For most of us, programming determines every step we take. It tells us who we are supposed to be, what we should do and not do, who we must love and who should love us regardless of what we do and how we behave. It also stealthily flips our inner switch to guilt when we don’t behave in accordance with those things. While programming may lend a sense of certainty, not certainty itself (that doesn’t exist) it’s like the pins kids stick in insects to mount them to a board. They aren’t necessarily bad, unless you’re the bug, but they can’t help but limit free expression.

Two simultaneous realities are happening here, that is if you can call either reality. One is the story, the dreamscape, the experience of a world and separation. That’s the home of programming. Our programming allows for the illusion of divisibility, cutting this which is not even one into pieces: world, person, dog, tree, fire hydrant. Programming informs the stories we tell about life. The other is the actuality that this is not separation at all, but the appearance of separation arising out of and returning to infinite aliveness.

In the dreamscape, what some call illusion and others call reality, we experience sensations and feelings, some deeply, others merely tap the surface. Thoughts pass through, some taking hold and sticking around. Thoughts beget concepts and ideas and mutate into beliefs, heavily influenced by programming, and manifest as our lives.

What seems strange to me is the only way I’ve found to realize the seamlessness of what appears to be two is to dive headfirst into the dreamscape, to see what is actually real for me even though I may not want to come face to face with the painful paragraphs in my storyline. It’s easier to live in denial, to say I don’t feel that way when I do, to say that doesn’t bother me when it does, to hide from the truth of my raw naked experience.

Unfortunately denial doesn’t change a thing. I know. I’ve tried. The experience remains, just unnamed. It’s still there but the mind does a quick retreat whenever it pops into view, like walking past a mirror naked and refusing to acknowledge I’ve seen what’s there. It’s a lot of work to live in denial. It’s painful to walk right into the middle of a mind that’s programed to retreat, but I cannot not these days.     

I am estranged from my oldest son. It is one of two ultimate expressions of separation. Long-term estrangement and the permanent absence of a loved one (we call that death), both do their damnedest to convince us that separation is not an illusion; it is a fact.

Most people hear that I am estranged and immediately believe I have done something wrong, that I didn’t do what I should have, that I failed. I am sure that’s true. No arguments here. You can’t be human and not make mistakes. Mistakes are how we learn. In fact, that would be a good definition for ‘human’. I don’t call them mistakes anymore. I call them life.

In our current world, kids can choose to disavow a parent, and the parent will still get the blame. In my experience, I was the parent who chose to walk away. What a horrific thing to do. It breaks all the contracts instilled in us by our societal programming. Yeah, I’ve heard that. I’ve even said it to myself.

In this dreamscape I call my life, my son and I haven’t talked in nearly six years, this time. Back when he was younger, he chose not to talk to me for four long years, what seemed at the time to be four critical years, from age 17 – 21. I did everything I could think to do to repair the rift. Perhaps I should have let it go then, but eons of parental programming were embedded in my cells. Mothers are supposed to love their sons, regardless. Period. They never give up on them.

So when he let me back into his life, I was thrilled. I clearly remember the day and the few moments of unfettered joy.  I was happy but not relaxed. I didn’t trust the truce. It always felt tentative. Perhaps because it was. I spent the next 20 years walking on eggshells, shelling out money, doing my best not to irritate him, to not do anything that would cause him to walk away again.

I didn’t know what I’d done the first time, so that was an impossible task. I vaguely knew what he thought I did, I think. I was never actually sure. His version had no grounding in my reality. It felt like he lived in a made-up world, but I accepted it. I listened. I let him vent. I even apologized for things I couldn’t remember doing, because to him, it was true. That’s what mattered.

My confusion wasn’t something he could acknowledge. No matter how hard I tried, we had what is called a failure to communicate. That’s bound to happen when one person is intent on blaming the other.  

I listened. I apologized over and over again. Good lord, I knew that I’d made mistakes, that I’d missed the signs of abuse, that I’d become a work-a-holic to avoid going home. I didn’t know what was happening when I worked late, when their dad was home alone with them. Perhaps I should have. I honestly don’t know. I was in survival mode. Guessing that’s not a good enough answer and never will be, but that’s how life works in this appearance of separation. We don’t always get to tie a bow around our traumas.

Even once we started talking again, we never seemed to connect. We didn’t have conversations, let alone good conversations. We didn’t laugh together. There was no joy, no happiness. My presence was demanded, the appearance of happy family was desired, but it was clear that I wasn’t wanted. It’s something you just know if you are paying attention. When you are an empath, it is excruciating. We didn’t seem to be able to speak honestly to each other. It was a painful charade. I tried to connect, to give him hugs, to let him know I cared … and I failed.

I honestly can’t remember a visit that left me feeling as good as I was before it, that wasn’t permeated with a sense of let-down, that didn’t leave my nervous system frayed. Resolving that was my responsibility not his, and it has been a long and difficult process, but worth its weight in gold. I love what Jung wrote, “integrate the shadow, or attack the mirror.”   

Six years ago, after a particularly draining trip, I realized that my relationship with my son had morphed into the relationship I’d had with his dad, my ex. I used to walk on eggshells around him too. He was mentally abusive. To me, that’s worse than physical abuse. At least if he had hit me, I would have had proof I wasn’t crazy, that the abuse really was happening. Mental abuse wears you down. It eliminates your identity, your sense of worth. It paralyzes your ability to see clearly. It puts you in fight or flight mode with no one you can fight, and nowhere to run.

