Midlander – I feel you have spelt out the situation, a dominating father, a difficult mother, a curse that you knew would come back at you.
I know the way out of these prisoning feelings, but it isn’t easy. Something I faced some years ago was that I realised that if I didn’t forgive my mother it would mean the end of my marriage. The reason being that the hateful feelings I had for my mother was the way I had learnt to love a woman. Either I really let go of them or continue to love as if it were a battle field. It wasn’t easy letting go of those feelings.
I suppose the same will apply to your father. The curse is a way to attain independence. I did it by hating my mother at the age of five and so managed to live without any real feelings passing between us. In that way I became independent at an early age, but at an awful cost.
And here is a dream that spells out another way toward breaking free of the prisons most of us are in. Not just prisons of hurt emotions and habits we have lived, but prisons of belief, of convictions, or hate, or prejudice, and the subtle one of knowing we are right – especially the one that most people hold that what they see and touch is reality.
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I was in a prison cell with two other men. I felt it was in Spain somewhere. We ate, slept and defecated in the cell. I was standing at the bars of the cell, and had the impression I had been in the prison for years. I was shouting and cursing the people who had put me in the prison, full of hate and self pity.
One day as I stood raging at the bars I suddenly realised that my years of shouting had availed nothing. The only person who was upset by it was me. I was the victim of my own anger and turmoil. It was as if I had been haunted all my life by ghosts of anger and passion. I dropped the attitudes or ‘ghosts’ and was free of them. Years went by and one by one I recognised and dropped other habits of emotion and thought that had trapped and tortured me. I realised I could be totally free within myself.
One morning I woke and sat up on the mattress on the floor that was my bed. The last ghost of inner entrapment fell away. A fountain of joy opened in my body, pouring upwards through me. It was so intense I cried out. My cell mates called a warden because they thought I had gone mad. They stood looking at me as I experienced radiance so strong I felt as if I must be shining. I was aware my joy poured into them, although they thought I was possibly insane. I could sense the enormous change in me influencing them, and I knew it couldn’t help but change them also. I realised that I might never be released from the prison, but it didn’t matter as I had found a fuller release than simply walking the streets. Even though remaining behind prison bars, I would still be touching people’s lives deeply. Nothing would ever be the same again.”
Tony