No Need to Wither Away
by Steve Beckow
Posted on March 9, 2024
I’ve just had a conversation with someone whose son is having emotional difficulties. I don’t want to go into details because (A) I don’t want to identify the person and (B) I don’t want to create an impression that I somehow have credentials to be dispensing advice.
We all contribute what we have. Mine is philosophical speculation.
Interestingly, my life history does give me some first-hand experience in the area I’m about to venture into.
It’s my philosophical speculation that, when criticized repeatedly at a young age, we go inward. I imagine that statement shows up as obvious to most people.
We hide. We erect walls of excuses, denials, and justifications for self-protection. We don’t ask for help or join in team efforts. Etc.
I was criticized in a hurtful manner by a man who was criticized himself. It helped along a tendency, which I can see in past lives, of seeking solitude, concentration and independence – monk, mathematical philosopher, etc.
When my Dad shouted at me from inches away from my face and I dissociated, it just sealed the bargain. I had no confidence after that to sally forth.
I’m describing this for this person, as an instance of how it can arise that a person could let go of society and turn inwards.
This isolated condition does not stop a person. It just makes things harder and colors our performance. (1) It also keeps us from experiencing our own love.
It results in loneliness, awkwardness, hopelessness, and more. And getting out of it can be a long process if you don’t know what’s happening or what can help.
***
OK, Act 1, Scene 2.
As a thoroughly-unqualified individual expressing his unasked-for opinion, I call this condition a problem with emergence. (See downloads, below.) A problem with standing forth, showing up, being here now.
We’re adult now, with a need to solve our problems more quickly than we might have had as a child. I see the need of the moment as being to re-emerge, to come out from the fortress we’ve erected and to do it more quickly than we might have if we were still a child.
We also may find we need to re-parent ourselves. More on that on another occasion.
Emergence is not a process taught in school. It was only taught in expensive growth courses in the 1970s!
As a person who went through the process, one of the best ways to do it for me was the Outward-Bound model. I didn’t do Outward Bound itself. I did what was then the est Six Day Course, which had many of the same features (and then some). (2)
This kind of physically-challenging course can cause a breakthrough and emergence. We say “we found ourselves.” We’ve emerged from our shell. We now know how we did it – once. We resolve to do it again. And again.
A second way was the give-and-take of an encounter group. That could bring about a mental and emotional breakthrough, an inner/outer emergence. (3)
The Growth Movement was full of breakthrough processes. Whether that literature still exists somewhere (perhaps the Library of Congress) is an open question.
While we may not at present have many elements of the Growth Movement around, after the Reval, I’ll be starting them up again in my local community (Vancouver). With that, we’ll have more of the mechanisms we need to help people emerge from their psychic wounds. (4)
Whether the prod is physical as in the Outward-Bound model or mental and emotional as in encounter groups, what happens is the circumstances are created for our Adult consciousness to stand forth, to call itself forth, and take charge.
***
Act 1, Scene 3.
I said “Adult” consciousness. What do I mean by that term? Let me explain.
The state that’s called forth is going to be increasingly more of our Higher Self.
But let me use, instead, the terminology which Eric Berne, founder of Transactional Analysis, coined in the Sixties to refer to it.
He saw three “ego states.” I prefer to call them “consciousness states”: Parent, Adult, and Child. I refer you to his numerous books on Transactional Analysis itself on the Parent and Child consciousness states. I want to zero in here on the “Adult” consciousness state.
The “Adult” consciousness state is everything we’ve been discussing in these pages. It’s balanced, centered, grounded, etc. It’s the Higher Self making itself known and felt, as far as I can see.
What emerges is, by definition, what was already there. We already are and have all we’ll ever need.
When we’re in this Adult/emerged state, as Werner Erhard said, we do what works and what we do works. This state starts out friendly to the divine qualities and ends up immersed in them.
***
Act 1, Scene 4.
Emergence, to take a large subject and squeeze the juice out of it, is the very act of standing forth, of accessing our Adult and allowing it to take charge.
The Adult that stands forth will not allow itself to be confined. It insists on truth and compassion in its own treatment of others and asks it of others as well.
This Adult state loves, listens, and learns as it moves through life. Eventually it taps into the artesian well of love that eternally arises in the opened heart.
That spring cannot flow freely in us when we’re walled off and turned away from others. It has nowhere to go and love must flow. It awaits our opening up.
This just in! An even more hopeful avenue is on the verge of opening up: med beds. Are they not being presently used on children who were more than just criticized? And do they not erase negative memories?
Finally, in the background to all this is what gives us the most hope: the continually-ascending energies. The very ones bringing all this to the surface are also the very ones that will dissipate it, if we only hang tight.
Curtain falls. End of story. Resumption of life.
On the subject of emergence, see Let’s Go! Let’s Grow! Vol. 4. Emergence at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Lets-Go-Lets-Grow-V4-Emergence-R4.pdf
See also Vasanas: Preparing For Ascension by Clearing Old Issues at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Vasanas-Preparing-for-Ascension-R11.pdf
Footnotes
(1) I was helped in making refugee decisions by “knowing what it felt like.”
(2) There are many more personally-challenging growth programs that I’m not aware of. When people say the armed forces builds character, emergence is the process they’re pointing at. That pre-supposes the armed forces themselves being honorable which, as we know, is regrettably not the case everywhere on Earth.
(3) A third way would be Enlightenment Intensives. That’s too large a subject for me to get into here.
(4) That “more” would include bodywork, bioenergetics, psychodrama, rule reconstruction, etc. However, all of this may now be pre-empted by med beds! We’ll have to see!
Steve Beckow
