To varying degrees in each of us exists a chasm of grief, deficiency and early wounding. The healthier our early years were, the less crystallised and dense this wounding is. Some of us experience it as more minimal, and for others it dominates their consciousness completely, but nonetheless it’s still something all of us carry. It’s not binary in the sense we have it or we don’t, but rather degrees on the spectrum.

The deep feelings of deficiency, helplessness and unlovability that the self reflective mechanism believes about itself become the visceral felt sense of who we are, accompanied by a voice in our head that tells us there’s something wrong with us. The primary wound that is imprinted deep into the fabric of the Soul, in those of us that carry the timestamp of early disconnection, abandonment and rejection, is one of the most painful and terrifying things to allow ourselves to experience.

The survival instinct itself protects us against it, telling us that if we go there, we will disappear into what may feel like an endless abyss of pain, an infinite black hole reaching out infinitely through empty space, and be abandoned and alone there forever. Unloved and unwanted.

This is the feeling of deep disconnection and existential aloneness that the adaptive self structures itself around to protect us from experiencing. When this is the case, almost everything we do is done as a movement away from this primary wounding. Whether that be addictions, compulsions, work, money fears, self improvement, unhealthy attachment patterns in relationships, people pleasing, narcissism, avoidance, clinging, anxiety, accumulating external wealth, compulsively attempting to fix ourselves, our frustration, anger and attempts at controlling our environment and sense of self, clinging to concepts and rigid belief systems, the need to be right, blaming and the hate and anger we feel for others, the inner frustration of the push and pull that results in all forms of efforting and suffering that the mechanism of the self imposes upon itself in daily life.

Even certain spiritual practices and awakened spiritual states can be simply avoidance strategies. There are an infinite amount of other ways we attempt to avoid ourselves, all based on inner movements away from this inner experience of deficiency and aloneness, from the intolerable vulnerability that this sense of being nothing and no one brings.

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When the self feels attacked or misattuned to, it reacts in protective patterns in order to protect itself from this vulnerable dissolution. When we feel unloved and unwanted (especially as children, even as infants) on some level it’s felt as a reflection on our very existence, and results in the loss of the inherent feeling of the value and innocence of our Soul. In these formative years we are unable to discern our environment from our subjective world; they are one experience, one unified happening, and our environment imprints itself upon us and becomes the very thing that crystallises into the mind and becomes the foundational structures of the developing self.

In this way the whole structure of the self, including the self image, the image of other, the personality traits we carry all the way to the level of felt sense preverbal sensation of the body, develops as a reaction to the early environment and in turn we are catapulted into the realm of becoming, and completely lose touch with our fundamental Presence, our sense of Being.

Everything we do from there is no longer an act of free will, but driven by deep survival fears that try to keep us safe from disappearing into the chasm of pain underneath. We from there on spend our lives treading water, unconsciously trying to stay afloat because we feel if we let go and relax fully we will be swallowed and disappear into the depths of the unknown and unknowable.

These are not personal imprints, but very ancient and a part of the collective sphere and how we evolved to survive. Tribalism and ancient communities felt that excommunication from the tribe was a fate worse than death, and they felt death was preferable compared to the intolerable shame and deficiency one felt when they were cast out of the tribe and the overwhelming sense loss of the common unity (community). In childhood when we feel unwanted, unloved and disconnected from, we feel this same loss of common unity and the same sense of shame and deficiency. Instead of understanding it’s our environment that’s deficient, we internalise these feelings and it becomes the process of self reflection.

The more times this happens, the more dense and crystallised these feelings become. As adults, when we experience loss, whether that be the loss of a parent, a child, a friend, a community or even a treasured possession, it activates this sense of inner dissolution. A gaping void in our sense of self is felt in the place where we held this person, place or thing in our consciousness. We feel not only its absence, but the absence of a part of ourselves. Even subtle judgements, rejections and critical remarks from those whom we are attached to activate this deficient empty space, and all reactivity and defensiveness on our part is just the self trying to maintain itself and move away from experiencing the vulnerability and pain underneath.

As we move through this journey and experience the unravelling our childhood wounding, or even if we are simply processing a more recent tragic loss, through practice we develop more and more capacity to hold and experience pain and life as it is. Our ability to remain centred in the stillpoint within and feel things as they are develops as we slowly gain more trust in our capacity for surrender and allowing things to be as they are.

