Essay 9 of 18
This is just me. It’s living as a question for me…
I’m trying not to make the following a statement and instead make it more of an observation and a pondering. I feel like, for all the things Tema made possible for you, like opening up your heart again, I just have to use a different type of talk.
In one of my other spiritual spaces of reflection, we talk about, “An almost, but not yet.” She’s “an almost but not yet.” She just doesn’t have it. She’s got some of it; she’s intelligent, confident, and cute. Necessary, but insufficient.
…
Okay, this is all just conversation, not me making any pronouncements. That’s why I think the work you did to make visible this meta-woman was the equivalent of like 30-hours of psychotherapy right there, brother. I’m serious! Getting to that is the threshold of freedom!
In Bob Kegan’s adult development class, he talks about,
‘It’s one thing to have a problem, and it’s another thing for your problem to have you.’
In your case, “It’s one thing to have a meta-woman; it’s another thing for you to see the meta-woman that you have but know you have choices.”
You did the work of surfacing this phantasm. While you did this work, your challenge has been being chased by phantasms [meta-women] and, until now, not really understand how they operated. Man, I can see that had been a struggle for you.
That’s where I am. There was something that you uncovered in those 16 voice note/casts soliloquies where it was like you could say to these meta-women,
“No, I see you, and I see you clear enough that I now have choices. I see that I cannot get seduced by the ‘halo effect’ of your attractiveness. Instead, I can discern who you truly are and run!”
To be able to see that in a person and to be able to make this visible to yourself was so life-giving.
So it’s not like this archetype of a problem [meta-woman] has you. So I’m thinking maybe what just went down is that you just fought the battle of your life.
“Man, this feels like total freedom!” Now I see so many possibilities for you.
…
Essay 10 of 18: Platform of Power — ‘I don’t shy away from hard conversations’ — Tema (coming 03.26.2022)
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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