In the midst of all of this awakening the experience taught me that there was little I could do to effect any positive change outside of my own inner change. It was such a contrast. I was changing fast and my ex and my son weren’t changing at all. If anything, they were reacting negatively to the energy that was flowing through me. I was watching this horror show unfold and there was no changing it. It was going to happen. I can’t say that it was in the least enjoyable, watching this slow-roll of destruction of my children’s mental health. Both remain on medications that don’t resolve anything and it will be a while before they fully grasp what happened to them in terms of how it will become like a strange glue that will hold their dysfunctional behaviors together and my oh my how strange all of those things were that were learned at the foot of someone who was a psychopath. None of it needed to happen, and yet humans have this inability to question or event to feel when something is amiss in a story. We just soak it all in. Children, psychologists and the neuroanatomists explain, are in Beta state 24/7 right up to the age of 9 or 10. Their minds and hearts are in full record mode, not really questioning what is pouring into them. It is likely an instinct or process that is intended to help them, but can also poison them when there is no ability to discern or filter the bad stuff out. That come later, like when they hit their 40’s and they realize that they have turned into their parents and have been passing on the next generation of dysfunctional behavior to their children. This is how we digitally copy our behaviors down through the generations so that what our ancestors were going through a thousand years ago is still be run over in our hearts and minds. You might doubt that, but there are studies of African Americans who show behaviors from their slave owners which those descendants pass on to their children now hundreds of years later. Somewhere we rise to the surface of all the samsara and gap, taking in the air of a new life and wonder if there is any way to stay in this new world long enough for change to happen in the depths.
Whoo boy, Parker, I don’t think they want to hear this stuff!
I had someone force their way into my life after my ex who was a carbon copy of my ex. Part of me knew it and had taken a protective stance. This time I was along to see if I could change all of this. In some ways, yes, but mostly what I was able to change was just me. Had I really wanted to help or change someone as a run-around changing myself? Not so much. But maybe a little. Maybe just enough for it to be a problem, just enough for it to hook me. Karma creates chemistry.
Finally, this person moved away. She had told me the first few weeks I knew her that she had spent her whole life moving from one place to the next, spending not more than five years in any one place. It was because of the abuse she had experienced, she said. When she moved away five years later I realized that it was all her and that she was unaware of the degree to which she created chaos in her and others’ lives. She was the perpetual victim and drew power from that as her identity. She had done what my ex had done, which was to make herself out to appear as some victim when it was she was was creating all the harm. I was fooled for years with the act and only in our last year together was I able to begin to see the behaviors for what they were.
I learned about narcisists, and saw how both women were on the spectrum of this behavior. My ex was the most destructive, though, because she was toying with the hearts and minds of children. Still, both were amazing in their destructive capacities due to their inability to fully self reflect. At least not when it mattered most, which was when they were in full freak mode and were trying to pin the tail on the wrong donkey. Life with these people was like living in a house of mirrors. And you want to know what? Some part of me was attracted to that vibe, even if I didn’t know consciously what it was that I had on my fishing line. All I knew was that the energy was BIG.
What I didn’t know was that if you stepped back one lifetime or three or seven or fifty (more like fifty for one), you see some really gnarly stuff happen, a real tragedy unfolded, and in some cases, no one was at fault, and yet HOW people reacted to the event created the karmic pull. People died, reincarnated, and were pulled back into relationships again, but this time all they felt was this powerful pull and this breathtaking sense of attraction. I wish it wasn’t so unintuitive as that. I have to say that In each soul connection I have had there was some rough karma to work through. In one case it was as simple as me wanting to serve and please another person. Once I knew everything was good, the MOMENT I knew that her awakening that took shape when I entered her life (all from a great distance I might add) was to her great benefit and that she was happy despite our not being together, everything just fell away. “I’m happy, Parker, I really am!” I had felt like I had failed her in another life, and in some ways that was true. I gave bad advice and because of it people died and she and I were then wound like wicker to each other.
All of this was an education. How practical was it for us to be together really? She was in Canada and I was in the U.S. We had only met two times. She was only willing to go to the water’s edge and I needed to jump into it and swim to the continental shelf to find the endless blue, the kind of deep blue that is like staring into the Void. It was the Void for me. And I understood before we parted ways that she KNEW she wasn’t able to go where I wanted or needed to go in this process. Neither was wrong, each took what they needed. Who can say what is right for anyone? In the end it wan’t some great love down through time, no. It was this meeting where I helped her as an African Pharaoh. But underlying it was this wrinkle in us both that led us to screwing something up royally. So when I hear people talk about twin flames or twin souls as this split in a person’s soul, I have to chuckle. No, it isn’t that. It feels great because it is a crack in the cosmic egg. The gift is we feel the energy from the divine leak through into us. We are able to realize a little of what we are beyond all of this. And yes, it is amazing and glorious. The reason why we aren’t able to see into this realm is because of how we have evolved. This curtain or veil so many speak of is merely how we have learned to tune all of this amazing stuff OUT! What we feel when we feel the draw of the twin is the draw of karma with the incredible boundless love of the soul. Soul love is the great untold story in all of this. So whether you become aware of it within yourself as pure bliss or if you are caught in a soul connection, the effect is the same. Meanwhile, I think the best thing to do is to make the best of it.
So when my ex showed up, it was bizarre. Surreal. I didn’t have the sense that she would EVER be able to acknowledge that she had done ANYTHING wrong or bad. But there she was trying to use her new dog as the way to introduce herself and why she was there in the first place. Just stopping by….and by the way, she wanted to say how sorry she was.
