Be that One Person

Be That One Person

Being a “helper” in someone’s life, the (often) one person who believes deeply in you , who “sees” you no matter what your current circumstances are, the person who expects you to be bigger than you are,  the person who helps you see and reach beyond where you are now,  and the one who never leaves you and yet manages to hold his/her own space and not get victimized or abused by your lashing out, these are the actions and  expressions of Spiritual maturity expressed as universal love.  Universal love and tolerance is not a choice for weenies. It is in fact a hero’s journey. I do not use the words “unconditional love” not only because it is an overused cliché but also because that expression implies a world of hugs, kisses, complements and affirmations, and that is not all that love is.  Those expressions  of love are often the self-gratification addiction of a wounded person who needs to be thanked and adored for giving “love” to someone else and  it is typically the trademarks of a co-dependent or narcissist. Giving hugs etc.  IS one aspect of love  but  it is only one aspect and one of the safest and most fun aspects of  “showing” love, just like giving your mate or lover an orgasm.  However, just like having a mate, love is not simply all about orgasms or making someone else “feel good” so you feel good.

What does being a loving, Spiritual, humble, strong secret agent look like?   I was watching a 60 Minutes story about the amazing opera singer Ryan Speedo Green, a former ghetto kid. In the 4^th grade, already a problem child, his first day in class he looked at his 5’1” Caucasian teacher and picked up his desk and threw it at her declaring he wasn’t going to be taught by any white person. Her response? With no anger, no shaming, and holding HER space, she took away his chair as well and made him sit on the floor and told him he would have to earn back the right to have a desk and a chair in her class. Later she talked to him to ask him what was going on at home. She knew this wasn’t him, not the real him, not the boy he could be, she started talking to the boy she sensed buried underneath his hardships and pain.  Years later he was placed in juvenile detention. She hunted him down and found him, even then and continued to not leave him, to stay connected.   She told him then, “Remember you are not your circumstances or even your current situation. This is just an event in the journey of your life. Don’t let this define you “and he never forgot those words. She didn’t feel sorry for him, commiserate with him, or give him clichéd platitudes (which always reads to me as if the person can’t wait to end the conversation so they are saying “feel good “ things so they can hang up or leave). Even though she could be of no direct help, her concern, her love, her commitment to staying connected to him was his lifeline. 

Ryan noted that he did not think he was treated in any special way by her, that this is what she did with all of her students, on her watch! Walking her talk.  This is the behavior of a healer, a Teacher, a Spiritual Secret Agent Warrior and this models the true behavior of universal love.  If you call yourself a Spiritual or Awakened person, these are the kind of actions you should long to do throughout your daily life, not just lusting to lead a crystal workshop, be a medium, or channel someone or something.  Those are all fine things to do, if you are called to do so, but they are also a “job”. Just like Picasso was a great artist but not a great person, many new age people have “gifts” but outside of their “sessions” and presentations they can be horrible parents or friends, self-serving, self-absorbed and wounded humans seeking attention from others to soothe their damaged and out of control ego.

The fabulous psychoanalyst Alice Miller wrote some amazing books, one called For Your Own Good uses an analysis of the life of Hitler and the Life of Picasso. They both had similar childhoods yet turned out very differently, even though Picasso was not the nicest of humans he was no Hitler. Her study (along with many other since) indicate that the decisive factor in a child surviving abuse or hardship (such as war, earthquakes, extreme poverty etc.) is have one loving constant relationship where a person stays connected to you, doesn’t leave, doesn’t give up, doesn’t get victimized by a person “acting out” their pain in a variety of often horrifying behaviors. You stay connected. You also don’t allow yourself to either be “used” or “abused”. If you allow yourself to be used (rather than you choosing to give) you will eventually dislike the person. If you allow the person to abuse you, the person will disrespect and even hate you, because now you have become another person that s/he has hurt through uncontrollable actions coming out of pain and fear.  If you cannot stay connected AND hold your space with the person you are trying to help, you become another one of his/her wounds reminding him/her of how hurtful and awful s/he is which only reinforces pain, self –hate, and hopelessness.

