It turns out that I could have avoided those horrible acne cysts simply by changing my diet. My hometown happened to have one of the very few dermatologists in the country who understood that. If I had gone to him right away I would have been spared most of my trauma. The problem was that I have a particular kind of allergy to milk fat. And I was consuming a lot of it — I was drinking close to a gallon of milk a day (growing teenage boy) not to mention all the pizza and ice cream. If I had given up dairy, the cysts would have stopped just like that.
I was in victim mode. When we are in victim we give our power away to something else, and hold ourselves helpless. My parents “knew” that there was nothing doctors could do about acne so they didn’t suggest I go one. That story didn’t serve me. What I needed was an accountability mindset. This mindset constantly is asking “How did I attract this? What was my part?” Instead of staying in stuck in the trance of helplessness and victim I could have explored what I could do differently to stop the acne cysts.
Accountability is a pretty big topic and I will return to it many times. The original mantra I was taught was “I attract 100% of everything that occurs”. In other words we create our own reality. This is a basic premise of New Thought religions like CSL. I don’t think it is literally true that we attract everything — if a meteor crashes into my living room and takes me out I don’t think I literally attracted that. And there are times when we really, truly are a victim. But that is much more rare than we think. This mantra encourages us to really investigate what is our part in what arises. To keep on looking deeper into the situation even if we “know” we are just the victim here. To notice when we have a strong emotional resistance to holding ourselves even partially accountable.
There is a real vulnerability needed here. To put away certainty and to stand naked, unprotected before our ignorance is scary. We usually need help on finding our way. Hakomi gently guides clients deeper and deeper into a non ordinary state of consciousness that helps them get all the way down to their core beliefs. These are the (mostly) unconscious beliefs people have about how the world works. What is and is not safe. These beliefs are usually created by a child desperately trying to survive against unfair odds. So the therapist honors the genius of that child for finding something that worked, but then helps them see how that solution also came with a price. A price that now maybe is not worth it. As adults they now have more resources and there are better solutions available. Notice how first we have to find our deeper truth before healing can happen.
Think of people you know in your life who are struggling. Almost always they are not letting themselves know something important. Maybe they are verging on alcoholism or other addictive behaviors. Maybe they are so consumed with fear that they don’t see how they are only focused on themselves and oblivious to the harm they are causing to others. It is so obvious to us as observers, but they are not letting themselves know it. We can try to compassionately help them find their Truth but this is something ultimately they have to find within themself. We can’t do it for them.
Now turn to yourself. You can see it in others, but what about you? What truths are you hiding from yourself? There must be some. There always are. There is a very good reason we conspire with ourself to not know the full truth – it would hurt too much. But as we practice non-violence we start to feel safer with more and more of our truth. And we start to get curious – how deep and vast are we? We start to develop a habit of tracking ourselves. Catching those brief instants where we see the tail of Coyote and hear his laughing as he whips around that corner. Letting us know that, huh, there is something more going on here. Coyote is the trickster that shows up whenever we get too sure we fully know our Truth. We don’t really but we think we do and Coyote just laughs and laughs at us. To find out more we need to get patient and simply watch ourselves. Yes, Coyote go ahead and laugh, you are right of course I must be missing something. I will get quiet and still enough to see what it is. I call this mindfulness. Let’s turn to that next.