David Bedrick: If You Love Getting Close To the Gifts You Were Given

Long ago my therapist reflected to me that whatever we try to push away or deny only grows stronger. So true, so true. Gratefully there are options beyond simply acting out onto others or acting in through repression, disassociation, depression, addictions, and more. We can cultivate our capacity to learn how to "cook" these qualities through ongoing shadow work and owning and transforming our judgments into something useful and in a higher good for ourselves and others. Gratefully we can steep ourselves in the wise teachings of an inner alchemist and ultimately bring more of our fully embodied, wise, compassionate, and loving selves to the world, the ripples we create, and how it is that we live our lives. David Bedrick speaks wisely to this process here. Deep gratitude for David and all who help empower us to see beyond the limitations we've absorbed into something must larger, much greater. Deep bow. 🙏 Molly

Friends: Be careful with how you hold and respond to your judgmentalism - the impulse to categorize and categorically disclaim; your vengeance - the impulse to get back, push back, hurt back; your jealousy - the impulse to resent when others have what you desire; your hatred - the impulse to destroy, erase and eliminate.

Of course, you can simply judge, refuse, and hate these qualities or be unconsciously jealous of those who wield these freely. Then you use those qualities against themselves in an act of unconscious brutality and cripple the life project.

 

Of course you can bypass them, moralize about them, and make believe you can simply decide to rise above them with a positive thought or a wave of some sage.

 

But, if you love psychological work, soul work; if you love finding your eros, your passion, your energy; if you love getting close to the gifts you were given and the power to unleash them, then you will have to cook these qualities, alchemically, until they give up their secret resources.

 

Then, your judgementalism becomes the power and clarity to speak out clearly about injustice and abuse or to create a boundary when a human wielding cruelty or shame comes near.

 

Then your vengeance becomes the power to say, "Don't try that, or you will be in danger," or "If you hurt someone I love, or me, you will suffer my response," or "This nation has done a great harm for which reparations are due," or "What happened to me as a child, I will never allow to happen again."

 

Then your jealousy becomes such a passionate desire that you can't help to reach for it, persist in its pursuit, and speak clearly and fervently, "This is what I want, need and desire in my life."

 

Then your hatred becomes the capacity to fully disentangle and walk away from what you were once attached to, like a family member, because hatred, when cooked, offers you a cutting power like no other. 

 

Learn to cook these qualities, do the painstaking shadow work. Then the energy and capacity to spread your wings and soar will be yours, not to soar to the sun and burn like Icarus, but still in contact with the Earth where your human purpose resides. 

 

— David Bedrick 

 

https://www.davidbedrick.com/