A long while back, I wrote a bit about Eva Pierrakos, a channel who brought out Pathwork in the 50’s through 70’s. I’ve only read a little of the material but found it quite insightful. I can’t say I agree with the solutions though, just the need for the healing.
Recently, a friend sent me a 1960 “talk” of Eva’s (#73) where a notable observation is made. We have a compulsion to recreate our childhood traumas as a way of healing them. Only it doesn’t work.
I’ve spoken in the past of how our mind runs a story about ourselves and the world. We use this as a filter to choose what to give our attention to (good or threat) and thus what we engage in our lives. In brain mechanics, this filter is engaged even before sensory information reaches the brain. This is completely normal.
It’s also normal for us to have had some traumatic experiences in our life that we’ve never quite resolved. Especially childhood ones. When we have a very strong experience, difficult or good, it can take some time to process it. Falling in love can be as confusing as a car accident. In different ways, yes, but the experience can still take time to process. However, if the experience was unpleasant or worse, we can have a tendency to avoid dealing with it, even denying it and pushing the feelings under.
We “...habitually overlook the strong link between the child’s longing and unfulfillment and the adult’s present difficulties and problems, because only very few people experience personally — and not just recognize in theory — how strong this link is. Full awareness of it is essential.”
Unresolved experiences leave energetic and emotional residues in our subtle physiology. This fogs our perception. With denial at play, we connect it to our story filters and it affects our whole experience of the world, casting a shadow as it where. And this gets in the way of happiness.
“Since children so seldom receive sufficient mature love and warmth, they continue to hunger for it throughout life unless this lack and hurt is recognized and properly dealt with. If not, as adults they will go through life unconsciously crying out for what they missed in childhood. This will make them incapable of loving maturely. You can see how this condition continues from generation to generation.”
Sub-consciously we want to resolve this energetic debris so it tends to seek opportunities to express itself. It tends to burst out when we’re triggered by energetically related people and circumstances. Yet we’re in denial about the feelings so don’t understand what’s happening and go into deeper denial, blaming others, self-shaming, and other control behaviours. None of which resolve anything.
“This striving may manifest in various aspects of your life. You run constantly into problems and repeated patterns which have their origin in your attempt to reproduce the childhood situation so as to correct it. This unconscious compulsion is a very strong factor, but is so deeply hidden from your conscious understanding!”
Because of this inner push for resolution, we experience a compulsion to recreate past circumstances so we have the opportunity to ‘do it differently’. We may ‘choose our parents’ as love partners, for example. They may not look alike but energetically…
“The most frequent way of attempting to remedy the situation is in your choice of love partners.”
There is a subconscious idea that if we could go back, we could do it better. We may even fall in love with someone as they ‘feel’ like someone who can help us heal. This of course is false – we can never go back. Not to mention what this does to the relationship.
Thus, we act out our unresolved baggage through our relationships, continuously trying to bring the past up without realizing it and thus continually messing up what is present now. Ironically, we can even subconsciously push our partners to act out in certain ways, obliging them to play the role in the old story. They can behave in ways they never would normally and find themselves in a play they never agreed to.
Keep in mind that “Children have no way of putting their needs into thoughts.” Thus those unmet needs are not stories as ideas we can investigate but are primitive feelings. You can’t get there with the mind.
If we’re in denial, we can’t feel those feelings. The more denial, the more out of touch with our feelings we become. And feelings are the nectar of life. They are love and happiness, always present within, but hidden by our unresolved history and unintended baggage.
The amount of energy most people are using to keep this facade going is amazing. Thus when we resolve it, we free all that energy for living.
This is how important it is to let this junk go.
Ideally, we don’t do this by wading into it like many, including professional therapists, will suggest. This can have the effect of making it more real, more justified and thus worth holding on to. More conscious perhaps but no more resolved.
The smoother route is to become aware of it and allow it to be there. Not to go into it, just to see it. Acknowledge it. In that allowing, it can resolve because that’s all it ever needed. Just to be seen. Not to be re-lived, just to be allowed. When it is allowed and seen, you may experience a wave of emotion sweep over you as the energy is resolved. And then it’s done. The charge is gone. The baggage dropped.
It’s the same with the small self or ego. It just wants to be seen. By whom? Who you are. By your self-aware being. Your I am. Your witnessing self. And that again is why meditation is the core practice. It awakens who you are. And who you are is a wonderful, remarkable thing.
No major renos are needed. Just a good spring cleaning.
Davidya
For a number of years I was in a Core Energetics group. The man who created core energetics was married to Eva and so I read a lot of Pathworks during that time. Very deep knowledge. One of my favorites: that we might not be meant to have a career in every lifetime. For example, a particular lifetime might be mainly for the purpose of healing one flaw or one relationship.
Do we even have to know what the period is about?
Thanks for sharing that. I didn’t know of the connection.
And yes, while a significant % of people work, a surprising % of people don’t – they’re mothers, students, retired, volunteers, and so forth.
I’ve found that life presents us with what we need for that “chapter”, It may not be what we want or expect and thus we may struggle with it. But it’s what we need. If we instead learn how to be with what is here, we’ll find life much smoother.
As a further remark, some drivers can be very subtle so it can take time to get a sense of what that period may be about. In many ways, once we get it, the period is done and things shift again. (laughs)
No, and in many cases we won’t. But if it’s a major one, it’s bound to become obvious as we learn. That said, if we know what we’re supposed to be learning, it may help us avoid getting in the way of ourselves.
Just as in the post, if we know what’s driving our compulsion, we can more easily resolve it. But it’s mostly about allowing it to be there.