Parenting and Fear

 

Since being in Panama for a few months, I went through a kind of 'culture shock' as a parent to a baby that is becoming a wild and daring toddler. My daughter, Celest, is developing very quickly and is starting to interact more and more with the world... and that world currently happens to be the third world here in Panama. 

In Canada, I had access to 6 parks within walking distance, vast swaths of green grass to run wildly in, surrounded only by sleepy streets with slow moving cars, or safely fenced in with all the comforts like benches, sandbox, splash pads, jungle gym, sun, shade, waterfountain, baby pools, public security making the rounds, and many other parents and children present at all times, and Celest was just a baby, barely starting to walk. In Panama I have only an unpaved intersection, an indoor parking lot, a litter-lined public access path to the beach and the beach itself, as my options for outdoor activities within walking distance - and Celest is now running, climbing and throwing her body into everything she does, including the ocean. She wants to be everywhere, doing everything all at once! 

There are sometimes venomous snakes along the roadside, or coconuts that fall on windy days, stray dogs that run in packs from abandoned areas with dilapitated houses and overgorwn yards that are everywhere. There's the broken glass and rusty metal hidden in uncut grass and under roadside leaves. 

It's not only the physical environment itself that presents new challenges, but the way the culture functions within that environment as well. The outdoors are treated like the wastebasket for everyone that passes by. Nothing is maintained by any public entity but rather 'left to entropy' and the 'tragedy of the commons', where nobody has the incentive or resources to maintain it privately.

Within this environment are lax laws and rampant bribery. There is a lot of drunk driving and public drinking. I've met a large group of drunk men cat-calling me in the street at night while walking Celest, and  cornered by a dog growling at me with beared teeth while holding her up. There is extortion and corruption from the big to the small, accompanied by a sense of having 'given up' in most of the people we meet. And I never see children casually playing, anywhere.

These are just a few examples of some environmental and cultural factors I have had to become aware of and handle, but there are more. Needless to say, I can become quite rigid from all the potential dangers that surround us in the environment we are currently in (which is also *one of* the reasons we are moving to Canada 🇨🇦). I begin to experience it as if my little baby were under constant threat from 360 degrees each time I venture outdoors.

I can get worked up into a stress, where I automatically play out worse-case scenarios in my mind in an instant, like a movie playing images of horrible outcomes with Celest dying or being permanently maimed. Each sound of tires on gravel could be a drunk driver that runs her over, each rustling of leaves a snake that bites her leg, or if Celest ventures more than a few feet away, some animal or someone could snatch her up. I get a jolt of energy in my body and move closer to her or pick her up from that starting point of fear. 

Please don't get me wrong - there is a practical point here, where we are in an environment that is not suitable for a baby. I can't just allow Celest to roam free as I could in the parks in Canada. The point is that I had done this kind of switch into 'fear mode'. It is exaggerated in my current environment which has many moments of truly being 'unsafe', but this is the state and condition of 'helicopter parents' on a an unconscious level. They are in a state of constant fear (not necessarily felt consciously). Because the thing is, it doesn't really matter which environment you are in. Switching over into 'fear mode', where we tend to believe we require stress and fear in order to 'step up' our vigilance (and then get stuck in that hyper-vigilant state) can happen in any environment. 

Over the period of a few weeks, I found I was really struggling with Celest (my red flag point). I would walk down the street and see coconuts hanging above, open gates where dogs live, piles of leaves where snakes could be. I was so busy 'keeping her safe' that I had started hovering over her and restricting her freedom of movement almost completely.  She started fighting me more, becoming displeased more and more easily,  not listening to me, and spending time with her outdoors had become something less enjoyable. It was stressful and I stopped looking forward to it, all under the guise that I am 'keeping her safe'. 

All the warnings, close calls and 'threats' were used in my mind to confirm and validate my worst fears - as if each one were not just a distant potential, but an inevitability that I must prevent. I would essentially wrap myself in those fears like a safety blanket, believing that holding on to them is what was keeping us safe. This means, instead of calmly walking over to Celest if she were walking towards a ledge for example, I would rush over to her with images in my head of her already falling off the ledge, or her little, lifeless body on the ground below.

