Sometimes an anology just appears and that is it. It’s in your head and there is no way round it. First of all the concept started as a holey bucket and as I went about my days and weeks it became the holy bucket.
The idea of the holey bucket started with the understanding that I was leaking energy. That some how I needed to plug those holes in order to be of better service primarily to myself, so that I could be of better service to others. In the process of understanding that I began to appreciate that maybe my holey bucket was a holy bucket that was being worn through by the concept of sacraficial love. The we have to sacrifice ourselves in order to benefit the other, that we are not just the giver but the donor of alturistically fuelled ascension magic (there is a lot wrong with this idea). That we have to cut off and cut up parts of ourselves in order to be of service to others. There is a huge amount of ego attached to such ideas, selflessness can often be a guise for deeper misgivings that the self is not prepared to face yet. Of course the idea of sacrificial is deeply entwined with religious doctrine than many of us have been brought up with. that we much act in service of the greater good or risk condemnation. That self-service even now is something that is often demonised. In a world full of systemic trauma waht does it mean to be kind, good or obdient. Kind, good or obedient to what? What is the underlying narrative, there is always one there. Even when we get down to the nuts and bolts of trauma.
As a sacred container my cup was supoosed to brimmith over and nourish all around me with the overflow. Yet the early segments of last two years have been accompanied by critical levels of compassion fatigue. Where quite honestly I couldn’t give a fuck about you and your problems. Not so lekker for someone holding space for the most vulnerable in our society. It’s made me realise how important it is to put things down, even when you are self-employed, even when you run your own business, even when you have responsibilities to people in your care.
The idea of The Holy Bucket got me thinking about a spiritual text I found in church one day that wrote about the concept of water in a bucket. I know wild idea right? That when we think about ourselves as important we must get a bucket of water and roll our sleeves up and put our arms elbow deep in the water and then pull them out. That if we look at the water we will notice there is no space left where our arms once were. It’s only then that we are asked to consider exactly how much spaces is left when we die. The answer is none. A brutal and liberating anology for the space we take up. So we might as well take the space fully and know that when our time is up, that we will be relquished on any grasp we had on this life. I think about that passage often, when I think about my relational value; what I mean to people in their lives.
I now firmly know that I don’t have to sacrifice myself for personal, professional and systemic reasons that might be expanded on at a later post. I must say that I am relieved. I have also found that my inner rescuer archtype is very clever. It likes to transfer grandiosse ideas of saviorism onto people, places and things to avoid uncomfortable conversations with others and with ourselves. How exactly is your trauma making you behave if you cannot go around saving people? What do you do now? It’s one of the hardesst things for those called to the healing profession to get clear on. We can choose to heal ourselves rather than giving what we need to the other. What if you just fed yourself fruit and drank some water? What then? I wonder. The simpliest thing always seems to be the hardest and the most over complicated for reason the traumatised brain is yet to devluge to us personally in our secret midnight dialogues that nobody else hears.
Having now taken inventory I am busy patching up the holes re-setting boundaries and re-writing the guidelines.
This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.
If you enjoyed reading this article I would be delighted if you can buy me a ko-fi here.
This year it feels like I’ve taken a crash course in all of the above. I’m also feeling pretty proud of myself in the process. For the first time in the history of my own community activism, I have refused to take on other peoples shit. True Story.