For a very long time, I wasn’t strong enough to stand up to it, let alone walk away. I trusted that he’d follow through on his threats. His lies were embedded. Over the years I’d been conditioned to believe them, given proof that he would do what he said … until one day, like magic, the conditioning wasn’t as potent anymore. Why? How? I don’t know. Evidently it was time.

That hot summer day, I realized that something had to change, that I’d divorced his dad, and yet I was still handcuffed to an abusive relationship. All I was doing by hanging around was presenting him with a target for his anger, someone to blame, someone to fan the flames and keep his storis of victimhood alive.

Seeing that flipped a switch.   

That was the day I decided the most loving thing I could do was walk away. He’d never been able to listen to me speak but seemed to be able to listen when I wrote my words down, so I broke up with my son with a text. God, how awful those words sound to the programmed parent, but that’s what happened. I told him I loved him, that I always had, always would, but I couldn’t remain in such a messed-up relationship. I asked him to find his way out of the anger and need to blame, to see a counselor, to do his own inner work and when he had, when he was willing to accept even a modicum of responsibility I’d be willing to reengage. There was a lot more in the note but that’s the gist of it.

These last several days I’ve been looking at love and poking into the tenderness, wondering how I feel about my son now that six years have passed. Since that day, every time I’ve considered reaching out I clearly intuit to leave it alone, that whatever needs to happen hasn’t, and may not happen this go around. I’ve learned to trust my intuition. I’ve found that honoring myself honors all others. That is one of the gifts that has come out of my failures. I don’t give myself away anymore.  

I’ve also learned to trust that his life is perfect for him exactly as it is, for what he incarnated to experience. I used to say that. I think it made me feel better. But I misunderstood what it meant. Now, I’ve actually recognized its inherent truth. Each of us can’t help but get the perfect mirror of whatever it is we carry within. Does that mean our lives are punishment or reward, no, not at all. That’s an idea based in separation. We are life reincarnating, not individuals moving through time and space in new and varying forms, even though that’s how it appears. It’s never about me or you or my son. It is so much bigger than that.

Seeing that has freed me to live my life without the guilt, without a need to end the estrangement. Separation is the dreamscape, the actual factual lived experience. My experience is a bit of an outlier but not really all that far out on the curve these days. I’ve gotten to the point that the estrangement doesn’t hurt anymore. It’s fascinating to me that it has felt better to walk away than to stay, better to disengage than to play out my assigned role of mother on a mess-up stage. I guess I was never good with roles.

If someone needs to call me a bad mother, I’m good with that, although my younger son would argue that fact. It’s all perception, that’s for sure. What surprised me during this current inquiry is when I asked myself if I love him, I couldn’t answer yes with certainty. Seeing what this is, what we are, how could I not love him? He is me. He is every being. He is life itself, but do I have the dreamscape motherly love for him?

I have trained myself to feel into anything, regardless of how painful it is, but I can’t seem to feel into that answer. Maybe I don’t want to know. Maybe I closed off that bit of my heart many years ago because it hurt too much. Maybe I don’t want it to be profoundly, absolutely done. I don’t think so. That’s not what it feels like. Perhaps I can’t feel what is not there.  

Is there a point where the bond breaks? Is there a place inside that dies when enough pain, when enough hurt is experienced? Can I be okay with that if it is so? Can I break all the molds programming holds and still continue to breathe?

We all have roles that we play, roles that are assigned, roles that we choose, roles that we simply fall into. All of them are roles, nothing more, ways that we are trained to be in this world. But what if we don’t follow along? What if we realize that being real, being true, honoring who we are in this moment, roles be damned, is the only way to truly honor life, to open our potential, to walk into the unknown naked and unashamed?

I don’t need to fix or repair what is. If that is to happen, it can’t help itself. It simply will. The dreamscape says we should be able to work through it, that we should be able to get beyond this, that any relationship is better than no relationship. I think that, like everything experienceable, is part of the story, nothing more.

Thinking life needs to be fixed is suffering. Thinking that someone should be different than they are is suffering. Being in relationship without mutual understanding is suffering. Honoring the deep sense of whether this is for me, that this is mine to do or not do and gently moving where I flow from there ends needless suffering.   

Does this dreamscape character love her son? What does this moment’s dream display? Look quickly because it is in constant flux. There are no absolutes, just stories of absolutes. For it to have true consequence, wouldn’t I need some control of the dream? Wouldn’t I need to be something more solid than a dream character? It seems like I am and like I do, but if I look closely, I see it’s quite the grand illusion. Life plays out as it only can, including its dreamers trying to change the dream and beating themselves up for the way it is … until that moment when all that silliness dissolves.     

The idea of love is another self-limiting program. What seems to be of more interest, at least to me, is being honest with myself, being willing to meet myself where I am, and experiencing life as it is appearing in this moment without need to run or hide, without impulse to deny what’s here or make up stories about it to improve upon a dream image.

Now, I find that way of being, of living, appealing.

Amaya Gayle is the author of 6 books, the latest Actuality; infinity at play, published by New Saram Press. https://amzn.to/3Rd4CTY

Image: Mystical Worlds, Benny Productions