Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.
CARL JUNG
My book, Love Lies Beneath: How Reclaiming My Soul Through Story Became The Secret To Healing My Heart is available in paperback and as a Kindle at Amazon.
Your Original Self lies waiting beneath the layers of your Original Self-Betrayal and Original Wounding.
Transcript
0:02
Welcome to Love Lies Beneath. I’m Zette Harbour. I’m glad to have you here. Do you feel like stress, fear or pain take up way too much of your energy? Have you wondered if you’ll ever be free of that heaviness of your past? Do you long to feel as good on the inside as your life looks on the outside?
0:44
In this podcast, you’ll discover the story of who you really are, and how to set yourself free. Together, we’re going to travel into those wild spaces of our inner landscapes, and dive deeply into the rich soil of our lives, reclaiming Soul through Story and healing our Hearts. My book, Love Lies Beneath is the map. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast so you don’t miss any of this enriching journey. And now, let the adventure begin.
1:44
In Episode Four, we are going to explore origins, the origins of the stories that we have come to believe are the absolute truth of who we are, the world we inhabit and our place in it. And these stories they can seem so woven into our reality that we don’t even see them. And they were formed during a time when they were absolutely necessary for our ability to manage and navigate, overwhelming and threatening and painful situations.
2:38
It’s really natural, when we are little to come up with explanations that help us make sense of life that really doesn’t make sense at all, and probably feels really overwhelming, stressful, painful, and even downright threatening. The mind is so resilient and so creative, she will come up with whatever it is that she believes we need to help us survive, and to keep as much of us intact as possible.
3:17
And the beauty is that no matter what stories or ideas about who we are, we feel we must shun or hide from ourselves or even twist into something unrecognizable, the true essence of who we are, remains there. It remains down in the core of our Soul and it just waits for us to return.
4:03
I’m going to read a passage from my book. It’s called Origins. “Until you make the unconscious conscious. It will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Carl Jung.
4:20
Many of my stories have felt as old as time. I did not recognize where they began nor what was there before them. Like a goldfish in a bowl of water, I could not explain the story environment in which I swam. If I asked that goldfish to tell me what water is, she would look at me like I was crazy. Water is everywhere and has always been as far as she knows. That is what it was to be unconscious of my stories. They were invisible to me and yet I relied on them to survive. I needed to find a way to make them visible to see them as separate from me. This allowed me to become conscious of them, and to understand why I created them in the first place. In order to do this, I had to track back to my origins.
5:30
Protective Layers. In the beginning, I was my Original Self. The world had not yet impacted me in a way that derailed me from being my natural self. My connection to the Love that lies beneath was unconscious and unbroken. I did not even think there was any separation between me and the loving source I was a manifestation of at this stage. The only story that existed was ‘I am.’
6:06
Then, while I was young and unprepared, some intense and painful betrayals and abandonments came. This was followed by the horrifying discovery that I lived in a home that was overtly dangerous for me. These are my Original Woundings, and they engulf me, they blanketed me and threatened to suffocate me. It looked as though they would become my only world. My fear was that this part of my life would continue to get bigger and eventually consume me all together.
6:43
I was terrified that I would cease to exist. The outer layer, self betrayal, was created by all of the stories I felt I had to make up to stay sane in a household of not so sane people. I needed to tell myself anything that would make my world even just a little bit less scary or dangerous. The illusions I created still hurt, but I felt like I had control over them because they came from me. The self-inflicted pain was designed to prevent others from continuing to wound me. This would act like a moat, protecting me, and it contained cold watery depths.
7:33
Just like a mythical moat, I tried to fill mine with guardians powerful enough to overcome any intruder. I populated this watery barrier with stories of self loathing and recrimination. It was a strange and almost homeopathic way of trying to ease my suffering. It was as if I believed that my personally created wounds would counteract the poison of the ones caused by others. At the very least, they helped me turn away from the traumas that were utterly out of my control.
8:09
The most pervasive story I installed in my moat told me, it was my fault that my parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles, did not care enough to make sure I felt loved, safe and cherished. I was not worthy, and I did not matter to them. If all of this was happening to me, it was because I deserved it. This was my Original Self Betrayal. And it was designed to keep those woundings from others contained. I would continue to exist, but it would not be pleasant.
8:49
For my self betrayal to do its job, I would need to split off my wounded parts. These bits would carry off the sharpest of the pains with them and create a buffer. My soul took on this mission as a way of keeping my heart and mind from being utterly overwhelmed. My soul had the wisdom to box up and packaway just enough of what hurt to help me find a way to function. I had created some protection only at a high cost. These exiled fragments of my soul may have been banished, but they would never die. Anytime I felt threatened or in pain, I would shun the feelings in me. It was as if I shoved them out of my front door telling them to get lost and not come back.
9:42
Since the dawn of human time, being shunned has been seen as one of the most severe punishments. The same principle applies to how I treat the undesirable parts of myself. When I cast out my painful and unacceptable bits and with them the events from which they were born, I am shunning parts of my Soul. These outcasts never disappear. And the space they leave feels empty and hollow. That emptiness echoes with grief and sadness. I can ignore it for a time, often with the help of alcohol, food, sex, shopping, smoking, pick your poison. Only when I invite the exiled pieces of my soul to return home, can the pain disappear.
10:51
It’s really common when you think about the painful stories that you have about yourself, to see them as enemies, and to believe that they are here to harm you. It’s a really tricky illusion, because they were formed in order to save you. And if that is true, then they must have come from a place of great love.
11:20
This is the idea of Love Lies Beneath. Every story that you have about yourself, no matter how painful, was created in a moment of great need. And it was created for you, by the deepest part of you, that is connected to the loving Source of all creation. In order to connect to that love that lies beneath, all we need to do is dive back into that moat, see that all the creatures we installed there are only in that moat, to protect us. And therefore they would never harm us.
12:07
And as we dive deeper into these depths, we can sift through that Original Wounding that came at the hands of others, we can recognize, reclaim and restore the part of ourselves that caused that Original Self Betrayal. And when we peel away those two outer layers, what remains is our Original Self. The ‘I am’ that existed before the world had a chance to impact it. And this ‘I am’ is within you, now and always.
13:12
What I’d like to leave you with today is to notice those moments. When you have feelings or thoughts that you just don’t want to keep around you. You want to open that front door and shove them out and get rid of them as fast as you can. Notice those moments and let that point the way home. Let that be the voice calling you in the wilderness showing you the direction that you can travel to find your way back to wholeness to find your way back to your Original Self.
13:54
I’m Zette Harbour. I’m so glad you could join me today. I look forward to meeting with you again. Don’t forget, subscribe to this podcast so you don’t miss a single episode on this journey. Go raibh míle maith agat!
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