Letting Go – Part One….Part Two
by Bernie Bell - 07:59 on 04 June 2024
Letting Go – Part One….
I read the following on Matthew Mannings Facebook page…..
https://www.facebook.com/matthewmanningukhealer/?locale=en_GB
“CZECH DEER STILL AVOID IRON CURTAIN
The Iron Curtain fell 35 years ago, but it seems that nobody told the deer. A study found that decades later, red deer on the border between the Czech Republic and old West Germany still do not cross the divide.
After tracking 300 deer, researchers found the animals are intent on maintaining the old boundaries. Researchers followed the movement of the Czech and German deer via GPS-equipped collars, which sent data to computers.
During the Cold War, electric fences made the Czech-German boundary impossible to pass. Czechoslovakia had three parallel electrified fences, patrolled by heavily armed guards.
Biologist Pavel Sustr, who led the seven-year program, said that even though the area is now forest and open land with no barrier, the deer still stick to their Czech or Bavarian sides.
“It was fascinating to realise for the first time that anything like that is possible,” he said. “But the border still plays a role for them and separates the two populations.”
He said that was remarkable because the average life expectancy for deer is 15 years and none living now would have encountered the original barrier.”
...and was thinking of how people adopt certain ways of behaving to help them to deal with the situation they are in. Then, when their life changes and those defence mechanisms are no longer needed – can, in fact be damaging to them – they still hold on to those way of being, thinking and responding – either consciously or un-consciously – when it would be better for them to let go of those thought patterns.
That is where I am now – I’m trying to work through letting go of negative responses which I have to certain situations and images. These responses are now working against my well-being and peace of mind. I try to ‘catch myself’ doing this and remind myself that these responses are nothing to do with reality, nothing to do with the reality of my life and my self – my actual, chosen way of being - and…let them go.
Some time, one or some of those deer will cross that invisible border, others will follow them and a balance will be re-established between their perception of a barrier and the reality, which is that there is no longer a barrier to their freedom of movement.
In my case - no longer a barrier or defence mechanism to stop me from achieving greater clarity about myself and how I can live.
And by letting go, live my life again with a more balanced and positive approach. Losing learnt behaviour to achieve more clarity. Crossing the non-existent boundary between present states of mind and ways of being, and potential states of mind and ways of being, to roam freely, without fear.
*********
Letting go – Part Two….
I had a dream – I was somewhere in South Africa with a small group of people. A man was explaining some symbols placed inside circles which were on the ground.
This was a burial ground and the idea was that each of these circles marked where a person was buried, and told their story. The enclosing circles were made of sections of raised, consolidated sand and each one contained symbols also made from consolidated sand, which told the tale...
The man explained that it was possible to take part in the preparation of your own circle while you were still alive, and took us to show us his own symbols which he was working on.
I woke up and told Mike about my dream and went to get a sketch-pad which I have, but which I haven’t used for years, to try to draw the designs for him. In the sketch-pad I found a draft of a letter I wrote to someone when his wife died. This letter is about family and how….
“…as long as the family are there around you, you’re not on your own – you’ll always have company, and ***** will be there too, in those children. We don’t end, we continue, and we definitely continue in our families.”
I read this out to Mike, and we talked of how my dream was set in South Africa, which is known as the ’Cradle of Humanity’ – where we started from - and how we are all still connected – still one family. And of how that family is now in crisis – at risk of ceasing to be – ending the tale which began so long ago.
But – we can still take part in telling our own tale – telling the tale we’ll leave behind us whether as individuals or as humanity and whether we continue or not. Family is continuity.
Mike and I then talked of how humans, individually or collectively, need to lose some of the defence mechanisms which were needed when we were starting off and which are no longer, or should no longer, be needed and are now potentially leading to our destruction. We need to let them go and evolve into the clearer, calmer aspects of our selves.
Mike then told me of a dream which he’d had at the same time as I was having my dream.
We were in a room in an old house with some people. In a nearby room Mike could see a Wild Boar, looking straight at him. He didn’t feel threatened, but did feel uncomfortable and wanted to put a door – a barrier – between him and the Boar, and so he moved to a different room – where I was. He said I wasn’t a bit troubled about the Boar, and was more involved with engaging with the people.
We talked of how the Boar could represent the Wild in us, the untamed, random and possibly dangerous elements of the human psyche. The aspects of our nature which were needed for survival way back, but which shouldn’t be needed now.
Unfortunately, there are many people living now in situations which call on them to use those aspects of their nature to survive – as our distant ancestors needed to.
But the rest of us need to let that way of being and responding to life - go. Accept it as part of us, of our deeper nature, but not let it dominate or dictate, and not live by it.
The people in today’s world who are being forced to live from that root nature are placed in that situation due to others living from their fear-rooted nature.
If we don’t collectively clear ourselves of living in that way and inflicting it on others – we’ll go, as a species. We’ll go – possibly only leaving symbols to tell our tale.
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