Perfect in Our Brokenness

Feb 2, 2020

By Reverend Rebecca Bryan

​“We all love you, that’s not the problem. Now you just have to love yourself…” words from a truthful friend in recovery.

“That’s a lot of diplomas and awards on that wall behind you,” said a person interviewing me to be a minister. I smiled sheepishly, not knowing if I should feel proud – or embarrassed.

For years I genuinely feared that if I stopped, or even let myself relax, I would never get up again.

I approached my healing with the same relentless vigor. I would get better. The pain would stop. I would conquer and cleanse myself of the remnants of trauma.

One day, a fundamental shift occurred. I realized I was treating myself with anything but self-love. In that same moment, I realized there was nothing to fix.

The irony is that in that surrender, a new and deeper healing took off. I began to love myself, even as I continued to recover. I had been healing for years, no question about it. But I had done so without mercy.

Before that shift, not so long ago, I was stuck in the “first half of life,” seeking self-esteem, control, and security outside of myself. By the first half of life I mean the period of our lives when we are focused externally, seeking clarity and growth of esteem, affection, and influence. We place our self-worth in our career, friends, and achievements. This seeking has its place; it is a part of human nature. It is a necessary step in building our sense of self, at first. And eventually it is no longer enough.

This concept of the two halves of life was first developed by psychiatrist Carl Jung. It has been studied and written about by many including the late monk and activist Thomas Merton, the political commentator David Brooks, and the author and theologian Richard Rhor. This evolution often follows age, but it does not have to. Many young or middle-aged people live in the “second half” mindset, and many people never move beyond the “first half.”

Simply stated, in the first half of life we focus on things external to us, and in the second half we focus on deeper felt spirituality. In his book, Falling Upward, Richard Rhor describes the first half of our life as when we create the container to hold our life, and the second half as when we discover the contents within the container. The first half lets us figure out important things without which the second half could not occur. The second half connects us with who we truly are. In so doing, it also brings us into deep connection with others and God, connection with the infinite mystery of life itself.

In his 1943 book, A Theory of Human Motivation, Abraham Maslow laid out what become known as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. He confirmed that our needs for food, safety, belonging, and positive self-regard must be met before we can move into the work of self-actualization. Unless those initial needs are met, we become stuck trying to achieve them, regardless of our age. We create what Fr. Thomas Keating calls our False Self. The False Self endlessly pursues the impossible, pursues safety, control, and love through things outside of ourselves. Keating calls these “emotional programs for happiness.”

Our False Self is a concoction of pretenses, defenses, and coping mechanisms that we desperately hope will keep our fears at bay, cover our sense of inadequacy, and keep us and others away from our pain. It is the self which knows more about other people’s likes and dislikes than its own and says “yes” when what we want to say is “no.” There is no shame in the False Self. Since one’s needs are never perfectly met, we all develop a False Self to one degree or another. The culture we live in is a huge proponent of the False Self as well. The False Self helps many people survive. The tragedy is if we never outgrow it or if we believe that it is our True Self or believe that there is nothing more to us.

There is so much more to all of us. There is love, beauty, and a uniqueness that is ours alone to offer this world. And that uniqueness is wonderfully quirky, reliably inconsistent, and fantastically made. I would go so far to say it is perfect.

This shift from the False Self to the True Self or from the first half of life to the second requires pain, pain severe enough that we are willing to let go and surrender our old ways of being.

“Sooner or later…some event, person, death, idea, or relationship will enter your life that you simply cannot deal with, using your present skills set, your acquired knowledge, or your strong willpower….you will and you must ‘lose’ at something,” writes Rhor.[1]

It will feel awful when this happens. It is not unusual to think whatever is happening is the worst thing possible. And yet that thing, that humbling, bring-you-to-your-knees thing, can be the doorway to authentic life. We don’t give up our False Self, or ego, easily, even when it’s not working and, especially, if we think it is working.

