Breaking out of shame with the help of the Law of One, Michael Teachings, and the Enn

[Questioner]

As I mentioned in my Olio post, I welcome guidance from the moderators about whether this should be in Law of One or Life on Earth.

I continue to explore some of the spiritually-minded systems of psychology that inspire me: the Michael Teachings, and the Enneagram.

The Enneagram explains nine patterns of human behavior, and how people are innately drawn to overusing one of those patterns. At best, we make the most of our own pattern, which is a path to enlightenment in each moment and just one stop in an endless flow of growth using all of the patterns in balance. At worst, each pattern spirals down into a unique form of self-destruction and outward violence, cutting us off from other aspects of our own humanity, and from our inward connection with the Divine. The patterns are numbered one through nine, and the numbering does not indicate any kind of value judgment or ranking.

I have Enneagram type 4. This type can feel alienated, usually emotionally disconnected from both parents since childhood, and by extension, from relationships, society, and God. Recognizing that there should be a connection but that connection is missing, type 4 assumes that the absence of connection is also felt by those who should be in a positive, loving, heartfelt relationship.

The relationships that should be present and positive, but instead don't exist with that positivity, could be at any level of experience. Parent and child, friend to friend, love, family, teamwork, society, culture, relatives, community, angels, aliens and God... all seem distant and cut off. Other relationships are screwed up because the initial relationship at the core of human existence isn't as it should be.

The type 4 adult is the older experience of a child who lacks a sense of a parent's consistently good enough attentive love, compassionate acceptance, and desire to nurture and protect. Assuming that the parent also feels the lacks of this relationship, not able to put into words what's desired going back before language is learned, the child tries to comprehend why the parent would not want this type of relationship.

In some cases, such as my own, years of intense inner work and outward research and therapy lead to this conclusion: the parents didn't miss that relationship, nor choose to withhold it. They were simply too immature, broken, sick, injured, and/or overwhelmed with their own problems, to be able to offer it.

It's not that the parents dined at a luxurious feast of loving mutuality from which the children were excluded. The parents also starved, because that food of love was not on their own table either. It was in the buffet of life, but the parents didn't scoop up that satisfying food and fill their plates with it. Spiritually, the parents scooped up the soggy, bitter, tasteless old leftovers. They didn't even see the good food was available, or maybe someone told them it didn't taste good, or maybe the parents were on their own STS austerity diet to gain power by omitting love from their diet.

Until a type 4 person realizes that this is the case, the type 4 person strives to find out what is their own inner defect that makes them unworthy of love, acceptance, or support - even from their parents.

This fits in perfectly with what the Michael teachings call the Chief Negative Feature of Self-Deprecation, or what psychology calls an Avoidant pattern of disordered thinking and relationships (starting with the relationship with self). From MichaelTeachings.com:

The person devalues, disparages, and slights himself. He feels that he is of little consequence among the rest of humanity. He sees others as better than himself, and looks up to them, and down on himself. The environment of the lowly one also often reflects the lack of self-esteem: a humble abode suitable for a person of modest means. Self-Deprecation is the self-image of limitation. The person feels he is limited in ability, talent, and intellect. He thinks his personal attributes and endowments are small and insignificant. In the Negative Pole of -Abasement, he is often beset with feelings of shame. He feels that he is a disgrace, a burden to himself and to everybody else.... driven by the fear of inadequacy.

Shame is about not even trying to do something good, because of a feeling that one's very existence is so unfixably defective that one has no ability or capacity to do good.

Healing comes from realizing two things. First, there was not a wonderful wellspring of love that was closed off to the type 4, self-deprecating, shame-burdened person. The well was empty. In my own case, this lifetime will never include my experiencing a sense of my mother's unconditional positive regard, acceptance, moral support and encouragement.

That is a dead well in parched desert rocks. Bringing a better bucket will not make it possible for healthy water to come out of that well. The better bucket is my hard work at expressing how much I love her and want her to be proud of me, happy about my existence, respectful of my choices in life, connected even if my beliefs and choices are different than what she would imagine would bring her the most reflected glory. I am not thirsty from one bucket after another being inadequate. I am thirsty from going again and again to an empty well.

The solution is to realize that the love of God, that should be expressed through parental love, is also available from other sources. The closest well is bone dry, but the life-sustaining flow of God's love is in other rivers, in the rain and in the fruits that trees have used to package water, all there for me to enjoy. I do not have to remain thirsty for the rest of my life.

Shame is an especially perverse trick that STS forces use to sabotage STO entities from within. If one desires to be supportive, useful, kind and loving... but what one has to offer is so defective that it must even be rejected by those who should be most close and loving... then helpfulness consists of hiding one's light, of withdrawing, not interacting, retreating into a destructive spiral of looking within for nonexistent reasons that one is below God's minimum standards.

Shame is like convincing a pilot that a perfectly good plane is allegedly full of bombs that will blow everything apart at takeoff or landing. This lie would keep a useful plane grounded, or force one already aloft to circle endlessly until it runs out of fuel. Either way, the good it should do is withheld from a false fear of defectiveness. This is what has happened in my life. And the lesson of my life is that the engines have always been just fine, with plenty of people who'd love to enjoy my next scenic cruise in perfect safety.

At best, type 4 is honest about the deepest contents of one's own heart and spirit; leading to a flow of intuitive creativity, and a unique expression of universal truths of human nature... because down below the basement is not hell, but the shared bedrock of God's love and freedom as expressed through every life.