The dimension of the word equality that opened up for me that I will be looking at today is self-equality. This opened up as I was looking at who I am within and as relationships/agreements/sex/sexuality as who I am within and as the relationship I have developed between my mind and body over the years. It starts with who I was as a child, where I, without question, believed that I was a burden to those around me. After some bullying incidences and with no understanding of the mind back then, I also began to develop the idea and self-perception that I was generally easy to dislike, or ‘who I was’ was something that was unpleasant or offensive to others.
Looking back, it all makes more sense to me now. I see that I was odd, that I was a girl that looked and acted like a boy, I was quiet and did not approach others or make any attempt to give them an opportunity to know me more deeply. I did not, at that time, take a stand as Who I Was, develop the confidence or the ability to communicate, which would have been cool. I rather accepted my perceived reality as ‘fate’, and developed coping mechanisms to deal with the intensity of emotional experiences I would feel in relation to others.
This is not something to blame or react to now, but rather just information about ‘the way things unfolded’ in my life, what can be learned from it and how I can now change. Because if you look at it, those elements of our childhood that go undealt with, those parts that we do not look at, but rather continue with the coping and the personalities that developed as a result of it, keep in place that child that we were, somewhere deep, or even not so deep within ourselves.
Aspects of ourselves are ‘locked in’, like some un-touchable vulnerability that must be protected and defended at all costs, instead of exposing them and seeing that it no longer has to be who we are. Elements of ourselves do mature and evolve, but if we don’t look at ALL of ourselves, there will remain bits and pieces that are left behind in an eternal child-like state that only takes on an adult facade.
This is how my relationship to my body and my relationship to men developed – with a crucial part of me that was left behind, a very specific dimension or myself was trapped within a self-perception and self-belief that was developed early in childhood and never questioned.
How this unfolded is as follows: as a bit of a ‘late bloomer’ compared to my peers at the time, I only developed an interest in the opposite sex in my late teens. By then, my body had matured, and based on the attention I got for it, as well as the media and Hollywood as my guides for how the world works, I began to understand that my shape and form was something desirable. Couple this understanding with the fact that I still held on to the perception that ‘Who I Was’ as a person beyond the physical was someone easy to dislike, a burden and offensive, and the result was that I supressed myself as ‘Who I Am’, and placed my physical appearance at the forefront as that of me that has value.
When I developed strong urges to be in a relationship, I would put my body and appearance out like bait, luring in the opposite sex, suppressing everything of me and learning through media, Hollywood and my peers who to be and how to act instead as something and someone that is ‘likeable’, ‘inoffensive’, and ‘of benefit’ and not a burden to others. This created exceptional inequality within and as me, where my physical appearance and my ‘act’ as personality superseded in every way my ‘Who I Am’ as a being. Its almost like our current global situation where we tend not to look at those perceived dark, shameful people and places in our cities and countries, that offensive poverty that tarnishes the beautiful and glamourous world of the wealthy. And then on an individual level we do the same within our families and ourselves; hiding that which is perceived as ‘dark’ and ‘shameful’, presenting only the acceptable picture presentation.
This is how the self-inequality is reflected in the world, where, what we accept and allow within ourselves, we also accept and allow on the large-scale, and so it all seems so normal cause we’re all doing it, when in fact it is actually quite twisted and distorted.
The result of this lived inequality, for me, was a polarity between loving and hating my physical body, as well as never really getting to know myself as Who I Am for real, because I had written myself off as ‘a burden’, ‘offensive’ and ‘unlikeable’. What I got to know intimately was who and how to be as a coping mechanism for situations, interactions and events in life.
So, that is all well and good, but what to do with this information? As I had mentioned earlier, I am looking at this internal self-inequality in relation to relationships/agreements/partners/the opposite sex as the situations and events in my life that really expose this point in me. Within it being exposed, I have worked with it, pushing to equalize my internal relationship by honouring my body as my temple, the place where I live, as well as bringing forth the ‘real me’, although, this has been more of a process of definition and discovery, as this part of me had been hidden, supressed and undeveloped for so long.
