June/July 2003

Imagining A New Model of Justice
Denise Breton, Christopher Largent & Stephen Lehman

Breaking the Bank: The Economic Heresy of Herman Daly
Lissa Harris

A New Vision of Development
Roar Bjonnes

Sustainable Businesses Combine Ideals and Vision
Debi Smith

The Politics of Water in the Middle East
Leah C. Wells

Making Media Monopoly Part of the Constitution
Robert W. McChesney

Why People Don't Heal: A Homeopathic Perspective
Douglas Falkner, MD, M.Hom

A Change of Heart: The Sacred Journey of Relationship
Sri Estes

In Search of Enlightened Relationships
John Darling

Ten Things Couples Can Do to Enhance Their Relationship
John Eisman

Witnessing
Peter Moore, MFCC, CGP

The Movie Mystic: Matrix Reloaded
Stephen Simon

The Urban Permaculture Homestead
Jude Hobbs

Cosmic Calendar
Salina Rain

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Witnessing

By Peter Moore, MFCC, CGP

Sitting on the porch, writing this article, enjoying the warmth of the early morning May sun, it is difficult for me to imagine some of the pain of other moments which, at the time, can be so consuming. As many of you who have been following these articles over the years know, when psychological events threaten to overwhelm us, even before they reach consciousness, the energy in our bodies moves up toward the head and creates that familiar agitated jumble of ruminating thoughts, like a mouse scurrying around in a cage. The upward movement recapitulates the focus of organized energy in our heads with which we are born—the capacity to recognize faces, root for the breast, suck, make eye contact, and not much more. So feelings at that age, which threaten our basic sense of trust and safety, send our energy into that part of our bodies which have this organization: in later life we experience this as obsessing over a situation, or spacing out entirely.

A more comprehensive sense of self develops, with the appropriate caretakers and environment, over a period of years, with a definite emergence of a capacity for self-awareness by at least the age of three. My not-quite-two-year-old daughter, for example, can identify mama and dada and people she knows in photographs, but does not seem to show a sense of recognition of herself when she sees a picture of herself: it’s as though there’s a blank there, to be filled in later—this, despite the enjoyment she sometimes derives watching a reflection of her body dancing in a mirror set at toddler height.

The development of this capacity for self-reflection may perhaps be seen on the physical level by the fact that people with histories of severe childhood abuse and/or neglect do not have the normal capacity for self-reflection and therefore self-soothing. The symbolic, non-linear right brain in these people is far more dominant, when recollecting a painful memory, than the linear, cause-and-effect left brain. Also, the connecting pathways between the two independent brains (left and right hemispheres), known as the corpus callosum, are less developed.

The great mythological stories of how creation developed bear a striking resemblance to this basic anatomic fact of our brain structure. When Unity started wondering what it would be like to be self-aware, immediately (if not before!) a duality occurred: an Other to be aware of the Self. To be self-aware seems to show up in the bi-hemispheric structure of our consciousness. As I have said elsewhere (Sentient Times April/May ’02, “Deep Scars Can Be Healed”), the presence of adequate parenting is what seems to grow an adequate communication between our two brains and an adequate linear, more “objective” view of our feelings. Beyond warmth, food and protection, the primary responsibility of a parent is non-judgemental witnessing. The constant conjunction of a caring parent’s behavior with a child’s inevitable ups and downs grows in the child a capacity for self-reflection, and, with that, good and loving self-care.

Many spiritual traditions offer the advice of being present: in fact practices such as meditation are often explicitly about developing a capacity to be in the here and now. Eckart Tolle’s best seller, The Power of Now, is an example of the strength of this message. But what if the witnessing capacities of our own parents were so poor that the “I” which is supposed to witness the self was never adequately developed? In cases such as schizophrenia or severe schizoid personality organization, the point is obvious: there is not enough stable coherence to form a witness self. When adequate social therapeutic support is offered over a period of years, an “I” is sometimes created which can then witness the present, but a life based on incoherence inevitably is a life of unfulfillment, so it is well know among those who have worked in therapeutic communities that someone in recovery from such an illness often then faces depression. If you read the very short sketch of Tolle’s own path to enlightenness, it is quite plain that he had already an intact enough “I” which could at least be aware of his depression.

I have worked with many successful people over the years—successful by our society’s standards—who have not known what they were feeling. Our conscious minds can process approximately 16 bits of information per second, while our bodies are processing something like 20 million bits per second. So it is not surprising that our witness self should be so selective. In all these cases, these adults’ childhoods were based on standard childrearing practices, which were the norm in nuclear families.

In the character analytic traditions of Willhelm Reich, Core Energetics, Hakomi, or Barbara Brennan’s School of Healing, what is called a Rigid overlay covers up the very early deficiencies of childhood brought about by the old norms of our culture: success valued over being, judgment over compassion, survival over abundance. Outward organization and success is created as a false self, which, at more fundamental levels, does not meet our more basic needs for security and nourishment. Toward midlife, or thereabouts, this serious deficit gives rise to symptoms such as depression, anxiety, heart palpitations, fatigue or body pain. If the symptoms are severe enough, they may break though the wall of denial, forcing a crisis for the “I” which has desperately fought for success for most of its life.

This crisis can open the doorway to awareness of very deep pain. There then arises a struggle between simply witnessing the pain compassionately—which, as far as I can tell, is the only way that these feelings can finally be released from the body: when holding a crying baby with love, the wave of feeling builds, reaches a peak, then subsides and is done with—or redoubling efforts to deny one’s own experience and push on to more achievement.

But developing and recommitting to our compassionate witness self can have far reaching benefits. For one thing, remember what, as I said earlier, seems to be the primary responsibility of a parent. By developing this witness for our own experiences we may finally be giving to ourselves what we may have lacked as infants. Many of the successful people I have treated have been in the service sector or raised families: they can compassionately be there for others. The much harder task of committing to self-awareness remains to be developed. It is as though their symptoms, which have prompted the search for healing, are just this: the cryings of an overwhelmed child. The witness state is equivalent to what any grounded caring parent would give their child. Much of healing is simply following the invitation to look, listen, and be with whatever our symptoms actually feel like, rather than trying to get rid of them. Trying to get rid of them is what an overwhelmed, isolated, and undernourished child-carer does: through ignoring, scolding, judging, rewarding or punishing.

I leave the following as homework for you to meditate on at your leisure: what about people who don’t have any symptoms which cause them distress, people, for example, who have risen to the top of the pile and have denied their terror and deprivation by giving it to others?

Peter Moore graduated from Oxford University, and, since 1980, has pursued his interest in healing. He is a licensed marriage and family therapist who also offers consultation and training to healers and bodyworkers. Peter’s practice is located in Eureka, California, he can be reached at (707) 442-7228.