A healing path (7) Forgiving others

 This is what it is like to be filled with resentment.

Why doesn’t everyone else have this? How do they cope? I am jealous & resentful of all those people around me doing normal things – I feel totally disconnected today – the whole world could blow up I wouldn’t give a toss –I’m sick of fighting this – sick of trying to make a life – I don’t want to accept myself as a depressive failure because I know I’m not – I’m cut off from that part of me that loves life – I’m cut off from the joy, the being-ness – I feel alone & desperate – like its never going to be any different – like this is all there is .

What is it in ME that I have to do this emotional work – where do I ever get with it? Where am I going? I just don’t want to be this person today – this person with all this shit still, this person with all these emotional problems, with these anxieties, with no job, with an underweight, undernourished sick body.  I don’t want it anymore & I’m not sure how much longer I can cope with this. Manage to get thro life – but I want to LIVE it. What do I do with it? – what do I do with it? How do I become free from this?

Resentment starts when our expectations or dreams are disappointed. We have lost something very valuable to us. We want recompense for the damages. But who can recompense us for the loss of our womb twin? This is a loss that cannot be restored.

The answer is to forgive.

Narcissus: fear of inadequacy

For the MZ womb twin survivor, a deeply-felt fear is of being weak and inadequate, unable to cope.  The only way to be safe is to be utterly strong, to the point of omnipotence.  Basically, it is better to be the dominant one, the No 1 in any given situation, than to be No 2.

I observed two people in conversation - if you can call it that. It was more of a duel than an equal sharing of ideas.  The first, a man, mentioned a terrifying experience involving snow in late May in the mountains of southern France. At once, sooner than acknowledge that snow at that time of the year would be unexpected and doubtless alarming, the other, a woman, was quick to point out that on her recent trip to Colorado there had been snow in July, three feet deep.

I was conscious that this was combat, not conversation. This kind of "How deep is your snow?" competition can be readily observed, as it morphs readily into " How clever is your child?" between parents or "How painful is your back?"  among older people.

I wondered why such competitive behavior was chosen, and what  pay-off there may be.  But then I thought about MZ womb twin survivors, who carry somewhere in the back of their minds a memory of half of them being so weak and inadequate that they were  unable to survive at all.  Then it was clear to me that this kind of competitive behavior is not just a little light-hearted banter, but a matter of life and death.

Narcissus: a life self-sabotage

There is one person who is highly narcissistic and has been featured in TV programmes because of his extreme narcissism and his name is Sam.

He lives a life of self sabotage, yet he survives because he knows he is the Alpha Survivor and superior to all other beings in the Dream of the womb wherein he lives.....

So, no matter what serendipity, what lucky circumstance, what blessing I shall receive - I will always strive with blind fury to deflect them, to deform, to ruin. And being the talented person that I am - I will succeed spectacularly.

I have lived in fairy tales come true all my life. I was adopted by a billionaire, an admiring student of mine became Minister of Finance and summoned me to his side, I was given millions to invest and have been the subject of many other miracles - but I was and am intent on bringing myself to biblical destitution and devastation.

Perhaps in this - in the belief that I have the omnipotence to conspire against a universe that constantly smiles upon me - lies the real magic of my thinking. The day I stop resisting my endowments and my good fortune is the day I die.

Narcissus: why empathetic failure hurts

Imagine that you are a tiny twin embryo, for many weeks moving in perfect synch with your identical twin:



But then,  because your twin dies, you are left alone.....



What would you miss?

Narcissus: bullying - a way of restoring the original twin bond

The monozygotic twin bond is closer, more enduring and more emotionally loaded than any other kind of relationship.  But when we think of Narcissus as a womb twin survivor,  we see someone who is bonded for life to his twin,  so he will seek his twin in others, and attempt to replicate the original bond.

But in the Dream is a weaker, more vulnerable version of himself. So in the reenactment of their dream, the Alpha womb twin survivor seeks out weaker and more vulnerable versions of himself.  This is how he may become a bully, for his need is paradoxical - he seeks out a vulnerable little person.  But he wishes that other person to be equally strong - as strong as he is.  Only then may the original twin bond be restored - the twin bond that was there long ago, before the Beta twin died.

Freud the narcissist - and his siblings

Now here things get intersting:

Here is an interesting article on siblings, with Freud as an example on unconscious feeling's towards one's siblings.

