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Riding Life's Tidal Waves


During the time I was working on my last book, when I arrived home after dropping the kids at school, I headed straight to the study, ignoring the mess the children love living in, and wrote. During those uninterrupted hours, nothing could have lured me from my computer. I knew my time was limited (it’s amazing how short the school day seems when it is not you at school) so that helped me to be disciplined. But there was also another factor at work: it felt as though I needed to write that book. I really had to do it. I didn’t have any choice. Being caught up so completely with anything in your life is what I will explore here.

When you take on a large job, such as starting a family or running a business or leading an organisation or embarking on a creative project, no matter whether your venture has been something you have planned or something that has fallen into your lap, it is almost inevitable that, in the beginning at least, you will become absolutely caught up in that venture. In fact, I would say it is inevitable. This is not such a bad thing, even though sometimes we criticise ourselves and others as though it were. We can start to feel guilty about it, as though we are not in control of our lives, thinking we should be able to simply and easily slide from one role to another, keeping our lives in a harmonious balance at all times.

But being on such an even keel is not always achievable. Life seems to move along in phases or waves and you have to ride out each wave the best way you can. Sometimes the waves are small and easily manageable, or there aren’t any at all, and you might be in a place where you feel you have things worked out. But then a powerful tidal wave rolls in and you have no choice but to be swept up by it.

One of the main tidal waves of my own life came along when I became a mother and my life became almost completely dominated by the needs of my children, which meant I became, in Voice Dialogue terms, ‘the Mother Self’.  This already strong identification was intensified even further with the drying up of help from extended family, who were so excited by the arrival of the first grandchild that they always wanted to be around to help, but by the time the third arrived, not only had the novelty worn off but their time and energy had dissipated too. Even paid babysitters baulk at taking on more than two children and those that are willing to, charge extra for the third child. Suddenly it felt as though I had a hundred children. So as time became more scarce and costs increased, my husband and I were nudged further into a very traditional bonding pattern where I took on most of the parenting and household responsibilities and he had to work even harder outside the home to bring in enough income.

This scenario is similar for many families. Unless you have always-available extended family or reliable nannies who can be there in the mornings until well into the evenings, then usually one partner will need to work outside the home less and be at home to take care of the family, while the other partner will have to work outside the home more and bring in more income. This is a great scenario for building strong bonding patterns, and one that will continue to be common to many families while our world does not pay for the job of parenting. (Bonding patterns are triggered by vulnerability and opposite selves of two people bonding to each other. So when one partner makes no income, there is vulnerability for that person about their total dependency and there is vulnerability for the partner making all the income because the financial wellbeing of the whole family rests with that person. Each partner also becomes the parent for the other’s inner child: the working partner parents the child of the non-income making partner by caring for them financially, while the partner at home parents the child of the working partner by taking care of all their home-based needs.) There are tangents I could go off on about our world’s undervaluing of parenting but I will stick to examining how such a situation nudges a person to be dominated by one powerful part of their personality.

This type of immersion in one part of yourself, of being taken for a ride on one huge wave, feeling as though you have no ability to get off, can happen in many areas of life. Another tidal wave of my own was my book-writing one. It actually sprang from my situation of finding myself being in such a traditional mothering role. I felt I needed to convey the immense importance of the immensely under-valued job of mothering, and so evolved my book Enlightenment through Motherhood. Writing it was a wave I could not get off and had to stay on until the end. 

Other examples of huge waves sweeping you up include starting your own business, or being placed in charge of an organisation, or simply being a teenager where you are separating from your parents and discovering the outside world more independently, leading to an inquisitive, wide-eyed, externally focused, maybe even rebellious energy to come to the fore. When you fall in love you are swept up by the goddess of love and it is unlikely you would even want to get off that wave.

There are many other life phases we experience too, and I believe these phases invite particular selves in to help take you through them. These powerful selves are the archetypal energies we all share, and they are ready and waiting to help us through when we embark on something big. Often they just come in and take over without our awareness that this has even occurred or was about to occur. With much personal work we can unhook to an extent and bring in other energies to help us see with greater perspective and to give us more choice in how we deal with situations that arise, but at certain times in our lives these archetypal selves become dominant.

