of course applies to the
compulsive need to wash, meditate, go to the toilet, sleep, go to
church, the races, the pub, etc.
One of the most difficult things for us to permit ourselves to
experience is not the accidents or injuries we has as a baby or child,
but what we are really doing in our relationships and why. The whole
sorry mess of why a relationship goes sour or becomes destructive is a
very tangled theme. It is woven of threads arising out of our longing
and rage for parents, the way our feelings were killed and turned
inwards later in life, and all the bitterness and attempts at survival
we make.
Mark, after the latent homosexuality and his desire and hatred for
his father had cleared, found SR leading him into how he was relating
to his wife. He says: “It exploded like a volcano that I was
killing my wife. I wanted to kill her, I has killed her frequently in
the past. So much suppressed rage and hate was there, but it has all
expressed underhandedly. There had been no physical violence, only the
subtle undermining of her womanhood by the way I kept becoming
emotionally attracted to other women. I had always excused myself
saying - to myself - my wife wasn’t attractive, these other
people had so much more to offer. Now I was really shaken because I
could see directly into my own motivations as they all rose to
consciousness.
Healing the hurts
In future sessions the terrific knottedness of the problems came up
and untangled. I went through a real explosion of a session where I
roared out my hate for my mother. My God, what a relief to have that
out of my system, not only the hate but the murder, I killed her with
all the violence a child is capable of. Not that my mother was a bad
mother, but both of us were human beings, and I guess most of us have
got a lot of desire to kill Mum and Dad (and if you have any brothers
and sisters these too) stored up inside us. But that really was why I
was killing my wife. Underneath I had been working her into the role
of my mother. It’s was so easy, just one of the largely
overlooked difficulties we face in growing up. There we are, a largely
helpless child, or a youth trying to face the real threat of leaving
home and doing it all for ourselves. And to guard against the crushing
feelings of inadequacy we are full up with the idealism or
aggressiveness or both. But underneath is this tremendous emotional
magnetic pull holding us to parents. Or in the communal cultures it is
the village, the clan, the tribe which is like mother - which it is
so awful to leave. All that power of dependence feels like an awful
threat to our independent existence and will. That’s how I felt
it for my wife in the role of mother. Because of you I can’t do
what ‘I’ want to. I cant love who my feelings reach out to.
I can’t come and go as I please. All because of you.
That’s the catch you see, the way we feel it inside. We do not
say, ‘because of my feelings of dependence upon you I cannot dare
to express my own feelings and will’, instead we say ‘you
are not letting me be myself, and the only way to be me is to leave
you or kill you.’ Of course, if we leave our wife, husband,
mother, before we have really worked out these feelings, we only set
up the same situation with the next person we get close to.
So unconsciously, I was killing my mother so I would become me in my
own rights. The other women were like teenage girlfriends who I was
showing to ‘mum’ and saying ‘see, I don’t need you
anymore. I’m independent.” But of course, wasn’t.
Then I had a whole series of sessions about how my energy had really
got smashed because of this Mum/other girl conflict. I saw how in the
end I had just killed my real vital self to avoid the pain and
conflict, and how this had led me to get really sick. I has loved F...
at one time and had killed the feelings, and this love energy can
never really be killed, so it had become agony inside of me, like a
living dead thing. It came up in a session that killed love is agony.
The problem was it had been so compulsive and it would have taken me
away from my children who I didn’t want to hurt, so I killed it.
I couldn’t deal with it at that time, and only in SR because I
was willing to really see and feel things, no matter how bloody awful,
instead of acting them out compulsively, could I deal with it now.
Well, as it all came up in the sessions I really have begun to find
the true independence of being myself. This means I no longer have to
compulsively attempt to leave my wife and grab other women. I have the
freedom to stay. But it also means I can feel my real affection for
other people more fully, without an overload of guilt or using it to
get at mother.
I still feel there is a lot more to discover about relationships.
Seeing the changes that have come I can’t but think I am only a
newcomer to what its like to really grow up. Also SR is full of
surprises, and new parts of your nature pop out every now then to add
a new thing to the way you experience life.
For instance, one of the things that came up as I began to meet my
wife more fully happened just after having sex. I lay in bed in the
dark feeling I had done something terrible. I just lay there letting
the feeling come like you do in SR, and it got stronger. In the end I
had to get out of bed and wash my penis, I felt so unclean. Then it
all came clear what it was about. I had been using my wife like she
was a fucking machine. Where I used to work years ago they called this
a no-handed-wank. You used a woman’s body to masturbate, without
feeling anything for her. It was so bloody awful to feel, not just
think it in the head, that I was trying to wash it away. All this
stuff we read about being moral and loving our marriage partner
dutifully is shit. Underneath all that dutiful fucking is this awful
unclean thing, the unfeeling acting out of love.
