ST. JOSEPH’S RENEWAL CENTER
SECOND HALF OF LIFE
Summary
SECOND HALF OF LIFE
Summary
We begin our journey in life out of the original blessing of being created in the image and likeness of God, who is love. Genesis 1:26.
Original sin passed down from generations, exposes each of us to each other’s wounds as our own original wounds are born.
We are born into a society that emphasizes left side of brain competition and success; teaching defensiveness, group-thinking and exclusion.
Mommy and Daddy are the most potent figures throughout our life. In our development they were our protectors, our source of love, comfort, security and safety.
The child internalizes specific behaviors and reactions of the parents as a statement about the self. The belief then becomes: “I am how I am viewed or I am how I am treated.”
Intrauterine, birth, and childhood experiences create mirror neurons inside of each of us as we experienced non-verbal communication, body language, facial expressions, words, tone of voice, touch, and embrace from those that we loved. This taught us how to feel about ourselves.
Touch is interpreted as a statement about life in general.
Is life predictable and nurturing or is it uncertain, painful and inconsistent?
The child’s conclusions about his/her self and the world are based on the VERY LIMITED experiences of the parents and their upbringing.
So we begin to create our individual methodology of protection as we lived our individual experiences inside our families.
In early childhood, a growing split develops between our true/inherent nature and our socialized self.
We begin to leave our original innocence to begin the task of the first half of life, which involves building, a False Self, and an ego: as protection from whatever felt unsafe, judged, not loved throughout our development.
The shadow self now hides whatever was considered unacceptable. Even our True self becomes hidden beneath the false self and its personas we have constructed to meet our needs for safety, security, control and esteem.
These distortions are at the root of those patterns of sin; to which we become so vulnerable believing them as truth; we carry them throughout our life.
They are not to be judged; they are not bad’ they are just not true.
They are manufactured and sustained, unconsciously, by our mind, but it can and will die, as all fictions do.
Once we have developed and protected our chosen persona: (our role of self image), minister, professor, priest, nun, moral believer, nice person------we then trap ourselves by trying to live up to the fiction.
The more unaware and attached we are to this fiction of the protected false self, the more shadow self we will have as we try to live up to what has been created as a way to avoid looking at or confronting that which we are afraid we might be.
The more we try to continue to hide from what was deemed bad and wrong in us, the more we will look to live out of our false self and our personas or mask.
So out of the wounding of childhood, the adult personality is less a series of choices and more of a reflexive response to the early childhood experiences and trauma of the early lived life.
We might label these internalized experiences as “complexes” the stuff that keeps coming up again and again that we continue to react to.
We can identify these complexes in our adult contemporary life by the CHARGED FEELING and RESPONSE.
God in us wants us to awaken to the presence of our true self. God uses all of life to reveal to us our fictions, our illusions that must die.
Our strong feelings and reaction to life experiences in our adult journey offers us a window into the memories revealing the original wound.
As we awaken we have a choice, we have free will, to own, take responsibility for, that which lives inside of ourselves.
Once we tell the truth to ourselves and God about these places and not run and try to hide from them through defense and fiction, we begin to recognize that what appeared to be stumbling blocks are actually stepping stones as God uses all of life to reveal ourselves to ourself.
We are beginning to recognize that I am not what has happened to me; I am not how I perceived myself due to what has happened to me. I am what, with God’s Grace what I choose to become. We have a choice.
God’s goal is union. God comes disguised as our life----the true life within the apparent life that we are living.
Life lived fully and honestly will always eventually embrace both joy and suffering, a path of decent, doubt, regret, and lots of little deaths that teach us to let go of our false self and to live in the simple joy of divine union----which is exactly the passion and desire of the True Self.
Our carefully constructed ego container must gradually crack open, as we realize that we are not separate from God, from others or from ourselves.
Original sin passed down from generations, exposes each of us to each other’s wounds as our own original wounds are born.
We are born into a society that emphasizes left side of brain competition and success; teaching defensiveness, group-thinking and exclusion.
Mommy and Daddy are the most potent figures throughout our life. In our development they were our protectors, our source of love, comfort, security and safety.
The child internalizes specific behaviors and reactions of the parents as a statement about the self. The belief then becomes: “I am how I am viewed or I am how I am treated.”
Intrauterine, birth, and childhood experiences create mirror neurons inside of each of us as we experienced non-verbal communication, body language, facial expressions, words, tone of voice, touch, and embrace from those that we loved. This taught us how to feel about ourselves.
Touch is interpreted as a statement about life in general.
Is life predictable and nurturing or is it uncertain, painful and inconsistent?
The child’s conclusions about his/her self and the world are based on the VERY LIMITED experiences of the parents and their upbringing.
So we begin to create our individual methodology of protection as we lived our individual experiences inside our families.
In early childhood, a growing split develops between our true/inherent nature and our socialized self.
We begin to leave our original innocence to begin the task of the first half of life, which involves building, a False Self, and an ego: as protection from whatever felt unsafe, judged, not loved throughout our development.
The shadow self now hides whatever was considered unacceptable. Even our True self becomes hidden beneath the false self and its personas we have constructed to meet our needs for safety, security, control and esteem.
These distortions are at the root of those patterns of sin; to which we become so vulnerable believing them as truth; we carry them throughout our life.
They are not to be judged; they are not bad’ they are just not true.
They are manufactured and sustained, unconsciously, by our mind, but it can and will die, as all fictions do.
Once we have developed and protected our chosen persona: (our role of self image), minister, professor, priest, nun, moral believer, nice person------we then trap ourselves by trying to live up to the fiction.
The more unaware and attached we are to this fiction of the protected false self, the more shadow self we will have as we try to live up to what has been created as a way to avoid looking at or confronting that which we are afraid we might be.
The more we try to continue to hide from what was deemed bad and wrong in us, the more we will look to live out of our false self and our personas or mask.
So out of the wounding of childhood, the adult personality is less a series of choices and more of a reflexive response to the early childhood experiences and trauma of the early lived life.
We might label these internalized experiences as “complexes” the stuff that keeps coming up again and again that we continue to react to.
We can identify these complexes in our adult contemporary life by the CHARGED FEELING and RESPONSE.
God in us wants us to awaken to the presence of our true self. God uses all of life to reveal to us our fictions, our illusions that must die.
Our strong feelings and reaction to life experiences in our adult journey offers us a window into the memories revealing the original wound.
As we awaken we have a choice, we have free will, to own, take responsibility for, that which lives inside of ourselves.
Once we tell the truth to ourselves and God about these places and not run and try to hide from them through defense and fiction, we begin to recognize that what appeared to be stumbling blocks are actually stepping stones as God uses all of life to reveal ourselves to ourself.
We are beginning to recognize that I am not what has happened to me; I am not how I perceived myself due to what has happened to me. I am what, with God’s Grace what I choose to become. We have a choice.
God’s goal is union. God comes disguised as our life----the true life within the apparent life that we are living.
Life lived fully and honestly will always eventually embrace both joy and suffering, a path of decent, doubt, regret, and lots of little deaths that teach us to let go of our false self and to live in the simple joy of divine union----which is exactly the passion and desire of the True Self.
Our carefully constructed ego container must gradually crack open, as we realize that we are not separate from God, from others or from ourselves.