In spiritual practice, many of us find frequent opportunities to experience guilt. We promise ourselves that we are going to do a certain practice every day, or that we will stop doing some habit that we perceive to be demoting or unhealthy, and then find that we are not able to do (or not do) the thing we promised ourselves. Then we call ourselves names, feel like we failed, are “no good,” etc. This is a very common thing. For myself, I have learned to work at turning all these guilt opportunities into self-forgiveness opportunities. I say, “work at,” because I do not always succeed; sometimes I have to try to forgive myself for not being able to forgive myself.

The thing is, that most of us have been wounded one or more times in our journey across this world ocean, some of us have been profoundly wounded, and some of us have been regularly wounded in multiple ways. The “wounds” I am speaking of are wounds to one’s self esteem, wounds to one’s capacity to allow oneself access to life’s abundance. Now that I have been in spiritual practice all these many years (almost 40), it has become quite clear to me that we all seem to have some sort of inner meter, or measuring system, through which we determine, on a subconscious level, how much of life’s abundance we allow ourselves. In this case by “life’s abundance,” I am referring to the quality of life of one’s life, and one’s financial and spiritual prosperity.

For many years, I thought that doing a substantive yoga practice with a strong daily Sadhana would, by itself, heal and clear up these wounds, but, I have, generally, not found that to be the case, either for myself, or for most people of my acquaintance, and I know a very large number of people who seriously practice one or another kind of yoga and/or other spiritual practices. Spiritual practice, is profoundly helpful, but not enough, in most cases, to heal the wounds of life. One can see after a while that one has more or less run into one’s limits with respect to one’s spiritual practice, and that there is a need to heal the wounds, so as to shift the meter, as it were, and increase one’s access the juice of life.

As the years passed I became more and more aware of the profound effect that self-esteem issues have on all the major aspects of a person’s life, and that these issues could be substantive even of there was no overt abuse in a person’s life. All the major decisions (substance abuse as a lifestyle or not; going to college or not; which college? with whom to try to build a relationship? what kind of work or profession to choose? etc) a person makes are shaped by how one values oneself, and whether or not you feel that you deserve to do well. If life’s exigencies have resulted in a person’s believing that they do not deserve to do well, they will spend their life proving that they do not.

This is a strange flaw in our basic design. If a person has an abusive father, they are most likely to select an abusive spouse. People tend to re-create the circumstances of their childhood household .The more negative the circumstances, the more likely they will be re-created. Alcoholism and sexual abuse have been, for the most part passed down through generations upon generations.

The thing is that the child’s frame of reference is quite small, and the parents are the center of the universe. If the parents are abusive in some way, there are several things that almost always happen. The child unconsciously works out how to blame itself rather than the parents, resulting, in most cases, in both lack of self-worth and guilt. If a parent is beating the child, for example, this is frequently accompanied with verbal abuse, reinforcing the message to the child that the child is “no good,” “worthless,” “too much trouble,” “should never have been born,” etc.

To the child this is taken as literal. The image of the self as “no good” penetrates deeply into the core of the being. The guilt message is, “If I could only be better, then they wouldn’t have to beat me.” The life path is determined, always trying to prove that one is OK, but never being able to do it. “Doing” cannot do it, as there is nothing that will ever be enough. The child could become another Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Bill Gates, Dr, Salk, Jerry Garcia, and still feel unworthy.
In the case of one or more alcoholic parents, there are generally profoundly erratic behavior variations on the part of the alcoholic parent, varying from affectionate to violent. The child has two typical responses, self blame for “eliciting” the parent’s anger and shutting down of emotions. The alcoholic parent’s behavior is very unpredictable. Over and over, the parent will be loving, perhaps very apologetic, resulting in the child opening its heart, then to be crushed by a drunken rage, again and again. After a while, the child unconsciously shuts down, having become unable to play the game any more.

