A strange thought came to me after spending five amazing days immersed in Dartmoor exploring ignition into Being through biodynamic cranio sacral therapy at the beautiful Karuna Institute.
What if someone you deeply disapproved of as a human being and/or that committed despicable crimes entered your clinic asking for a craniosacral session?
What if this person was for example someone like Scott Pruit, the former head of the US EPA(Environmental Protection Agency) or even Donal Trump himself?
One possible reaction would be relief that they have finally “seen the light” and that a massive shift in their personalities must have taken place for them to be knocking on your craniosacral door.
In my case however, I'd have to shut down my inner lefty green political activist and resource twice as much in order not to let my judgment (positive or negative) come in the way.
You might rightly ask, why on earth were you thinking this after spending five great days exploring “the nature of incarnation, a deeper sense of being and the generation of a sense of self out of conditions met in early life”?
Well because of Rosebud of course. If you’ve seen the fabulous classic that is Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941) you know about Rosebud. Here is the famous scene if you’d like a reminder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZOzk7T93wE.
‘Rosebud’ is the dying word pronounced by the main character, Charlie Kane (inspired by real life multi millionaire newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, the Rupert Murdoch of his era), as his hand lets go of a little glass snow ball.
It is the brand name of the sleigh the little Charlie was playing with when he was forcibly taken away by a bank-trustee appointed guardian, following his father’s death, to prepare him to lead the largest American newspaper group of the time.
'Rosebud' was his last taste of childhood innocence. This deeply distressing incident was a massive early trauma, a forced disconnection/separation from safe, familiar surroundings to catapult him into an adult world with immense responsibilities and little love nor bonding.
'Rosebud' stands as a symbol of a pure, innocent and luminous (remember the snow-white surroundings) love long gone. It is a long lost thread to being-ness that he latches onto in his dying moments.
This could explain his later extreme narcissistic tendencies manifested as a penchant for the egotistic, the grandiose and colossal (remember his massive mansion on the hill) while debasing in misogynistic, manipulative, sleazy and tyrannical behavioural patterns.
Sounds familiar?
Meanwhile in Karuna, the two wonderful and eminent biodynamic craniosacral therapists and teachers that are Cherionna Menzam Sills and Franklyn Sills were telling us about the nature of the “compassionate deeper presence of the adult self in the present time “ and the importance of differentiation. How trauma awareness helps us to feel empathy but how, in order to feel compassion for oneself and others one also needs to differentiate from said trauma and resulting patterns.
Clients can trigger us, press our buttons precisely because we haven’t done the “it’s not about me”, or the “it’s not about the present time me” work; we haven’t learned to distance and dis-affect ourselves from traumatic experiences and their imprints.
Franklyn Sills quoted British psychiatrist Frank Lake who spoke about, “meeting the Being beyond the behaviour” and “unconditional acceptance” as a basic need of Being. In other words, and I am reminded of 'Rosebud' as I write this,“in the midst of our pain can we reclaim that which has never been lost?” as Sills asked.
Beyond our conditioning as humans there is a luminous being-ness and at the core of this luminosity is Source or in craniosacral terms the great organising life-giving force, the Breath of Life.
“ We all breathe by the same Breath,” as Franklyn Sills said beautifully.
Franklyn called for the “reclaiming of our hearts” to become aware of our “basic being nature” and our ignited aliveness.
“The inherent compassionate quality of our hearts is at the centre of our incarnation,” added Cherionna Menzam Sills. “We choose to be alive. Our awareness itself is an augmentation which may support an ignition.”
This heart starts beating us into form four weeks after conception. Heart awareness is at the centre of our work as craniosacral therapists, it is a gateway to access our original potential as human beings.
So as I meet clients that would trigger various negative emotions, can I go beyond these and see past the conditioning of the likes of Trump, Pruitt, Kim Jong-un, Charles Manson etc… to resonate with their core being?
Can I hold them in a field of unconditional acceptance and presence that could ignite their heart and help them witness the living forces at play within them? Can I facilitate a differentiation process that would infuse them with compassion, to step into their Being-ness and re-connect with Source?
What if the quality of this holding had happened from an early age (often enough) in their lives and the lives of their mothers and fathers?
We can dream but, in the words of Louis Armstrong,“I think to myself what a wonderful world” this would be.