Loving someone while excusing horrible, destructive and self-destructive behaviors is the path of a coward and it is enabling. Being the loving being who will not accept the “lesser” or more dysfunctional version of a person is the Path of a Warrior.  To do this, you must be able to keep boundaries.  You must know and value self-care.  You will have to give up seeking recognition and winning accolades for being   “amazing” and for your “good deeds”. You will have to put your ego in check and tolerate the wounded one’s behavior and language without allowing yourself to either be or feel like a victim because you have to be the one who believes in them when they cannot believe in themselves.  You have to use boundaries to help the wounded socialize and to teach them to consider the feelings of others. People in pain, especially younger people, are extremely self-centered because all they know and can feel is their pain.   When you don’t use boundaries, you are giving them the message that they are so damaged you can’t possibly expect them to behave any better than what they are doing now. So you are further burying them in their already out of control low self –esteem or self-hate. Boundaries say to people, I know you are bigger than this behavior you are doing. Boundaries also tell the others that you are strong enough that you will not be hurt which makes the wounded feel safe with you. If a wounded person knows you will not let yourself be hurt, it is such a relief for him/her because s/he doesn't have to second guess how to act with you and it also means you are strong enough to truly help him/her. Wounded people feel hopeless about themselves and their wounds and now their life, whether they can talk about it or not.  They need a hero. Someone sensitive and strong, knowledgeable and tolerant, someone who won’t get hurt and most of all someone who won’t leave even if the wounded ones try to push you away, because that is all they know.

What does “being the one” look like?  There is no one way and each case will be a dance between the two of you that will be specific to that situation and that relationship.  On a simple level for example, I cannot count the people that I barely knew who went through a rough patch. I started calling them every day even changing my cell phone plan so I could do this. I called them to listen to their woes, help if I could, but mainly to check in every single day so they would know they mattered. I never became “friends” with them.  One person, years later, only one, realized what I had done and thanked me (maybe a decade later) there was no recognition or thanks from the others. Some actually became my critics once they got back on their feet, go figure.  I have stayed connected to many of my Teachers (both Spiritual and in education) after all, they are human as well, because I wanted to “return” or give back all they had done for me and made phone calls (and later texts and email though those are really not the same as a human voice) for decades. Connection can save someone from depression.  Often the people I am calling can’t talk; they are in too much pain. I call and do most of the talking, just telling stories about life as a way to stay connected and to keep them grounded. This is the simplest version of being a hero.

On a more complex level, when being a Spiritual secret agent in say the medical field, educational situation, working with children, in corrections, police, social work, job training, even as a supervisor or manager you can choose to be a mentor and a “hero”.  You will not be appreciated at first, maybe not for years or even decades, or maybe never while you are alive. People in pain typically lash out at first because they are desperately afraid of more pain so they create it at once to get it over with as it is inevitable in their world. Also, the wounded don’t know other ways of reacting. They need socialization, education on how to behave as all they the behaviors they observed and learned in their lives produced pain, or violence, or disrespect, or many other forms of dysfunction.  

To be a hero, there are books to read. If you have never experienced the culture of poverty, war, or abuse, you might need to educate yourself. To be a hero, you need to have courage, the courage to not take the actions or language of the wounded personally. It takes intuition and Guidance to see beneath a person’s pain or even his/her facade of “I’m okay”. Then the hardest part, you need to have the strength to be the sacred space that will not go along with people’s victim narrative but instead you start asking them to step into who they really are, who they can become with work on their part.  In the 60 Minutes show, Ryan Speedo Green tells how he saw his first opera and told his high school teacher he wanted to be an opera singer and sing in the Metropolitan Opera in NYC. His teacher’s response was not discouragement for this ghetto child with a huge police record, nor did his teacher give him generic encouragement,  His teacher outlined that Ryan would have to get two higher degrees in music, and learn four languages as well as being able to sing in order to just audition.  His teacher helped to concretely and very specifically support, formulate and structure Ryan’s vision of who he really was underneath his pain and his circumstances. 

Being the one means you help the wounded person find their own way out. This makes a person strong. Giving answers only makes you look good and tells the other people, subliminally, they are not good enough, smart enough or strong enough to figure it out for themselves. While you help a person find his/her way out, you stay, showing him/her through concrete real actions that you believe in him/her. The wounded are used to people giving clichéd advice or comfort then passing them on to another, or back into the system. You need to stick around. Be specific in helping people structure success, survive their outbursts or lashing out when they get scared, not leave (yes I keep repeating this), don’t allow yourself to manipulated into believing their dysfunctional narratives whether it is that of being a victim, or of being a bad person. Hold your space to model holding space. Hold your space so you can hold space for them to step into, to own, and then to eventually take over.

Journey On.