Inner Child And Hero’s Journey
Three Centers
Three Gates
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Those are the structures, and the dynamism is both implied and explicit. What I said yesterday about my past should make it VERY clear why I have the motivations I have for martial arts (survival), family (love and healing, sharing), teaching (sharing with others the treasure that was shared with me), and writing (self-expression, survival, cultural leverage, gathering tribe.)
Can you see that in all three arenas? And if you can, you have the WHAT and WHY of 80% of my life. All that remains is the HOW.
Looking at the question: how can I compensate for the damage? How to I detect the "limping" in my life and break those bones to straighten them? How do I distinguish allies from sleepers and snakes?
Lets look at one of my very favorite HOWS: the Hero's Journey and Lifewriting.
There are dozens of different writing structures, plot structures. And if you organize your story according to A or B or C structure, you will always see different things. And it can be a very simple and effective way of shifting perspectives.
OBJECTIVE-->OBSTACLE-->OUTCOME is probably the simplest structure I find really useful. The most complicated that I find useful might be:
Character
Situation
Confronted with challenge
Efforts to solve
Series of escalating failures leading to a
Precipitating event making necessary a
Solution followed by a
Reward.
This one, published in Locus many years back, has a mirroring "villain's journey" as follows
Character in a
Situation
With a Problem, and their
Efforts
Are a series of escalating SUCCESSES leading to a
Precipitating event making necessary a
FAILURE followed by a
Punishment
When you have both of these, and tease out the implications, this is seriously powerful. Now, all of you know my personal favorite is the Hero's Journey as interpreted here:
Hero confronted with a challenge
Rejects the challenge
Accepts it
Road of Trials
Allies and powers
Confront evil--failure
Dark Night of the Soul
Leap of Faith
Confront evil--succeed
Student becomes the teacher.
I can map any story, any human process, onto this pattern, and once you figure out what I mean by that, you can not only design a story, but interlocking secondary character stories, the process of WRITING the story, and the general flow of life. It is magical, ONCE YOU LET GO OF RIGID THOUGHT and flow with it. Few stories or processes follow the pattern precisely, and not always in that order. Sometimes just fragments of arc….but that's the full circle.
The "Lifewriting" concept is to apply what we learn in life to our writing, and the structures of writing to life itself. Let's do that with me and the whole "needy, wounded, abandoned child" thing.
Hero confronted with challenge. The challenge is to be an awake, aware, adult human being.
Rejects the challenge. I didn't even know what that looked like. If my father had been there, and done a bad job of it, I could have learned by Via Negitiva, the "well, I won't do THAT shit." Both light and shadow teach us. I simply had void, filled with media images and imaginations, as well as terror that I would be crushed if I failed in life, and murdered if I succeeded. Ouch
Accepts challenge. I had to do something.
Road of Trials. And armed with the desire to be respected by the men I respected and desired by the women I desired (although it took many more years to actually phrase it that way) I went to school, had relationships and jobs, went to and dropped out of college, started writing, and hacked my way through the jungle.
Allies and powers. Friends and lovers and teachers, and while I made many errors, I tried to learn. I always had faith that there was a way through, and a study of comparative religions and philosophies trained me to look for the commonalities and connections, things like The Golden Rule, Balance (ultimately the Three Centers) and the simplest description of the path to being an "awake, aware, adult human being" I've ever found, the Three Gates, which guide language and action.
Confront evil--fail. About every seven years, life tears me a complete new one. Two major ones were the breakup of my first marriage, which led me to total reassessment of my entire life, and learning the rules of mating that led to Tananarive and the "Soulmate Process" and Incel book. The other was Atlanta, where I was actually shattered, my ego in shards, forcing me to re-construct my whole being. Here's the thing: these events ultimately were like auto accidents that broke my spine and legs. The "doctor" then discovered that my bones had been broken in childhood and reset poorly. In fact, they had been re-set in a manner designed to keep me working but never QUITE reaching the goal.
Dark Night of the Soul. I was literally curled on the floor, crying. I couldn't see any way out of the situation, and the map of life I'd had from childhood, desperately maintained, was SHATTERED. Whether by accident, ignorance or malign thuggery…wow, was THAT ever massive wake-up call. What a blessing that by some strange coincidence (yeah, right) Steve Muhammad had retired to just outside ATL, leading to one extraordinarily powerful and painful conversation that showed me that I could keep my pain…or be a man.
Leap of Faith. I can point to them…but what it comes down to is that I was committed to being the "father" of my own "child self". My commitment to protecting "him" manifested externally as commitment to health and family.
Confront Evil--Victorious. I stepped up. We made the short film DANGER WORD, which was our way of working completely around all the obstacles of Hollywood by crowd-funding. Then distributing ourselves, which taught us so much that:
Student becomes teacher. Tananarive and I learned so much that when we returned to Hollywood we were PRODUCERS, not just writers, and that subtle difference was amazing. We've been teaching this (www.lifewritingpremium.com) that teaching both sharing and creating a separate income stream so that we could afford to say "no" to the wrong offer. But I also gained clarity on my own growth process. In essence, the problem was that I was built haphazardly, and there was no time to put my "race car" body-mind up on the rack and take it apart to put it back together.