Where I am at the moment in SR and marriage is the realisation that
all my life I have been yearning for a deep contact with a real
person. All the arguments and aggressiveness I have shown at times to
my wife I can see now were because underneath I felt there was a great
brick wall through which I must burst to get the real person, the real
contact. The problem was also that to meet a real person deeply I had
to become real myself, and that’s bloody hard. Yet all of us
really long for this meeting.
I don’t know if I can describe what that real meeting is like
because I am only on the verge of finding it. But a few days ago I
drove my wife and children to a shopping centre. We bickered all the
way. Then as I parked the car she couldn’t operate the lever
which let the seat forward for the children to get out. I explained
several times and usually she takes such as criticism. But this time
she looked up at me. Instead of the huge wall of defence which her
hurt feeling created between us, she simply showed how defenceless she
was. All my irritation melted. I loved her so much because she had let
me into sharing who she really was - a woman who could feel pain, and
love, and be quite stupid at times. But that’s who she is, and
that’s who I could love.
Dreaming the truth about oneself
Marks wife Helen, also practices SR and at the time Mark was
experiencing the above she had a very vivid dream after a session. In
the dream she had twelve potted plants. The knew the plants were
herself, and because they had never been put in a garden their roots
and growth could never be fully expressed.
It was as if they were alive yet constantly dying or dead. She lay
awake most of that night, crying, realising with a depth and clarity
she had not previously known, how her feeling and emotions had never
developed their full depth and expressiveness. This was why the depth
of contact was so difficult.
Real loving sexuality - not just ‘no handed wanks’ on the
part of men and women - feel contact with our children or involvement
in our chosen work, means we must be able to not only feel deeply, but
to let those feelings flow through us spontaneously. We can act this
out, just as every advertisement and TV commercial portrays someone
who is acting out pleasure, or promising it, but this fools only
ourselves or others who are also acting out pleasure. Underneath we
are still deeply restless and unsatisfied, so our search for pleasure
is either compulsive or denied.
Tom shows us another side of this in one of his sessions.
“I had woke that morning with a headache. This was very unusual
so I know another lump of pain was ready to come up. For some weeks my
sessions had all been centred around being a tiny baby left to cry. As
that baby I had hungered for my mother with every ounce of my being. I
don’t suppose many adults an conceive of a condition where any
feeling or desire is totally engulfing. We are used to thinking of
that sort of being swallowed up and possessed by a feeling as madness.
Because of the pain most of us feel when we really begin to experience
our deep yearning we do relate to our deepest feelings in a sick mad
way. Yet a baby is neither sick nor lad, but it is totally engulfed in
its feelings.
I had been experiencing this in the sessions, and how as a baby I
had killed my longing when nobody came. And because of that I had not
as an adult been able to really let myself feel deeply in
relationships. Or when I did begin to go deep into a feeling
relationship with someone it brought great pain. So I thought the
thing coming up was another lump of baby pain.
The pain of fatherhood
As soon as I had an opportunity I had a session. I had been sitting
in with a friend while she had a session, and now we swapped roles. As
I lay down the pain in the head increased. I felt sick and dizzy. My
body began to jerk and it was like words being forcefully squeezed out
of my body. It feels as if those words, and the emotions pouring out
with them, were literally in the body, like juice is in an apple, and
the process of SR, squeezes out this painful juice.
At first the words were just a jumble of noise being pushed out as
my body cramped up and squeezed. Then I was shouting out ‘I’ve
got VD I’ve got VD’ Then every so often I would gasp out ‘A
father...s father...’
I didn’t understand at this point what it was meaning, but I
knew from the past it would explain itself if I let it come, and there
was no need to analyse or think it out.
Now the body contractions became deeper and I could feel some real
deep emotion in my chest just beginning to come up. ‘Dirty, I’m
dirty’ I was shouting. ‘I’m a father and I’m dirty’.
Then my body just gave a big heave like I was having a baby or
something, or a tooth out, and I was just one frozen block of pain,
and a great moan of pain came out. I was sobbing and moaning about my
children. Hardly able to say it because of the pain and sobbing,
nevertheless the words squeezed out of me ‘D.... Duh ...Does..
a... Does a father...’ I just couldn’t go on for a while. My
body contorted up with this inner emotional pain again, and a sort of
bellow of it came up from deep down. Then the words came again. ‘Does
a father...Does a father kill his children?’
I couldn’t take it. I just wept. I knew that’s what I had
been doing for years. That’s what most of us are doing, only we
can’t and won’t see it. But even though we hide from it, the
pain of it is there like poison juice in our body. Now mine was being
squeezed out and the words were like pips forcing out of my mouth.
There was more to the session which explained how I’d got
poisoned and why I killed. I had died, killed myself as a baby. Nobody
had come when I had wanted them with all my being, and it was so
painful to want anything that much and not get it, I had died Inside.
