Shira (2) - Bara searches the dark forest

Remember Shira and the story of Bild's quest for happiness?  Here is the second chapter in the story, which is about Bara, his brother.......

Bara's search

Meanwhile, Bara had been racing through the forest. Not for him the wild open spaces that Bild needed for this race!  Bara had the eyes of a hawk and the ability to weave and skim though the trees and along the paths faster than anyone.  He searched out with his keen sight a faint pathway, where few had walked before, and boldly he took it, spurring Tamba onwards and onwards to run faster and faster.

 
Bara kept his eyes fixed upon the darkest places in the forest, for he knew that somewhere in the hidden depth of the forest was the place where Shira lived.  If such a wonderful white horse with a golden mane were to be out there in the open, then surely the whole world would already know him and be able to see him! No. Bara knew with his keen mind and sharp eyes of deepest blue that only the keenest eyes and sharpest wit would be able to locate this secret hiding place where Shira would be found.
 
In his secret heart Bara was a proud man, and was fiercely jealous of his brother’s enormous strength.   To win the race he had to believe that his eyes were the keenest and his mind the sharpest, and he worked hard to use his eyes to read the signs of Shira’s passing and use his wits to deduce where he may be hiding.  His only thought was that secret place.  

More tales for the journey: Hiding in the Light (Awakening from pain)

I stood still in that place where they were, and it was dark.  I was afraid to move.  I heard voices and they seemed to be talking to me, but I could not be sure, so I smiled, just in case.  I wondered what they looked like and what they felt inside and I tried talking to them about that.  When I spoke to them about their dreams and thoughts they came close and spoke to me.  Then it did not seem so alone there in that place.

Then the fencing match began, and I was afraid. I did not know the rules, and I could not see where my opponent was, with her sharp rapier, which so often found its mark.  I darted about at quickly as I could, and I learned to see in the dark by guesswork, which threw some light upon what was happening.  I turned away and hid out of sight and out of the way of the sharp rapier that could sting but never killed, that humiliated but never drew blood.

I stayed a long time in hiding, for the rapier was silent and deadly and ay in wait for me to emerge.  If I did, there it would be once more with its deadly steel and the silent masked face behind it,  and the tough vest that admitted no hurt.

And then another opponent whose name was Death took her away, leaving only the memories and the dreams I had made in my own silent space.  I still found my way about by guesswork, and made my own torches to light the way, woven from my hair and spittle, until my mouth was dry and my hair was thin and my scalp was a weeping sore.

A healing path (2) How do YOU live out your Dream of the Womb?

Are you beginning to see how you live out your Dream of the Womb?  In the Dream is a muddled set of vague details, all mixed together and confused.  Just like a Jackson Pollack painting. ( See left)

In the Dream your twin is dead and gone, yet is still there beside you. In the Dream you are both the Alpha survivor and your own Beta twin. There are sights and sounds, sensations and smells, all in a mess that needs to be unravelled if you are to make sense of the Dream.

Somewhere in the mess is your womb story. You are not crazy or  neurotic, you are simply trying to get your head around something that has haunted you all your life.  You will continue to live in inner chaos until that happens.

Healing (4) : Acknowledging the primal wound

Suffering is a choice. It hardens your heart to believe that you are not suffering or to pretend that people are trying to make you suffer. It softens your heart to believe that the suffering of the world is all your responsibility. Suffering is about pain. The pain that is yours belongs to you. All your feelings belong to you. No one can make you feel pain that is not already there inside you.

Unrequited love
Let us take for example the suffering of unrequited love. The lover reaches out constantly only to be rebuffed. Why do you keep reaching out so often and so consistently if all you experience is suffering? Why do you not stop trying and go elsewhere? It is a strange thing that you should stay and suffer when there are other, more reciprocal relationships you could make.

Attacked by doubt and vicious rage!

