tranquility tuesday - calling your energy back to you

today for tranquility tuesday lets consider an exercise about becoming less dissociated.  what does that mean?

there are different words to use of course - people nowadays are fragmented, dissociated, spread thin .. or we can even go one step further and look at people as having become in many ways disspirited and soulless.

ROOTS OF THE PROBLEM

the roots of the problem are myriad.  for many people such as myself they can be found in traumas of early childhood - especially if the parents are fighting viciously while one is in the womb or an infant, studies show this is one of the most traumatic experiences a young person can have.  but being the subject of sexual/emotional/physical abuse of different kinds is of course severely traumatic as well, especially for a very young person.  and then in the modern world where medical 'solutions' are so often worse than the 'disease' we can consider that receiving treatment within the western medical paradigm is a form of traumatic abuse as well .. no matter how well intentioned.

these roots are intensely 'personal' but it is important to remember when we think about the 'roots' of a problem that actually the truth is always deeper - problems are never really personal, even though they impact individuals in profound ways.  it is easy to see that for example if parents are fighting, they are surely dealing with stress from challenging circumstances external to them .. repressed emotions from the long years in the school system or from strict upbringings or lack of healthy social life somewhere along the way .. could be any number of things.

so problems have deep roots, and really when we talk about the 'cause' of a person becoming dissociated, we are talking about the 'trunk' of the problem moreso than the roots for the most part.

THE TRUNK OF THE PROBLEM

towards the base of the trunk is the experiences that we have had which lead us to become dissociated from living a calm life within our own bodies and being happy.  for many of us there are many of these types of experiences.  the school system, just for starters, is massively oppressive and repressive and overwhelming.  it was not designed to create healthy happy humans, it was designed dating back to the napoleonic era, to create good bureaucrats - people who follow orders, and to be able to start a long process of selecting the best bureaucrats for advancement within the context of any given bureaucracy.

here in the US we have the additional problem that many of us were raised in neighborhoods without good social spheres of kids from different ages to play with outside of school.  or, if there were kids and a nice group, then maybe we didn't have time to play very much since our parents kept signing us up for 'extracurricular activites' or maybe political or other differences kept our parents from getting along, and we ended up living overly isolated lives outside of school .. extreme mental and emotional exertion all day long for 12 years in the system, and then extreme physical exertion in sports, then homework on top of that .. and you can easily see how people would want to 'leave their bodies' .. ie become dissociated from their own existential reality.

and this is in a best case scenario!  if you add to that unstable home life, or abusive older siblings or moving a lot from one place to another and having to leave friends behind or close cousins or whatnot .. its even easier to see how people can tend to become de-spirited and live their lives on 'autopilot' without much engagement from their soul.

THE BRANCHES OF THE SOLUTION

solutions can take many forms - in other words they can branch out in many different directions.  and in fact for many people this is a lifelong process.

one good way to frame it is in terms of this: create a life circumstance that your inner child would actually be happy and comfortable with.

this is far different from creating a life that your ego will be comfortable with.  remember, your inner child doesn't care about BMW cars or a 401k plan.  Your inner child lives in a shorter term time span, and sees things only for what they are.  your inner child values essential things, like good healthy neighbors, good healthy food, stimulating and enjoyable pastimes, opportunities from growth, time to exercise the imagination away from serious 'grown up' concerns, physical activities, emotional stability, connection to nature, not being sick ... these kinds of things.

so the more we can create this sort of life for ourselves and our loved ones and neighbors, the easier it will be to 'call our energy back' ..

CALLING OUR ENERGY BACK

in traditional cultures, this is a huge part of the healing process, and is often facilitated by a shaman .. someone who has gifts of being able to connect deeply to the dreamtime realms and go out and 'retreive' parts or aspects of our souls which may have 'abandoned ship' somewhere along the line.  but even if you do not have access to shaman, anyone can start to put effort into becoming more whole just simple by 'calling my energy back to me'

but remember, if you are not living a good happy life and you are still very sad or ill-at-ease, your energy aka your child-soul will not be inclined to respond positively to your call!  it will say 'bah .. i don't want to come back .. your life sucks!' ... so it is a long term process .. them more we are able to get our life into a good dynamic, the more we will have success calling back our child soul .. and then, we will have more clarity and energy to put towards improving the world around us.  so it can become a positive cycle, rather than a negative one.

this is why even though you might have begun to read this post and felt overwhelmed or discouraged .. the tranquility comes from having a sense that there is a possibility for a light at the end of the tunnel, that even though there might seem like a lot of work to do to get ourselves into a better life space, once we do we can make big improvements, we can become more 'integrated' and 'whole' in ways that we have long since given up on.

without that, we will always have a hard time being truly tranquil, we will instead tend to be forever looking for external stimulations, whether it is from tv and social media, or from sugar, cigarettes, pharmaceutical medications or whatever the case may be.  many of us do not realize how much of this 'external seeking and grasping' is a result of our soul loss and deep-rooted alienation from ourselves and our existence.  and many of us do not realize either that there is hope to turn the ship around!