20. A Summary of Where We've Come
Without knowing it, we typically recreate our painful past again and again throughout each day. But, our early procedural programming can only continue to call the shots if we stay inside the spell it keeps weaving, recommitting thousands of times each day to see the world through a lens of negative options.
eightysevenminutes
Not only were neural pathways formed in our earliest years, but new neural pathways are now being created by our current agreement with what we originally learned about relationship. The prisoner has unwittingly become the jailer.
We may not be able to stop the old messages that the Voice continues to whisper, but once we recognize these messages as early programming, any ongoing acquiesce to their validity becomes consent.
Once again: We are always either strengthening our procedural mind or finding ways to build a new one.
Waking up includes becoming aware that we live inside a pre-programmed jail cell. It also includes finding a way to live outside its limitations. In order to do so, something essential remains to be done if we wish to gain access to a more freeing option. Initially, we’ll need to ask several questions in order to find the way beyond the limitations of procedural memory:
-
What if reality is actually larger than the one we were first taught to know?
-
What if there is a context bigger than the narrative/text we were taught to believe? (Not that our early learning was inaccurate, because it clearly does tell the story, true in its own way, about what our initial experiences felt like.)
-
Does the sense of certainty instilled in our early neural pathways define the full range of options available to us now?
-
Do the limitations of our original caregivers accurately describe the entire spectrum of holding and possibility available to us in this moment?
Said another way, can fresh options be added to our sense of what’s possible? Can we experience a new mind, even though the learned difficulties of our old mind continue to persist?
imgarcade.com
Daniel Siegel, a brain researcher at UCLA, puts it this way: “Where attention goes, neurons fire. And where neurons fire, they rewire.” Our sense of “reality” is indeed fully capable of being expanded. Our brains, regardless of age, are available for rewiring.
Our worldview is not limited to our initial, procedurally learned conclusions. Deeper down, the cement remains wet.
But, there remains a central caveat. The rewiring of procedural negativity doesn’t seem to happen without two key ingredients:
-
Actual experience of authentic presence and possibility, holding and potential space beyond our original sense of negative certainty,
-
A willingness to actively try to accept this new experience of presence in spite of a continuing felt certainty about absence.
In other words, we need to find a way to practice presence in absence.
flickr
Fortunately, we have that exact option: the intentional, gradual acceptance of a deeper, always-present, underlying AND; presence that holds the possibility of new possibility. Being-with that meets us (and our orphaned selves) exactly where we are, offering tenderness.
Moments of meeting. Moments of trust.