Protect and Defend or Learn and Grow

Is it an Either/or Choice?

Protect and defend or learn and grow. I was deep in conversation with my son and he said, “Mom, it doesn’t have to be a choice between the two.” His energy was protected and I was having difficulty being with him. It felt as if I was sitting next to an impenetrable hedge, not an ordinary hedge, but one with great thorns and deeply troubled energy. I felt as if I had been transported to Grimm’s land of fairy tales and plopped down in the middle of the wonderful story about Little Briar-Rose.

“But round about the castle there began to grow a hedge of thorns, which every year became higher, and at last grew close up round the castle and all over it, so that there was nothing of it to be seen, not even the flag upon the roof. But the story of the beautiful sleeping Briar-Rose, for so the princess was named, went about the country, so that from time to time kings’ sons came and tried to get through the thorny hedge into the castle. But they found it impossible, for the thorns held fast together, as if they had hands, and the youths were caught in them, could not get loose again, and died a miserable death.” Brothers Grimm

The protected energy stood between us. It seemed odd that I felt it so intensely. It made me wince. It definitely had my attention. Even as I responded to my son I realized that this was his lesson…and it was mine as well. Nothing that ensnares us is someone else’s cross to bear. It is always ours and the more intense the pain, the greater the chance for personal opening.

So what was it that wanted my attention? I had been seeing snippets of fear gathering around my upcoming trip to New York for the publicity summit. As I listened to the coaching sessions of my fellow attendees, I had sensed the ghosts of my past inadequacies as they grabbed at my heart, not hard, just enough to make certain that I felt their presence. The first one appeared as I listened to a woman’s sales pitch, describing the specifics of a winning appearance. As she listed her nightmare examples—gray hair, face cream and little else—it occurred to me that she was describing me. I brushed it off—after all, my hair is silver not gray—but the corrosive thoughts had already seeped through the cracks. The second had come when I was offered a free thirty minute consultation with an image consultant and chose not to participate in the offer, reasoning that I didn’t have current pictures with my planned wardrobe. The third dug its heels in during a conversation with a friend—a most unexpected place. Her surprise at my decision to pass on the image consultant offer forced me to take a look and see what was up.

Opening my eyes had taken more effort on God’s part this time because this fear was very, very painful and therefore, pretty deeply hidden. Once glimpsed, the investigation began. It was rather like opening an oyster; I twisted the knife back and forth and all of a sudden it popped.

As I watched the layers unfold I wondered if all women, men for that matter, held such deep aversion for their own bodies. Mine had started early on, in my teens, and had evolved into a nagging dissatisfaction on the best of days and downright self-denial on the worst. I hadn’t realized how much I longed for a different body. I was judging my appearance, not the woman with the winning strategy. I had determined that the image consultant would want to change my appearance, because I wasn’t satisfied. My friend’s reaction wasn’t her reaction at all; it was mine.

Here it was, out in the open, asking me to let it heal. Sitting with this fear was extraordinarily fascinating. It is usually enough just seeing the fear to begin the process of letting it go. I see it, understand the need for healing, open my hands (literally), and release it, giving it back to the divine—to the Christed awareness—forgiving it. But, this time was different. My hands did not want to open. My hands clenched, wanting to hang onto my self-resistance. It was a very old story, one I had wrapped tightly around my life. Letting go of the resistance meant that I would have to accept the perfection in the form God gave me.

As I thought back to the tale, the analogy became clear. On her fifteen birthday, little Briar-Rose pricked her finger on the spinning wheel and fell immediately asleep, fulfilling the curse cast upon her at her birth. Briar Rose, all the people in her father’s court, and each of the creatures fell into a deep sleep spanning one hundred years. Many princes attempted to break through the hedge but were caught by the thorns and died. None broke through until one day another prince tried again.

“But by this time the hundred years had just passed, and the day had come when Briar-Rose was to awake again. When the king’s son came near to the thorn-hedge, it was nothing but large and beautiful flowers, which parted from each other of their own accord, and let him pass unhurt, then they closed again behind him like a hedge.” Brothers Grimm

One hundred years had come to pass. The time was ripe. The hedge no longer held its power. Maybe my son was right. Maybe it isn’t an either/or choice. Perhaps there is no choice at all but rather a ripening of willingness that arrives fully matured in God’s own perfect time. At another time, even with the same clues, I might not have listened. The pain may have been too deep, my identity inexplicably entwined within the story—the thorny hedge shielding me from an ache long avoided by means of clever fabrication. Possibly it was necessary to learn the other lessons first—lessons to help me unearth these more deeply hidden treasures. With each new ‘Yes’, as the hands open in surrender, a more profound awakening becomes possible.

We tend our pain meticulously through the familiar process of thinking about it. The more we think around our emotional pain the more we cripple ourselves with the artificial intensity of it…We would allow our pain to dissolve into the skylike openness of direct experience; but somehow we feel more secure with our pain as a reference point. Ngakchung Rinpoche, From “The Zen Commandments” by Dean Sluyter