B & B
It is holiday season. B&b, that must be about Bed ‘n Breakfast, right?
Not quite. Today’s blog is about bitch ‘n bastard, another popular B&B.
I was talking with a client about anger issues today and then she said: “In every woman there is a bitch and in every man there is a bastard!” We laughed heartily because this statement felt so freeing. No pretense necessary, no hiding required.
Do you also have a bitch or a bastard as an uncomfortable subtenant somewhere in the dark corners of your subconscious? There is a kind of sad humour when we are reminded of situations in which these guys stepped forward, when we acted out those malicious impulses, or when we tried desperately to hide them, when we tried to explain them, to excuse them, to justify them, when we tried to be right or when we blamed ourselves, judged ourselves mercilessly because we could not live up to the nicely groomed pastel coloured picture of who we would like to be.
A week ago, another client said: “All my life I dealt with my anger. I had endless counseling and treatments, did anger management courses, learned to express it, to talk about it, to be responsible for it, tried to transform it on the spiritual path, sing hallelujah and chant it into submission. The wolf did not turn into a lamb. In the end it is still there, this animal in me baring its teeth and now and then I have to wrestle it down. The next day my stomach hurts and I am depressed.”
The problem is that the more we suppress an uncomfortable part of ourselves, hide it and judge it, the more power it gets, the more it will dominate the energies of our lives. The more we act it out, the more we feed it and again we will be dominated by its often destructive energies. Acting out or suppressing, either way does not work or it even can make us sick. As we cannot get rid of it, the only option is to transform it. This does work if we can be with this aspect of ourselves in love and without judgment, even without the expectation that it has to change. Still this process is slow and it requires a lot of discipline and commitment.
Homeopathy can help here. We still have to do the work, however the friction will be much less and it will be easier, faster and more complete. We have remedies which hold the energies of wolf and tiger, of lion and cougar and Co. They can help us to deal with and to make peace with the untamed parts in ourselves without crippling them. These wild parts have an incredible energy. Imagine if you could use that energy creatively in your life instead of even losing more energy in fighting them!
Allowing the outside nature to heal our inner nature, this is homeopathy.
If you know someone that might want to have support on the path of making peace with himself, forward this newsletter to him or her. You can contact me at Roland@VancouverIslandHomeopathy.com.
Thank you for another well-written, thoughtful and helpful mini-essay, Roland! What a great point of departure, how your client used the B & B term. Bringing the animal idiom in is so effective. And homeopathy is a powerful tool indeed; thank you for bringing it into the world, Roland.
A few years back I began to learn about the differences between ‘prey’ and ‘predator’ animals’ social organization and physical behaviour and how we humans can learn to do energy ‘work’ with them, learning from their worlds. Around the same time, I discovered that Chinese philosophy also has animal-pair equivalents to the more common yin and yang symbol of the opposites and complementaries’ energy dance. It can be ‘horse’ (yin) and ‘tiger’ (yang), as well as other animal pairings, that are depicted in opposition while seeking collaborative balance, succeeding at times, not at others. With this imagery, I began to get in better touch with my inner horse and tiger.
With this, the main shift that happened for me is that I began to ‘work’ differently with myself. No longer did the tiger flare out into the world or the horse run away and disappear; the message about harnessing _both_ beautiful energies into a larger whole, holding them in vibrating balance while acknowledging each, had taken root in me. Now I love my inner zoo of multiple herbivores and carnivores, better than before. The anger work continues, but goes more smoothly.
Thank you, again, for your stories, Roland: they are homeopathy for the mind!
Hello Astri,
That is so wonderfully said. Thank you for sharing your personal experience with your inner ‘zoo’. It is a great inspiration to discover the nuances of our inner world and see how they can relate to the outer world, in our case to a multitude of animals. It surely makes our inner life richer and with that comes an increase of possibilities to experience and to respond to the outer world. Thank you.
Roland