The Fifth Cowboy

Sorry I'm posting a bit less frequently right now, but as I mentioned before I've got a computer problem - and there's some other things which are slowing things down a bit too. One of these is that I'm working on a series of posts called 'The Ultimate Truth'.  (I hope you're impressed with the title!) As with the earlier 'Heart Of The Secret' posts, I'm planning to get this whole series written before I start posting them. This is because - as you might glean from the title - they're kind of challenging and there's a possibility that I'll lose my thread in the middle and the whole thing will fall apart. In which case, you'll get a really interesting post about the weather instead...

On top of which, I'm traveling down to the Optimum Health Clinic in London in a few months time to get some treatment for my CFIDS (or ME as it is most usually known here in the UK). Just to explain briefly: the theory on which this clinic operates - which is not (as yet) mainstream - is that the root cause of the condition is a dysfunction of the mitochondria, the energy-producing part of the body's cells. The theory goes that this dysfunction has been produced by a viral illness (or some other trigger) and does not heal because the person gets stuck in a highly stressed 'fight or flight' state. The clinic treats this on two fronts: a nutritional approach to help heal the mitochondria directly and also a series of cognitive techniques (including Emotional Freedom Technique which I mentioned in an earlier post) to treat the 'fight or flight' condition. If you have CFIDS yourself and would like to discuss this further, then please leave a comment.

But the main reason I'm mentioning all this is that, ahead of my visit to the psychologist at the clinic, I'm writing out an account of my early life, and my writing energy has therefore been channeled into that instead of into the blog. Waste not, want not, though, and I thought you might be interested in something I've been remembering. Don't worry - I'm not planning to make this blog 'all about me', but the following story ties in with some of what we've been talking about in earlier posts...

One of the things that has come up for me is how isolated I felt in my early years. I was an only child and my parents didn't seem to understand the need for me to socialize with other kids. I remember well the trauma of my first day at school. It wasn't the lessons that were the problem - it was playtime. I remember standing at the edge of the playground, feeling utterly baffled. The teachers couldn't understand why I didn't know any other kids. The only one I knew was the little girl from down the street, but she wouldn't play with me because I was a boy. She later sent apologies (via her mother) which was kind of nice, I suppose.

Eventually I became friends with a boy called David, who bullied me. I can remember very little about this relationship except that I didn't enjoy it at all, and I suspect that is the reason why my memory has blotted it out. I can remember distinctly the reason why I put up with it though: the only alternative was being lonely and alone.

Then one day, David was away sick. I remember standing at the edge of the playground, once more alone, but watching in wistful fascination as a line of four boys snaked in and out amongst the other kids, occasionally firing imaginary guns and frequently slapping their hands against their thighs, as though to encourage the imaginary horses they were riding.

I should explain that this was round about 1959, and if you were a British boy at playtime, you had two options. You could either be a second world war soldier, Hitler having been vanquished in the relatively recent past and the war still being very prominent in the nation's psyche, or else you could be a cowboy. This was the age of Cheyenne, Bonanza, Rawhide, and numerous other western series. It may seem strange to us now, but if you switched on the TV in those days, it wasn't going to be very long before you saw a cowboy.

There was also another option, I suppose. You could always be an Indian - and I'm proud to say that I possessed both a tomahawk and a teepee - but this was kind of alternative and I remember having a long argument with one kid who thought it was ideologically very suspicious to be an Indian. I don't think he ever came to play with me again. The term 'Native American' had not yet been invented, of course, and no one would have understood why there was a need for it.

But these kids I was watching were cowboys and I desperately wanted to be one of them. So it was like the answer to my wildest dreams when the lead cowboy - who turned out to be called Keith - suddenly held up his hand in a signal to halt, drew sharply on his reins to pull up his 'horse' beside me, and asked me if I wanted to join his gang. I could hardly believe my luck. Moments later, I was running along at the end of the line behind the charismatic Keith, mischievous Andrew, amiable Paul, and sullen Graham. I was the fifth cowboy, the lowliest member of the gang, but I was firing my gun and slapping my thigh with the rest of them. I was wild with excitement. I was where I wanted to be...