What happens when you go into a 'fear-mode' like this, is that you are actually attracting events to you, both physically/practically and existentially. Look at dogs: they will more likely attack if they sense fear and nervousness. Snakes are highly sensitive, your fear is a threat to them, so they will more likely defend themselves with a bite. When you are in fear, you are not present and aware in your body, which is when accidents tend to happen. And then there is attracting events on a whole other level, where if you live in fear, Life will manifest events for you to face in order to overcome or let go of that fear. 

The second point is that when you exist with, surround and hover over your child in a state of fear, you are constantly impulsing to them that you do not trust them, there is no trust - no self-trust, no trust in life - only fear. This will also make THEM more prone to accidents and injuries, as they will pick up only on nervousness, insecurity, stress and panic, and will embody these words as they grow and develop.

How is a child supposed to confidently walk into the world and reality when all they have been programmed with and impulsed is the many faces and flavours of FEAR? This is how we as parents inadvertently destroy our children from the getgo, where like most things, it all starts with good intentions. We destroy their self-trust and their godhood, we snatch away their innocence and eternal life and replace it all with fear. Fear as insecurity, fear as anxiety, fear as stress, fear as apprehension, fear as self-doubt - all of it just the different faces of fear.

The question is: how do you balance being practically safe and at the same time allowing for the development of trust, confidence and assuredness? How do you "allow your child to do dangerous things carefully" (jp)?

When it comes to most fears, you just have to STOP. Take a breath, release the fear, and delete the images. We are not victims to our minds - we can BE the directive principle of what takes place in our own minds, to use it as a tool. I look at the commonsense of: if I can so easily get locked into a 'fear mode', then I know I have the power to decide where my mind goes, and that that decision can be quite firm. So instead of locking myself into and trusting only 'fear mode', I lock myself into and trust my presence and awareness. With this, actions and movements are purely practical. I can calmly pick up my child when I see a car coming, or guide her away from areas conducive to snakes. I can be aware of my environment for dogs and assess the behaviour of the dog, which 99% of the time is calm and chill. 

I remind myself that, for example, dangerous things happen IN MOMENTS, and are not present all the time or even most of the time I spend outside. That I can be vigilant and preventative without fear. That I can bring forth my self-confidence, self-trust, self-assuredness, my constancy and consistency in the application of my awareness of myself, my surroundings and my child, and so impulse THESE words as myself, instead of impulsing fear.

Conversely, in the purely practical realm, it is very beneficial to have access to child-friendly spaces. In these spaces I allow Celest much independence and to take her own risks: to climb up high and get down on her own. To fall often and get bumps and scrapes, to go down the slide or climb up the rocks, to run along the edge of the bed and climb up on the stool - to do dangerous things carefully - as this is how she is learning and growing. 

Once I made the switch out of 'fear-mode' where I stopped hovering and moving my body in rigid, tense energy, and once I began stopping the doomsday thoughts and walked myself into presence, awareness and trust - there was a significant substantiation of my bond, communication and cooperation with Celest. I could see her blossoming more, not just physically, but in her cognitive abilities as well - all of this I use as feedback that I am moving in the right direction. 

The sad reality is that this world was not created within a consideration for children. And most or many of the systems that are designed for them, are done so in a way that limits and diminishes their greatness, all under the guise of 'keeping them safe' and 'preparing them for life in this world'. Our greatest power as a parent is to honour our children's Greatness, their Godliness, their Utmost Potential IN OUR OWN HOMES, and in those pieces of reality that we participate in.

The Devouring Mother

I'm sharing this video and my perspectives on it for any mothers that are going through the point of pushing their child's independence/self-sufficiency and autonomy. 

