Aloha and Good Morning My Friends,

 

 I believe that we all truly desire to live life more fully, to experience depth and authenticity, to learn to do things differently and better – even if only a little. Yet, doesn’t it seem like we wander down life’s path willy nilly, at a loss how to proceed in our hope for personal growth? How often do you feel overwhelmed by your internal striving, your inner demands for perfection, and the awesome (largely unconscious) inner standard you measure yourself against?

 

  What are the tools that elevate our actions? What are the insights that promote personal development in all the areas of our lives that sag somewhere beneath the heavens we look to with longing. Does it really even matter, or at least; does it matter enough to justify the pain and discomfort that comes from peeking into the shadows of our own soul and climbing up towards the unknown places that beckon but require we leave our comfort zone to visit?

 

 On the other side of the high road that leads to our own evolution, the elevation of our being from one stage of growth to the next, lies all the little pieces of ourselves that got stuck along the way and left behind, little hurts too great to assimilate and recover from in the moment when they occurred. Each little piece of personal abandonment that transpired when our soul was forced to flee the brightness of pain or betrayal, for it lacked the wherewithal to survive it otherwise intact – each of these small pieces of our soul remain disassociated and repressed somewhere in our body/mind. They hold us back. They reach forward from the past and color our perception of the present, dropping their little behavioral bombs that sink the battleship of equanimity that is our peace of mind. After a while the weight of them, hanging on us, becomes too heavy for us to climb even one more step up life’s ladder of soul lessons.

 

 A plan for personal growth must acknowledge the need to reach both forward and back, to transcend present awareness and include new ways to find relationship to past unpleasantness that robs it of its sting and its power to divert our consciousness from the now.

 

 Each of the little traumas, the little blobs of ourselves that we leave behind to survive contain copies of our consciousness, as it was then – not as it is now. Therefore, if the disassociation occurred when we were a little child, that little piece of our soul left behind always remains a copy of our consciousness as a little child, with a child’s unconscious, egocentric needs and understanding.

 

 In the present, when an outward event occurs that reminds us of the trauma that created the disassociated blobs of soul in the first place, what seems to happen is a shift from our current, adult perspective to the consciousness level of the blob. No wonder we sometimes act with such seeming silliness, the part of ourselves doing the acting remains in the consciousness of a hurt child. I believe this is a literal transfer of operational control from one soul part to another, from one copy of conscious at its own level to another copy of consciousness at perhaps an entirely different stage of growth and awareness. On the computer screen, you can have many different windows open at the same time, and switch between them easily and frequently, but only one is on top and active.

 

 Developmental psychology records different stages of mental/emotional growth. Each stage has its own worldview: a baby of one month isn’t capable of profound leaps of logic, a child of around 3-4 literally can’t form thoughts beyond a certain level. You don’t ask your five year old for help with your taxes! Each stage of growth is only capable of seeing the world in its own way. Each new stage of growth contains within it a completely, revolutionary, new way of seeing and understanding the world around us.

 

 If our consciousness suddenly transfers to a copy of an old worldview at the age of five, our thoughts might still seem to be normal adult thoughts, but are they really? Our behavior is driven by the needs and desires of the internal and external point-of-view of a five year old. What’s more this point-of-view is incapable of seeing outside the bubble of its own consciousness and perceiving a more advanced worldview and it doesn’t even know it!  

 

 When we are grounded in the present, acting from the highest awareness that we’ve grown into over the years, we would never do or say some of the things we do and say when we get triggered by unresolved associations. I believe this is simply because it isn’t the us of the now that is doing and saying, but one of the soul pieces we’ve left behind still acting within its own sphere and completely unaware that other parts have evolved to a greater depth. I believe that in the main, only one part will be in control at a time and that we switch between parts, quite unconsciously, all the time.

 

 This means that the sense of self, the “I” that we currently self identify with isn’t always present or in charge and yet it carries both the blame and the guilt. When in truth, how can there be room for blame when the behavior is perfectly normal for the growth stage that prompted it in the first place? Rather than blame, shame or guilt, an enfolding is called for, a big internal hug that squishes the blob back into our beingness! The how of that process is beyond the scope of this Morning Moment. Yet, surely the first step is understanding and acceptance that truly we are doing the best we can, all of our pieces and all of our parts.

 

 For now, I hope merely to recognize, accept and acknowledge that sometimes my behavior is driven by pieces of myself that cry out for attention, that need to be gently listened to, to be witnessed, to be loved. True growth must comprise both transcendence – an opening to a new, deeper, more fully realized world view – and also include all that came before. It’s the including that gives us license and opportunity to re-integrate the beautiful little blobs of consciousness and spirit that were cruelly torn off from the magnificence of our soul. We no longer need to repress them as if they make us somehow less than unlimited, glorious, divine expressions of light and love. We are all that and more – despite shadow parts we’re not yet able to admit to or grow beyond.

 

 Cling to your magnificence! Accept your divinity and smile.

 

 Aloha, health and wellness,

 Holman

Contents © 2008 by  Holman R. Meyerhoffer, LMT—Project Transformation