Krishnananda and Amana Trobe

One of the questions which many people ask who do emotional and spiritual work is - “how does change happen?” We may notice that we have painful and destructive patterns that repeat themselves. For instance, we may find ourselves in relationships which are unnourishing or we have a habit of being attracted to people who are not emotionally available. Or we are afraid to express ourselves and subtly sabotage our creative efforts. Or we may be unable to stand up for ourselves. These patterns have their origin in traumatic experiences of one kind of another from our past and they continue to have a profound impact on our lives.

In an effort to find the magic answer to the question, “how do we change”, some people have dived deeply into exhaustive insight oriented psychotherapy. But perhaps, they have felt after years of this approach that nothing has really changed except their pocket book and they feel frustrated. Others have chosen a quicker and hopefully more effective approach - simply altering behavior. No need to dig into deep childhood issues, just change what we don't like. If we are overweight, go on a diet. If we attract people who don't want to spend as much time with us as we would like, be with someone who does. But often this approach has also proved equally frustrating. After experimenting with fifteen of the latest and greatest diet regimens, the weight always seems to come back. After trying to pick the “right” people to be with, we still find ourselves attracted and going for the same types.

In our experience, we can bring deep and lasting change in our lives - in our behavior, in our relationships with others and with ourselves and in our beliefs about ourselves and life - by becoming intensely aware of two sides of ourselves. One side, which we refer to as the left side, the passive side, is our vulnerability, a side of us which carries the emotional memory of traumas we have sustained in our life. The other side, the right side, the active side, is the side of our natural life energy which remembers the natural movement of our energy when not burdened by fear.

Most often, when we start to observe our patterns, we also see the connection between what is happening today and what happened to us as a child. Often unknowingly, we are carrying many past traumas which continue to affect our life – the choices we make, the people we attract, the ways we think about and experience ourselves, life and others.. Most of our deepest behavior and thinking patterns have their origin in the shame and trauma we experienced as a child. For example, if we have a pattern of feeling emotionally abused in our love relationships, most likely we carry the negative expectation that it will always happen because it is what we became accustomed to from early on. We may even notice that when this happens, we behave by shrinking inside and become a compulsive pleaser. Going deeper, we notice that when we think of ourselves, we see someone who deserves to be mistreated or rejected. Finally, going back to our childhood, we become aware that we feel this way about ourselves and about relating because this is what we learned as a child.

Our left side carries our vulnerability, our sensitivity and as well as deep fears and insecurities. Part of the way we may have survived could have been to push down this vulnerable and wounded side of us and not feel the pain and fear that we carried inside as a child and continue to carry inside even today. Rather than feel this wounded vulnerability, we may have learned to minimize, ignore or distract ourselves, to push away disturbances and to ignore the fears and insecurities we have inside. But once we start to pay loving attention to our traumatized self, we begin to notice how many times in a day, we may get affected by small incidents which we might earlier have considered insignificant. And we also begin to observe the wealth of inner experiences that go with these events – the ways we feel in our solar plexus, the way our breathing is affected, tensions in other parts of our body, the thoughts that come up in the mind and so on.

Part of the process of embracing and accepting our trauma is becoming conscious of our body sensations, particularly at those times when we are disturbed by some event in our lives. The body reflects the fear and insecurity we carry. We use the metaphor of a “wounded child” because it helps to tune into this vulnerable and sensitive part of us. It is difficult for us to describe how important it is for our transformation to allow ourselves to get to know and love this part of us. Perhaps the most important thing we can do for ourselves is to get to know and love our wounded vulnerability.

Because of the shock and shame which we carry inside, we are often not present to the moment. We space out or react rather than allowing ourselves to be in the here and now and feel ourselves. A lifetime of painful and frightening moments from our past have created habitual habits of not feeling. But it is deeply nourishing and empowering to return to the present even if it means feeling the pain and fear that we hold inside. Our fear and pain is present much of the time anyway. When a life event brings these feelings to the surface, with an attitude of open and loving acceptance, we can choose to feel them and let them be there. Once we take the time to be present to our body sensation, we will mostly likely also begin to observe grief and anger from our childhood as well as repressed joy, sensuality and wildness which has been covered with many compensations and defenses.

There are incredible treasures buried in our traumatized vulnerability if we make the commitment to explore it. This side of us is the doorway to our deepest sensitivities and when we enter into the world of this side of us, we also open to a profound appreciation of the beauty and pathos in life. We come to see that in our trauma, we share a deep bond with everyone who knows and has sustained difficult and painful times in his or her life. It softens us to open to the trauma inside and when we stop fighting with our own helplessness, we can surrender to life in a much deeper way.

A participant in a recent seminar, (we will call him, Michael) shared that he had just been rejected by his girlfriend whom he had been with for a year but he also was still recovering from being abandoned by his wife of 13 years. When we asked him why he thought this was happening to him, he said that he realized that he was dependent on women and behaved like a beggar. He thought that eventually, the women who came close to him just got fed up with playing his mother. “I understand my pattern and I have felt the pain of my abandonment from my mother, but it still doesn't change,” he said.

