We live in a quantum reality. Your thoughts create your world, and you’re experiencing the microcosm and the macrocosm of your own psyche at all times. That means something important: when you cast out another person, or demonize a whole group as “other,” there’s a part inside yourself that you’re casting out too.
There’s a part of you saying: I don’t want you here. You’re not allowed. Go away. But it doesn’t go away. It just gets pushed down inside your psyche, where it waits.
The homophobe who’s secretly gay
You’ve seen this story. A very aggressive, alpha male type goes around accusing other people of being gay, and then it comes out that he’s been on the down low the whole time.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Somewhere inside, he decided: I’m not allowed to be gay. If I’m gay, I’ll be put in the box that was never accepted, and I’ll lose the tribe. So he fights that part of himself with everything he has. He says he’s straight and gay is bad. And he splits. He sneaks off to meet men in secret, then goes back to performing hatred. He’s living a lie.
A famous 1996 study by Henry Adams and colleagues tested this. They showed straight men erotic videos and measured their physical arousal. The men who scored as most homophobic were more likely to show arousal to gay male videos than the men who weren’t homophobic. It’s one study, and not every homophobe is secretly gay. But it shows how hard we can fight against the very thing living inside us.
When you’re split like that, it leaks out. You can black out. You can have bursts of extreme anger. You can become violent, hateful, spiteful, because you’re spending enormous energy repressing a part of yourself that exists and isn’t going anywhere.
And the moment he says, holy crap, I’ve been homophobic because I’m actually gay, let me sit with that, that’s magic. That’s the portal where the black and white spiral turns into the rainbow.
The silenced singer
Here’s a gentler example. Imagine a little kid with a part of their heart that loves to sing. But every time they sing, their parents say: shut up. Stop making all that noise. You’re hurting my head. Your voice sounds terrible.
So the kid decides: I’m never singing again. They lock their voice up inside their heart, and they demonize it.
Then they grow up, and someone near them starts singing. And what comes out of their mouth? Oh, shut up. That hurts my ears. I don’t like how that sounds.
That’s a cycle of perpetual trauma. It happens in families, and it happens across whole societies. What we were forced to cast out of ourselves, we cast out of other people.
Sit down with your inner pyromaniac
You might be thinking: but we have to repress some parts of ourselves. Otherwise everyone would be crazy and violent and mean.
Actually, no. The violence and the meanness don’t come from the part itself. They come from the repression. Take an innocent person and start ignoring them, accusing them, telling them they’re not allowed to exist, and they’ll start getting angry and lashing out, even if they never did anything wrong. Demonize something, and it becomes a demon.
This is where internal family systems is so powerful. Let’s say I have a little part of me that wants to light fires. (I don’t, but I could!) The old way is to say: you can’t do that, it’s destructive, you’re a psycho, nobody can ever know, go away and die. But it can’t die. It’s part of me.
So instead I sit down with it and ask: why do you want to light a fire? And it says: because nobody pays attention to me. Because none of this was built for me, and I want to burn it down. Because I need to be seen.
Attention, being heard, being seen, getting accommodations: those are valid needs anyone might have. That part didn’t get them so badly that fire seemed like the only answer. Wow, you must be in a lot of pain. So let’s figure out how to get you seen and loved another way.
Once that part’s needs are met, I don’t have to spend energy holding it down anymore. I can just say: I need some attention and accommodation. Yeah. I’m human. So is everyone.
The power of an integrated person
Begin within. When you transmute the outcast energy inside your own psyche, it transforms the world around you too.
Think of the gay man who finally accepts himself. He does the work, he apologizes, he becomes a healthy, aligned person, and often an advocate. His behavior is no longer violent or aggressive. He’s not lashing out or projecting. He’s integrated. And the power an integrated person has in this world is unbelievable.
I see it in my own life. Even people I’ve only spent a short time with seem to get inspired by my energy, because my field is cohesive and harmonized. I’ve integrated all the things I used to project: all the ways I felt like a victim, all the anger in my heart. It turned out all of it was aimed at parts of myself I wasn’t letting myself look at.
And once you understand this, people stop hurting your feelings so much. You walk around and realize: holy shit, everyone’s projecting. The cruel things people say are about the parts of themselves they’re trying to lock away.
The way into all of this is unconditional love: of yourself first, of every part inside you, and of each other. It’s all the same thing.
Thank you for raising the vibration of earth. If this speaks to you, join UNICULT.