The vicious comment to the last post, (written, one imagines, by someone who suffers with anorexia, and is filled with hurt rage, as such people tend to be) is not the first. It is interesting that so many people wish to attack this project. Invariably, they are people who know little if anything about it and who don't want to know. In fact, I have found that there is a lot to learn about them. I have always subscribed to the idea of knowing one's enemy, and the emnity I have come across over the last six years suggests that I should do so now.

I had an email from a wombtwin survivor recently, who had a difficult and upsetting encounter with someone, who claimed that the whole wombtwin survivor project is "not backed by any recognized science". As far as we know this person has never read the website or the book.

An author, writing a book about twins, interviewed me. What do I do, she wondered, when people cast doubt upon my ideas? I answered in full and she just looked at me. "You are very articulate," she mused, "If you weren't, I would think you were a crazy woman." She seemed to have no idea of how insulting that was, even after she had told me that she is the mother of a wombtwin survivor.

On several occasions I have been accused of "preying on vulnerable people." I'm not quite sure how I am supposed to do that, for people come to me for help and I make no charge.

The project has been described by people (who think they are in the know) as " a fantasy", and "stretching the imagination too far." They haven't read the website either.

I had a bit of fun on the sceptics forum last year with a post about the book. They took me apart! But then they take everything and everyone apart, including each other, so that's normal enough for them. In the midst of the abuse however, there was just a hint of incredulity - which is quite understandable, and a genuine belief that they were protecting me from making a complete fool of myself by building a whole project on a piece of scientific baloney. Kindly, but misguided.

The conclusion is this: people who are not twins - and have never been - will never understand this. We have to stick together and help each other and let them be. If you come across someone who doubts and decries your feelings and your sense of being a wombtwin survivor, remember this: your inner truth and feelings are your own. The doubts of others who are just trying to be clever cannot take away from the fact that you are the world expert on the subject of yourself.

Vicious attack however is a bit different: here we have someone who cannot bear to face the fact that their pain could possibly be understood and healed. They are themselves wombtwn survivors and resistant to these ideas. They are locked in a cycle of pain and rage against the pain that they are deliberately perpetuating, for when they keep the pain alive they keep alive their Dream of the Womb and the Black Hole that lies within it. They just won't let go.

Don't be downhearted: we will one day be taken seriously - I promise.

Insult arises out of injury

I found this post yesterday. It spoke to me of someone deeply hurt - but someone who doesn't know why it hurts so much. He feels "crushed" and "not strong enough" to face the hurt. Read on, and I'll tell you afterwards why I think this man is an undiagnosed wombtwin survivor. The object of this post is to demonstrate how one can read between the lines of what a person says and find the pre-birth trauma there in amazing detail, if you know how to look. It's how I do the "wombtwin work".

i hate my life, and i do at this moment, i am crushed. Don't ask me for the reasons, my life just sucks more than usual sometimes and i'm not strong enough to face some things, just not yet.

Anyway, some people told me many interesting things, many good things. But some others, well, the last thing you want to hear is "how pathetic you look", from people who don't know a s***t, know what I mean?

i actually feel sorry for them, they can't see beyond their noses. i read so much ignorance and stupidity, i just felt so bad. i have the right to have feelings, right? i have the right to write how i'm feeling, and i have the right to ask for advice, for help. But some people are sooooo stupid.

i feel bad 'cause i know they have problems, and they don't face them. They pretend to be perfect and insult people who are trying to get better - people who accept that life is hard and that acceptance is not perfect (like they try to pretend to be.)

i just have some words for you guys, You s**k! and would you mind keeping your f***ng mouth shut? thank you. You make the human race look stupid and bad.

The venom behind this outburst is palpable. There is real rage here, expressed as a desire to insult.

1. Here is someone (lets call him Reg) who cant stand to be criticised, and in particular to be described as "pathetic". Yet he already believes he is "crushed" and "not strong enough." That belief would probably be enough to make him appear "pathetic " to others. Yet once the description of " pathetic" has been given Reg is free to throw that back as an insult.

