Knots Loosening

You Emerging

It’s one of those things that’s easier to see in others but we’ve all got some version of our own. We might have a sense of it, have seen glimpses even, though it largely acts under-the-radar and part of the operating system.

Not so much a glitch, as an annoying recurring feature; It just does that sometimes. Only it applies to us: She just does that sometimes. He’s kinda funny that way.

I’ll give an example. I had a friend, we’ll call Linda, who I met at a discussion-type group 15 years ago. Bright, knowledgable and insightful, with and a sharp wit and humor.

Linda came into the group years after it was established; so as an addition, with a strong personality and a penchant for challenging people. It was clear immediately she could be disruptive.

Linda’s presence didn’t sync with the larger group. I quickly heard rumbles from other members who were not happy. A sense that she was looking to create fissures and break up our good thing.

I defended her. It was a male-heavy group and I welcomed another female. I agreed she didn’t share the lightness and almost playful quality our group had developed, but nonetheless, her appearance shouldn’t be perceived as a threat.

Separately I was becoming friends with Linda. She was far more open one-on-one. I sympathized with her story, which she didn’t share with the larger group.

Our group met once a month and over time it became clear she showed up there very differently - she could be remote, cold, on the edge of judgmental - and her comments lacked the nuance I saw when it was just us.

She had knack for dropping little bombs that shifted the energy and created uncomfortable distance where before the group’s field was highly conducive to connection.

Complaints among long-standing members continued, my defense of her did too.

I mentioned my observation to Linda about how she interacted with the group compared to one-on-one. She artfully deflected and turned it into a subject on how I interacted with the group and maybe I should look at that.

I remember registering this as a red-flag- among growing others - but ignored it.

Inevitably, people fell out and over several months, the group ended. Eventually my friendship with her ended too, when she turned on me. (By that time, I expected this, given I’d learned everyone else in her life - daughter included - eventually stopped communicating with her. (It was always their fault of course.)

A year or so later, another friend from the group who I met for lunch, told me he was really angry with me, that I allowed the group to end because I refused to see that Linda was effectively poison to it.

I was caught off guard and immediately defended myself and my intentions. “Yeah, well, that’s the part of you that refuses to see what’s right in front of you, Kathleen. It’s a blindspot. You had some idea about fairness and in sticking to that, let a decade-long group, that was only getting better, fall apart.” He was clear: I killed our good-thing, not Linda.

Ouch. He was pretty much spot-on. (It still hurts.)

There was something extraordinary and precious about our little collective and I didn’t protect that. I made excuses for someone and held onto an idea rather than confront what was happening right in front of me.

I thought of the multiple red flags - why did I ignore them?

Linda had many good qualities, but she was also someone who repeatedly blew up relationships. My assumption that she would ultimately be a valued member was not based on what was happening but rather on what I wanted to happen.

The thing I knew from our friendship was how much she wanted friendship. Yet over and over when the chance presented itself, I watched her undermine it.

Yes, one of my blindspots, hitched right on the back of one of hers. The loss of our group was a big loss to everyone in it.

My point is, we all have them and maybe blindspot is too trite. It’s more like a knot we can’t get at, but continually signals its presence in painful ways outwardly. Something stuck and tangled, operating in the larger self-system, that undermines but is so fully weaved in, we can’t see it, even when it’s on display and everyone else can.

We justify it. We defend it. We rationalize and repeat it, even when it’s working against our best interests.

Well, we can’t see what we can’t see, but we can see the effects of our blindspots - assuming the desire to and the integrity to own them.

But here’s what I think is happening - en masse - to these snags and snarls of unconsciousness we carry around and that potentially ignite and create difficulty.

I think they are slowly going the way of the old world. It just makes sense. They developed out of and were embedded in a distorted world where we navigated manufactured narratives that were complete bullshit and full of contradiction. How could we absorb and adapt to such a world without mirroring the same in ourselves?

We’ve been swimming in lies while attempting to build a solid foundation.

I ignored the signs of Linda’s effect on the group, attempting to apply ideas I picked up from a distorted ‘spiritual’ premise that elevated acceptance but didn’t include discernment. (Symptom of the New Age virus.) I thought I was doing the right thing and was actively part of doing the wrong thing.

If that situation arose today, I’d have no issue cutting right through the convoluted conflict I carried around. “Hey, you’re not a good fit in our group. Sorry. But we can still hang out.”

I don’t carry those contradictory ideas around the way I used to. (Though I’m sure I still have blindspots.)

As the world out-there unwinds this latest version of ‘reality,’ dropping the lies at faster and faster rates, the identities we formed to adapt to that world, unwind too.

And this is what I’m feeling. A sometimes subtle, sometimes not, breaking up of old patterns. Those inner knots are loosening. I see it myself.

Old ‘hooks’ that used to grab hold and work me, show up like shadows of their former selves. You know them - the ones that recycle thoughts that are petty, that trigger doubts and insecurity. The stuff that can consume us and keep us small.

They try to lure me in to tangle with them, but are less and less persuasive. It’s like I can see the whole tired process they trigger and now can simply decide to ignore them. Who needs to waste the time? I know how that goes.

My ignoring them, my refusal to take the bait, speeds their dissolution. They fade away as insignificant because they are. (I’m making a clear distinction here between that kind of ‘noise’ and the stuff that arises that requires my attention, which has a fully different quality.)

You could make the case this acquired skill is simply the result of time and its lessons, and I’m not saying that’s not in the mix.

But I think there’s more to it - the larger force for freedom that’s been building and pushing at this world is also pushing at us. How could it not?They go together.

There is a mirroring effect between us and the world. What’s going on ‘out there’ is also going on ‘in here’ too.

Given the velocity of change happening it makes sense to me; we don’t have the luxury of being stuck in old patterns like we used to. There is no time for that. Big change requires big adjustments and we’re doing this at faster and faster rates.

These knotted bits in us are losing their juice because their previous context - the massively distorted old world - is losing its juice. As this world makes way for an upgraded version (I trust that) we make way for upgraded versions of us, too.

A final point: when I ask myself, who did those knots belong to? My answer is obvious - an old version of me.

It can be a jarring realization but impossible to avoid. If the world leaving was not ‘real’ in many ways, then who we were in it, weren’t ‘real’ in many ways either.

Like my former identity as a Democrat. Whatever that word once meant, it’s gone - both in the world and in me. It would be irrational and idiotic to attempt to hold on to it - since that meaning has been clearly gutted.

My being a Democrat was based on an idea that didn’t translate into reality. It was a false identity.

These false identities are being shed along with the false world shedding because they go together.

There is so much upside in this realization; the dropping of what’s false - outwardly and inwardly - will naturally reorient us back into deeper inquiry around both reality and identity.

The uncomfortable shedding process - we are all in the midst of - must facilitate the emerging of what’s actually real and bring more of that world and who we really are into embodiment.

It’s a process we can deeply trust, are already in, and can maybe even marvel at.

In the growing demand for truth and reality in the world, what remains will be what is essential. The rest will be stripped bare.

Same for us.

New world emerging = new You (and me) emerging.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Thanks for reading.

Buy me a cuppa cocoa.

https://ko-fi.com/kathleen87247