Primary Shaming
For the part of you that looks around the room before it lets itself be seen.
Looking around the room
Maybe you know the glance that goes around the room before you speak, the quick read of every face for the yes, and the way one raised eyebrow can fold you up from the inside so that the thing you were about to say goes back to wherever it came from. This one moves quietly, as a tucking away of what you love about yourself in case it is too much for the room, and it turns outward too, so that you catch yourself correcting, teasing or judging someone right at the place where you were once made to feel exposed. For me this is Primary Shaming, one of the 5 Primary Imprints, and it belongs with its four sisters as a betrayal of the natural order, because somewhere early you were doing exactly what Life does, which is to be fully and loudly yourself, look, look at me, and a grown-up met that with a look or a word that asked for less of you, and a young part of you took that look as the truth about who you are. In my experience that part has been doing a job ever since, scanning and shrinking so that the look stays away, and the job performs a function with purpose, so the work is to question the function, and that question walks home through the heart.
What a seedling knows
I learned this from the trees before I learned it from the parts. A seedling in the subsoil puts out its first leaf with everything it has, and its whole attention is on the light, because Life is in continual, unconditional acceptance and places no stipulation over the circumstances that it finds itself in, and a child reaching for the grown-up’s eyes is that same seedling, wanting to be met in the unique experience it is having. Carry that into the internal landscape and the shrinking shows itself for what it is, a little version of you that doesn’t go by the name of shame, but that expresses the story of shame, and these little beings are part of every conversation, and they yet wait for a proper seat at the circle. The one who hid learned that hiding keeps it safe, and it has kept you safe, and I say that with some tenderness, because the parts of self that I in the beginning shamed most kept me safe the longest in the world of men. So the first move is thanks, and the second move is a question.
Pen and paper
Where do I go looking for approval of who I am and what I do?
Where do I keep a piece of myself tucked away, and from whom?
Where do I pass shame along, perhaps quietly, to someone smaller than me?
Where in my body does it fold when the eyebrow goes up?
Then whisper the word shame and listen for what answers, and for which images surface.
The part of self always knows.
Your own acceptance
Shame sent you out into the world looking for approval, and all along the search was for your own acceptance, which is the thing that was taken off the table the day the look landed. Does this actually feel natural to me is the question that opens the door, and it is worth asking of the whole set: is it natural to judge somebody, is it natural to think that I am more than somebody else, is it natural to shout at my children, is it natural to make myself small so that a room will keep me? Following that question back takes Will, the proclamation of what the wholeness of self is willing into motion, and at the root of it a young one still stands very still, waiting to be accepted as they are. Your own acceptance is the acceptance that is your own.
Kneeling to their height
Let the young one who first felt shame come close, maybe with a hand over their face, maybe standing very still in the corner of the room where it happened. I want you to kneel to their height in your mind’s eye and just gently ask, will you share with me your name, which is the first step of re-membering, and when the name comes, say it back softly, because the name is a sound and the sound opens every memory that was filed under it. Then name what happened, plainly, and speak the words that should have been spoken that day in the first person of the grown-up who was there: I see you, and I am here, and you are welcome here exactly as you are, all of you, and I am sorry that I asked for less. Then comes the hinge of the whole thing, and it stands on its own line.
Do you feel willing to accept that what happened happened?
A no is a fine answer, because we can thank that part for saying no, I’m not willing, and sit with them a while longer, and a yes, when it comes, is the moment the walls of that room begin to come down. From there the way home leads through the heart into the internal landscape, where that moment still plays and can be re-scripted the way the Self wants it remembered, and the young one can finally be held.
Warmth first
Shame softens in warmth, so meet whatever rose the way you would meet a child who has come out from behind a door, perhaps with a walk outside or a warm drink so that your body can settle, and give it a day before you decide anything about what you found. When more opens than you wish to hold alone, I am here through a written or live Dream Interpretation or the Syntropic Embodiment Journey, where I go there with you into the subconscious and we do the retrieval together, I guide and you heal, and when another of the five speaks louder than this one, Absence of Presence waits next door.