Healing The Father Wound

       Many men do not want to be their fathers, so they work to make their lives different from what they knew growing up. They work to parent differently, disciplining more because their fathers were too lenient, or disciplining less because they were treated harshly. They choose different careers, working long hours because they grew up with the stressors of financial lack, or avoiding work commitments because their fathers were never home. They try to control and command every detail of life because their fathers lacked control and command, or they try to shirk any structure and authority because their fathers were authoritarians.
       The thinking is something like this: If I can control certain or all of the aspects of life outside of myself, then I won’t be like him inside of myself.
       Once stated, we can see obvious problems with this thinking. How many men try and try to control the aspects of their lives only to find themselves looking at their fathers in the mirror years later? I don’t know how this happened. I tried so hard to do everything differently, and I still ended up becoming the person I feared.
       Fear of becoming one’s father is a fear of becoming someone else. This is the surface emotion, and when articulated does not make much rational sense either. I don’t want to become someone else, so I need to control my outside life so I don’t become someone else inside. If I fail to control some aspect of my outer life in just the right way, then I will inwardly become what I am most trying to avoid. This fear and the outward activity generated by this fear are blinds that keep us from digging deeper into the raw heart underneath.
       Beneath the fear and distracting activity is anger and hatred and hurt. He ignored me. He hurt me. He left me. I hate him. Not wanting to become him is our way of saying "I hate who you are, and you are is not worth being."
       Instead of retreating back to fear and trying to control our outward appearances, we need to stay with this raw, aching core. Why is this important? Staying with the hate and the anger and the hurt allows us to soften our hearts and begin letting go of the hurt that controls our inner and outer lives. For as much as we strive to control our outer lives to avoid becoming our fathers, it is the unaddressed anger and hate within ourselves that controls us through and through. The anger and hatred drives the anxiety and fearful feelings and behaviors, and the anger and hatred will ultimately prevent us from softening our hearts for those things we hate and fear within our own selves and truly becoming compassionate and fearless men.
       Staying with the anger and hatred does not mean you validate past abuse, neglect, or harsh treatment. Abuse is wrong, neglect is wrong, and you don’t have to accept these acts as right or okay to heal. Staying with the anger does not mean you have to rekindle a relationship with the abuser or repress the facts of the past. Staying with the anger and hate means staying present with the surge and depth of these emotions. Sit and breathe with the dark, old rawness. Stay present and do not reject the feelings as wrong or bad. See how the impulses of fear and anxiety emerge and divert attention away from the heart and outside of yourself. See how the past emerges with flashes of abuse or hurt that make you want to turn away and keep the anger and hate permanent because it is justified and right to do so. Notice the voice of doubt that says if you heal the hurt, then you will surely fail, because only holding onto this anger and hate will protect you from repeating the past. Essentially, study and know yourself, how you work at your rawest points, and how your emotions and impulses arise and influence your actions.
       Notice all of these things. Watch them rise and fall and change and surge and rage and fade. Stay with them for as long as it takes. It may be ten minutes each day for several days or weeks. It may be a block of hours one afternoon. There is no right, normal or expected amount of time. Stay with your deepest and darkest emotions, breathing through them without considering them right or wrong or good or bad. Do not repress them, and do not indulge them with fantasies of change or violence. When daydreams or images arise, acknowledge them as thoughts and let them go. Again and again if necessary. With each breath in, let the intensity of the emotions rise. With each breath out, imagine space around the emotions or imagine light shining into them.
       What may happen? You may see that the anger and hatred already contain breaks, that they are not constant and permanent or solid. You may see the raw charge of the emotions fade each time you return to meditation. You may feel compassion for your own hurt heart, compassion for yourself and the self-hurt that comes from clutching onto anger for years and years without relief. You may feel new space in your heart, and you may feel yourself recognizing the feelings of fear and anxiety as the momentary distractions they truly are. You may feel the impulse to control and command aspects of life and let the impulse go, knowing how and why it arises and knowing that it is another feeling that will naturally subside. You may return again and again to the rawness of your heart, but find each time you return that the seas are calmer and they extend farther than you could ever imagine, and you find new drive and curiosity to become the man you are instead of running to avoid becoming someone you never were.