In walking this point of mothering for myself for a while now, I have seen many points come up in me, points which I know are about me, and NOT the child. The primary context within which to confront this 'issue' is to take responsibility/self-responsibility in seeing that no matter what comes from the child, they are never to blame, and never to be on the receiving end of any emotional reaction the parent might go through. The child is coming from a point of absolute innocence, their out-put is a result of the input from their environment and the influences and forces within it.  Their responsibility/self-responsibility will come later, once they've learned and once they know better. 

In terms of my experience, I am in a very cool position of first walking this point with a child that is not my biological son - this means, I do not have that history of bearing him and raising him from a newborn, which is where a lot of the programming that blinds us, the chemistry behind the bonds is released into our systems, almost addicting us to our newborn infants - those years where our parenting personalities, self-definitions, and all the mind-points sprout and take root. I am not immune to any of it, but I can see myself more clearly than if I had borne him, as the blind spots were not yet in place. I also have a partner that has been through it and can guide me, I can thus navigate the terrain a little more clearly and prevent a lot of the common pitfalls before blindly falling into them. For example, I can clearly SEE, when I take a step back from doing something for the child in my life, that I feel guilty as if I am causing him unnecessary suffering, I feel bad/sorry for him when he struggles, his pain feels like my pain, and  have been trained to avoid pain, I feel good and fulfilled when I do things for him, as if I am fulfilling my purpose. It sometimes feels 'counter-intuitive' to have him do things on his own, and I have to literally restrain myself to NOT step in and do it for him - the programming is there and is being activated, but I have more 'wiggle room' to make a clearer decision about how to direct the points as the programming has not yet taken root into my behaviour.

However, now I have a child of my own, and will be walking the point first-hand. Even with all the lessons and understanding in place, living a point in reality will always present the same challenges with the same intensity as it is REAL, and you have to work in real-time. It's not just knowledge and information that you can slow down, fast-forward, rewind and isolate. 

Looking at the point self-honestly, I first notice that all of the activated programming as the feelings and emotions are all about how *I* feel, they form MY internal experience. This means that if I blindly follow them as the ultimate 'truth', that I am not looking practically at what is best for the child in the long-term. Sometimes the child will ask me to do something for him that he can do himself, and he'll even give me reasons why I should do it, or go into a self-defeat just to get me to do the thing for him. In these cases I have to push even harder to remain patient and encourage/support him to take over, I have to push through my own internal emotional reactions and 'instincts' at the same time as walking him through breaking down his own walls and self/limitations, to 'fight' for him and show him what he is really capable of.

When the child does find success on his own, and when he does things for himself, we BOTH see his confidence grow. I get to see him become proud of himself, valuing himself and beaming with that look of self-satisfaction and contentment - that reminds me that it is so worth it to let go of myself and support the child to develop himself fully.

The "Devouring Mother"  is the mother that goes a step beyond falling into her programming - she does it intentionally. She'll do everything for her child as they get older, devouring the child's autonomy and ability to become independent. The Devouring Mother is essentially setting herself and her child up to create an 'adult infant' to fulfill the mother's wants and needs as long as she lives, as she is  creating a child that will and can never leave her.

I would like to add to what Jordan Peterson shares in this video by suggesting that the Devouring Mother is directly related to the mother's relationship with herself. I will explain why and how, and the benefits of sorting her self-relationship out so that she does not destroy and devour her child, creating that Freudian nightmare

Now that I have a newborn in my life, it has become so much easier when Cesar ('step-son') does things for himself. I can see how when I was completely available to him, I may give in more easily, or move more slowly on the point of him developing his abilities to do things on his own. I learned very quickly first-hand the dedication, commitment and repetition it takes to teach a child what may seem like simple things to do, maintain and remember. It is a LOT, and it feels as though everything is against you when you push for it - your programming, the child's will, not having the adequate developed vocabulary and understanding within self or the child,  time and life in the system, practicality etc... Nowadays it helps a lot when Cesar is not only more self-sufficient, but can actually help me by fetching things or giving me an extra hand, and he seems to like it. It gives him purpose, value in the group, equality and empowerment, and he sees he is helpful and useful instead of feeling in constant need of others.

