Parts and Presence

Posted by Prudence Tippins on 22 September 2009 | 0 Comments

"The truth may make you free, but there's an even chance it will first scare the daylights out of you."              -Gregg LeVoy

There's so much to learn about authenticity, isn't there? 

My son recently left home to attend Scattergood Friends School, which is a Quaker boarding school in Iowa.  He is our only child, and if you'd have asked me on his first day of grade school at what age I'd expect him to leave home, I'm sure I would have said "Thirty, at the earliest."  He was reluctant to leave home for play dates at that age, never spent the night away, and wanted Mom and Dad on every field trip.

Now, at fifteen, he feels ready.  Ready not just to leave home (*sob!*), but ready to take on the challenges of an intense academic program, an immersion into constant socialization with peers, and to negotiate relationships with adults with no intermediaries.  I bless him on his journey, and when I reflect on where he's been so far, I stand in awe of his courage and resolve all along the way.  He seems to know what he needs and know how to make that happen.

That's about him.

As for me, I've been dealing with layer after layer of "self:" parts I haven't heard from in many years.  Of course, there's the Mother self, who is experiencing the predictable "empty nest" grief, mixed with pride that she's raised such a brave guy.  But there's a lot more in there, too.  There's the victim part that feels bereft and abandoned; the adventurer part that feels excited about my new freedom and all I might get to do now that mothering isn't my primary focus; the anxious part that feels like my life's purpose has suddenly exited, stage left; the sensitive part that feels rejected ("Why would you want to go away to school when you could be around ME all day?!"); the suspicious part that is afraid I won't do anything productive now that I have more freedom; the lazy part that is relieved not to have to attend so stridently to others' needs; and the wise part who knows this is simply another cycle and all is truly well.

Those parts and more have revealed themselves to me one by one over the course of the summer, preparing for him to go, and especially since he we dropped him off in late August.

My teacher, Julie Tallard Johnson, says that everything in our lives is fodder for our writing, if we are writers, or for the expression of whatever it is we have announced we want to do.  I admit, I haven't necessarily welcomed the appearance of every one of those "parts," but I am grateful now to have met them and gotten to know them.  Many have been buried for decades.  (The "abandoned" feeling, for example, dates back to the 1970s!)  It took a dramatic life change to bring it to the surface again. 

And how useful that is in my quest to being more authentic! These layers resisted being discovered.  Even though they were close to the surface, I was able to keep them under wraps until I did some pretty intense work to see myself more clearly.  I'd let my meditation practice lapse as the date for him to leave approached, and my yoga practice dropped off too.  I just couldn't seem to find a lot of time to write or journal, either.  Huh.  Coincidence?

I claim to be someone who relentlessly seeks the truth about myself, but even with that quest practically tattooed on my forehead, I was able to start skimming the surface of things; to avoid the hard questions and the ugly truths.

(Now that I've seen those parts up close, I wouldn't call them ugly.  But when they're hidden, my ego self wants to keep them under wraps because they could be seen as imperfections, and that's just not acceptable to my poor ego!)

So, my ego self was in charge and therefore the ugliness started jamming up behind the dam.  Naturally, at a certain point, the dam burst.  It was overwhelming at first.  Didn't have to be.  Had I been continually practicing yoga, meditating, writing, and having authentic conversations about it with trusted friends, I wouldn't have experienced the roller coaster ride so intensely.  But, of course, the fact that I did it this way is good information for me, too.  As Julie says, it's all fodder.

My ego tells me that I cannot feel or think certain things because if I do, I will not be accepted in the world.  My best self doesn't believe this, but my ego really, really does.  And it wants to protect me from that rejection.  It thinks my Higher Self is a bit of a New Age Ninny who loves everyone and is naïve as can be and is therefore in no condition to protect us.

Of course, the ego is right about my Higher Self loving everyone.  That comes from a deep knowing that we all are one.  And the Higher Self doesn't worry about protection because it knows there's nothing to be protected from.  All is well.  Yes, even if the body is slain, even if the world seems cold, or the ego feels all alone.  It knows the truth.

So, my challenge has been to look at all these various parts of myself through the eyes of my Higher Self.  They're not prescriptions for social suicide, nor ridiculous forays into fantasy.  Each part has a reason for being there.  Each part has a valid point to make.  And each part sees only a small part of a very large picture.

Once I resumed my mediation practice, began taking a yoga class, and making time for daily writing again, the larger picture began to become clear to me again. Why? Because I was present with myself. Instead of trying to escape my reality through endless analysis or worry, I relaxed into it and simply felt what was there to feel. 

Remind me of this next fall, when my son heads off to school again.  Presence, presence, presence...


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