Ending my Marketing of Woundology; summarizing Myss

"We are not born fluent in love but spend our life learning about
it. . . . We are as attracted to love as we re intimidated by
it." -- Caroline Myss, The Anatomy of the Spirit

I started reading this book two years ago, though never in order.
Today I read about the fourth chakra, the heart chakra, because it is
associated with the heart and lungs, the location of my mother's
illnesses. Appropriately, it is all about love and compassion,
revealing lessons I have yet to learn.

First, I was struck by the idea of fluency in love, going back to it
being a practice. It is natural for us to love, but we often learn
of unnatural signals for how love should look, feel, taste, smell, or
sound. Jenna commented on a recent blog how fear is really the
opposite of love, not hate. I now see what she means.

Similarly, jealousy is the opposite of trust, a trait of love. Myss
lists jealousy and anger as evidence of the disconnection with our
fourth chakra, our power to love, as obstacles to loving. Yet, when
we love we expect or are expected to show our love not only through
compassion and concern, but also through expressions of
possessiveness and jealousy (though we don't actually use these words
as positive expressions of love). Rather, if our lovers do not
inspire jealousy or anger when they do wrong (or we think they do),
then we tend to doubt the sincerity of our affection (or vice
versa). However, isn't that jealousy and anger our ego and our fear
talking? If we can witness our ego's games and set it aside and we
can still see the beauty of the person before us, then isn't that
trust an aspect of love?

Thus, what do we know about love if what we are taught to seek as
evidence of love is really its opposite?

Myss also lists the strengths of the fourth chakra, and this, I know,
is the kind of love I want to bring to all relationships in my life:
"Love, forgiveness, compassion, dedication, inspiration, hope, trust,
and the ability to heal oneself and others."

How do you get there? By cultivating compassion and forgiveness.
Myss defines compassion as "the strength to honor another's suffering
while bringing power back into one's life." Furthermore, she
describes forgiveness as, "a complex act of consciousness, one that
liberates the psyche and soul from the need for personal vengeance
and the perception of oneself as a victim." We do not have to
condone someone's actions that hurt us, we do not have to let them to
continue hurting us, but we cannot use them as an excuse for hurting
ourselves or others.

This tendency, to use our wounds as an identity and to control
others, Myss calls "marketing" of our wounds. She also coins the
word "woundology" -- the proliferation of new terminology we have to
name our fears and their sources, to talk about our pain and process
it. However, rather than healing, we have created a culture out of
our wounds, getting lost in the healing process and never reaching
healing and the possibility to love fully. As Tolle would say, our
pain feeds our ego, and we become attached to the very thing we are
trying to escape by naming it and nurturing it. My wise friend in
the desert calls this the victim mentality versus the witnessing
mentality.

Currently, I have witnessed by own marketing of wounds, using them to
control others and as an excuse for not having the courage to be open
to what I really want in my life. I think my writing is on the verge
of doing this, so I will take a break from blogging for a bit, for
the few of you who read often. Maybe it is time to move from the
'personal essay,' which might have its limits before being too
personal, to fiction.

In the meantime, leave comments, send messages, read my archives and
comment there.