I was the younger sibling in my childhood, and I remember how it felt to take that leap from looking for help versus doing things on my own. I only cut the final ties in my mid-twenties! There was a resistance and a laziness present, which I could feel but did not have the words for. It stemmed from a belief that I could not do things on my own, feelings of disempowerment, from trying and failing and not seeing things through to the end in not pushing myself until I succeeded. I could sense, even as a child, that when I fought for 'help', I was fighting for dependency and fighting for my own limitations. There is a sense of 'ugliness' to it, I felt like a burden, and even at that young age I could see deep down that it was not serving me nor anyone else in my environment. Yet at the same time, I felt like I was getting away with something, getting 'off the hook', having it easy, and this also fed the laziness and resistance, unfortunately making it stronger in me. 

Children are quite perceptive like this, they are aware of what they are feeling, but they do not yet have the vocabulary to define it for themselves - this is why they cannot work with the point and cannot direct it. The parent's role moves from doing everything for their infant, to then teaching and directing the growing child to become capable, able and self-sufficient. For me in my childhood, having not really pushed the point, it led to things becoming more difficult for me in my life in later years. It is the responsibility of the parent to educate the child and give the child the words and understanding to describe what is going on within themselves. Oftentimes, the parent themselves has not developed the insight to do this, because it is how they were taught (or not taught), and it was how they experienced themselves and did not correct themselves in their growing up years. When we do this we end up learning through life lessons and consequences, leading more burdened and complicated life circumstances than was necessary. Rather put in the effort to support the child while they are young, before the resistance, procrastination and laziness have really taken root, when there is more plasticity - this is when it is ideal for the parent to really push themselves and give it their all.

Now that I'm in the position of having a baby, I can see more clearly where I've catered to Cesar too much (this is where physical feedback shows you where to focus and correct). In most cases, it is a case of a mother's good intentions gone 'bad' (as in, not what's best for everyone involved). I can easily justify why I did things the way I did, how it was necessary given the circumstances, how I saw it as best at the time, and it may have been - but none of this negates when there are points to be corrected in the present moment and situation, regardless of how or why they are there. This is where self-forgiveness plays a big role. We can forgive, release, let go and correct from where we are NOW, and not bring in the past as justifications and excuses.

I believe this point does not get the attention it deserves, because if left unchecked, over-protectiveness and excess compassion can become very big detriments to the child. It gets overlooked because when you observe it happening, it looks very 'nice', even 'heartwarming', like a caring and helpful mother tending to her child's every need. It can also be experienced this way by both the mother and the child, so it is difficult to identify it in the moment, and oftentimes you'll only see the detriment later in down the road, in hindsight. 

Pushing a child's self-sufficiency is often hard to do, like a mother bird pushing the baby out of the nest, it seems 'harsh'. Within this, we have to remember that Real Care often hurts. It is, at the same time, encouraging, gentle and embracing - but there is a quality of 'growing pains' to it. It has to feel 'bad' for a moment in order to serve as a reminder as to why the thing needs to change. It also involves pushing beyond comfort zones and perceived limitations, and a child will not always do this willingly of for himself. It doesn't feel 'good'.

In the video above, Peterson explains very well the dangers of "excess compassion" coming from mothers towards their children. There is so much talk in social media about "masculine toxicity", but you rarely hear about "feminine toxicity" and how this overprotective nature can fatally undermine a child. This creates a society not of REAL men and women, but of emotionally dependant, reactive, easily offended 'adult infants'. 

As women, we are nurturers naturally, but we are also adult human beings. Having been through child rearing before, my partner has talked at length with me about 'life after Celest' (my newborn) - because right now, the role of caring for a newborn is so fulfilling, so purposeful and so rewarding, that I can see the temptation to want to make it last forever. But as soon as Celest can crawl, this role is going to slowly change from her complete and utter dependency, to beginning that process of boundary-setting, developing independence and autonomy and everything that comes with that. After that, childhood, and then a teen... And within this, even though it seems so far away, I will still have a life after Celest's infanthood. What would I like to be doing then? How do I want to support myself? How would I like my body to be? I have to look at these questions now so that I set myself up as best as I can for a successful transition when the time comes. If I do not focus on myself in these ways, Celest will become my whole world, and this is too much responsibility for a child - it is not their job to be this, and they I'll be flooded and suffocated in the most 'beautiful' and 'nice' ways if the mother neglects to maintain herself and her self-relationship.