The long-term consequences are substantial, as the person who grows up this way may find it hard to love anyone, and most especially to love oneself. If there is sexual abuse in the home, frequently by an uncle or a friend of the family, sometimes from the parents, sometimes allowed by the parents, sometimes with the parents unwilling or unable to acknowledge that it is happening, the child is deeply betrayed right down to the core of their being. The result is almost always a profound sense of being “no good,” not worthy of better care, not deserving of anything. Quite often these children are told by some adult authority in their life such things as, “you are used goods,” “nobody will want you,” “it’s your fault,” etc.
This is one of the common ways in which abusive behavior is transmitted through generations. When an abused child grows up, there is usually very low self esteem, plenty of inner (unexpressed) anger, and little ability to experience love or trust. As soon as a new relationship starts to seem permanent, some manifestation of the unconscious attitude, that if someone loves me, and I am so unworthy, then there must be something wrong with that person sets into place. Then the romance is over, and it is followed by various acting-out towards the once valued partner

Abuse patterns are, generally, passed on from generation to generation. We have all seen, on numerous occasions, or personally experienced, the child of abusive parents marrying or developing relationships with abusers whose abusing patterns are very similar to what the person grew up experiencing as a child. In almost every case, a sexual abuser will have been sexually abused as a child, and an alcoholic will have grown up in a home with alcoholic parents.

In 1987, my daughters (all high school age at the time) and I organized Creating Our Future, a social change action/training organization for high school students. Baba Ram Dass was involved from the beginning, as were Bob Weir and Jerry Garcia from the Grateful Dead. We started with two experimental workshops in the summer of 1987, and were rolling along by the fall of 1987. For the next several years, I pretty much averaged leading three workshops per month, with 25 to 35 students per workshop. Most of the participants were girls. There were rarely more than five boys in a workshop, as most boys of that age are more interested in gross physical motion that the state of the planet and talking about how they felt about it.

Through the influence of Joanna Macy and Interhelp, and their work with Despair & Empowerment workshops, we started out asking moderately deep questions, such as:

* How do you feel about yourself?
* How do you feel about your parents?
* How do they feel about you?
* What do you like about yourself?
* What do you not like about yourself?
* What are your fears about the state pf the planet?

This process could get very deep and I had begun to learn a great deal about the kinds of issues that these kids were dealing with. During our first Summer Camp, I noticed that one of the girls, aged 14, was acting extremely promiscuously. I went for a walk with her and asked her to tell me about herself. It turned out that she had been sexually abused at ages 3, 5, and 8. The abuse came from friends of her stepfather. Her mother and stepfather told her that the abuse happened because she was being “wanton and provocative,” and, of course, she believed it.

Not knowing what else to do at the time, we organized a circle of the girls (high school students) with the boys sitting around them. For this circle, the boys were not allowed to speak, but could only witness. Later, they would have an opportunity to do their own sharing. There were 32 girls in the circle. It turned out that 18 had been raped or sexually abused, and that 8 of those had never spoken of it before. It was an enormous relief to the girls to be able to share their experiences. All of them carried a substantial degree of both guilt and shame in relation to these attacks on their beings. Needless to say, this experience profoundly changed the agenda for that summer camp, as we had to spend the next several days processing what came up for everybody.

As time went on I became more and more aware of the degree to which abuse of various kinds (physical, emotional, substance, sexual) became the central issue in the lives of those who were abused. And most frequently, a central issue that while all pervasive with respect to the impact on the person’s life, was most often never acknowledged or dealt with. Girls who were leading well balanced lives suddenly taking to relatively extreme drugs or alcohol; who were close with their parents, becoming profoundly alienated from them; who were good students, started to fail and cutting classes; who were relatively chaste, becoming promiscuous. These were all typical signs of abuse, and if the onset was sudden, most typically sexual abuse.

