Fifth Pathway - Persistently Looking Inward - Part V

Fifth Pathway – Persistently Looking Inward – Part V

Archeologists look for artifacts to deduce how previous civilizations lived.  Depending upon their discoveries, these social scientists can extrapolate our ancestors code of conduct, religions, social values, means of trade, languages, literature and societal structure.  In utilizing this pathway of healing, a person employs an archeologist’s tools.  Look for the relational artifacts embedded within your personality.  What sayings, values, principles, prejudices or other concepts did you uncritically accept from your parents and grandparents?  Chances are these ideas solidified within your thinking, feelings and behavior. In order to differentiate from them and accept yourself as a unique individual, you examine these artifacts from your formative relationships and years.  Ask similar questions of your relationships with siblings, aunts, uncles and close cousins.  Do you continue to hold beliefs, assumptions and principles borne of these significant relationships that are incongruent with your character?  Interestingly, I met people in college who held racial prejudices because their relatives imparted these ideas to them.  Upon reflection, my college contemporaries realized that they did not agree with these concepts.  They acquiesced them because people whom they loved held those false, misguided and uninformed notions.  As you analyze these relational artifacts, consider any lingering toxicity in your mindset.  How will you demolish hurtful and continually detrimental patterns of behavior that undermine your progression toward self-acceptance and self-expression?  As you read, consider pausing and listing in detail any artifacts from previous relationships that provide you with clues about the composition of your personality and belief system.  Do those relationships and the concepts that they conveyed to you retain relevance?

Anthropologists would advise you to delve more deeply into the foregoing relationships.  Examine the context of your formative years.  Who are the persons who contributed most significantly to your self-concept?  What did they believe?  In the larger periphery of your upbringing, what role did neighbors, teachers, friends and acquaintances play in your formation?  Did you go along to get along?  Did you inadvertently become a stereotype?  Did you listen to the music that everyone else enjoyed even if you liked other artists and genres?  Did you wear what everyone else wore because it was in style?  Did you believe what everyone else believed?  Did anyone question the pervading assumptions about politics, economics, religion and social relationships?  Can you find any points of departure between you and the chorus of persons who were on stage during the drama of your formative years?  Did you ever stop and ask, “Who am I?”  Were you aware of what you wanted most to do in life?  Did someone attempt to rebuff your dream and goals by impeding your progress?  Were jealousy, ignorance, limited experiences and provincialism prevalent in the lives of the people who lived in the shadows and on the sidelines of your early life?  How much of this negativity still dwells within your mind and heart?  Within your childhood and adolescence, do you recall distinguishing yourself from the people, context and convictions that fostered your personality?  Simply, an anthropologist would ask if you ever questioned anything you were taught within your home, family, church, school and local society to ascertain how these factors cultivated your beliefs and behavior before becoming an adult?

Historians begin where geologists, archeologists and anthropologists finish.  Evidence such as journals, diaries and letters comprise a corpse upon which you complete an autopsy.  The dead body is the persona you cultivated based upon other people’s impressions of you.  As you look through any documents, photos, mementos and memorabilia of your past, you will garner clues of how this inauthentic expression of yourself developed.  More significantly, however, this evidence yields clues about the seeds of the authentic you.  Looking persistently within is a pathway of healing because it allows you to search through the rubble of the past and find your diamonds hidden in the rough.  Your heartfelt dreams and goals forged in the anvils of childhood trauma symbolize who you are.  The painful experiences you survived may indicate a passion you have carried in your heart to assist others in similar situations.  Are their creative impulses and imaginative inspirations that have lain dormant in your consciousness and intentions?  Is there an imprisoned entrepreneur, composer, author, artist, linguist, business owner, musician, vocalist, athlete, teacher or inventor inside of you?  As you analyze your patterns of growth and development, you will find the most reliable answer to these questions.  Persevere in inward exploration and you discover the tools of self-mastery.  You learn to neutralize your weaknesses and liabilities which impede your forward progress.  You invest time, energy and resources in strengthening your asserts, talents and abilities.  Practically, you become even better at what you do best.  You acquire greater spiritual attributes especially the willingness to forgive anyone who harmed you.  In forgiving those persons who injured you, you liberate yourself from anger, fear, resentment and bitterness.  Freedom from that extreme toxicity creates passageways for your advancement.  With that dross burned from your character, you will create, imagine, inspire, motivate, encourage, empower, endure, produce, achieve, succeed and excel!  A whole new life awaits you when you unload the bags of cement you have been carrying for thousands of days.  New vistas of possibility for a life of joy, happiness and freedom filled with new experiences and mystery burst on the horizons of your mind and heart.  It begins with persistently looking inward.