But I hadn't reckoned with the little girl down the road. She told her mother that I was in a gang, and of course my mother got to hear about it and wanted to put a stop to it. She didn't want any son of hers involved with a 'gang'. I had plainly got in with the wrong sort. She told me I would have to stop playing with this gang. And what was wrong with that nice boy David anyway?

I was in floods of tears. I couldn't believe it! After the uphill struggle of trying to hold my own amongst the other kids after the isolation in which my parents had chosen to bring me up, I had finally managed to find some proper friends, but now my mother was trying to put a stop to it! I understood perfectly the injustice - and utter stupidity - of what my mother was trying to do, but I didn't possess the ability to explain it to her. I was helpless, totally dependent on a couple of clueless parents. There was nothing I could do to help myself...

When my father came home, my mother told him the bad news and he came across to talk to me. What was this 'gang' I was in?, he wanted to know. Still crying, I couldn't bring myself to look at him as I explained.

When he had heard what I had to say, he went next door to talk to my mother.

I can still remember those wonderful words coming through from the other room.

"It's all right," he said. 'They're just his friends."

My father had 'got it'. We just called ourselves a gang, that was all. We didn't go round robbing banks. It was going to be all right after all...

So I got to stay in the 'gang'.

OK, so I was the fifth cowboy, but I always got along very well with Keith and I think he would have promoted me up the line if he'd had the chance - but he knew that the other cowboys wouldn't have liked it.

When he got back off sick, the bully David was angry. I can still remember his words to me: "You're not playing with them - you're playing with me!" But I could afford to turn my back on him now. I didn't have to be scared of being alone any more.

I remember all these emotions I felt so clearly - and also the frustration and confusion of being unable to express them. It's been useful for me to reconnect with them. I've spoken quite lot in this blog about the need to release the suppressed emotions we carry around with us, so it's helped to get in touch with the way some of those emotions felt when I first encountered them - and how the inability of a child to express them is part of what led to them being suppressed in the first place.

And we wonder why children throw so many tantrums...

Comments

[Sue Ann Edwards]

"And we wonder why kids throw so many tantrums"...because of the 'sins of the fathers'. If Mom & Dad don't know how to cope with their own emotions other then suppression, then Mom & Dad don't know how to teach our children, either. Our ignorance is congenital for the most past.

Then there's this little thing that can be observed, too...

Look to the children to see what their parents are NOT expressing themselves. Once the parents claim the behavior, the children often stop.

I sense it's WONDERFUL you're going to the clinic. You're Loving yourself. You're on the way to embracing yourself. And all of it is very healing.

It may help 'down the road' to keep in mind that we experienced whatever we required to experience in order to motivate us to turn our seeking and searching inward. It is only in seeking inward that we discover and claim our own Sovereignty. For a LOT of us that meant being social outcasts. Outer connections being 'challenged', we developed our inner ones.

Notice the meaning of our social connections are usually for a sense of validation. Then notice that when we have developed our inner connection we don't need that sense of validation.

Teepee, wigwam...aren't you expressing you feel too tense? With all these suppressed feelings bottled up inside?

...Then imagine you're a bottle of champagne. Filled with bubbles that tickle your nose. Then imagine popping your cork in celebration!

When we're a stick then being a member of a teepee is important. When we're a pillar, it isn't. Sometimes what it takes to make a pillar, is being rejected as a stick.

[Marion]

this is a super post, Simon. I remember so well the times when my parents didn't get it; so many events when I felt completely tongue-tied about explaining something I felt good about doing. The memories of these clogs my throat to this day.

I'm glad you continue to write when you're in a flow. It's really important to me to continue a train of thoughts and ideas, without fracturing them.

[Liara Covert]

Problems begin and end as a state of mind. We may feel tired of life lessons and decide we don't want anymore. Yet, quite curiously and most profoundly, we remain victims of our own imagination. What next?

[Sue Ann Edwards]

Well Duh! do I feel silly. {{Simon}}, at your mention of the mitochondria and suppressed feelings, I felt something niggling at me.