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The movements toward or away from any experience slowly erodes through this practice of allowing, and a sense of faith in that capacity grows as we find the courage to open ourselves up to pain and let go of our inner struggle against what is here right now in this moment. We don’t simply just resign to being broken, but rather learn to surrender, allow, and be with the feelings of brokenness exactly as they are. Nothing is rejected nor accepted, but allowed to be as it is.

In time the emptiness and void we feel inside is met without resistance, and we face the unconscious layers of terror from the existential threat of aloneness (all-oneness). We learn to relax more fully into it, and eventually the struggle of Becoming dissolves into the peace of Being, and in turn Being dissolves itself into the pure experiencing of Becoming. This is a very different shift to the one that many of us know where we have realised our True Nature as Being, or otherwise called Pure Consciousness or Emptiness that we recognise through various practices that lead to this awakening, and even different to the experience of Unity, where our True Nature recognises itself in all things.

Teachings and teachers are usually oriented toward opening to these shifts through the process of being attentive to what is already here and now, the changeless space of Aware Presence, but rather what I am talking about here is the collapse of our human experience and our Being into eachother, and the loss of our identity and union with the Presence we had previously realised as our True Self. Whats left is pure nothingness, the absolute beyond any reference point or experience of an absolute, the groundless ground beyond Being and Non-Being, beyond existence and non-existence.

I’m not religious, but am reminded of Jesus of Nazareth hanging from the cross being crucified and what that represents for all of humanity in the context of this early wounding. Crying out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” completely and utterly helpless, facing his powerlessness over his death and inability to change or stop his situation from unfolding according to the will of his God, feeling the desertion of the One he has put his faith in. He experiences an existential abandonment and disconnection.

Jesus then surrenders and relaxes fully into the crucifixion with the words “it is finished”, releasing himself from the existential pain and resistance, and allows himself to fall completely into the vulnerability and futility of the experience and pass on. This for all of us symbolises our own inner process, and at some point—and it may be at the point of physical death for many of us—we will be forced to stop all the efforting and all the attempts to manipulate reality as it is and let go of ourselves completely.

To die before we die is a term often used in spiritual circles, and points to this inner dissolution of our familiar sense of identity whilst we are still here on earth, resulting in a release of the existential grip of control. Jesus is then resurrected on the third day, exalting his life as Christ, Jesus is no longer Jesus, but Christ the Lord. The adaptive sense of self dissolves as the mind’s mechanism of hope and desire fall away, and what remains is what is, as it is, and we are left as we are and have always been, without the veil of the past, the isness of Reality is revealed.

To the adaptive self this inner letting go through and into the wounds approximates death, and opens the grip of the survival instinct of the ego self held within the body. In surrendering to this helplessness and vulnerability, we lose our sense of having a separate will to that of life itself, conveyed as the direct experience of “Thy will be done”.

This journey is not the intention of everyone who pursues healing and nor is it the intention of therapy or trauma healing, but it is inevitably the fate of everyone on the planet. My intention in writing this is not to persuade anyone or even encourage people to take this journey, actually if I’m completely honest and transparent I would recommend many don’t as it takes everything from us. I would only recommend it for those who have the utmost sincerity, and feel life has given them no other choice.

It is a very painful and difficult process, a process of destruction and loss. If it is a truly authentic awakening process it is not a process of becoming anything, we dont gain anything from it including becoming more spiritual or even more happy, if we are wanting to gain something we are still being moved by the inner compulsion away and spirituality is being used as another attempt escape the feelings of deficiency, but rather it results in losing everything which we had previously taken to be true and free falling into the empty space thats left. All we get is Truth. All we get is Reality. The unfolding humbles us to the point of being unable to hold onto anything for ourselves, resulting in what the 13th century mystic Meister Eckhart called living with complete inner and spiritual poverty.

I write this with the intention of assisting those who may be finding themselves somewhere on this trajectory, so that they may perhaps gain a bit more insight and in turn trust in the process and allow themselves to relax into it a bit more, even if just a little.

A Soul that does not know suffering and does not learn to suffer willingly cannot know Truth, and consequently cannot know Love, as Love is the very fabric of Truth.

With Love and Humility,

Matt Kay – Co-creator of Embodied Processing

 
Embodied Processing Practitioner 

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