"Love is the wrecking ball that is pulverizing every relationship of record that isn't wide enough or brave enough to let real love in." -Daphne Rose Kingma
so...I put this quote on my facebook page (if you'd like to see the page search "Jenny Morrow, Marriage & Family Therapist" on the facebook site and you should be able to access it). Luckily I had an honest friend, thanks Richard, express confusion. It reminded me that this is in fact, quite confusing, especially to the mind. I felt a little like jello in my body as I thought about attempting to explain what I think it could mean. Jello, I think, because there was a sense of substance in my experiencing this quote, but a weakness and lack of structure as to how I make sense of this quote in my mind.
When I first read this quote it was a perfect heart/brain connection moment...like a knowing, or a remembering. I sat and read it three times, feeling it resonate inside, at which point it had naturally imprinted itself in my memory (not my strength to memorize anything) because it seemed to make perfect sense in my being. Now, attempting to explain it conceptually/cognitively for a mind translation seems like quite a task. However, I decided it'll be a good challenge for myself, and possibly meaningful for someone else, so here are some thoughts on what this quote means for me.
Here are the symptomatic things I see "destroying" relationships in my work:
- communication problems (inability to express feelings assertively...vulnerably from the heart, and set boundaries).
- "selfishness" (inability to understand a partner's emotional/physical needs, and/or inability to feel a desire to meet those needs and longings)
- addictions
- co-dependecy (expecting someone else to provide our sense of happiness, or us to provide theirs)
- turning to other people or things for a sense of "aliveness," or a filling of the void (affairs would be one example, but really it could be dependency on anything that creates imbalance to our essence...anger, depression, over or under anything...eating, sleeping, movie watching, etc)
The question then becomes: What do these things have to do with love? and how is love the wrecking ball? This is where it gets a little tricky for me to understand...and explain, but hang in here. Brent Baum, a trauma therapist who has worked with over 12,000 trauma survivors, says in his book, "Living as Light," this about healing our traumas...)
ps. here's my definition of trauma, esp. for those who believe they haven't experienced trauma: "ANYTHING we feel, think, believe, or do to ourselves or another that is not in line with our deepest essence...pure love and light. Trauma may also be triggered in us by something someone else feels, think, believes, or does to us not in connection with their deepest essence of pure love & light.
Okay, so here's Brent Baum:
"As we shine outward into the universe, we summon to ourselves others of like kind. If we carry the imprint of a traumatic event or indiviudual within our field UNRESOLVED, we radiate outward white light everywhere except in our field where we continue to hold the darkly-framed image of the specific abuse or deprivation. Outward into the universe we shine except where WE ARE USING OUR CREATIVE POWER to contain the pain and darkness of our trauma (Jenny's thought: we use our creative power to hold onto this shadow stuff because it becomes an ingredient from which we can create a grander representation of ourself, as we understand it and are able to heal, than we could have without it). This precise trauma profile, though subconsciously and automatically encoded, creates a 'dark spot' imprinted over our light core. As a result, a specific void, or vacuum, is created by this absence of light, sommoning every individual or event that fits this dark hold or profile in our field of consciousness.
This is the physics of consciousness. We SUMMON those very beings whose imprints we hold. if I carry unreolved abuse from an alcoholic or emotionally unavailable father, for instance, I will rapidly summon other individuals or systems that fit this profile on a subconscious level. the inherent magnetism created by this void feels perilously close ot the intense draw of love. Quite frequently, we cannot tell the difference. When our ninety-three percent subconscious mind holds traumatic imprints, we can CREATE an intense vacuum that will seek to fill itself. In creating from the void, we usually retraumatize ourselves. Until we correct or complete our subconsciously imprinted, trauma-based definitions of love, we will continue to manifest from the void. Such relationships will offer an OPPORTUNITY to mirror our unfinished 'business,' affording an OPPORTUNITY for personal and, perhaps, mutual healing, otherwise resulting in divergent paths when one individual heals the void when the other does not."
a few pages later...he explains,
As we begin to heal our traumas, "We begin to 'see' each other for who we really are without the baggage of the encoded trances" (he's talking about our traumas here). "Without these distortions, we are free to attract persons of like frequency who may be our real soul mates, versus the 'unconscious marriage' created by the dark polarities of our unfinished trauma scenes. The aggressive magnetism created by the latter is often mistaken for love, given the intensity of its pull. Our spirits may use such attractions to begin a healing process, but the marriage may turn out to be more about healing the past than authentic communication with each other in the present."
So...lets do the tying together. I believe love manifests in many ways. One way is through its (love's) encouraging of our own soul to evolve. If we are experiencing(whether in a family, friend, or romantic relationship) the magnetic pull of another's void (if we are feeling the pull of another's void, WE'VE also got a void where there's a trauma to resolve), love (our own soul's longing to experience & evolve) is what allows us to follow the magnetic pull into a relationship (however "unhealthy"). Love (again, our own soul's longing to experience & evolve) also becomes the wrecking ball that pulverizes the relationship (with any of the "symptoms" listed earlier), when the learning, healing, growth and evolution now requires the ending or shifting of the relationship, from which we can gain insight, understanding, and experience that helps us to better understand ourself and what blocks us from further evolution, or what blocks us from being able to love in a more real, authentic way...rather than simply "loving" (in a limited way) from our "natural man" space. Now, if both people in the relationship are able to become mindful and aware of their voids, what created the magnet, work through things, etc., than we are able to open up our ability to love & connect authentically, thereby not needing love to pulverize the relationship, because it's becoming big enough and wide enough to let real love in (the relationship cont. to be the the place of most growth and evolution in our opportunity to learn about and express 'real' love).
Wow, so I don't know if this is helpful or creates more confusion. I realize the paragraph above contains more than one run-on sentence, and I now feel more confused than ever :) Yet, somewhere inside it still seems to make sense. I watched "The River Why" a couple weeks ago and in this fly-fishing/philosophical film, the main character ends by saying...paraphrased...'we can't write about love. It doesn't mean we shouldn't stop trying, but love is like a river. Damn it and it becomes a lake, put it in a bucket and it's no longer a river. Just as a river can't be captured, neither can love, when we try it's no longer love. Love is like a river, ever flowing between two banks shifting and changing as it goes.'
And so, live, love, experience...no fear. We don't even need to analyze whether our experiences are coming from authentic, true, love or our trauma voids...that will become evident as we move along, and when it does we can use whatever evidences it to us (even if it's a pulverized relationship) to learn and grow and change...to come back to our original self, pure love & light.
