Innocence isn’t Powerlessness
Healing painful memories is one thing I work on with some of my clients. This week, a reoccurring theme has been the we way tend to view innocence, and the way these beliefs often hold us back.
Of all the things I’ve learned about healing the past, the lessons about innocence are really central to the healing process.
Some of the things I’m going to say about guilt and innocence really challenge the people’s beliefs on the subject. Until we challenge these beliefs though, we won’t break the patterns created by them. So if you find yourself thinking, “no no no! that can’t be!” please hear me out. And if this post doesn’t address your objections (I don’t expect it to address them all), leave a comment so that I can respond. This is a sticky, but important, topic and I doubt this post will be my last one on this big, hairy subject.
OK so let’s dig in. The issue to be resolved is a traumatic memory. Think of one where you felt like the victim of either a person or circumstance. Our immediate goal is going to be to help you at least begin to embrace the notion that you have the power to prevent anything like it from ever happening again. And it’s absolutely true that you have such power. Even when external circumstances feel totally outside our control, the law of attraction tells us that all of our experiences are ones we somehow attracted into our life.
Ah now there’s the rub. Think about it for a minute. Do you believe you have the power to prevent painful things from ever happening to you again? Just try embracing the notion for a while and see what happens.
We only get so far towards believing we have power over our own experiences before we instinctively start fighting it tooth-and-nail. If we have power to prevent being hurt in the future, it logically follows that we must had the power to prevent being hurt in the past. And if we could’ve prevented it, that means we are somehow, to some extent responsible for what happened. And that really freakin’ hurts to even contemplate, doesn’t it? We’d rather tell ourselves we were powerless.
So now we’ve found the thing that stands in the way of taking power over our lives: Guilt. How do we assert our true power over our life circumstances if power comes with accountability, and accountability comes with blame, aka guilt?
Guilt is the worst emotion there is, because it’s the same thing as self-loathing. Yet the most destructive thing about guilt how we respond to it. The most common way to relieve guilt is to tell ourselves we were powerless at the time. We couldn’t help what happened. We’re innocent, or at least not fully to blame. People will do just about anything to avoid feeling guilty for long. Indeed, avoiding the feeling of guilt is a perfectly sane thing to do!! It’s just dangerous.
Of course, not being “fully to blame” isn’t any different than telling yourself you were 100% powerless because either way, you’re still subject to chance and the victim of external circumstances.
Do you see the problem here? Telling yourself you’re powerful, leads to you telling yourself your powerless. In fact, anything we do that’s deeply empowering will increase our sense of accountability, which brings us face-to-face with guilt, which makes us actually embrace powerlessness! Then as soon as we try to move back towards being empowered, the vicious circle starts again. (For anyone who’s been through an abusive relationship, you know this story all too well, right?)
Here’s the key to breaking the vicious circle. It sounds simple but it can take a while to digest. You are inherently innocent. Let me say that again. You are inherently innocent. We are all innocent by nature, and nothing we do, or don’t do, could possibly alter that. Accept your own innocence as being your inherent nature, and you will no longer feel guilt. Accept yourself as innocent and you can finally accept full accountability for everything in your life, because you no longer have to avoid feeling guilt.
Some of you are saying, “Tara, that doesn’t make any sense at all!! How can I be responsible for something horrible and yet innocent at the same time?” And moreover, “If I’m inherently innocent, then any person who hurt me is inherently innocent… and they’re not innocent! That person hurt me!”
But who says innocence is based on powerlessness? Of course, powerlessness is pretty much what people take innocence to mean. If something terrible happens and everyone agrees there was nothing you could’ve done about it, you’re deemed “innocent,” because that’s what innocence means. Plain and simple. Innocence means you were powerless. And if you weren’t powerless, then you weren’t innocent. But seriously, where on earth did we get that idea? More importantly, why on earth would we choose to continue hanging onto such an idea, considering how destructive it is?
The thing I struggled with for a while is figuring out what innocence could be, if it isn’t powerlessness. What all that contemplating seems to have come down to is that innocent is simply what we are. We can’t not be innocent. It’s hard to say anything else about what innocence is, because there’s no such thing as not be innocent. Innocence is the only thing we can be. We’re it. We are innocent.
OK, I know people need something a little more concrete to wrap their brains around. Here’s what I use. I don’t know that it’s perfect, but it’s the best I got and it works for me.
If we can (at least momentarily) accept the statement, “In some way, shape, or form, I inadvertently allowed those horrible things to happen to me in the past. Therefore, I have the power to stop it from happening to me.”