You're Naturally a VERY Intuitive person. This is a feeling sensitivity. A very refined sensitivity.

Go watch Star Wars Episode I. Listen closely for mention of "mitichlorins" as a "symbiotic lifeform", that gives Jedi their awareness of the 'force'.

Now relate that to your personal experience in regards to your own feelings and the fact that the mitochondria are multidimensional....not 'symbiotic lifeform' but 'spiritual ears'.

Spirit been screaming at you to open up?

[Alexys Fairfield]

Hi Simon,
Releasing emotions is our chance to be heard. It also clears the mind of debris and opens our heart.

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY! :D

[Secret Simon]

Sue Ann - “The sins of the fathers shall be visited on the sons…” That’s a very appropriate quotation, I think. I’ve long since believed it’s nothing to do with the vengeance of a wrathful God and all about parenting. We inherit our parents’ ‘stuff’ along with our own, but it’s not their ‘fault’, it’s just the way of things. And that is a realization which really helps. I don’t hate my parents – or even particularly blame them – for their shortcomings. They loved me and they were doing their best. Such anger and frustration as remain are about the situation, not about them. (At least, I think that is true. The thing about buried emotions, you can’t really be sure…)

Thanks for your positive words about the clinic, Sue Ann, and thanks too for your ‘bottle of champagne’ metaphor – that’s lovely! Bubbles in champagne certainly sound more jolly than suppressed emotions… and all you have to do is burp.

You refer too to your metaphor about sticks in a wigwam needing each other for support, which is why people tend to cluster together in various social groups. I suppose I feel that I had to know how to make it as a stick first before I could decide that being a pillar was a better choice.

[Secret Simon]

Marion – Thanks! I’m really glad you liked the post. And of course, even if you did manage to explain yourself, you couldn’t guarantee that your parents would be convinced. There was always a kind of assumption that their added age and experience must make them right. Yet you only need to take a look at the state of the world to realize that adults aren’t so smart after all.

You’re quite right about the importance of carrying on writing while you’re in the flow. The trouble is: I haven’t worked on that series of posts for some days now. I’m hoping the threads are still lying there where I left them…

[Secret Simon]

Liara – “We are victims of our own imagination” – how true that is! And somehow, my own imagination seems to feed on negativity. Dreaming up problems can be so creative! It is part of the enigma of the human condition that we take such delighted interest in things going wrong.

[Secret Simon]

Sue Ann again – We should never underestimate the wisdom to be found in science fiction! I think this ties in with what you said earlier about us experiencing whatever we experience for a purpose. This is why I don’t feel bitter about my illness. I’ve been ill so long that if I hadn’t been ill, I would now be a very different person. So how can I regret the illness? It propelled me into all this spiritual stuff - if the illness hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this blog, I wouldn’t be the ‘me’ I’ve become.

Which doesn’t mean to say that I haven’t had enough of the illness by now, thank you very much…

Looking at things in a broader sense, I mentioned in this post about the theory that our mitochondria don’t repair because we’re stuck in a highly stressed ‘fight or flight’ state, along with – I greatly suspect – a large proportion of the population. Is it possible that there is some sort of corrective mechanism going on here? As we all get so run by our minds and are so hyper-stressed that some of us are even shooting each other over traffic accidents, is biology intervening, triggering a condition which encourages us to look inwards to find a different way of being?

[Sue Ann Edwards]

As I've been sharing...we're ALL being "herded", Worldwide. Whatever circumstances it takes to motivate us to turn inward, is what is manifesting or will be manifesting in our lives.

In words and phrases that have been used before, our Whole PLANET is going into "Light Body". That basically means that all the density we've been supressing is going to come out into expression, one way or another.

That's why so many are going ballastic. Because our Societies have been based on supression and denial of the laws of cause and effect.

[Secret Simon]

Hi Alexys - Welcome! The word 'debris' fits in well with how I am starting to see emotions. It feels like we have a natural connection to light and love which is blocked by all this debris, by the detritus of all the emotions we've been holding inside for so long. Once we can release these emotions, the love and light start to flow - and yes, our hearts open up like a flower...

