“We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.” Auden
Now that we see the Barriers as energy-forms which enter our inner and outer stage, now that we understand “the problem,” the question becomes, “What next?”
As I will use the word “ritual,” I am referring to a deliberate and creative response to what we come to know over time from our regular reflections. Not every period of Enlarging and X-posing Barriers requires a creative response. But, eventually, sooner or later, like the peeling back of an onion, X-posing reveals persistent patterns that have an inordinate influence over our lives. These powers can maintain their sway by being invisible to us. However deep and consistent our exploration is, of course what we do come to know is limited because we are limited beings; yet, with the help of Inspiration, we can know more of the reality that has shaped us.
Eventually, when we commit to the process, X-posing reveals a source of Pain and some realization of the unconscious reactions that have operated for our protection and self-delusion. We notice how traumatic “solutions” have involved forms of fighting, fleeing, collapsing, or submission. Traumatic action patterns give rise to narratives that are lies about us, tales that shame us, tell us we are bad or broken or less than. Through courageous inquiry we recognize our survival reactions to an unsafe world (usually arising from at a time when our world was unsafe), reactions that still have the potential to distort and limit our ability to be fully present, impoverishing the way we attend to our lives.
Turning Point
Rituals that we decide upon are not what the Fallen World tells us are “solutions.” The analytic mind tends to choke at the X-posing, as it tries to grasp and to “make sense,” explaining the Pain (dismissing it). But the Rituals cannot be a mind-full solution to an intellectual problem. There are deep mysteries that cannot be problem-solved. Wounds cannot be behaviorally modified, nor skilled out of existence. Only our Heart is up to the task of apprehending the drama, holding our awareness of the injury, exclaiming an intention to courageously protect what needs protection, bringing compassion, and imagining a ritualistic step (however small) toward healing. Often it is helpful to have another person (or several) assist in brainstorming new responses.
In the X-posing, the question we sought to answer is “In my exploration, does this seem like I have gotten to something important?” If we can say, “yes,” then we can move forward. Now we can shift our attention. Now, what we seek to gain from Pain into Ritual is freedom from the past. The freedom to be more aligned with the Awakened Child, the Artist, Lover, and Visionary.
Of course we cannot change actual history, but that’s not the goal of the Turning Point, nor is it a reasonable intention. The focus is how to interrupt a mistaken story, to tell a different narrative, to alter the faulty wiring in the neuro-ception. By some act—an act of imagination that feels right—we express our wish for possibilities to be opened. Jacob Mareno describes that as moving beyond our “creative neurosis” by a “novel and adequate” response. The pertinent question now is, “How do I want to change this narrative?”