Time to roll away the shoulds...

Everywhere I look these days I seem to see instances of disagreement leading to division and demonization; it seems very much to be a signal aspect of the human condition.

But I suspect it's a bit like being pregnant: you know the phenomenon -- when you're pregnant, you see pregnant women everywhere, but when you're not pregnant they're apparently invisible?

What I'm trying to say is that my seeing of this disagreement/division/demonization is most likely a projection of what's going on in my own spirit.  When we finally see how parts of us -- the judging parts, also known as "the shoulds"-- seem to dominate our thinking and derail some of our best efforts, the temptation is to argue with them, to disengage, and to demonize.

But now I'm thinking it's not so different from the advice a dog whisperer gave me not long ago when I was complaining about my dog's overprotectiveness.  "That's his job," she said.  "You need to thank him for performing it well, and give him another job."

I'm coming to realize (thanks to therapy) that those shoulds, those parental voices that keep me stuck and insecure, are actually protecting some other extremely vulnerable part of me.  Which means, I suspect, that if I continue to attack them and hate and demonize and argue with them, they'll just get bigger and more defensive.

What I really need to do is appreciate them, work with them, let them know I'm grateful for their protection, and teach them to trust me enough to reveal what lies beneath; maybe even give them another job -- or, ultimately, pension them off.   Because the truth is -- if we're feeling trapped and victimized by our own self-defeating voices, it really is a cave of our own making, and (she said, moving into an Easter metaphor) it may be time to begin rolling away the stone.

And how do we roll away the stone?  By embracing it, wrapping our arms around it, and moving with it as a way of setting it aside so we can move into the deep rich parts of ourselves.  The stone is there to keep out the robbers and the bandits, but we can choose to offer to take over that job more consciously... And that's the trick, of course: it only works if we're conscious -- awake, aware, present, engaged.. and that's a hard promise to make.  No wonder the shoulds are working overtime: they just don't quite trust us to be as attentive in the moment...