Learn to See What Is in Plain Sight

Over the last few weeks I’ve been contending with facial neuralgia. Often described as one of the most painful human conditions, I can attest that it is up there on the scale with childbirth and kidney stones, as it comes in waves of debilitating and excruciating pain.

This is the story of how it led me to an inner truth I’d not seen clearly at all until now: that I was still seeking respect for my decisions from other people.

So, starting with the pain, once I was confident my life wasn’t in any immediate danger, I moved pretty quickly into detective mode on what was causing it. Physically it seems likely it’s caused by a post virus that got activated when my immune system was low, a bit like shingles without the rash.

I’m skipping past a whole bunch of stuff here about the process of healing and healthcare that I will dive into in some later blogs, for now I’ll just share what was relevant to this particular nougat of authenticity revealing itself.

Whenever something physical arises I know it’s my inner being communicating that it’s been trying to get my attention and I’ve missed all the clues, so I was interested in what was going on beneath the surface.

My chiropractor said the feeling of being stuck is often associated with a post-virus. I also had a good look through my go-to books on what the body is telling me when illness arises and pinned this down to the emotion of anger.

No surprises there you might think, since it’s an area that I’ve been feeling called to look at lately (you may have read Let Anger Be Your Teacher While Learning to Become Its Master). That is what surprised me though; I’d done a lot of work on it and thought I’d released anything stuck.

My body, obviously fed up with me having missed subtle and not so subtle communication, was being quite painful in its insistence. So off I went to the local pool to contemplate just what I might be feeling stuck on. As I was swimming up and down the thing that kept coming back to mind was how stuck I was on the issue of the lack of respect I feel from my kids’ school.

Having switched tack on my communications with the school earlier in the year, there was this old thought pattern (sitting like a devil on my shoulder) just relishing the possibility of being able to unleash itself in an intelligently worded tirade. Yet I knew that doesn’t work for me, but without having expressed my anger to the people at the school who had so offended me, I was at a loss about what to do.

I feel such gratitude to have some good and insightful friends and a safe place to throw all this stuff in the arena to tussle with it. A lot of conversation flowed, but here are the pieces that hit the nail on the head, as we flushed it out:

Friend: “Do not waste your grace and self respect on opening your wounds to people who are unsafe to open them up to. The school clearly doesn’t care, so don’t ask them to give something they never will. Dare I ask, in ten words or less, what is the hot button here with the school?”

Me: “It's about honoring our innate intelligence”

Friend: “I feel for you, I see the stickiness and the loop. I also see that it’s so strong that it can’t just be about the school, this has to be something more that is here to propel you into a higher perspective. It’s literally playing small on purpose so you don’t have to face something much bigger..?

It’s at this point a whole history of writing long, articulate letters to those who have offended my innate intelligence flashed before my eyes. In fact, earlier this week I came across the very first of those, a letter I wrote over twenty five years ago to a doctor. The story of how it came about can be paraphrased simply as a response to being passed around multiple practitioners, given repeated unsatisfactory diagnoses and a series of unhelpful treatments, along with a huge dose of condescension.

My friend said “While I totally get where you were coming from, I’m really interested that you felt so under attack by the world (or a psychiatrist) at such a young age, that you felt the need to pen a 5-page letter to correct his incorrect assumptions. That’s pretty intense and a lot of active indignation.”

Then the grand slam of observations “Is this about self validation, internal acceptance and a deep knowing of your worth and value, without seeking approval from anyone or anywhere else?”

At that point a light went on, something I heard often when growing up “for someone so intelligent, I’m amazed at how much rubbish you believe.” Bingo!

I’d hear this and associate it with a lack of respect, and I’d work harder to connect the conventional wisdom into how I’d arrived at my decision.

Intelligence is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge, whereas innate intelligence is, by definition, inborn. Aside of the obvious intellect that is at play in every aspect of the natural world, I’ve always felt that I did not arrive here like an empty vessel waiting to be filled up; nor did you.

Right from the first moments, babies show both an inherent awareness and an ability to apply and acquire knowledge. Yet the world into which I grew commonly considered that I had nothing of value to offer unless I got it from a conventionally recognized expert or had become one myself.

In short, I knew my own mind, I did and do know what is best for me (as I believe we all do), and balked every time I heard “Shona knows best” delivered in sarcastic tones and with rolling eyes.

As an adult this has led to a world of frustration and a pattern of writing long, intelligently worded letters or emails in defence of something or other – usually the right to have my own opinion about my own life.

Most aspects of our society – the health, education, finance and legal systems and professions - have rattled my chain at one time or another. It may just be the very reason I have gone wide and deep in my learning, in order to defend my own decisions. I now recognise that my knowledge and my ability to articulate it can be quite intimidating to people, especially when directed at them as a personal complaint.

Rather than intending to intimidate, really I’ve just been seeking validation and respect for the choices I’ve made. Yet none of that will happen unless it happens within me first. Certainly, with every letter, every line of every email I’ve constructed, it’s brought me back to knowing what I already knew, I do know what is best for me.

You may not be surprised to know that this revelation has brought about a relief of the painful symptoms on many levels. And I continue to be fascinated be just how much of who I am and what drives my everyday actions and outcomes is so often unseen and misunderstood, yet standing in plain sight.

So what is standing in your plain sight just waiting for you to notice it? Learn to value your unique traits and insights and know that you did not come to help this world stagnate and crumble, you came to evolve.

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