The question that arises then is, “Then why didn’t I do something to stop it before?”
It’s like this. Imagine you’re trying to drive a massive semi-trailer down a narrow road in bad weather. Worse, you’re blindfolded. In fact, you don’t even realize you’re in the driver’s seat! You know you’re in a moving vehicle, but you think someone else must be driving.
You wouldn’t blame yourself if the truck went off the road and hit a tree. So why blame yourself for your past?? Did you even know you were in the driver’s seat? If you did, were you able to take off the blindfold? And did anyone ever actually teach you to drive a semi-trailer on a crappy road, through freezing rain?
The only thing to do now is admit that we’re the one in the driver’s seat. Fully, 100% face the fact that life isn’t happening to us, we’re happening to it and we can either take off that blindfold or not. Yes, there’s lots to learn before we can drive our truck year after year without any major collisions. Life’s not an easy thing to handle. But it’s better to start learning than blindly sit around with your hands on your lap!
Now stop beating yourself up for hitting the tree (yes, self forgiveness), reverse the truck a few feet, and steer it back onto the road. Over time, with a little effort, we’ll learn to drive better. In fact, we can learn to drive very, very well.
(this blog entry was written April 15th, but modified May 20th 2010 because I thought of a much better way to explain my truck metaphor)
Themocracy
This is deep Tara. Wow.
I totally agree that I am accountable. But I also love the song “Jesus take the wheel”. ie. God/Universe/Presence take the wheel of my life. So if I am accountable, then really the great I AM is accountable/at the wheel.
What do you think?
Do you mean I am both empowered and powerless at the same time? Is this a same/same, non-dual thing?
Fabulous question Christine! Love it.
I would put it this way. We’re empowered, AND we have the power to choose to surrender to a higher power. But surrender’s not at all the same thing as powerlessness. Surrender is a choice, whereas powerlessness suggests we have no say at all.
In fact, I find the most effective way to manifest anything is to select how I want to feel and let the universe figure out where that is exactly, and how to get there.
Metaphorically, I always see myself at the wheel, I just have higher powers as my GPS. Sometimes, I have no frickin’ clue where I’m going! But I trust the directions I’m getting, so I breathe through my fears and step on the gas pedal.
Here’s another way to look at it. I’m sure you know from your own experience that trying to help someone who doesn’t want to be helped doesn’t work. It’s a waste of your energy, and can actually strain your relationship with that person as you push for positive change and they push for status quo.
God (or whatever you wanna call it/him/her/them) understands that too. Moreover, God respects our freedom of choice, and recognizes how important it is for us to be left to make mistakes. Without the power to screw up our own lives, we’d never learn to live life well.
So, getting back to “Jesus taking the wheel.” Higher powers won’t just grab the wheel from us. They’re more likely to wince and shake their heads as we careen blindly into trees! But if we *choose to ask them for help,* then metaphorically, yes of course they can drive for a bit! (I still prefer to see myself at the wheel and higher powers as my GPS, but don’t let my silly metaphor stand in the way. It’s just semantics.)
When we surrender to a higher power, we empower ourselves even more by calling in as much support as possible. It’s isolation, or any other refusal of support, that’s dis-empowering.
Ah, now I’ve just raised another question. This also will address your remark about the “great I AM.”
We’ve all known times in our own lives (or perhaps in lives of people we know), where we’ve been on a path to self-destruction and some kind of external event (let’s call it divine intervention) seems to knock us back on course. There’s even a tarot card for this! The Tower. So does that mean something outside of ourselves does grab the wheel on occasion?
Nah, not really. At least, nothing’s intervenes without us asking for intervention. What’s happened is our own higher has self intervened on our behalf at a sub-conscious level. So our ego-self can make all the stupid decisions it likes but if the wiser part of us takes charge, asks for help and rallies the forces, something/someone still saves our sorry arse.
When this occurs, it can be a painful process because our ego is resisting the whole way; kicking, screaming, and resisting all changes. We’re so stubbornly attached to our self-destructive direction, our life’s gotta be completely derailed in order to get us back onto the right track. That’s why the Tower card looks dark and ominous. (It shows a stone tower being struck by lightning. Fire flares from the windows and people tumble down from the top of the tower. Yeah… the traditional imagery’s a bit medieval.) The pain can be reduced, if not averted entirely, by opening up to dramatic change and surrendering to higher powers.
okay, well that was a longer response than I thought it’d be! lol. I really enjoyed your comment, Christine. Very thought provoking.