It’s not to say that the parts of myself as the character and personalities that I developed over time had been completely in vain. I have learned valuable lessons, I have grown and expanded, pushing little bits of myself here and there, showing myself through experience who and what I am, what I like and dislike, and through consequence, what I am not or will not accept and allow. When and as moving forward though, the pre-programmed path as personalities and characters is the path of least resistance. It is the well-lit way, the familiar, comfortable one, despite the knowledge of the consequence and outflows it brings – when I am not self-directive and aware, it is the path I will likely, subconsciously choose.
The other path, that of eternal self-discovery and self-creation, is the un-lit path as it is the path into the unknown. The one where comfort zones are challenged and where those self-beliefs and self-perceptions that went unchallenged from earlier years are confronted and must be re-written, re-defined and re-scripted into the way it should have been, the way where I do stand as Who I Am, I don’t write myself off, and where I examine those little bits of myself that I had buried in deep places, now having become to scary to confront, yet what is often the case is that the monsters under the bed turn out to be only figments of the imagination when you muster up the courage to shine a light under there to remind yourself of the difference between fantasy and reality.
What this means, translated into practical, do-able terms, actual steps to take to bring realizations through to application and reality, is that when I am in these situations again – those times where I feel that parts of me must be hidden and suppressed, I stop, and I breathe. I bring myself back to self-completion by bringing through All of me unconditionally, even those parts I had previously judged as ‘burdensome’, ‘unlikeable’ and ‘offensive’ to others, because the only way to see if this is in fact the reality, is to expose myself to myself, and see, realize and understand that how I am received by others says more about them and their self-relationship than it does about Who I Am. I will only ever change or alter myself from a starting point of what is best for me, where the change or re-alignment comes from a decision made in awareness as something that I am living that is not beneficial to myself, so that I can look at it and change it into something that is.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to carry the self-definition that I am a ‘burden’, ‘undesireable’ and ‘easy to dislike’.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to try and attempt to change myself and cover up parts of myself that I have, over time, defined as ‘a burden’, ‘undesireable’ and ‘easy to dislike’.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge my assertiveness as undesireable because it is un-lady-like and does not match the stereotypical ‘damsel in distress’ architype I learned from my environment, Disney movies and fairy tales.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hang on to the stereotypical ideal of what it is to be a woman that I learned from media, society and my environment during and throughout childhood and adolescence.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear my strength and independence within the thought, perception or belief that these qualities are threatening to my partner, and should therefor be supressed and hidden and only lived when I am alone or with others that I think I will not scare away or hurt in any way.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think, believe and perceive that being ‘weak’, ‘delicate’ and ‘in need of being saved’ are desirable attributes and characteristics when it comes to entering into a relationship/agreement/partnership, thus placing them in the forefront while placing my strength, independence and ability to direct myself more in the background of myself.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to lose myself in relationships by narrowing my focus of myself into only those internal and external qualities I find desirable while essentially abandoning parts of myself that I believe to be masculine and threatening or in any way undesirable, instead of bringing all of myself equally forward.
I forgive myself that I have NOT accepted and allowed myself to exist as an inner and outer equality, with myself as my beingness standing as the directive principle deciding what is brought forward and when based on which expressions of myself is practical or which needs time and attention to be developed.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from my body, seeing my body like a tool to use to manipulate others, seeing my body through the eyes of others instead of living IN my body as an extension of myself and simply another means with which to express myself.
When and as I see myself separating myself and creating an inequality within and as myself by highlighting or hiding aspects of myself when with another, I stop, and I breathe. I bring myself back to a self-equality by looking at the situation and looking at myself within it and deciding in awareness what is the best expression of myself to bring forward based on common-sense self-awareness and the self-understanding I have developed over time within myself.