So many women let go of their bodies and/or their sexuality for example, when they become mothers. I experienced this immediately after Celest's birth while I was in recovery and had this tiny little newborn in my care: my body was only a life-giving machine and nothing else. I saw this whole new expression coming from me and I loved it! But as time passed, I had to ask myself if I truly wanted to give up the other aspects of my expression, my body, my self, my individuality and my 'personhood', and my answer was that I did not. Fitness, my ability to do things, my sexual expression (and this goes way beyond the act of sex, which is just one small aspect of sexuality), and all the non-child-rearing aspects of my woman-ness I endeavoured to hold as equally important parts of me as my ability to be a mother. I decided I would embrace the new expression, AND maintain what I already had developed as a woman without a child. This is something I can't forget or lose sight of, even at this early stage. It's not to act on it all at once, no, but rather to keep it in my awareness and bring it in (in moments) when the time comes. This is how I tend to my relationship with myself so that it does not fall on Celest to be anything FOR me, but to rather become her OWN woman, where, when she is older, her and I will be equals, and she may even surpass me in many ways. This is the main reason why Celest will know me as Kim, and not 'mom'. I do not want to impose roles or a hierarchy onto our relationship. I do not want her to be bound to me or feel she needs to do or be something she is not because of me or our relationship.

In the video, Peterson explains that if we immerse ourselves too completely into the nurturing nature of the mother, where that becomes our ONLY role, that we can end up essentially destroying our children. I posit that we would destroy ourselves in the process as well. For the child, the mother has condensed all of herself into this one role and one purpose of protecting and nurturing an infant,  when the child displays signs of autonomy and independence, it becomes a threat to the mother, as it threatens her role, purpose and self-definition. In order to protect this, she will do everything for her child. She is keeping her child as an 'infant', which Peterson describes as raising 'old infants', and how that is an 'ugly' thing (both for the parents and the child). For example, think of an adult temper tantrum, an emotionally unstable adult lashing out: this is an adult infant - he cannot function in the real world, cannot create functional relationships, cannot support himself through the challenges of life, and can actually be dangerous.

Within this, the mother has also undermined herself - with all the 'best intentions' in the world, the mother becomes the epitomy of self-interest, which becomes a subtle and undetectable toxicity -  the child is used to her benefit to fulfill her role, her purpose, her fulfillment and sense of herself, mostly emotionally. She may even replace having a man in her life with having her child remain with her - instead of having kept the relationship with her child practical, as physical actions, and kept her emotional well-being as her own responsibility. In this, the woman can feel purposeless without her child. She can miss out on developing new partnerships, or neglect her current partnership and allow it to deteriorate and fall apart. She can lose parts of her expression she once had, becoming a less dynamic version of herself, and so much more.

In the end, we have to remember that our children do not belong to us, they are their own beings. Our job is to guide and teach them so that they do not need us anymore. Our job is to render ourselves obsolete, so that what is left is an actual equal relationship between two beings. There is no 'need' or dependency, but rather two complete beings together in this life.

The good news that I have learned from my own experience is that there is a lot of 'wiggle room' in terms of too-lateness. It's never really too late to learn, it just becomes more difficult as habits and expectations take root. There is then also more emotional reactions to manage and work through and it takes more time to integrate. But it's ok, there is no such thing as a 'perfect' parent, but there is a perfecting parent, so the point is to never give up. 

The FEAR of Being ALONE

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react in fear to the words

I Am Alone.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think and believe that when

I am alone, nobody sees me,

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think and believe that when

I am alone, nobody cares for me. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think and believe that when

I am alone, nobody can feel me. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think and believe that when

I am alone, nobody understands me. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think and believe that when

I am alone, nobody knows what I am going through. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want, need and desire for

people to just leave me alone. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want, need and desire to be left

alone, for no one to come near me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want, need and desire to be

by myself, to be alone.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think and believe that I want to

be left alone, or to be alone.

