The Truth Sets Us Free

The above diagram or idea map is a sketch of what I've been awakening to over the past few years. It looks quite dark, but it's actually liberating. Our entire society or culture is a macrocosm of an abusive family system. I took a deep dive in one of my classes in graduate school into studying the psychology behind abuse and it was so fascinating. It was extremely eye-opening. The main source I read from was Lundy Bancroft's work, but I also feel like a lot of what I learned kept building on itself. First I started understanding abusive tools from the perspective of an abusive man in a family context. I was interested in this because I grew up with an emotionally and verbally and psychologically abusive father and I wanted to understand that more. But then, as I started to understand how abuse actually works and functions, I realized that our whole entire society is based on these strategies. Everything. Every single nook and cranny of this system that we currently exist in. It's liberating to realize this because then we can realize that it doesn't have to be this way. We, humans, are completely capable of living in harmony with the earth and with each other. It's not even that hard. Lies make it hard and believing lies makes it hard, but when we stop believing lies, then it's easy and simple and natural. It's the way we're meant to be. I find this incredibly liberating. 

This is basically what Byron Katie's work is all about. On an individual level, she is teaching each person to question the thoughts in their head, especially if any thought causes any degree of suffering what-so-ever. For me, I had a lot of suffering surrounding romantic relationships. There were several layers to this, involving parts work (or internal family systems), but what also really helped was this podcast, with Martha Beck and Liz Gilbert where Liz talks about the "Marriage Benefit Imbalance" which is that there were studies done about marriage and they found that in every area of life (finance, emotional and mental health, physical health etc.) when women get married, their quality of life goes down and it continues to go further down with every child they have, while with men, their quality of life goes up in every area. This, for me was so eye-opening and clarifying. Also, there was Toward a New Psychology of Women by Jean Baker Miller, which I found in a free mini library and absolutely loved. You can view me enjoying it here: 

Just kidding. Kind of. The main take away for me from this book was that she writes about how women in our society are socialized to become disconnected from their inner sense of autonomy and therefore loose their sense of self, particularly when they enter into romantic relationships with men or even friendly relationships with men. This totally rings true for me as far as what I saw in my mom growing up and also what I have felt in myself. I had never really seen that or been aware of it before reading this book. Another book was a book we read in school called The Power of Partnership by Riane Eisler, where she basically talks about the exact same thing I am talking about here. She talks about how different cultures are structured differently. Ours is a dominance-based culture seeking to have power over its inhabitants. Others (like indigenous America) are partnership-based cultures that are based on relationship rather than dominance or exploitation. I've started to see this so clearly and I've realized that the ways culture gets inserted into us is by indoctrinating us with these lies at really early ages. For me, I think about marriage and how that message was so overtly poured into my life at such an early age so that I really felt so ashamed of myself that I wasn't married. Now, however, I feel as though I've dodged a bullet. 

Christianity is another big one. Too much to talk about here. I was a very devoted Christian when I was growing up because it was all I knew. It took a colossal effort to get me to leave Christianity and I truly, with all my heart believe now that it was the work of the Spirit, Creator, my guardian angels . . . I'm not sure what to call this Force anymore because I believe the word, "God" is an invention of this domineering system. I absolutely still believe in the Spiritual world though and when I got to the other side after leaving Christianity, I realized that the Spirit world is so much more vast than I had ever possibly understood or comprehended before. In fact, it's not comprehendible. It's a Mystery. a Mystery that we are all in and a part of and that is a place we can rest. That is where I found myself after leaving Christianity. There is a lot to say about this obviously. But I think one of the main take aways for me is the idea that a very affective abusive strategy is to get the victim to believe that she is bad. That is a fundamental lie that distorts the basic truth of who we are. I think you can see where I'm going here. If an abuser can convince someone they're bad then it is so much easier to control them because they are weakened by that belief. With Christianity, obviously, there is the messaging that Christ died for our sins, which if you really think about it is quite gruesome and I've realized quite clearly that what that is actually saying to us is that essentially, we deserve to be brutally tortured to death. That's what you deserve. Would you say that to someone you love? and mean it? would you say that to your worst enemy? This is just fundamentally untrue. We belong to this earth. We are the same as the animals and the moon, the mountains, the rivers. There is no reason to believe that we need a savior. We are good. We are fundamentally good. Now, when I think about Christianity, what I see is a very clever abusive strategy that worked very well on me for many years.

I think I will leave it here for now. There is more to say about this, but I want to leave this with the conclusion, that what I have realized is that actually, this awakening is incredibly liberating. When we clear away the many illusions and lies that are thrown at us we find out the truth. and the Truth really does set us free.