The wounded boy’s shadow is a systemic mother wound revealing the human condition we find ourselves in now — most of us believe we are separate from the source and sustenance of all life. This gives rise to disharmony in the human experience. It is the core tension in all relationship, including marriage.
The sacrament of marriage is bound by the vow to acknowledge the divine as the pulse in each person and the primary purpose for union. Marriage can be a way to divine realization. But human beings have normalized the denial of the divine. This self-deceit has destabilized the institution of marriage and the ways it can support human development. If one knows not the worth of their own being then love of another is not possible. Under such conditions, marriage becomes a power-play between people seeking to source their own value outside of themselves.
It is useful to understand the wounded nature of humanity in order to overcome it because the denial of the divine is expressed in a myriad of ways. Most marriage counseling is simply behaviour modification and manipulation in hopes of recalibrating power imbalances. It’s a bandaid trying to hold together a wound rather than a true balm to heal the wound. When each person in a marriage is fully empowered and committed to bringing the best of themselves to the marriage then the relationship itself never needs working on. Marriage counselors would be out of work!
So how do we know if the mothering wound is activated in our marriage?
Before offering tell-tale signs to answer this question, let me clarify how I am using the following ideas implicitly or explicitly in my writings here. With proper context, we achieve deeper understanding.
- ARCHETYPES – the architects of human life; live in the collective unconscious where all souls are connected; forms in the psyche that are present always and everywhere. The wounded boy is an archetype.
- COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS – inherited experience of the entire human race.
- CONSCIOUSNESS – the perception of existence.
- DIVINE CONSCIOUSNESS – Goddess-God perception.
- DIVINE POTENTIAL – the spark of the divine seeded in everyone and everything; the love flame of life in the heart of humanity that wants to come into full expression for the highest good of all.
- DIVINE REALIZATION – to know one’s unity with all that is; inner knowledge and understanding of the spiritual truth of one’s being.
- LOVE – the outpouring of spirit; the givingness of life; the great transforming power; the inspiring power of all that is.
- PSYCHE – the human soul.
- REALIZATION – interior awareness of the divine perfection at the centre of everything and everyone; the essence of all healing.
- SHADOW – of the light but unaware of being so; calls to be claimed in understanding and acceptance.
- SPIRIT – essence of life that permeates all things.
- SPIRITUAL – presence of spirit; the atmosphere of Goddess-God in human consciousness.
- THOUGHT – movement of consciousness.
- TRUTH – the one true power.
As I’ve stated previously, the pain caused by the belief in separation is the ultimate mother wound. It divides us against ourselves from within and out-pictures as discord in our relationships. From this division, we project onto others who we need them to be so we may feel what it is we think we are entitled to experience.
But here’s the truth: incarnating into the human story, we were promised nothing more than the pulse in our heart and the blood in our veins. That’s it. And it’s everything. In fact, it’s power we must learn to balance and use in service to the whole of life. Being in relationship with others helps us learn this. However, much suffering is generated because we’ve been born into false ideas about what love is. Looking to others to give us what we think we should have comes at great cost — we never learn what we can and must give to ourselves in order to become whole beings in divine consciousness.
To answer our question then is to realize that when there is any hint at all of “need” in a marriage, the mothering wound has been activated. When we need someone to be or do something so that we can be okay in the world, we’re in trouble. Because deciding what love should be and ascribing certain behaviours to meet the expectations we have of love and loving in our fantasy of relationship and marriage will always lead to blame, resentment and disappointment — the signature qualities of the mothering wound.
To be in love is to be in the expression of love and it is the divine that loves through and as us. Anything less is what we do on our way to learning the truth about love.
There are three tell-tale signs when we are married to the wounded boy in our partner. (The same can hold true for being in relationship to the patriarchal daughter, which is another archetype I work with, but I’ll introduce her in another blog soon.)
- It is suggested that we are not giving, doing or being enough and this has our partner feeling lonely, unloved or inadequate;
- Try as we might, we can’t seem to find a balance between having time for ourselves while meeting the needs of our couple;
- The mothering of our children is perceived as problematic when it demands time and attention away from the couple.
These signs reveal fatal flaws of patriarchy. We’ve been taught it is our responsibility to prove our love when someone feels unworthy of it. We think it’s selfish to claim our relationship to ourselves as primary. And we believe our partners take precedence over our children.
Life will never be sustainable until we sort this out.
Until we decide we are worthy of love, we will be challenged in the experience of loving. Worthiness begins with knowing the primary relationship in our life is first and foremost our relationship with the divine. And the conscious mothering of our children is one way we break free from the abuses we inflict on ourselves and each other. (That said, I’ve witnessed many a marriage where the adults are locked into unconsciously mothering each other and their children are essentially motherless. Sadly, it’s seen in our society as normal.)
Love is not a feeling. It is a current that is available to each and every one of us every moment of every day. For the divine is everywhere in everyone. If we can’t see it yet then we have work to do. The path of loving work is walked from within and we must know we are worth the journey in order to begin.
Opening to love is opening to the divine and no being is without love or separate from love. As the timeless tune tells us, All You Need is Love!
Our job is to learn what love is.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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