Within this, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed a deep-seated,

all-encompassing ‘volcanic’-eruptive fear to build within me in relation to the word ‘alone’.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think and believe that I really

in fact want to be alone. 

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see and realize that

behind the want, need and desire to be left alone, to not want to be around people,

to not like people, to not like the world, the belief that everything is fucked up, is actually

a cry for help, a cry for someone to care, for someone to listen, for someone to understand

and for someone to see.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a physical, addictive

desire to have someone come and embrace the entirety of who I am inside myself, for

someone to almost fit inside all that I am and make sense for me of who I am, what I am

experiencing, why I am experiencing it.

Within this, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear being alone

with/within myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to deceive myself and others within

the apparent ‘want’ to be alone, as a manipulation tactic as a way to seek attention to not

be alone, to get energy and experience.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to exist as this cry for

attention, for someone to see me, for someone to understand me, for someone to

LOVE me, for someone to be with me for the REST of my life , instead of seeing,

realizing and understanding that it is all in an attempt to fill the void, to not have to face

the fact that I have not developed that relationship with myself completely yet.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to place the responsibility onto

another being to see me, to understand me, to love me, to embrace all of me, to explain

me to me, instead of being that and giving that to myself.

I forgive myself that I have used and abused ‘wanting to be left alone’/not wanting

support/help/not wanting to be comforted and consoled as a manipulation tactic/reverse

psychology to attract people to me, to make people want to do and be that for me, instead

of being self-honest about what I actually want and need, which is not to be alone, and also

to have a better relationship with myself.

 

Relationships as Religion

 

 

In Osho’s book ‘The Magic of Self-Respect’, he explains how birth is the first death we experience, where we cross a great divide into the unknown. How we have to leave a world we have become comfortable in, safe, taken care of – and this leaving is forced, it is not by choice or by volition. We then spend our lives creating (or trying to create) a new life where we experience again a little comfort, a little security, we “carve out a little corner of the world” for ourselves and call it home. And then after having spent a lifetime creating it, we are met again with another great divide – another forced leap into the unknown.

Within all of this, according to Osho there is one ingredient that makes the difference between a believer in God and a non-believer, and that ingredient is FEAR. Osho had an atheist as a grandfather and a theist as a father, and so he always had the two to observe, to compare and contrast what they believed in, what they spoke and what they actually lived in fact. His grandfather claimed an absence of fear and thus no need for a god. Until his dying breath, he never called upon a god to save him - from what? He had lived fully, done nothing wrong, had nothing to pay for in the end, and was simply ready to pass on to whatever came next with no concern as to what that could be.

The religious men around Osho, on the other hand, prayed and chanted for hours a day, asking for protection – protection from what? Osho observed only many instances of fear.  Fear was always at the root, at the core and the starting point of religious beliefs and actions.  

I am not however, here to write a book report. I am here to share my own, personal realization I had from reading the first parts of this book, and how even though I have never defined myself as religious, I have used ideas and beliefs in the same ways the devoutly religious do in the book in terms of comforting self with a belief in a god - I saw how we are capable of creating a ‘religion’ out of other ideas - repressing fear with beliefs not necessarily related to the idea of God or divinity, but rather exalting ordinary things not normally deified, creating a personalized religion inside of self to cling to, adhere to, to abandon self for.

“the moment you think of dropping the idea of God, fear comes up. It is a simple indication that with the rock of the idea of God, you are repressing fear; so the moment you remove the rock, the fear springs up.”

What ideas serve as these rocks for me? For you? These ideas which, if removed from your life, will uncover a hidden (or not-so-hidden) well of fear?

There is one paragraph in particular which helped me to identify what I have ben living as a ‘god’ or ‘religion’ in my life, it is as follows:

“You asked for God to be invented because you could not live alone.

