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- Опубліковано 28 вер 2024
- What’s the difference between shaming, being ashamed, and being shamed? Which of these is most alive in the culture right now? Why do we feel existential shame, and how can it be healed?
Here's the dream we analyze:
"I was on one side of the Grand Canyon with my graduate school classmates and it was daylight. We all had on our caps and gowns. There was a thin land bridge reaching over to the other side where there stood significant others, homes, and other symbols of a great future. My classmates were running across smiling and throwing their caps up into the air. I let them all go because I wanted some space to run by myself. It started to get dark and I didn’t see anyone I knew on the other side for me. The land bridge turned into a rope ladder with dowels that was strung horizontally across. I had to crawl across in the dark by myself."
A shaman (no pun intended) once told me shame is not an authentic emotion. It is a spell from the outside. "shame on you" is literally a curse. It's wishing that the other feels hurt. The result is a mix of fear and sadness of being rejected and verbally attacked. Fear and sadness are authentic emotions.
Sounds like my childhood
It had never occurred to me that the outcome of my childhood was "shame" until I attended a Cirque du Soleil in which the story was about a boy who had, instead of hair, feathers. His posture which accompanied his failed attempts at connecting with "the conformists" and "the elites" were palpable to me, and resonated deeply. In his case, he had seemingly been "loved" by his mother- a boon for him, which in my case was not so, as she taught me this shame. In his case within the story, it was "the free spirits" which literally took him by the hand. It makes evident how easily a "spiritual bypass" can occur, and yet in the story, these were apparently a relatively grounded group who gained freedom in neither of the former two groups. They freed him, I imagine, to own more of his true self. Longing for this group, yet the fear is real. So too is the pain of a shame I didn't deserve, although I am now, in many ways I'm assured, guilty. What a journey this life is; the well is indeed deep. Appreciate this talk, as I do all of them.
shame as a verb....EPIC