I was just about to take some books to the used book store to trade in when I came across a copy of a book written in 1986 called “living in the Light” by Shakti Gawain.

I am sure I read it a long time ago but when I started re-reading it yesterday I was delighted to find another explanation of the theories I write about - the ‘code of the caretaker’ - which involve learning to take responsibility for ourselves and take care of ourselves first before taking care of others. It leads to learning to be of service which is different from helping.

There are a few great chapters - on on the “Tyrant and the Rebel”. Here is what she says:

“The tyrant is the inner voice that tells us what we should and shouldn’t do. It’s all our rules and rigid expectations. The rebel is the part of us that refuses to do anything it’s told to do. It reacts in total rebellion and trusts no one. When the tyrant says ‘do this’ the rebel says ‘No way’.
The rebel was developed early in childhood in response to pressures and demands from outside authorities. The rebel originally protected our feelings by refusing to believe anything our intuition knew was untrue.

The tyrant wants to be heard and wants cooperation.

Neither the rebel or the tyrant are listening to or protecting you anymore. They have taken on their own personalities and are working in reaction to each other. When this happens, people feel stuck.

Neither the tyrant or the rebel are truly you. By learning to trust and follow your intuition both the tyrant and the rebel dissolve and you emerge into who you really are.

So when you are struggling in your life somewhere it is a good idea to take a look at who is speaking and taking the actions. Is it the tyrant who keeps driving you making you think that you should or should not be doing something? Is your rebel reacting and stamping their feet saying “no”?

Learning to trust your intuition is a process. Taking it easy and being gentle on yourself and taking very small steps can help you get unstuck. When the tyrant and the rebel are fighting it really is a form of beating yourself up which is what you were probably taught to do at an early age. It happens when we are told things like “big girls don’t cry”, “stop crying or I will give you something to cry about”, “you can’t sing - you should be an accountant” and all of the other critical voices of others told you. Everytime you beat yourself up you are continuing the cycle.
Learning to be gentle with yourself requires that you develop a certain amount of strength

Gentleness comes from a place of spiritual abundance. We can
only afford to be gentle when we are secure enough to lay aside
our instincts for self preservation, defensiveness or aggression when
we know what we need.

Taking the time to really go inside and find out what you need is really about taping into your intuition - your inner guidance system - your feelings.

The wealthy massage therapist is able to honor both the tyrant and the rebel and get in touch with their deeper selves and finds out what they need and value and is able to start taking the steps to tune into their intuition and take care of their inner needs.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 13th, 2007 at 6:08 pm and is filed under Ethics, Peer Supervision, Recommended Reading, The Code of the Caretaker, The Wealthy Massage Therapist. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.