a rite of passage
Changing our Orientation -- from Falsehood to Truth
Giving up an Addiction – a Modern Rite of Passage
A True Rite of Passage
Coming Out – a Genuine Rite of Passage
Death of the False Self
Counterfeit Rites of Passage
Facing our Demons
In traditional rites of passage, an untested child is instructed in the customs and beliefs of the clan. By enduring and passing certain tests, mental or physical, the child is confirmed a grownup and endowed with the rights and rewards of adult participation in the tribe and its religion. This tribal “rite of passage” is a non-creative process of indoctrination.
A true rite of passage is a private, individual act. We go from dependent child and begin an adult venture that ultimately culminates in enlightenment. We belong, not to the limits of the family or tribe, but to the universe. We go from dependence on parental approval and social conformity -- to autonomy. We no longer live as a child, referring to parental and societal values and voices for the governance of our identity and actions, but become our own person. We look to our true self as the referent for life’s ethical and emotional decisions.
We join the universal fellowship of great beings who listen to the unique messages of God implanted in our souls. The journey to truth is a painful, arduous process that may take a lifetime to fulfill, but it is a journey that begins with a rite of passage. We must take this first step if we are to be free of the limits of our family and culture and true to our deepest being.
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Coming out – a genuine rite of passage
Coming out for gay people is a disturbing process – and a courageous rite of passage. As we gays claim our orientation, we defy the family’s and norm’s taboo against homosexuality. No matter the consequences, we dare to be true. We align with the truth of our orientation. We are no longer defined by compliance to a false role – we are defined from within.
This honest rite of passage of coming out is a paradigm for all people who dare to be true. When any of us dare to be honest in the face of great pressure to conform to the mores of denial of the family and norm, we undergo a true rite of passage analogous to coming out.
We all need to change our orientation towards life -- and live true.
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Death of the false self
The most painful part of a rite of passage is relinquishing our identification with the false self – it feels like death. The mask we assumed in childhood to insure parental care must be shed. Only by removing this sham persona and dying to the limits prescribed by the family can we resurrect into the authentic self and be passionately alive. For gays, this process began when we came out.
The defensive mask children adopt for survival is the “original sin” -- a necessary evil to remain in the care of limited parents and families who demand not originality but conformity to what is. For gays, this includes suppression of our homosexuality. This “original sin” must be expiated through crucifixion, the sacrificial death of the false self, for continued identification with our mask will destroy us and our days will end in dissociated, unconscious dying.
By enduring the pain of psychic crucifixion, we die to the sins and compromises of the past needed to survive in our families and become real. We are reborn into our “original perfection.” This is the salvation we seek for it provides the resurrection of our authentic self and initiates the development of our soul, the eternal self.
During this painful process, we, like Jesus on the cross, ask the forbidden question, “Father, mother, why have you forsaken me?” This is a mature question. Only an adult can confront what is false in mother and father and not be overwhelmed. We descend into the hell of our psyches to find a wounded child. Resuscitating this devastated inner child is a lonely, slow, and painful task. Our true self is vulnerable, underdeveloped, in need of care. With time and integration, we leave our addiction to parental approval and grow up. We emerge from the tomb of familial despair alive, resurrected from the deadness of our past. We begin a new exploration of life.
Gay people are forced to face this cathartic rite of passage in order to come out and be consonant with our sexual orientation. But anyone, gay or straight, who wishes to be consonant with his or her true self, must undergo a similar, cathartic rite of passage.
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Counterfeit rites of passage
If we fail to undergo a genuine break from our parents and the limits of our upbringing, we will turn to pseudo rites of passage for relief from anxiety.
The most commom pseudo rite of passage is alligning with convention through marriage and having children. As we replicate the family's patterns with our new family, we receive approval from our parents, our extended family and the culture. We have "grown up" in the eyes of the norm. The feelings of adult status and stature are amplified as we have children who look to us as all-knowng parents as we dominate them with our parental authority. But playing this conventionally condoned role of parent merely imitates what has gone before some of which is troubling. As parents, we fit in like cookie-cutter people and do not approach the true agony of adult maturity -- separating from the constucts and compromises of the family.
