dear chris,
not sure i totally agree with you about your definition of shame here, although
a lot of what you say about it from this definition rings true adn wise.
for me i understand shame as occurring when there is a percieved ignoring
of the human subjectivity of the person. as a subject a languaged living
breathing subject he or she has been (in 'objective' reality or in 'subjective'
perception (psychological reality)) ignored, scrubbed out, deleted. it may
have survival value in that it is percieved as threatening to the very existence
of the subject and therefore cause so much psychological pain that efforts
to reestablish being are made with varying success.
i feel this is different here from what you describe occurs with bowing to
one's elders or those that precede one in a lineage. far from inducing an
experience which threaten's to wipe out the subject, it affirms through language
as well as through bodily action, his or her place his or her subjectivity
and humanity within the love lineage of the family or system. it actually
contributes to subjectivity rather than detractiing from it. humility thus
is not shame, humility acknowledges other's and ourselves in relation to
them, in love and in place within the family. humility is inclusive of our
humanity as well as of others. hence it is very different imho from shame.
perhaps semantics but i think there is an important distinction here between
what is life and living affirming (humbleness) versus what is life and living
squashing (shame). between what is protective and enhancing of our subjectivity
and place in the world and what is annihalating and dismissive of it.
best regards to you chris and thanks for the discussion on an important point.
i'm not trying to argue for the sake of it with you over words and meanings
, i feel this is quite vital distinctions here. so please forgive me if i
disagree with you slightly, just on some language rather than the overall
gist of your meaning and intent, which i do indeed agree with.
love to all
sarah
Chris Walsh wrote:
Recently there was a discussion about forgiveness that helped me to understand this important and difficult issue a little better. Most contributors agreed that when someone says “I forgive” from a position of feeling morally superior it is not helpful. As Otteline Lamet pointed out this is often an attempt to avoid unpleasant feelings, such as rage and deep hurt.
I am very interested in the role of shame in this process. I assume that Otteline might include shame, among other things, under the heading of the deep hurt which she states that people are often trying to avoid feeling when they forgive. This has made me think about how shame is related to the bowing we often see in constellations. These are some of my initial thoughts on the subject. I am sure it can be explored much further.
To make myself clear here, I am not talking about the toxic shame that is a secondary emotion and paralyses people. Rather I am talking about the much briefer primary emotion. Shame like guilt is not really about being morally good or bad. It seems this way, because like guilt, shame is used as a means of socially controlling people’s behaviour. In fact shame arises when there is an interruption to something that interests or excites us. Remember the sense of deflation when you mistime trying to join in an interesting conversation. That feeling is what I am talking about here. It has the survival value of forcing us to withdraw our energy and then hopefully to reassess the situation skilfully. When it is mild, it feels like discretion. When it is severe it feels like disgrace. When it is part of a complicated secondary emotion it can become positively toxic
A key step in dealing with difficulties with parents is the one of acknowledging parents' fates and maybe bowing in respect to that fate. That puts parents' behaviour in context. Then we can become aware of the real forces, the entanglements, that drive our blind love in these situations. This forgiving in a state of blind love may have been the best we could do until now. Nonetheless, we realise that our attempt to carry our parents’ pain and fate has really been misguided and inflated. So we feel embarrassed or ashamed. We become humble So our heads spontaneously start to bow. This is genuine humility not the humility that any intelligent person can fake if they want to. Sometimes we can see a bow spontaneously beginning like this in a representative in a constellation.
As we accept the shame and surrender to it, we can become open to receiving support. It is then the tender connection with another human being that allows us to rise out of the bow and out of the shame and reengage with the world, & with ourselves in a new way. So then the shame has done the job that it has meant to do. We have now become disentangled from the toxic dance of blind love. Shame/humility has created space for grace to enter, for love to enter and for life itself to enter.
hasta la vista
Chris Walsh An Australian Constellation Website:
www.constellationflow.com
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