Happy Sunday

“Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~Rumi
I am currently reading Caroline Myss’ book Sacred Contracts and I am taking my time to figure out what are the 12 primary archetypes of my personality.  Caroline says that if we can determine these innate traits within our souls we can better know our purpose or “Sacred Contracts” with the Divine and with our loved ones.  This is another step in my journey to answer the big question of WHO AM I?
Caroline says that all people of our current culture have four key archetypes; they are the child, the victim, the prostitute, and the saboteur.  The other eight we need to identify from a list of several hundred. (Yes this is a lot of work!)  As there are so many archetypes to choose from Caroline provides a list of a dozen or so questions to ask of each archetype to see if the ones you select actually fit you.
This past week I started working through the first four archetypes that Caroline provided, not really having any idea how the victim, prostitute, or saboteur related to me.  I set up a spread sheet to answer the questions; surprisingly the answers came out of me and I gained a lot of insight into myself.
The evening I sat down to work through my issues with the saboteur archetype I had no idea what I might be sabotaging in my life.  As I re-read the section of book it said the saboteur was the guardian of choice and it gave an example of a woman who didn’t accept the love given by her spouse. I realized “I sabotage intimacy!”
Through out my life I have always been considerate of others and I have empathy but I don’t have intimate ‘share everything’ types of relationships.  I think of others all the time but when I should take the next step to reach out I will choose not to or to put things off.  Working through the questions I found three ways that sabotaging intimacy serves me: it helps me to control the situation by keeping others at a distance; it avoids my being asked too much by others that perhaps I don’t want to give; and it avoids the fear that perhaps I won’t meet others expectations.
The next evening Peter and I were out to dinner and I told him of my work on my work on archetypes and then told him my realization “I sabotage intimacy.”  He replied with an emphatic “YES!” Which in truth hurt my ego a bit.  I knew I was speaking my truth but there was still a part of me that thought “whoa, am I really that bad?”  We discussed my behavior of the past and I apologized as I felt I should do to everyone in my life. Then he wanted to know the same question I was asking myself.  WHY?  My reply was that I hadn’t worked it out that far.
Later that night, while in bed, I thought about my life and what could have caused me to avoid intimacy in my relationships.  There were no childhood traumas I reflected until I realized that I had modeled the behavior I saw from my Mom.  I thought about the difficulties she had in her youth that may have distanced her from her loved ones; then I went on to think of my grandmother who had an even more difficult life than my mother.  Had we been modeling this separation from one another for generations?  Who knows when this condition began in the family line!
I kept thinking about the Kelly Clarkson song “Because of You” about a mother who does not get over heartache and has her and her daughter’s life smothered in fear.  This made me think maybe we needed to work through the cause of the problem.  I felt like I should ask Mom about her feelings of childhood and about unresolved issues with her father but when I saw her on Saturday it just seemed wrong as my questions would probably upset her.  I just left my questions unanswered and had faith that my behavior going forward would be more loving. As always, God sent me answers.
This morning’s sermon by Joel Osteen was about letting go of the past.  As he spoke on scripture and stories of moving past the pain these made me think of the program I saw the evening before, “Iyanla Fix My Life”.
Iyanla was working to reunite the rapper DMX with his son.  Iyanla spoke to each man separately. Things didn’t go well with DMX but the son Xavier heard what she said about DMX being an addict and therefore a man with a disease; to appreciate that he did the best he knew how.  When they got together DMX seemed unable to hear the truth that Iyanla and his son Xavier were speaking to him.  In his tantrum he did bring something up that resonated with me.  He said that he loved his son the best he could and that as he had no father he didn’t know how to be one.  The closing captions of the show didn’t have any good news regarding DMX but it said his son Xavier was living his life differently being more caring and less angry with his family.  Will Xavier be the first generation of his family to break a model of detached men?  I respect DMX for the step he made in his life of trying to father for the period of his kids youth, thereby being a stepping stone for his offspring to have a more healed life.
I can relate this to my life feeling a new appreciation of Mom and Nana, and perhaps the generations before.  They did the best with what they had.  Nana raised her kids on her own not able to provide a relationship with a husband to support her kids.  Mom managed a life long relationship with Dad (Dad was definitely the more affectionate of two in the relationship just as his father had been with his mother, more modeling).  They each took steps that are moving us forward toward perhaps generations to come who will live loving fulfilling lives. I hope that my new awareness will be able to impact my young adult sons so that we can break the chain in our family line and love well.
When you know better you do better.
Thank you Lord for awareness.