Today I unwittingly managed to spark a minor controversy on Facebook when a friend included me in her request for support in relation to some personal development training she is undergoing from an organisation that I myself used to great effect to a point some years ago, sparking the search for my true self, for freedom and fulfilment. Yet for me the effectiveness of the teachings of that organisation ended 5 years ago when I felt it had done all it could for me and I wanted to follow my own path, not led by anyone with an agenda or otherwise, a course whose truth and source is so high as to have no agenda other than the spreading of the light and this path has truly allowed me to soar, though I never forget the spark of that earlier teaching that made the whole thing possible.
The controversy came in my reply to my friend’s invitation, when I explained I would not be assisting her on this occasion since I felt the organisation had had its own issues that needing resolving at the time I last did their training.
Some recipients of invitations (all of whom had experience with that organisation) leapt to either patronise me by “telling me off” or to attack me for my opinion to which I am, after all, entitled. Others more enlightened responded with an offer of updated information involving material changes within the organisation that largely met my former concerns and even with support for my right to freedom of speech.
But what is really interesting about this otherwise relatively mundane story is how I felt after the initial patronising and aggressive responses: I felt really bothered by the controversy, even though I knew my opinion to be a fair one, and I did not know why I felt this way or how to deal with it. I asked myself, “Should I have kept quiet as a mouse?” and then wondered what the source of this ugly, acidic almost “guilty” feeling could be. Then it struck me: the pain was familiar, the feeling being one that, though recurring in many varied contexts throughout my life, could be traced back to one of those character-forming moments of early childhood.
At 4 year of age, we lived in a preparatory school that my parents owned and it was the first day back after the Easter break (during which I had been entrusted with looking after the class’s tadpoles). On arriving late, my teacher said, “Maitland Kalton, how is it that you manage to be late when everyone else comes form miles around yet manage to be on time ...AND...I thought I asked you to look after the tadpoles over Easter and look...they’re DEAD!” Followed by a deathly hush, I was then “sent to Coventry” (intentionally snubbed) by the entire class.
This traumatic incident triggered me deciding I must be very bad and selfish as well as unlovable (if that seems dramatic, do remember I was only four years old!) and what today’s events had done was to re-trigger that intense pain of that time and the fear that they might be right!
However, once identified, its hold over me vanished almost as quickly as it was triggered and I was free again, with subsequent communications vindicating my honest stance. Oh, the funny games our ego plays with us! Thank goodness for my commitment to self discovery as it gives me unrestricted access to the freedom to be who I really am and to have the best life I possibly, fulfilling my potential beyond any perceived limitations set by an unhappy 4 year old! How lucky am I to be so happy and to have only occasional pain disappear so fast!
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