When married life with children fail to assauge our deep urge to be true, real and authentic, but we fear the actual work of differentiation, we look to other pseudos rites of passage. We turn to addiction or misplaced rebellion, even violence to quiet our longings for truth. We hope to alleviate the anguish we feel, as denied, ancient voices haunt us. But pseudo autonomy and counterfeit maturity will never bring us our hearts desire -- a satisfaction in our own existence.
As long as we refuse to confront parental abuse and fail to comfort the raging child within us who suffered at their mercy, we will pursue phony rites of passage. As long as we avoid a genuine process of assessment and grieving of our childhood despair, which defines a true rite of passage into autonomy, we will seek false rites in surrogate, wheel-spinning acts of delusion and destruction.
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Facing our demons
Rites of passage, in traditional cultures, include painful tests of physical and psychic endurance for a boy or girl transitioning into adulthood. For a boy, left alone at night in a forest with unseen terrors lurking in the shadows, the young warrior must confront his night demons to emerge in the morning a man in the eyes of the tribe.
This archetypal journey, passing from the fears of the child into self-reliant adulthood, is parallel to the journey we must make in consciousness to achieve true adult stature. The terrified child within us becomes mature when we face the demons of childhood, most frightening of all, the terror inflicted by our parents.
In a safe setting in therapy, or in our own self-therapy, or with any evolved and trusted witness, we must face unflinchingly the demons that terrified us as children and call them by their proper name -- the limits of mother and father that thwarted the fullness of our developing spirit and identity. We re-enact the terrors of childhood. As the adult re-experiences the horrors he felt at the mercy of parents who did not value his essence, we see the enormity of the terror the child faced, but could not fully feel -- until now. This is the moment -- this is the rite of passage we’ve feared, avoided -- and hoped for all of our lives. Once we feel and integrate the annihilating pain of our early days, it will no longer haunt us. We begin to grow into authentic adulthood at last.
A child can not feel the disappointment of his parents’ failings – but adults can and must. We must undergo a “modern rite of passage,” or remain childish and fearful in our dealings in the world. Even a life filled with bravado and the embellishments of power and accomplishment is a deceptive ruse, if a genuine rite of passage has been ignored. Behind the curtain of pseudo maturity and its posturing is the terrified child, pulling the strings of what appears to be an adult.
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Giving up an addiction – a modern rite of passage
Addictions are symptoms of trauma – especially the wounds of childhood.
Releasing our addictions, we begin a painful but genuine rite of passage into adult living.
What makes addictions so hard to give up? There is an agonizing reason we became addicted in the first place. It wasn’t a gene or a chemical imbalance or a “disease” as AA would claim that causes our addiction – it was the mistreatment endured during childhood. In a vane attempt to avoid knowing and feeling these troubling realities, we used and abused substances, others, and ourselves. By calling addictions a disease, we avoid the arduous work of looking within at the horrors inflicted during childhood.
Addictions keep us in an infantile state and chain us to the past through denial. Addicted, we are forever linked to our parents and their pathology that has infected us.
Giving up an addiction is a major shift -- not just physically but emotionally as well. Sober and sane, we can take the next step and know the crimes of the family and the betrayals of our parents that generated our need for addiction in the first place. We wince at knowing that our first loves, mother and father, hurt us. This is why most people slip and slide … or replace one addiction with another … or shift into a dissociative, spiritual relationship with a higher power, another externalize rescuing parental figure. These are all attempts to avoid looking at our parental perpetrators. The exposed feelings that sobriety provides are torturous to feel, especially if we would prefer to remain an unconscious child waiting for parental rescue – the infantile position of the addicted. There is a great temptation in early sobriety to return to addiction to avoid facing realities insufferable for us as children, and excruciating as adults.
With courage, and no longer anesthetizing troubling memories, we begin to face the realities and responsibilities of adult living – and grieve our childhood. We begin to take our inner child under our wing for nurture and protection.
The key to adult living is to be freed of childhood despair. As sobriety from any addiction including co-dependence allows us to feel all of our feelings, especially those impossible to feel during childhood, we integrate them into our being and grow up. As repressed feelings emerge, we honor the story, and horror, they tell, and integrate their pain into an identity. We begin to build an adult structure within us. We are no longer a fragile, frightened child, subject to hostile realities and authorities. We become an adult -- held in our own care.
With sobriety, the energy we squandered in destructive and diverting activity can now be applied to the recovery of our true self.
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