Discovering the work of Bill Plotkin and Fred Luskin has led me to understand a bit more about what I am discovering and uncracking. Lots of cracking on this path.
I have a Loyal Soldier (Plotkin), who protects me from not being seen, accepted and loved fully as a child. While I'm sure there were many in my village who didn't see, accept and love me fully, it is my father who stands out most. I felt shame as a child and not seen, accepted or loved fully by him. I know he saw, accepted and loved me to his fullest extent, but it was not enough. The net of this is that I developed a Loyal Soldier to protect me from not being seen, accepted or loved by him and any other human. I reduced myself, shied from my true nature, expressed myself only in approved ways. This Loyal Soldier made me safe, but at great expense to my unfolding and joy.
My Soldier employed a vast array of defenses. I acted out to get attention. I lied to inflate my position. I wallowed in eddies of shame and accepted my father's values and instruction. The Soldier merely wanted to create behaviors and structures to isolate me and prevent me from intimacy, which if enabled, would risk more pain of not being seen, accepted and loved. As the Soldier got older and had at his disposal a greater armory of physical and intellectual weapons, he began to alter his appearance to become stronger. He lifted weights and took mostly legal supplements. He altered his persona to become more callous, more risk-seeking, more dominant, more funny/cutting. He sought every opportunity to create difference between himself and others, especially women, his friends and family. As the necortex developed and he wisened, the Soldier sought intellectual distancing mechanisms, most included a proclivity to emboss a way of life and cosmology in staunch opposition to his father's.
I read lots of books. I still do - and aim to become the wisest in the land. Frankly, the Loyal Soldier will do whatever it takes to be relevant, and as such he picks fights he cannot win, cementing his leadership in perpetuity. The war must go on. To do so, he has unenforceable rules he seeks to maintain whenever impossible - here are a few:
He has a rule that all humans should have fathers who see, accept and love them. Uneforceable.
He has a rule his penis should get hard whenever he wants it to. Uneforceable.
He has a rule that the world should recognize his genius, command of disciplines and ability to inspire. Uneforceable.
He has a rule that he should have supremacy in every area of life - financial wealth, worldly influence/impact, romance, family, health, wisdom, and that others should enjoy success to a slightly lesser extent than himself. Uneforceable.
What is possible is for the Loyal Soldier to be thanked for his contributions thusfar, to see that the war is over (he is no longer a boy requiring his father to see, accept and love him), for him to see that his gifts are still useful but no longer required to enforce these rules, to know that there are other tasks in the present to which he is both suited and called up for active duty.
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