Each person will experience archetypal energies in a way which is influenced by their primary self system. For example, a man embarking on fatherhood who has a primary self which is carefree and likes to have no responsibilities will be a different type of father to someone who has an impersonal business self as a primary self, and a man who has as primary a pleaser will be a different kind of father yet again. Depending on a person’s total personality picture, sometimes the archetypal selves come in and completely transform a person, for instance a self-centred, fun-loving and irresponsible man might become a devoted, committed and totally responsible father. (When such a complete transformation occurs, usually the ‘old self’ becomes disowned and later, once the initial intensity of the new self wears off, the old self tries to rise to the surface again.)

It is tempting to wish for a state of consciousness where we’d instantly become aware we were being taken up by a powerful energy and be able to unhook from it quickly.

But I believe that you are lucky if you even become aware at some point that you have been swept up on a huge wave, for chances are that if you have not yet experienced a particular life phase or event then you won’t have an aware ego in relation to the archetypal self that’s swept you off your feet. Normally it is only after a period of time that you will become aware of what has happened and then be able to start the process of unhooking from that energy.

So sometimes you have no choice and simply have to ride out the wave until it naturally dissipates or something knocks you off it. So if you are in the middle of a big life event, you may as well enjoy the ride and live your life. This entails surrendering to where you are in your own journey and not expecting particular outcomes or results. Life is easier if you are gentle on yourself. And there is also no requirement to struggle to separate from these selves. There have been many times I have struggled with being so fully 'the mother', and I have wished I could have been somewhere else, on my own, with no mothering responsibilities, being my 'old self' again. But for a while I wasn’t able to do much work separating from her. The hold was way too strong. Maybe if my husband and I had organised our lives so that the pressures would not have been so great to identify with my inner Mother so strongly, I would not have felt the need to escape her. But the fact is, life proceeded as it did and I can’t escape that now. I have had to accept that this is where I am and I can only do as much as I can do.

So is there any point in doing techniques such as Voice Dialogue if you are very caught up in a particular life experience, if you have been swept up by a huge wave? Should you try to separate from Aphrodite when you have just fallen in love? Should you unhook from your Visionary as you sign up investors for a big project? Should you turn down the high energy and idealism of early adulthood and bring in some middle-age conservatism as you embark on life after school?

For me, the answer is: only if you feel you need or want to. There are no ‘shoulds’. If you feel you should, then you are following a rule – either someone else’s or one you have created for yourself. Living by a consciousness pursuing rule-system, especially when you don’t feel like it, can backfire and cause you to identify with the opposite side and rebel against your own rules! So if you are caught up in something, then you are caught up in it. But if you want to, and can, do the work, then by doing it you can only benefit. For by starting the process of unhooking from a self, you can create space for more objectivity about that self and then you have access to a greater picture, and to the energy from other selves. From such an aware ego in relation to the self you have just separated from, you might very well choose to stay on your wave for the time being, but you would be able to ride the wave with more skill and conscious direction.

With no awareness at all of what is going on in your psyche you can get caught on a wave for longer than you might like, if you had had any choice. There are many instances of the rebellious teenager being a rebel for life and never being able to feel they belong in a community. There are many workaholics who never are able to turn down the powerful self who enabled them to get where they are, and their job becomes their life. And there are many mothers who can’t set aside the mother self and they live their lives vicariously through their children and their relationships suffer from being a mother to everyone.

For some huge life events, those events become easier and richer when you simply let go and go with the tide, or energy, or flow. A prime example many women will be familiar with is the process of childbirth – it works much better when you let go of trying to control the process and allow the energy that naturally arises within you to take you along with it. And to do that, in my experience, you have to totally identify with it, surrender to it, and trust it will take you in the right direction. And, for me, that birthing energy is far too powerful to have an aware ego in relationship to it – although the process of unhooking from the part of you who wants to control birth and allowing yourself to let go is having an aware ego in relationship to that controlling part.

So if you've realised you have been riding a powerful wave for some time, and if you feel you are ready for a change, don’t berate yourself about it. Just look at it and accept what you have achieved (or not achieved) by being there. The fact that you are now aware that you have been caught up in something means you are ready to unhook a little from it.

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