I literally had to rebuild WHILE IN MOTION. And here is where the one advantage, the one "talent" I'll admit to having came in: I won't quit. Ever. You can kill me, but you can't stop me. That little kid inside me is alive and well, and the source of my energy. But what I now knew was that if I didn’t' DELIBERATELY kill my ego so I could rebuild, life would throw me curve after curve until I overloaded and exploded and ended up curled on the floor in tears.
So I DELIBERATELY sought out things that would crack me open. I could point to the NINETY DAY LOVE FEST, (I'm on the 18th day of the second go-round) as another one. I DESIGNED AND CONSCIOUSLY ACCEPTED THE RESPONSIBILITY. Instead of waiting for life to knock me upside the head, I'm consciously accepting that I still had shallow, childish attitudes toward love. I had to commit to being more adult than I'd ever been, if I was to be an appropriate partner for the magnificent woman in my life. I could, in other words, use my love for Tananarive to force me to be more awake and aware than EVER BEFORE IN MY LIFE.
Now…what I want you to do is to realize that really, I was just taking care of that little boy inside me by protecting his Mommy and Playmate. But I had to do it NON-TRANSACTIONALLY. For its own sake. Without an eye on any selfish result.
Like writing a story for its own sake. Or a punch or kick that must be from "it" not "you". Not the "I" because the "I" is just an ego construct, and inevitably the best of the best things you've ever done in your life were done in a state of such connection and flow that "I" doesn't exist. No observation. Just action.
I want you to take that realization, and look at yourself as if you want to fall in love with yourself, want to be the parent you always deserved.
To love yourself FOR ITS OWN SAKE.
The benefits that will flow from this are countless: CONNECTION TO THAT CHILD IS WHAT CREATED THE FREAK EMOTIONAL ENDURANCE I mentioned. Just going and going, constantly learning and changing, and keeping an eye on the goal: being happy and healthy and safe.
Get in touch until you are willing to do WHATEVER IT TAKES to succeed in those ways, using the "safety rails" of balance and the Three Gates. Take your brakes off. Love that child with all your heart, and you'll have the love, energy, optimism, creativity, ego-less action and ability to "empty your cup" and learn over and over and over. Endlessly. Until you run out of breath and heartbeats.
Look at the hero's journey. What "challenge" to honor and protect your child have you rejected, perhaps telling yourself it is wrong even to love your own being? What road do you need to walk, what discipline have you refused to accept? What allies do you need? Remember: the ONLY known way to compensate for lack of ability is to create teams of people with different skills but the same desired outcome. And you can approach a Larry Niven or Steve Muhammad if you humble yourself completely, empty your cup with head held high and commit to creating value for THEM if they will share their wisdom with you.
What failure awaits you? Remember: you cannot move from one major level of life to another without killing your ego. Just can't do it. What will you need to have FAITH in in order to keep going when you feel destroyed? Faith in yourself? Your companions, allies and mentors? In a higher power or the flow of the universe itself?
Without faith in at least one of these things, you will bump up against the barrier and then fall back to the lower energetic state. And you'll do this again and again as you run out of energy and finally age out and die.
YOU CAN'T TAKE YOUR EGO WITH YOU. Any more than "the camel can get through the eye of a needle." Your SOUL, your spirit, your essential self survives. But all that crap you carried with you? That shit has to go.
And then…if you do all of this, what is the victory you will experience? Can you see and feel it? "Future Pacing" the result: a happy child and a strong and loving "adult" heading toward a satisfied "Elder" who has lived his life in integrity…if you can see all of this, and swear to build this playground for your child, that kid within you will shine.
And you will then either move to the next level and progress…or keep your forward progress while leaving a trail of bread crumbs to inform others who wish to take the journey.
I warn you: it will be lonely at times. I remember telling my agent long ago that I didn't know how my career was going to work in Hollywood, but that when I left, it would be with my sense of honor intact. He looked at me and said: "you'll be the only one."
I knew at that instant that he had sold out his child self for adult toys. And justified it by saying "well, everyone does it."
At that moment, I realized I needed to find other representation. No, I wouldn't pimp out my "little boy" for money. There was a way to do this, and whatever it took, whatever the cost, I'd find it. And if I didn’t get quite as much external success as those who had social safety nets, and privilege, or sold out their hearts or health or honor…I could live with that. And the little boy inside me would be as happy as a puppy you cuddle and play ball with. That puppy doesn't give a damn how much you earn, or how famous you are.
It just loves you, and wants to be loved, and safe. I would build a kingdom in my heart, and what the rest of the world thought about it is not my business. If they cannot die my death, they cannot live my life.
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Anyway, I hope that something in this discussion of applying one of the Firedance tools to the process of emotional healing has been valuable. I invite you to experiment with it as well…or ask any questions you wish.
I love you, and want only that you love yourself even more…
Steve
