In speaking with a dear friend, we got to reminiscing about how old distant memories were coming up for us, distant they are and yet as clear as if happened today.
We continued the conversation about how life at our age feels a bit like this landscape of unfolding – and we’re trying to make some sort of sense out of it, like finding the pieces of a puzzle. While sharing and reflecting that in those snapshot memories we were most often just trying to make it, survive, moving away from, running, pushing the hard and painful emotions down and away from the heart that’s aching.
I’m like an investigator I tell her, trying to make sense of Why a particular memory came up, she began that the same thing was happening to her – we were and are experiencing the unfolding but the difference for me in talking about the memory wasn’t any pain or discomfort, just struck with the curiosity of why they were even coming up? And that’s when it occurred, I said to her, I’m the observer. Observing the younger version of myself as a child and not the child “in it” but watching it, not actually trying to survive or get through which Actually may very well be the Release. Release and letting go without the need for further investigation of Why the memory, in the first place. And at that moment immediately felt freed.
Because I had been taken back a bit by what these seemingly random, pop-up memories might mean, what might they be trying to tell me, especially coming from a person whose mind loves to ask why – to explore all the possible answers, to find meaning. Then the answer came what seemed out of no where, no need for further investigation or meaning of the “memory itself” it wasn’t about the memory itself or that event which required investigation only that it was presented as a vehicle for releasing and letting go from the stance of being the observer.
Which then lead me to the fascination most have about wanting to “know the why” (and this is for most anything where deep painful emotions reside and trauma are involved) and how even if I received an answer – it felt inadequate, it never truly gave me or what one might believe an answer could provide. Most often the why was allusive, no reason offered or shared from where the hurt was derived only kept or keeps anyone of us in the spin of asking why again and again? If only one knew why, they could make sense of and move on, right?
From my experience, if I did get an answer (albeit rare) it still didn’t offer me any completeness or wholeness because the answer offered came from their unique experiences, their capacity.
And further, asking of Why inherently doesn’t free us from victimization but rather continues the cycle ultimately away from ourselves; thereby, placing our power over to the very thing we didn’t or haven’t wanted to, trying to escape…only to become intimate bed fellows.
It is in the work of feeling and allowing all those feeling (sadness, anger, bitterness, resentment, all the one’s we rather push away or in some sense feel more comfortable having and expressing – thereby staying stuck) that only through every single one, they be felt, honored, and acknowledged within ourselves to say thank you, thank you for showing up, I see you and I feel you, what would you like me to know? And most often, just by honoring and asking, what would you like me to know allows the release, the letting go, and in the release so arrives the answer.
By Magdalena Andrasevits