You were incapable of facing life, its beauties, its joys, its sufferings, its anguishes. You were not ready to experience them on your own without anybody protecting you, without somebody being an umbrella to you. You asked for God out of fear.”

This hit me like that rock, I felt it hard, as if it were speaking to the depths of me when it comes to how I have lived within my definition and belief of RELATIONSHIPS in my life. And it was not until I deliberately and painstakingly began removing this construct from my life that I began to see the fear it was repressing.

And it has to be deliberate, because relationships, as they currently exist in our society, are omnipresent. It is a construct that exists that is taught to us from our birth, as we are born into them much like one would be born into a religion and know nothing else. The construct is fed and impulsed to us from every direction, including religion. Every media outlet will sell to us ‘relationships’, it even has its own market share, and it is weaved into the fabric or our society through marriage, laws and legal contracts. I would say, the religion of ‘relationships’ is more pervasive than the godly or spiritual religions that exist today, because even atheist and non-believers are still susceptible to hiding from their fear in relationships.

I made a decision one and a half years ago to no longer participate in the construct of ‘relationship’, and decided instead to enter into an Agreement. In an agreement, there is no hiding. There is no game playing, no hierarchy, no manipulation, no control, no room for feelings and emotions, and there is no morality. This essentially has turned everything I have lived and understood upside-down.

It may sound like chaos, with nothing giving direction or holding the partnership in place, because we automatically assume that taking away one thing means replacing it with it’s opposite: without the game-playing there is boredom, without hiding there is only shame and judgment for who we really are in our minds towards each other, without hierarchy there is only conflict, without manipulation there is no fidelity. Without control there is no fulfillment, without feelings and emotions there is nothing but a void, without morality there is no consideration, and so on… but this is not the case at all, because it is only looking at what an Agreement isn’t, or how it is NOT a relationship, instead of looking at what it IS, how it is something that stands independent of the construct of relationship.

An Agreement stands upon principles – doing what is best for all involved. It stands upon commitment, regardless of feelings and emotions. It stands upon holding the best of someone and not letting go of that, even while they walk through their worst. Within this, it stands upon patience, trust, and integrity. An Agreement stands upon accountability and taking self-responsibility – which leaves no space for hiding, for victimization or for blame. It embraces the fact that each individual is a Whole, not requiring to be fulfilled by another. An Agreement stands as ‘two or more’ in the name of the principles agreed upon.And most of all, an Agreement stands upon FORGIVENESS - Forgiveness of Self and the Other as Self. And here I am talking about REAL forgiveness; the kind where you can in one moment drop the past and give each other a blank slate. Start fresh. Start over. Not even one trace of the past or an emotional reaction to it must exist in the minds of everyone involved.

Importantly – an Agreement is created in awareness, and not something blindly fallen into like love, falling in love, blind love. This is because we are in fact broken people coming from a broken system, beaten down by survival, dominated by authority, brainwashed by school, media and culture, emotionally underdeveloped and reactive, and our personalities are deeply rooted in so much fear. This is why you cannot ‘fall’ into an agreement. It is deliberate, it is worked on, it is seen through to the end, despite the discomforts or unbearable points we may face when stripping away the ideas that have kept us safe (from ourselves!) for as long as we can remember.

And it is this ‘stripping away’ of the idea of relationship that exposed to me the hidden fear I had – and not only the hidden fear, but what had become of me over time because of and due to living with this fear. And it is important to note that the truths of me that I exposed to myself were never visible to the naked eye. On the surface, I have been a very independent woman, having worked in careers, supported others financially, travelled across the world by myself, thrived after a divorce, aced my way through university later in life – everything I could have defined as ‘independent’ and ‘fulfilled’, I had done it.

But what I didn’t see until I really dropped the idea of ‘relationship’, was that even while I was alone and feeling independent, unstoppable, empowered: I still caried with me the faith, the belief that one day, I would get my perfect relationship. It was as though one is floating on clouds of hope, keeping one elevated just above the reality of self. The belief that, I am alone right now, but will not be forever.  I will not ever really have to peak under this cloud to see what I have become over the years. I will not have to admit I have been avoiding my fears while busy contorting myself into things that I am not in order to secure relationships; placing the ‘eventual perfect relationship’ as my starting point, essentially disregarding myself and not exploring Who I Am, but rather, who must I be to get into heaven?