Hi again Sue Ann! - I'll respond again shortly...

[Secret Simon]

Hi again, Sue Ann - It's interesting: I'm writing, speculating about this change that may be upon us but you, Sue Ann, *know* that it's happening. It's very much apart of your consciousness. I can see the need for global transformation and I have been given glimpses of what this new way of being will be like. As a result of these experiences, I very much want it to happen for all of us. Added to which, I can't really see any other way ahead for humanity. But I stop short of *believing* that this change is about to happen - with everything that entails - because I am inherently cautious (even suspicious) of *belief*. I want to feel *certain* about something before I assert it is so.

This certainty will come from either material evidence or from a deep inner knowing. I have such a knowing already that the change *can* happen and I have a great deal of evidence which tells me that it is urgently needed, but these two together don't equate to 'knowing' that the change is upon us.

All of which is to try to explain why I can write about global awakening in one post and then make a statement like the one above: 'Is it possible that there is some sort of corrective mechanism going on here?' as though I am just picking up on all this stuff for the very first time. The truth is that 2012 is still not a part of my everyday consciousness. It's like my underlying 'program' still isn't reading my blog.

[Malcolm Campbell]

Those cowboy gangs don't seem all that long ago. We had cap pistols. Nobody messed with us. :-)

Malcolm

[Secret Simon]

Thanks for dropping by, Malcolm - and for reminding me about caps. There were two kinds, I seem to remember: the green ones in a roll which I could load into my wild west six-shooter and fire off indiscriminately until all the adults in the area were totally deaf, and the single pink ones which I had to balance individually under the hammer of one of those pistols a bit like Dick Turpin used to use for holding up stagecoaches. If I wasn't careful, the cap would fall on the ground before I could fire. They had it tough in Turpin's day...

[Sue Ann Edwards]

Hi Simon!

btw...I STILL have my cap gun and have both red and green caps. And if you wonder why, just remember I live in a place with bears and mountain lions, both of which run at the sound of loud noises.

Yes, I *know* but more then that, I *know* you *know*, too. I *know* everyOne of us *knows*. I don't have any kind of monopoly or special pull with the bureaucrat of the Universe that is giving me secret tips withheld from others. We just simply don't *know* we *know*.

Because our expectations have us looking for something completely 'off'.

I've been 'seeing' everything that we've been repressing for decades. Now no matter how hard we try, we're not being successful when it comes to keeping it repressed and it's ALL coming up and out. THAT'S why we've been seeing what we have been seeing on our World stage. Because our 'civilization' has been a veneer only, an appearance and nothing more and now we're seeing what's been repressed and hidden right underneath the surface of things all along.

So where you 'see' the world needs changing, I 'see' that it is, when we're looking at the same thing. What you use as examples to cite why we need change, I cite as examples that we are, simply because the option of repression is no longer available to us anymore. And if we imagine it is, then this year will prove to be a disappointment, as all sorts of repressed emotions surface to be dealt with.

One things to keep in mind might help. We have NOTHING to learn. NO lessons we need. It is a process of Remembrance, not learning.

See? Unity = re-member-ing = becoming Whole.

[Secret Simon]

If there'd been bears and mountain lions around here, it would have made being a cowboy a lot more interesting. The only things we got to scare were the girls and the teachers. So do you have the same color coding for caps over there that we did over here: green for the roll and pink/red for the single ones? For some reason, I find that fascinating.

You know, I'm starting to really get what you're taking about. (Ta da!) It's surprising how long it can take to wake from a dream. It was just in the news yesterday over here about the remains of a child's body they've found at a children's home. These sorts of terrible things that have been hidden for so long are coming out all the time. And politicians keep getting found out for cheating on their expenses. One guy has just been caught for using the frequent flyer miles he's earned on official flights to fly his family home for Christmas. By all accounts he's a decent guy and what he's done is really no more than stealing stationery from the office, but what makes it really embarrassing is that he's the guy who has been appointed to run the investigation into... guess what? Politicians cheating on expenses. It's like *everything* is coming out. There's no escape any more.