Today, something finally ran its course in my life. It concerned something that happened over 25 years ago and the choice I made in the situation. It’s puzzled and troubled me ever since, and it has greatly constrained my life. I didn’t consciously think about it often, but it’s always been there nevertheless. It concerned a choice I made about who I would be for myself and who I would be for an other.
What happened today? Nothing much from the outside. Just a phone conversation. But in that conversation, in the midst of saying something, I got what I’d missed for 25 years. The words were half out of my mouth before I recognised them. Recognised them for the truth. And by the truth I mean something completely straightforward; I mean I recognised they described what was so.
I saw I had failed to do something. Something very plain and simple, and that that was the source of my guilt and confusion and constraint. At the very same moment I saw it, all the power, all the charge which the situation had had for me for over 25 years vanished as if it had never been. What I was left with was the inimitable feeling of lightness, freedom and wholeness that always follows a “Landmark” breakthrough.
For, yes, it was a “Landmark” breakthrough. It was made possible by my doing the Landmark Forum in September last year, and by the fact I was having the conversation with another Landmark graduate, one particularly skilled in listening for what matters to others.
It was also a Landmark breakthrough in the sense it demonstrates four features I’ve observed are common to all such breakthroughs.
1. It’s simple
What you get in the breakthrough is always much much simpler than anything you might have conjectured previously. What’s revealed is always crystal clear and almost laughably simple.
2. Always the one act
Regardless of the situation, the breakthrough always involves the act of taking responsibility. Nothing more, nothing less.
3. Being “complete”
A breakthrough involves being “complete” about a situation. Being complete simply means the situation no longer brings up any emotion or “charge.” One can think and speak about the situation without any upset, pain, anger, shame, embarrassment or any other emotion. If you feel upset or sad about it, it’s not complete.
4. No regret
When one has the breakthrough, curiously, there is no sense of regret that it didn’t occur earlier. For example, I’m not left today thinking,
Why couldn’t I have seen this earlier? It would have saved a lot of pain.
Instead, I feel only gratitude it occurred at last.
*****
Image: Beach at Barcelona by Luke Phillips
While your “lightening up” experience was……how shall one say……”Landmarky”, it was also “esty”, since some phrases you used reminded me of the “est” training (aka “the training”) I did 25 years ago.
I note, though, that you didn’t use the phrase, “clearing up”, which was big in est. It seemed in what you wrote, that a certain situation “cleared up” for you!!
Like Landmark, est was big on “what is” or “what is so”. Another phrase from est that I’ve found useful in my 25 years of post-est life, is, “What is, is. What isn’t, isn’t”.
This is not only very “esty”, but very Zen.
Another phrase, not from est, but from the sci-fi/fantasy writer, Harlan Ellison, that I’ve found of great help whenever I experience charged-up feelings of sorrow or anger at certain unwise decisions with long-lasting consequences, which I made in the past, is, “It seemed like a good idea at the time”.
After I repeat this phrase, I become calmer. My sorrow or anger “clears up”. Or at least for the next hour or so it does!!
Hi Mr Pip. Oh yes, I never use original words or phrases when I’m talking Landmark. Borrow them all! Cos I love them, cos they bring back the experience for me. Landmark uses the phrase “cleaning up” to refer to what’s required when we see where we’ve been pretending or covering up about something, or been without integrity. Is that what est meant by “clearing up”?
In the situation I was talking about (sorry to seem a bit cryptic and not specific about the details, but it involves others and isn’t just my story) “cleaning up” wasn’t required. There was nothing I’d been pretending or covering up, and it wasn’t a question of integrity. It was that I couldn’t see what had actually happened. The thing had been hidden from me for over 25 years. Once I saw it, the “situation” vanished. In fact, this morning I’m having to strain a bit to think what it was. And this is what’s so different about Landmark for me: the breakthrough, the “being complete” is permanent.
Will have a look out for Harlan Ellison. And thanks for sharing ;)
It sounds from what you said, as if Landmark’s “cleaning up” and est’s “clearing up” are synonymous.
Once you saw your situation for what it really was, any remaining negative energy from it simply “cleared up”, or, more felicitously, “evaporated”, or “vanished”, as does a desert mirage when one nears it.
Yes, that’s it exactly. It evaporated. I like the image of the mirage. Am going to pass it on to a friend. Thnx.
Off-topic: I blushed myself silly when I read your compliments.
Many thanks for the link.
Sx
Hi Scarls. Thanks for coming over to my place. Re the comments, you’re welcome sister. Just found you when you had a wee break and was v pleased when you came back. Never met another Mavis Cheek reader. One I read featured a woman who ordered a tree to imprison her ex-hubby and then ravished him ;) xx
Sounds like you broke up with somebody 25 years ago and talked again to him, or to another person, and said that you would do it again.
then again, just guessing.
He he, nothing so juicy. It was very straightforward. I saw that I failed to defend someone.
I realized that I was wrong as I pushed “submit”. The math didn’t work out, unless you started dating in kindergarten…
Failed to defend someone. Hmm. Plot thickens.
Ha ha, very kind and gallant of you to think the math doesn’t work. It works only too well, but I liked it anyway ;)
I want to know what happens next ! in further conversations that you have ! For me break throughs in understanding often allow other previously hidden niggles and relationships to arise and they get “cleared up ‘ so much easier. I think of putting glasses on to read a word and then I see the whole page.
As an ex-estian and a recent landmarkian there is a clarity in their programmes that takes one ‘action’ to move into the present.
For me the action is to get started is to ask, ‘Who am I being in relation to this person or issue?’ There’s a range of responses here and knowing I can choose alters my behavior swinging it to the positive.
Hi there. I like the “putting glasses on to read a word and then I see the whole page.” I think that could very well happen. The “who am I being?” question is a very powerful one.
Hey! This calls for a catch up :)!
Yes, it does!