We are taught not to be selfish. Many of our cultures and religions treat wanting something for yourself as close to a sin. Desiring something can trigger a feeling of unworthiness.
People often fall into old programming from childhood stories of not being acknowledged or encouraged. Those stories can create an eddy or vortex of dysfunctional mental and emotional energy, a kind of shape or field where someone can get caught without realizing it.
And if something that we want does not manifest, we might take that to mean something judgmental, a failure in ourselves, even though we thought we were doing our best to stand up for ourselves in wanting it.
I think the most powerful reinforcer of the unworthiness paradigm in our culture is the family. Beliefs are handed down over the generations that seriously and unconsciously restrict our ability to think, perceive and act from a place of our own truth.
Children so often are punished for having their own ideas, or for saying what they really see and feel. The culture in the family is that their belief system must be reinforced and replicated at all costs. A child can even be made to believe at a deep level that he or she will not survive, physically, emotionally, spiritually if they do not buy completely into the parents’ worldview.
It is very hard to enter into an understanding of our sacred sovereignty when it is not being mirrored to us by the people and culture around us. We need to learn to do this for ourselves.
Feeling shut down in the process of wanting something comes right out a place of feeling young and helpless, like a child, lacking a sense of personal agency. But of course, telling someone to “just grow up” would not be the best healing approach in most cases…
So, I encourage people to go ahead and be selfish. I always say that I spell it Self—ish…that the capital S means that our Soul is our Self, and caring for ourself means caring for our soul. If we don’t care for our soul, no one else will. So, BE SELF-ISH! It is a spiritual practice!
In my work I have had wonderful results using a technique that I call Metaphors of Emergence. I ask my client, or the class volunteer, to draw a stick figure image that shows how they actually feel stuck in the situation they are in. Often, the image that emerges is so clearly of them as small, blocked, trapped, apparently helpless. At the same time, almost always right there in the picture, is a clear (though maybe not to them, yet) representation of how they could take a step out of what feels so constrictive.
As we look at the image I always ask, What can you do with your body and your muscles to make a difference here?
Creative imagery can be powerfully helpful. (“A magical fairy godmother/ powerful superhero /inner ally comes to rescue me…the tool I need suddenly appears in my hand…”). BUT, in this process I want to encourage them instead to use their own incarnated sovereign power to make a change in their life—this is where the real magic lives.
So when this kind of stuck, trapped set-up presents itself in their image, I might eventually say, gently but with intention, What would happen if you just grow up?” I go on to say, I don’t mean it like a parent or someone might say to you, ‘Oh just grow up!’. But in a way I do mean that. So consider, what would become possible now, in this image, if you just grow up?
Because they had been thinking like a resource-less child, it hasn’t occurred to them that if they actually “grow up” —literally get bigger, internally and externally, and become their actual adult size and capability in the drawing, the restraints on the stick figure image can no longer do much to constrict and contain them.
It is often a huge revelation to them to see that the metaphorical trap that they drew into the image, which felt so powerful when they were seeing themselves as small, is just not a problem any more when they perceive themselves as “grown up,” and big. Adult size. Fully incarnated.
Here is an example. The first image is what the person drew when I asked her to describe what happens when there is something new or expansive that she wants to add into her life. She described feeling like she must numb herself down in order to NOT feel herself wanting something. It had been too dangerous in her young life to want something for herself, and she was unconsciously replicating this same way of being. It felt as if there were many many many layers of cotton batting around her. She couldn’t see, or hear, or touch anything and there wasn’t space for her heart.
We worked with energy methods like EFT to change how she could perceive her own shape in the world.
I asked the key question, What can you do with your own muscles, and your body, and your natural capabilities to make a change here?
This next image is what she drew. She stood UP, and the cotton batting began to dissolve into a golden aura of “energetic radiance.” Her ears and her eyes and her hands woke up, and became portals for this radiance. It could flow both ways, into her, and out from her in self-expression.
The new title of her new shape was “Standing in Generative Power like a Christmas Tree.” She began to imagine what manifesting from this place could be like. This was a very different experience of herself!
Once we understand that so much of who we think we are and what is possible for us is not a given, but is learned and absorbed from our culture and in reaction to it, we can build our lives according to a deeper blueprint.
By learning to stand in my own sacred sovereignty, I can learn to heal a wounded “selfing function.”
The act of saying ‘I want…’ is an act of holding space for our life.