There came a point when identifying only with my healing, recovery from childhood trauma, and addictions began holding me back, limiting me. I say that in the kindest, gentlest, way possible. I know personal healing takes what it takes. We cannot rush healing or reconciliation. At some point, however, we have to choose to connect with more than that. We have to claim our happiness. We have to let go of the familiarity of our background, our tribe, if you will, and our previous sense of identity.

Buddhist teacher Tara Brach calls this waking from the “trance of unworthiness.” She says that this waking requires us to “Make contact with the deeper parts of our being, such as the truth of our loving, even when we sometimes act in ways we don’t like.” Doing so allows us to experience “the radiance and love that is our essence.”[2]

Waking from the trance of unworthiness is not easy. It can appear to happen spontaneously. But it is more likely a breakthrough that comes after significant periods and significant work on one’s self. Ritual can be important in supporting this shift in identity.

Psychologist and wilderness guide Bill Plotkin tells of a ritual that Japanese communities do with their soldiers returning from war. Communities realized that these young soldiers were deeply attached to their identities formed during their time of service. To support them in their moving forward, people gather and profusely thank the soldiers for their service. After a time, an elder in the community says with authority, “The war is now over! The community needs you to let go of what has served you… to return as something beyond a soldier.”[3] This doesn’t mean that the soldier’s previous experiences aren’t part of who she is. Instead, it means they are not all of who she is.

We all need those elders, the wise ones who have gone before us whom we trust and respect, who can help us ritualize and let go of identities that no longer serve us. We all need those who show us the way of the second half of life. One of the many benefits of religious community is having such relationships right here.

Elders are those among us who have grown beyond the first stage of life. They recognize that we all have a divine light and they live out of their True Selves. They do not dismiss or reject all that came before them. They understand it was all essential, and everything had its place, even the brokenness, perhaps most of all the brokenness.

Living connected to our True Self also connects us to the underlying web of life. This felt experience is not intellectual knowledge. Thomas Merton called it life’s hidden wholeness, or the underlying unity of all things.[4] Jesus called it the living water. T.S. Eliot described it as a deeper communion.[5] I think it’s when all of our life becomes a prayer. We recognize that we are not alone, we are not all powerful, and we are a part of this beautifully interconnected web that we call life. We finally belong, not because of what we’ve accomplished, what we know, or how we look. We belong because we are here.

Unitarian Universalist minister Reverend Lesley Takahashi writes, “…figuring out how to do these things may be as important as figuring out how to incorporate movement into worship, how to preach from a device or how to increase stewardship. Breaking open authenticity could be excellence.”[6]

For me, this shift in perspective through which I accept my brokenness and its beauty has allowed me to surrender the fight and paradoxically have more stamina. Knowing that all that I seek is inside of me, I look outside of myself differently.

I persist with measured discipline. I accept that not everyone likes me, and those diplomas… they’re somewhere in the basement packed away among the boxes.  

Amen and blessed be.

[1] Rhor, Richard, Falling Upward, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA. 2011. Pg. 65.

[2] Brach, Tara, “Waking Up from the Trance of Unworthiness” in The Self-Acceptance Project, Simon, Tami, editor, Sounds True, Bolder, CO, 2016. Pg. 7.

[3] Rhor, Richard, Falling Upward, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA. 2011. Pg. 44.

[4] Palmer, Parker, In the Belly of a Paradox, Location 123 of 605, Pendle Hill Publications, Wallingford, PA 19086.

[5] Rhor, Richard, Falling Upward, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA. 2011. Pg. 87.

[6] Takahashi, Leslie, “Truth, Trauma, and Transformation: Embracing the Cracks and the Gold,” 2019 Berry Street Essay.

Questions to ponder, discuss and hold…

How do you mirror to other people the goodness you see in them?

 

Can you look in the mirror and love who you see? If not, how can you move toward that level of self-love?

 

What words or sentiments soothe you?

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