My yoga time is my cat’s cuddle time, especially during savasana at the end, when I’m lying on my back, finally still. She will rub her face on mine; it is extremely sweet. The other day she sneezed, and I freaked out. The droplets of her bodily fluids on my face created an enormous internal explosion. Extreme anger and frustration made me emit high-pitched, muffled screams/grunts, while I covered my face with both fists. Unperturbed, my cat continued to cuddle, and I lay there, my body tense as a strung bow, raging at the tiny drops of saliva which, for all my strenuous effort, I could not seem to wipe off my forehead.
The part that surfaced remained triggered, and I found myself behaving rather like a toddler that morning, enraged with helpless frustration at every little thing that did not work perfectly, needing to scream.
Taking time out to get to know this part, I took many deep breaths, counting slowly to match the inhale, retention and exhale, until the calm, parental self came online. I used a mindfulness exercise I created to make sure that I was approaching the young part from what I call the “parental self” - known in the Internal Family Systems model as the Self - and checked the Four C’s : Am I calm? Am I connected? Am I compassionate? Am I curious? The compassion was fully there, and the breathing brought about a state of calm, but it took some focus to connect with this part, with genuine interest.
When the part became aware of my presence, she instantly let me know that I had no idea what it was like. Next, I began to get a sense of the numbers of the rapes, and how much of her natural reactions had to be suppressed. I got in touch with my young girl’s incredible frustration, the tragic powerlessness of being forced into sexual acts with hundreds of grown men, while often physically restrained, smelling their sweat, or the faint, disgusting smell around their anus, unable to use my arm or hand to get my hair out of my face, or to wipe off their discharge. I recalled how throughout my entire life, this young girl has emerged to express to me that she was still in those rooms, utterly frustrated and powerless, needing to scream.
When I felt my anger at her situation rise, I started to speak out loud on the subject of child sex slavery, as if I was rehearsing for a public talk, and after a short while realized that I had slipped into another part: the speaker. When I stopped to wonder why, the answer that came was that the speaker puts words to the screams.
Breathing myself back into the parental self, reconnecting with the young part, I asked her: “What if you could do anything you want?” She smiled with glee. I asked her if she needed anything, and again, she smiled impishly, as I offered her a big, freshly sharpened Samurai sword. She went straight to work, and I quietly observed as she caused a terrific bloodbath, torturing and killing her naked rapists, screaming with laughter.
When she pulled at the penis of one of the hairy, pale-skinned, big-bellied rapists, she asked him: “Do you want me to cut it off in one hew or would you like it to be cut off little by little?” Her wide-eyed victim was speechless. She made it clear that he had a choice, and it was time that he make one. He stammered that he preferred that she do it fast. “Okay,” she decided, bringing the sword to his penis: “I’ll do it slowly.” And as she proceeded to saw, and he screamed in bewilderment and extreme physical agony, she reveled as she scoffed: “What? Did you think you really had a choice?” And I was reminded of a situation in my childhood when I was confronted with an impossible choice.
My young-girl-part cut off dozens of men’s penises. When she grabbed it, she looked at the tip and joked that she was looking right into the single eye, their greatest secret symbol by which they give so much importance to their own phallus. “Why don’t you use this to cover one of your eyes?” she squealed, cutting off the tip and handing it to its owner. She killed them quickly, slowly or not quite, but bloodied all of them, enjoying the looks on their faces: their shock, pain, their feeble attempts at fawning, blubbering, pleas and sometimes even their commands for her to stop. She had tremendous fun, and once in a while saw that I was still watching, and then we smiled at each other.
The walls and floor of the rectangular room in which all the ugly nude men were gathered was covered in blood, with bodies piled up everywhere, with some survivors groaning or making faint attempts to move. As I wished to meditate, I checked with the part and she let me know that everything was fine; she was good, she was having the time of her life, and she did not need me. The blood and the bodily fluids that were on her own body and face didn’t bother her anymore.
After my meditation, I checked back, and she was tired and done. She wanted to be bathed, and after all the blood and grime and sweat was washed off her skin, she shone and glowed like the purest angel. When she announced that she was hungry, and did not get served food instantly, she was frustrated and quickly became enraged again, so I asked if it interested her to enter back into the bloody room and perhaps kill off a few more of those who were still moving, but, she said, with surprising authority, that she did not even want to think about that place. She wanted to eat, and to be served. I was slightly puzzled at her mood, as I am used to parts who, after they receive what they need, are the sweetest little children, perfectly content. This part wanted to continue to feel the high of power, and be surrounded with beauty and refined things while being waited on. As I allowed her to indulge, I felt, through this part, the pleasure of status and power. Perfectly relaxed, her presence and sense of humor were very attractive. I, as the parental self, happened to know that her power high, which induced her ease, covered the same rage she had channeled during her debauchery.
This part helped me to understand elite perpetrators better, who appear to lead charmed lives, but are secret power addicts, switching from part to part without any connection to their spiritual essence, or the Self. Power is based on anger, and offers a platform from which revenge can be had in perpetuity on all those lower in rank. And since power or any addiction do not heal, and can never remove the underlying frustration and rage over past abuse and humiliations, the need to channel the anger increases rather than decreases. It is difficult to grasp the vast dissociation power addicts experience. We only get to see the front part that may be charming or relaxed or intense or brilliant, which is nothing but the calm after the storm. Without status, which protects the secret darkness, they could never keep up the pretense of the front. Their motto “Do as Thou Wilt” creates the storm, much like my young part, reversing all the indignities she suffered, free to be the sadist, ridiculing victims while slaughtering them. Those in power all belong to secret societies, which only at the highest levels reveal why the secrecy is so important. If we would understand how disappointing, how ridiculous and banal are their secrets, if we got a glimpse behind the lies and the enormous machine they control to keep us believing that we need them to lead us, we would instantly take charge.
We have to be the change which they, by the very nature of their position, can never be. Power can only protect itself; its slaves pretend to create change while creating nothing but a world in the image of their frightful internal chaos.