2. Now here its very important that Reg is the winner in the" how painful is my insult?" competition that Reg himself has initiated. He chooses "stupid" and "ignorant" as a worse insult than "pathetic. " The belief here is that Stupid will trump Pathetic.

3. In a classic piece if what psychotherapists call "projection". The insult is seen by Reg as coming from the other. It is possible that the other person was very low in intelligence and furthermore completely ignorant of the inner pain of this individual, but this is not to be so: the accusation of stupidity is the worse insult. So in response to the assumed insult a further and larger insult is handed out with a few additional swearwords, just to drive it all home.

4 The final act is to condemn the presumed insulter to silence. The presumption here us that if everyone leaves Reg alone and stops insulting him, then the whole human race will be up-graded The implicit meaning here is that somehow the person who named him as "pathetic " is themselves pathetic - a subhuman being. It is as if Reg wishes to make it quite quite clear that he an Alpha person and the other is a Beta person.

5 One assumes that having re-established his position and vented his spleen (impotently, on a blog) Reg then feels more at peace. He may imagine he has "asserted himself" and "let the anger out" but of course he is wrong. That perpetual painful, seething resentment will still be there, awaiting another presumed "insult" to set it free.

So where is the wombtwin story here?

A little crushed person, not strong enough to survive, without enough of a brain to respond appropriately or to survive. The beta twin who died away leaving the sole survivor alone, master of his own little world but forever bonded to a pathetic little creature who seems to be part of himself.

The powerful rage is the only expression available of this feeling of being torn in two; no one understands that Reg is "not strong enough to get better", and that is the pain. Out of the pain comes the strong capacity to give insults and his re-assertion of himself as the Alpha.

Its a muddle and a tragedy that monozygotic wombtwin survivors (like Reg) must constantly hurt others because they can't understand that the pain is theirs and has been there all their lives.

Wombtwin survivors carry other people's stuff

Some years ago I began to notice how easy it is to pick up on other people's emotional issues. I found that very useful when I was a counsellor, because after a session with a client I would quite unexpectedly start feeling vulnerable or aggressive or tearful, when there was no particular reason for feeling this way. My training taught me that this is empathy, and the feelings inside me were in fact those of my client. That greatly helped me to understand them.

This happens to me frequently these days when I am talking to wombtwin survivors.

For instance, yesterday I was giving words of encouragement to a wombtwin survivor who has just begun the healing journey. I had to dig very deep to find anything at all positive to say, so deep was their sense of despondency and hopelessness.

Today, I woke up with a deep sense of vulnerability and despair, so deep that I could hardly get out of bed. After a while of inwardly interrogating this feeling, I decided it was not mine. I remembered the conversation with this wombtwin survivor. I gently and lovingly handed the despondent feeling back to where it belonged. Within ten minutes I felt a rising energy. Then I could not remain in bed a minute longer, but was ready for a brand new day, so I got up and wrote this blog.

This is not the first time I have had this happen to me, and it may have happened to you. You may have suddenly and irrationally felt overwhelmed, anxious, vulnerable or filled with pain or paralysing despair. Now this may be because you need healing and have not yet processed those difficult pre-birth impressions. However, intermixed with your feelings may be some feelings that belong to someone you know very well and have been with recently. It's worth developing that inner sense of what is yours and what is theirs, and gently and lovingly hand the feelings back.

I say " lovingly " because it is very important to recognise that this person did not dump their stuff on you : you willingly took it on and owned it as yours, because you thought it would help. This sounds good, but it is how we use other people's pain to keep ourselves hurting. It's this kind of mechanism that lies behind the difficulty some people have in leaving abusive or loveless relationships.

If you are in pain because the one you love is in pain, do try and separate your own pain from the pain of others. You cannot heal the pain of other people, but you can heal your own. Then, healed and strong, you can come to the ones you love in a stronger and better position to give them the help they need to heal their own pain.