This dead baby in me caused all the energy, sex energy, its all sex,
life, energy, to be diseased, pain dealing, poisoning, infecting other
lives I entered into. Not only had I infected my children but as
babies and children they too couldn’t help - at first - wanting
me with all their being. But how could I respond to their want and
their love when deep down I was dead? How could I let that pleasure
flow through me like silk from a mother’s breast when I would
have felt the agony again I had felt as a baby I couldn’t, so I
gradually killed them by undermining, hurting, shouting away, beating
away their own yearning, their sexual desire, their man and woman
growing inside them. I killed their baby like I had killed mine, and I
felt their death, as their father, with as much pain as I felt my own.
Thank God it can be squeezed out so we can come alive again.”
God and Pleasure.
You cannot experience deep self-regulation and not feel directly in
contact with the moving, living process which is one’s being.
There arises at the same time the feeling and realisation that this
principle is universal. It is at work every where and in everything.
The self-regulating force is everywhere alive, even in Sun, planets
and rocks, No wonder Mesmer felt the influence behind his ‘cures’
was the same power which moved the planets. Reich also very positively
stated orgone to be a cosmic energy.
Tom has just stated, if we put it in a few words, that our original
childlike state is one of total feeling and longing. This totality
does not separate body from feelings, feelings from sexuality, others
from self, self from life, If this total self is injured it goes
around injuring others. Literally Tom’s life process expressed
this as a sort of emotional VD which passes to all we relate to.
Reich called it the Emotional Plague. Both suggest infection of
others.
Earlier on Mark explained how his inner feelings had been split off
late into symbolical expression. This, he said, was because his life
energy, not allowed to flow in its natural channels through pain,
diverted and inflated ideas which expressed its condition. A balloon
is small and inert until we blow it up. Then it enlarges, and if we
let go can fly about the room exhausting its energy.
Once exhausted it is small and inert again. Similarly some of the
ideas or symbols in our memory becomes inflated with our diverted life
energy and appear huge, meaningful and living realities. Reich
describes this by saying the mystical experience - of God,
supernatural events, spiritual realities - is due to the “blocking
of direct body sensations, of total feeling.
This might very well be an over-simplification, but nevertheless, it
does apply to so much of SR it must never be ignored. Our inner energy
pours out, inflating a symbol as it comes, and we take the symbol for
the life energy; the illusion for the truth. Yet truth and illusion
are very much the same. The only way we may be able to prick our
balloons is by constantly seeking to directly and deeply experience;
to directly and deeply transform.
In the process of self-regulation, religious experience plays a very
big part for many people. Religious symbols of all the world’s
faiths arise with tremendous power and impact. I believe this is
because the person behind each great religion was very often living
out of their core. Their words and actions expressed this central life
energy. The way they sat, the things they did, are therefore
meaningful to the core in us. As ideas or symbols, such as virgin
birth, death and rebirth, they touch on the vital processes of our
being. Such symbols or ideas therefore lend themselves extremely well
to symbolically, not directly, Expressing what is happening to our own
life process. They are thus frequently taken up by the self-regulatory
action, pumped full of life energy, and experienced as realities. That
is, one may actually live through crucifixion, being a messiah, or
meeting the Devil. I have attempted to express the experience of this
in my book Yield.
Mark described his sessions where he faced his desire to kill his
mother, and where he says how he had killed his own love. He said ‘killed
love is agony’.
Two sessions which preceded these will show something of religious
feeling, God, symbolism and pleasure. These are quotes from Mark’s
notebook with his added comments.
The murder of oneself
There was a pause and a different sort of singing began. I started
calling out ‘eroakerby’ I couldn’t understand what it
meant. It came out over and over. Then it started being called in many
different tones of voices, mocking, cajoling, questioning, miming and
so on.
Suddenly a change came into the calling and I realised it was a
name, Ero Akerby, or ‘Ero Akerby. I began to say the name in an
angry way. ‘.....’Ero Akerby. Ero Akerby all the time. Ero
Akerby, Ero bloody Akerby, that’s all one ‘ears.’ There
was on underlying anger and jealousy expressed in this. I began to
spit at the name, jeer and belittle it. Then lifting my hands in a
menacing way I said something like ‘If I get ‘old of ‘Ero
Akerby....’
There was a slight pause and now the action was different. The
desire had been acted upon. With shock I lifted my hands and looked at
them and began to speak. ‘Why did I do it? I bloody killed him.
Oh God why did I do it? Why did I ‘have to kill ‘im...? This
got more intense. I lifted my hands.
‘Ero Akerby the Bugger, I killed ‘im. But why kill the
bugger? God, I killed a man. I bloody murdered ‘im.’’