The role of siblings in mental life may have first been underemphasized by Freud, who may have had his own reasons for such downplaying. For example, Freud as a child had a private bedroom filled with books while all of his siblings lived together in one other, crowded room.

 And in another place:

As noted by the authors, the index of the complete standard edition of Freud's works has no reference to sibling (although Siberia is referenced).

Leonardo da Vinci - the greatest womb twin survivor ever?

It is often said that Leonardo da Vinci was a genius, that he had a modern mind and invented machines far ahead of his time, even though  he lived 500 years ago, between April 15, 1452  and May 2, 1519. So today, being the anniversary of his death, I though he deserved a mention. Not just because he was so gifted as an engineer and artist but because it seems that he was a womb twin survivor - probably the greatest womb twin survivor in the world, ever.

Leonardo was born the illegitimate son of  Ser Piero, a notary. He grew up in the tiny vilage of Vinci, near Florence. 

Today in Vinci you can find

Museo Leonardiano

Leonardo Museum. This museum is considered to be one of the largest and most original collections of machines and models of Leonardo the inventor, technologist and engineer. Each model is shown together with precise references to the artist's sketches and annotations.

The machines exhibited exemplify various fields of interest: there are military machines, machines for construction, scientific instruments and machines for moving through air, water and on land. Palazzina Uzielli, a newly added section of the museum, houses the temporary exhibitions and an educational center which offers cultural programs.
BlBLIOTECA Leonardiana
A complete and specialized documentation center for the work of Leonardo da Vinci, that has facsimile reproductions of all of Leonardo's manuscripts and drawings.

His most famous painting, the Mona Lisa, hangs in the Louvre. Millions of people pass by every year to gaze at this  little painting, almost lost among the other pieces and now behind glass, but its attraction is hypnotic.

.

It has been said that the painting relies on optical illusions to do with the action and reaction of light and shade ; it has also been said ( in February this year in fact) that the face in this painting is a man, dressed as a woman.  The assumption is that the face is Leonardo himself, but female.

So now lets look at what evidence has come to us down five centuries that may explain this man in terms of being a womb twin survivor:

1. Same sex attraction. ( An early idea on this blog, 2008) There has been much speculation about this. Sigmund Freud had a great time revealing Leonardo as homosexual and wrote about it.  (Not unsurprisingly, Freud blamed his mother, but then that says more about Freud himself than anyone else. )

But what if Leonardo was the sole survivor of an identical twin pregnancy?  He was left handed and often used mirror writing, which is clear enough as a sign of monozygotic twinning, but  this idea would also explain how he sought after men much younger than himself and formed a deep bond with one of them. - the first  and most significant was "Salai"

Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno (nicknamed Salai (Little Devil). Gian entered Leonardo's household around 1490 at the age of 10. Leonardo himself has recorded in MS. C the precise date of this event. "Giacomo came to live with me on St Mary Magdalene's day (22 July) 1490, aged ten years.

Salai as Saint Sebastian by Leonardo

Salai  has been  described "as an adoptive son, protégé, companion, or servant."  But it may have been a deeper need than that- a deep spiritual bond, made at considerable personal cost to Leonardo because Salai was a compulsive thief as a boy and required constant supervision.  There was no sexual union here, but the presence of Salai  seemed to be essential it seems to Leonardo's mental well being.

2. A love of the feminine?

Although he drew naked bodies often, for he studied anatomy, he seemed to know little of the female form other than the face. His men as depicted in his art were always beautiful and clearly Salai was a pretty boy.  Leonardo himself was very good looking, with  an aesthetic kind of face, and a long nose that was to be found in almost every portrait he made. 

It has been suggested that he painted pictures of himself, again and again.

As a young man

And that the Mona Lisa was a portrait of himself too.

A self portrait and the Mona Lisa superimposed

So why women? What was it about this man that he made such feminine images of men? That the one picture he never finished and kept until his death was one of himself but as a woman? 

What if, along with a lost identical half of himself there was also a sister, just a faint touch of oestrogen from another embryo nearby who was there for a while and soon gone, leaving a vague but profound impression? 

That would make Leonardo da Vinci a multiple womb twin survivor and as such  the greatest womb twin survivor in the world - ever.

 ( ...........and I didnt mention his inability to finish things, his self sabotage and his narcissism - that will have to be another blog, another time!)