But hang on. Did this person really know why she was sorry? What she did was behavior that was exactly like a psychopath. That term sounds really severe, doesn’t it? But a psychopath isn’t some axe-wielding slobber-jawed maniac seeking to kill anyone they see. No. Psychopathy is actually the lack of conscience in a certain area emotionally. It is a blind spot, a lack in the emotional feeling space of the individual. It leads a person to do horrible things but never see or understand why any of their terrible behavior is a problem. You can’t know what you don’t know, the experts explain. And it could be a blind spot in one area and one area only in their inner landscape. By being that way, a problem could lie unacknowledged for years. People like me, spouses, could see hints of it, but I am a glass half full person so I just told myself it wasn’t as bad as it was, which served to enable the behavior to some extent. Everything else about her was so functional, so smart, so aware, so caring. And yet, psychopaths who charm the public rise to places of power sometimes and as presidents they can send us all off to war at the drop of a hat and with no compunction about it whatsoever. Psychopaths are functional people, and they are everywhere. They are in politics, medicine, in Fortune 500 companies, in schools, and in families. They are people with a blind spot in them. In the case of my ex, it had to do with how she used my kids to try and hurt or punish me for not giving her something she felt she was entitled to. When I explained what happened, people had a hard time believing it. The same was with this other woman. People would remark about how together she seemed. Then we would get to my place and she would go into an emotional melt-down that would be hours and hours of drama. In fact, I found that the longest she could hold it together was about ten days. She would claim that something about me pushed her buttons. This was always a mystery because there was never any action I would do, no trigger that could be identified. No, it was my presence. It was my realization that the jig was up and I was at the end of the illusory rope. She feared letting go of that rope. She held to it for dear life even as I coaxed her to loosen her grip. I was a threat…but the threat I represented was the threat of freedom. We often don’t see freedom for what it is and instead see it as a threat to our safety. By this time I had ceased trying to help her anymore. I saw that she would go into one temporal meltdown after another. My guide’s words echoed in my mind: “You wouldn’t be doing what you are doing now if you knew what lay on the other side of this.” I had learned that I could see freedom as a threat or freedom as an unknown to be feared. I never put this onto another person, though. So given all of this, I stood there watching as my ex said that she was sorry.
So I asked her if she knew what she was sorry for.
She gave me this squinty look that told me she really was lost and had no idea what I was on about. It’s okay, her awareness is her awareness. You can’t pretend that her and your awareness is anywhere near the same.
So I did something that was uncharacteristic of me before awakening happened, which was I began to rattle off a few of the worst offenders in her behavior. To her credit, she listened and didn’t turn defensive. Before this, I couldn’t bring up ANY mention of her bad behavior without it being turned back on me, effectively gaslighting me. It was always my fault back in the day. All of it. But now she was squinting at me sideways and not putting up a defense. I kept on going down the list and she didn’t run away. I learned that she had been through a lot of therapy about all of this, and my guess was my innermost fantasy had come true, which was a therapist at some point explained to her just how abusive her behavior was and maybe she needed to set things right if she was ever going to feel any better.
What happened was something I was unable to achieve, which was to forgive my ex for what she did. Something came undone as a result of our talk out in my yard that day. I realized that this was the end of helping the broken birdies. From now on, everyone finds their way and no more being overly generous (and setting up a sense of entitlement). It is important that everyone learn how to be self sufficient both materially and emotionally, right? It seems time for a new chapter to be written, because honestly, I thought that this was it, and if that is so, I had little interest in this world to be honest.
How someone’s act of contrition, their mea culpa, was able to shift how I felt about the whole of life was downright magical. Instead of feeling like I wanted to beat a quick retreat back to the numinous realm I felt more eager to remain here on this still crazy ball of earth spinning through space. What are the chances that the craziest species ever, bent on destroying others and itself, but would get one of the most beautiful planets in the cosmos?
Besides, I have a project that I have to finish, which will help to settle a multi-lifetime theme involving the birth of Christianity and how it once taught sophisticated methods for attaining the Christ within. Surely its worth staying around to get that taken care of. My hope is that we didn’t all wake up only to turn woke and ideologically extreme, unable to capture the nuance and the broad range of what it means to be a human here. I pray that the maniacs don’t get to decide our destiny. We all need to look our neighbors in their eye and offer kind words of understanding. Soon. We are being divided faster than a fraternity can cut up a pizza on Pledge night. For as bad as things can seem, there is so much to be thankful for and so much hope that lies curled up within our world…
The result has been a loosening of these threads that held me in an alienated position. I also see that when I hold a karmic cord tight the person on the other end often holds tight to it also, unaware of what that little bit of tightness is all about. But loosening, it goes away forever, and does not return. Perhaps the relationships that mirror this karma fall away. Perhaps some might continue changed. I think I am at that point of more wholesale change, so I rather think its time for an entirely new chapter….no…a new book to be written.
I do wonder what happens to the people who were part of those old patterns when the patterns get erased, healed, or transmuted. I suppose they are like the acred actors in our lives who often bear terrible things that then provide the potential for us to choose differently and to feel differently as well. We are here for such a short while, and we are all coming and going. It seems worth it to make the most of all of this and face a many of our demons as we can. In spirit all things are known. On earth, things are veiled. What happens when we bear heaven to earth and cause the veiled to be seen again. Do we do our little part in redeeming earth or our little place in it?