It also changed the course of my life: listening to those girls, who had been abused, while at the same time being the father of three beautiful teenage girls, moved me profoundly. I determined to learn how to help people heal the “wounds of life,” and prayed, for many years, for guidance in how to do so. I also, of course, looked around at how these issues were being dealt with by whatever systems, agencies, health professionals, etc., that were purporting to be doing so, but found that most of these seemed to be thinking that they were doing something to heal these wounds, but were not really getting deep and clear enough to actually do so.

About ten years ago, I led a Self-Worth workshop that was sponsored by the Young Women’s Social Entrepreneurs Association, which was founded by Sara Ellis. It was quite a successful workshop, although all we did was create a space to talk about wounds and scars to the psyche. After a while we did another three-hour workshop. At the end, when we were doing evaluations and appreciations, it was suggested that we really needed to do a full weekend to give the subject the attention it needed, to do something more than just bear witness for one another.
I sat with that for a long time. In spiritual circles, I had often heard the advice given that one should just drop the past. From my own experience, that is much easier to say than to do. The image that comes to my mind about “dropping the past,” is to imagine that one is holding some really sticky substance. Then when trying to “drop it,” you try to shake it off, opening your hand and shaking it vigorously, but it remains stuck. When you try to pull it off with the other hand, then it is stuck to that hand, etc.

So, what to do?
Old Habits Old demoting habits die hard like trick birthday candles that won’t stay out

I was discussing this with a friend named Fleet Maull, a Buddhist teacher, who had spent many years in jail related to dealing drugs, and who had started two different prison organizations while in prison. He had done quite a bit of work in dealing with self-worth issues, and spoke of developing a process in which a person’s head would be held while he was sharing the pains and wounds he had received.

Sometime after learning about that process, while sitting in morning Sadhana, I developed a clear vision as to how to lead self-worth workshops. I have been refining this process for a while now, and have also begun, this year, to train others to lead these workshops. I think it was necessary for me to lead this process for a number of years, to hear the many, many, stories, to be present with the pain, and to be deeply and directly involved in allowing healing and resolution to manifest, in order to be able to begin to train others in leading these workshops.

I wish to train others because this work is important. As Yogi Bhajan said, in what is a profoundly radical declaration: “happiness is your birthright.” Throughout the course of human history we have mostly been told that “life is suffering,” and that if you are really good in this lifetime, perhaps you may go to heaven and enjoy eternal bliss – but not in this lifetime. The notion that one could be a happy person, a good person, and lead a good life, is part of the transition of our collective consciousness as we (humanity) go through the long struggle between those energies and forces which are moving us towards eliminating ourselves as a viable species on this planet, and those which are elevating us towards learning how to live as a mature species, in harmony with our environment and one another.

The thing is, that most people do not believe that it is possible to heal our wounds. Mostly at best, people try to “deal with” being wounded, if the wounds are engaged with and acknowledged at all – as opposed to being denied and swept under the carpet. I have seen people who have been profoundly abused, sexually, physically, and emotionally, who have been repeatedly told that they are no good, will never be any good, etc., and who have spent many years living self-destructive lives, come to be able to embrace and hold (metaphorically) their wounded selves, and feel forgiven, worthy of being loved, safe and innocent.

There now no question about it, we can heal our wounds; we can embrace life’s abundance. Last year, for the first time, I successfully trained a number of people to begin to lead these workshops. It was, for me, one of the great moments of my life. I had hoped to be able to train others, but I did not know whether it would truly be possible, whether the capacity to lead these workshops were dependent on my unique experience. That is, I have now been leading workshops of one kind or another for, literally, more than forty years, and teaching yoga for almost that long. The people who were successfully trained varied in their years of yoga practice from 3 years to, at most, 10 years.

Now, I hope to spread this training far and wide. Far enough and wide enough, so that its comes to be a given that one can heal the wounds of life and live a happy life, so that we can begin to turn our attention to seeing to it that children around the planet are raised in such a way that they grow up relatively free of these wounds, readily able to love themselves and their fellow beings.