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Dalton
Roberts |
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One calling we all share is to help friends see the good in themselves that we see. We need to regularly jackhammer the concrete they have poured around some old painful life experiences. I coined that phrase writing to a dear friend who has the robotic habit of putting herself down. She is a wonderful, brilliant, creative and thoughtful person who does not realize how special she is. So I once wrote her, “It always sends a pain to my heart when you put yourself down. I have this sinking feeling, wondering why you don’t see as much in yourself as I see. I know you may keep doing it but as long as I am alive, I will be putting the jackhammer to that concrete. You are much too important to be rendered null and void by your own memory storage system.” It may seem strange that we need another person to help us see the good in our own selves. It is really not strange at all. It is a protective device in our own psyche that malfunctions. It goes like this: We experience a pain so severe that it is like a red-hot ember we cannot stand so we cram it deep into our unconscious mind. Pain stored then surfaces like a ping-pong ball pushed to the bottom of a barrel of water and because we have not processed it, it often manifests in negative and even dangerous ways. The only thing I got of great value from the bestseller Celestine Prophecy was a description of how this process works. Until we know how something works, we cannot manage it. It will manage us. To some extent we are all managed by those old painful ping-pong balls we have crammed down into the barrel of our unconscious. We are freed from their control only as we are able to become aware they are there and to process them as they pop up to the surface. Every time a ping-pong ball explodes in our face, we can develop the habit of quietly, meditatively, exploring where it came from in a friendly way. I say, “In a friendly way” because of the truth in an old saying, “What we resist persists.” When we fight with our psychological demons, they just become stronger. They love it. They feed on negativity and fighting is negative energy. So a friendly, even playful attitude is much more helpful in getting them on the table for a playful autopsy. Don’t give up on jackhammering the concrete from your own self-concept. Make it a fun lifetime project. Don’t give up on your friends. At some point they might recognize the horror their own nasty self-image is inflicting upon them. It stops their idea flow, kills their confidence and often prevents them from being able to act upon the best judgments of their own minds. I had a musician friend who constantly put himself down. One night I was riding around town with him and he wore me out running himself down. I told him to stop the car and when he did, I stepped outside and said, “You are one of the best men I have ever known and a great musician. If any other man said the things about you that you have said tonight, I would punch him out. I am not going to listen to you put yourself down. Goodnight. I will just walk back to my car.” A year later he asked me to play lead guitar for him one weekend and when he paid me he handed me a grocery sack saying, “Here’s a little something I bought you to show how much I appreciate what you said to me one night.” When I got to the car, I opened it. It was a mirror with the words ‘love thine own self’ on it.” So don’t give up. Keep that jackhammer handy. ~~~~~ To order your first edition copy of Long John Cardinal and the Best of Dalton Roberts for only $4.95 postpaid go to http://www.ipspress.com/publishing.htm.
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