Whenever we see personal qualities that we reject in ourselves, that we believe don’t belong to us – especially bad ones – we must put them outside of ourselves. Where do we put ’em? Why, we hang them on others!
So we say, Mom is “controlling” (which implies I am not). Or Dad is “stubborn,” my Uncle is “mercurial,” my boss is “incompetent.” They are that way — but (thank goodness, haha) — I am not.
Often we give out traumas to people. Being too heavy for us to handle, we put these ugly clothes onto someone else. We make others evil and dangerous… which allows us to be “the good one”… “the pure, naked one”… without having to deal with our inner troubles.
We are only fooling ourselves. The ugly clothes are still there… waiting for us.
Sooner or later, we tire of this game… of avoiding our inner work… of pretending that “others” are “the problem.” We tire of running around, throwing these ugly clothes onto others… always having to seek out new coat hangers, always giving our power away. We see how useless and tiresome it is. It’s like we’ve been living out of our car for years, with all these ugly coats and sweaters we don’t know where to put.
So we try something new… we try wearing these clothes – these undesirable qualities – ourselves. That’s the only way we can ever get rid of them… by owning them.
We own our controlling part, our stubbornness, our mercurial incompetence. We all have these traits… why did we think we were so special? We used others as Placeholders… as walking coat hangers. How unfair of us!
Only after we’ve worn the clothes for a bit — and realize that the clothes aren’t so ugly after all — can we finally get rid of them. They’re so heavy and burdensome, no wonder no one wanted to wear them!
And when we take them off… that’s when we finally get to rediscover our original purity. You know, the one we pretended to have before. Now it’s not such heavy work… in fact, it’s as “light-as-a-feather.”
We chose nudity. And we finally allow others to choose it, too.
Joy Biscuits 