These things were repeated many times as if trying to understand
them, as if I had to know what could lead me to do it. This led to the
next phase. ‘God, what did I do? How do I do it? I killed a
man...It’s not the action. It’s not the action, that doesn’t
matter, but I’m bloody proud of it. I’m proud I killed ‘im.
I’m still proud I killed ‘im. I’ve got bloody bands. My
hands are dirty. God, what do I do? How do I do it? I’m proud I
killed a men.’
I was very deeply involved in all this and really cried at what I
had done. Yet the feeling of pride was so pronounced I could not feel
sorry.
‘God, what can I do?’ I cried. ‘I’ve got bloody
hands. We’ve all got dirty hands, unclean mouths, filthy pricks.
God, how can we come before you?’
I now lost myself even more deeply in the experience. ‘I can
see something. Wait, I see something. It is a hill. It is a hill. I
see a hill of blood. But how can a hill of blood help me? I’ve
got dirty hands. How can it help me when I’m proud of it?’
I kept lifting my hands and dropping them. Then I held my hands to
my head and wept at my degradation before God; at my spirit of pride,
at my inability to feel remorse over my action of murdering a man.
I’m a bloody unclean, but I can hear something. I hear
something. Something is calling me. It’s calling me, me, with
unclean hands.’ Something calls me and calls me but I won’t
answer. I won’t answer because I’ve got unclean hands. It’s
been calling me all my life. It’s called and called but I never
answer. It’s calling me and calling me but I won’t answer. I
won’t.’
Here the session ended.
My Bethlehem
“The next session I was trembling as I began. Quickly I began
to call out something like ‘zuzz’ or ‘thus’. This
developed into ‘Those...those...those... Lord. I believe this
referred to my unclean hands, and there was a feeling God had cleaned
them. I was trembling and moving about in the hall haphazardly, but
this suddenly defined itself and my right band reached up and moved as
if I were drawing back a curtain. Then the left hand did the same. I
had my eyes closed and it was as if I were seeing something. The
curtains had been drawn and the night sky was revealed, blazing with
stars.
Then I saw a great and wonderful star. It was a star of wonder. I
really felt this wonder as I looked at it. The star seemed to direct
me to my right and I followed this direction, although physically I
did not move. I realised afterwards I had actually turned to face the
East. What the star directed me to was a baby lying on or near the
floor. It was the Christ child, and I was experiencing being one of
the wise men or shepherds. I has been calling ‘Rabbonai’,
Rabbonai’ before tie curtains had been drawn, and thanking God
for the cleansing of my hands. Now I was experiencing the birth of the
divine upon Earth. I kept saying ‘Abebi....a bebi. ...a bebi..’
It was said with such a deep feeling of awe and wonder that the whole
night sky, all of God, could become a baby. I went down on my knees
before this wonderful child. My feelings were so intense I began to
sob uncontrollably, calling out ‘Abba, Abba’ over and over.
The intensity of the emotions was because God had given this
wonderful gift of a divine child to us, and had allowed me to know it.
I was so overcome I prostrated myself before God, calling out in
thanks. My sobbing and calling were the only ways I could express the
depth of my feelings.
Gradually the sobbing subsided and I was moved to stand up. There
was a pause. Then words came and a conversation with God arose. “Thank
you Father for cleaning my hands. What would you have me do with them?”
‘You have killed. Now you will give life with your hands.’
“Do you mean life to the dead body or the dead soul?’”
Here it was as if God smiled. There was no face, just the feeling of
laughter”. ‘You will stretch forth your hands to the
multitude.’
“To heal?”
‘Whatsoever you shall ask it shall be done. By the power of the
Spirit it shall be done.’
It was such a deeply moving experience I am probably not remembering
the right order of this. But now it seemed as if I stood on a
roadside. It was lined with a few people. My hands stretched out in
front of me. Suddenly I saw Christ standing before me. He placed his
hands around mine. I cried out almost in agony the experience was so
deep. Then he drew me to him. I couldn’t bear it and cried out ‘Oh
Christ, no!’ I cried this out because I wasn’t worthy;
because it was more than I could ever hope for; because it was too
piercingly joyful for me to take it. He had made me a disciple.
Then he was gone. I was crying and saying ‘He touched my hands’.
Then I was sobbing over and over again. ‘Thank you God, thank you
God, thank you.’
Again it was as if God spoke to me. ‘My power will be in your
hands and by this you will heal, or stretch forth your hands and what
you shall say will be done.’
Now my hands reached above my head. It literally felt as if heat
from a fire was touching them, like holding them to warm before a
fire. Then they came down and rested upon my chest, where the pain is.
God seemed to say, ‘I know there is doubt in you as to whether
you will do the things promised. And this is given as a sign for you,
that you shall be healed of your pain by the power expressed by your
hands.’ |