“You can either be a person who is a coward, afraid, ready to submit, surrender, a person who has himself no dignity, no respect for his own being – or you can be fearless.”

…needless to say, I have not been entirely fearless. Not at all.

So, what happened as I stripped away the comfort, security, the exalted nature I held of the idea of relationships? I sank deeply into the reality of me – that which I feared - into the void that was there which I had never filled for myself, the parts of me I had abandoned and neglected, thinking and believing it was someone else’s job to tend to.

My demons came out as I tried to escape the reality of me, looking for someone, something to blame, to make it better, feeling as though this had all been done ‘unto’ me by some hand other than my own. I faced the aloneness that existed within me – that utterly alone feeling that drives one to God… or in my case to dance clubs and bars, dating sites and lovely fantasies. That emptiness that comes up from time to time, that motivates you to pray to something outside yourself, or in my case to look my best and go out into the world as an eligible individual, looking to meet her ‘other half’.

Relationship had become my god, my religion with which I covered up my fear of being alone, the emptiness I felt when things that should be enjoyed were not able to be enjoyed, or pain and sorrow seemed too painful to bear by myself. So, yes, it looks entirely different. But if you break it down and look at how we use it, any idea, belief, or construct can be used as one uses a religion or belief in God. It’s only when the fact of the matter (the truth of the Self in the Flesh) is realized and known that one can open one’s eyes to be able to see through the veil of religion, and it’s only through actually DOING it, LIVING it for real that the truth can be fully exposed. The truth of Self exposed to Self– there is no one else involved here.

Interestingly, what I had discovered through walking an Agreement, and a very unique one at that, was that the personal hell I discovered inside myself, the one I had buried, hid and feared, was entirely emotional (not a real, physical hell, not real pain) – because the reality of the situation was that I was not in fact alone – I was in an agreement. All the physical supports and structures are here. Everything I could ask for is Here – just not the participation in the emotions, feeling, conflict, drama, love, attachment, manipulations, control and everything else we do to keep a hold of another person, instead of just standing unconditionally there, Here with them no matter what.

Within this, I can emphasize and relate to those who begin to question or even give up on their gods, and how that can be a painful process. I can also now understand how people can be and become so devout, unwavering, defensive and protective of their religions and their gods. I understand how it is all based in fears – a unique array specifically designed by and for the individual.

Within this, I can admit that I have been devout. I have exalted something outside myself above myself and then submitted to it. I have been a coward in the face of life, and ran away afraid, surrendering my personal power to another, and built a false power on top of a faulty foundation, compromising my dignity, my self-respect for my own being, in believing I required another to do or be something for me.

I only slowly realized what Osho meant when he said:

“If the fear comes up, you have to face it; it is in no way going to help you to cover it with the idea of god”.

So now I am busy facing my lifetime of fears, using the tools of self-forgiveness, self-correction and self-commitments. Relationship systems and constructs had been programmed quite deeply into me by me, by my upbringing, by my culture and my family, by media and television and social circles. Questioning and letting go of something at this level involves shaking foundational parts of self, as self was created on top of this belief system as if it were fact, unmovable, unchangeable. It has, at times, felt like the entirety of me is being shaken, where it feels like there is nothing left of self to hold on to. Yet with breath and breathing, forgiveness and self-change, I have seen that there is always something of me to come back to. And until I am back Here completely, unwaveringly, unshakably, in the physical – I walk, breath by breath, step by step, re-creating myself as I go. Falling, getting up, repeating mistakes, facing the pain and the fear, realizing what is real and what is not. Realizing so much about the mind and how it functions – seeing more and more through the veils based on one point that extends into many other points, moving back to the title of the book that started of the blog, and rediscovering the Magic of Self-Respect.