Why is nothing changing for Michael? He knows he has a pattern and he knows it comes from his childhood. He has even done much emotional work and felt the pain. What is missing? Michael is deeply identified with his role as a dependent child looking for a caring mother whenever he comes close to a woman. And in this identification, he has forgotten himself. He has lost touch with the part of him which knows that he can be alone and does not need someone to make him whole. He has lost touch with his right side, the side of independence and freedom, the side which can overcome obstances, which carries creative fire, individuality and passion for truth.

Dorothy has a pattern of feeling tyrannized in relationships. She believes that if she stands up for herself and sets limits, something terrible is going to happen. Her automatic behavior is simply to collapse and play the victim. She sees the pattern and knows where it comes from. And she has taken the time to feel the incredible fears inside. But she remains afraid to set limits. Rather than face the fear of beginning to stand up for herself, she prefers to explore all the reasons for her fear. She is ready to risk something new. When she begins to take small steps to express herself when she feels invaded and disrespected, she will begin to rediscover her lost strength. The energy of confronting her fears by taking small risks breaks her identification with the impotent and wounded child and helps her to feel empowered once again.

Often the missing ingredient in our approach to changing our lives for the better is energy. And energy comes from taking risks. Most of us have deep addictive habits to avoid feeling and taking risks. And when we resort to these habitual habits, we lose self-respect. Using the female pole, we can develop deep compassion and understanding for why we have these patterns and for the fear that we carry inside. But at a certain point, just like a child who chooses to explore the world outside, we are ready to take risks toward the new.

Our risks need to be small, what we call “baby steps” so that we don't overwhelm ourselves with feelings of failure. Just little steps in the new. And we also need to allow plenty of space to fail. The point of the male pole of transformation is not success but igniting our life energy. It is deeply empowering to risk because it builds resources and self-respect. The risk, not the result, brings the transformation. When we take a risk, it brings up fear – fear of rejection, failure, disapproval, rejection, etc.. If there is no fear, there is no risk. Also, taking the risk to behave differently will bring up fear and perhaps guilt because in the past, most of us dampened our life energy for approval and to avoid punishment. Now, when we step out of this “box”, we will have to confront irrational fears from the past. Life regularly presents us with opportunities to take risks. If we incorporate this aspect into our lives and recognize it's important in our growth, we will begin to identify the moments where we can try something new - such as setting a limit, taking the time to be alone, choosing to confront our addictions or expressing our creativity.

It also empowers our right side when we take the time to move energy with the body. Our body has a deep intuitive connection to our natural life energy. But this intuitive connection can become blunted when we spend too much time in the mind and not enough time in the body. Physical activity such as dance, sports, yoga or working out at a gym all brings back the aliveness and natural knowing of the body and brings us out of the trance of helplessness, collapse, depression and impotence.

Transformation involves finding a balance between these two sides of us. If we have avoided our vulnerability and placed our focus and priority on developing our right side, on achievement and activity, we may be able to get things done and overcome obstacles but we may lack sensitivity and depth. We may have pushed down our vulnerability so that our fears and insecurities won't get in our way but often at the expense of becoming hard, driven and goal oriented. On the other hand, if we have neglected to take risks and have focused on exploring and feeling our wounded vulnerability, we may have profound sensitivity but we lack fire. We can become too identified with our fears and insecurities and our life energy suffers.

In our experience, there are no easy or rapid ways of bringing profound change to our lives. There are no short cuts, no magical cures. We have to be patient. With patient and loving awareness, we become more sensitive to our body sensations and more able to be present to the moment. We start seeing the behavior and thinking patterns that have run our lives and recognize their root. We can begin to understand and feel how much pain and terror we experienced as a child and still carry inside. And finally, we can be willing to take risks in our life today - risks that we were not capable of making earlier because it was too frightening and we did not understand enough.

In this journey, we begin to see that what we believed about ourselves and about life is no longer true. We gain some distance from our negative self-image. We begin to see that we are actually lovely, lovable and capable. We have more courage and confidence to express ourselves and develop our gifts. We also gain some distance from the mistrust and fears inside. We start to see the beauty and love in others also and the world becomes a friendlier place. We discover that we are making more intelligent choices. We cultivate awareness when we begin to observe ourselves in a non-judgmental, loving way with an open curiosity to know ourselves better. Most of us are not accustomed to relating to ourselves in this way. We judge, we are critical, we have opinions and preferences and we are hard on ourselves when we observe something in our behavior and thoughts which we disapprove of.

With an attitude of open awareness, we continually ask ourselves, “what am I thinking and doing and what is the root of these thoughts and action?” When we start to be with ourselves in this way, we are more able to accept what is and actually allow what we notice.

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