TRANSCRIPT
Many years ago, almost 20 years ago now, when I was in my early years of being a therapist and I was just heading toward getting independent licensure where I could start my own private practice, I had an idea that I wanted to start a therapy institute. An institute based on certain ideas, and the ideas were very similar ideas, actually, to what I talk about now on this YouTube channel about healing from childhood trauma and connecting with the truth of who we really are on the inside. Learning to love ourselves, learning to love and manifest our true self.
What I decided to call my institute was Institute for the Rare Soul. I even put it on a business card: Institute for the Rare Soul. My first private practice had this on the business card. I don’t even think I have anymore. I think they’re all gone by now. And I created my first website based on that idea. It was called iraresoul.com. This is before my present website, which is wildtruth.net. Well, iraresoul.
And I was like, why, when I think back on it, why did I call it Rare Soul? What was the idea, Institute for the Rare Soul? And I think the reason was—I know the reason was—and now that’s what I want to talk about here, is that to really do this work, to really look at the history of what happened to us, be able to look at the history of what happened to us in our childhoods, the rejections we suffered, especially in our family system in relation to our parents, to look at our parents’ deficiencies, to see and remember and feel how that felt to us back then. To bring those feelings up, to reclaim the lost sides of ourselves that happened as the result of that, to grieve, to have the motivation to do this at all, let alone to do it in a much more extreme or significant way.
Also, to have the fight within ourselves to become independent, to break out of our family systems and stand on our own two feet. I’m not talking even just financially; that may be the least of it. Because a lot of people break out financially, break out of their families, and become independent adults, modern productive members of society. I’m talking on the emotional level. I know so many people who have become independent productive members of society and have fancy jobs and have their own house and car and are preparing to retire and have 401ks and all these different things. And yet, emotionally, woo, they’re as in their family system as they ever were. They never dealt with their childhood.
So what I thought then, almost 20 years ago, and I think even more now, it’s rather shocking is how rare it is to do this deep healing work. Or maybe what it really is, it’s how rare it is to do it in any significant way. I think a lot of people are drawn to these ideas, especially because these ideas, from what all I’ve seen, are true. So people are sometimes drawn to it. Often people are drawn to it. They can kind of recognize at an intellectual level that who they are, the problems they have, are connected with what happened to them. Or maybe they can just see it in other people. Oh, this person is so screwed up because of their screwed up childhood. Especially once you get to know a person a little bit, you hear a little bit about their history. Often it can kind of add up. Sometimes it’s easier for people to see it in others than to see it in themselves.
So people are drawn to these ideas often because of the truth in them. But to really move forward in really deeply looking at it, really deeply putting together the history of one’s own life, that’s a lot harder. That’s a lot more rare. And then I think the most rare thing of all is once people do that and then they take it to the next level and start looking at what harm they caused others as the result of the damages that were done to them. The harm, especially if they had children, if they really had that kind of power over the existence of other people, how their basic relationships with others were manipulative, how they acted out.
I’ve heard so many people who talked about, “Oh, I had a really terrible childhood. It really messed me up in all sorts of ways.” But when I had children, I didn’t do any of that. I didn’t traumatize my child. And it’s like when I look at it again and again and again, I see people who did. They did harm their children. Maybe not in the exact ways in which they were harmed, but metaphorically in the exact same ways. I’ve also heard people, lots and lots of times, who acknowledge that they have all sorts of problems but are totally disconnected from their own childhood, so they didn’t even get to that point.
So what I basically see is the real fight and motivation and ability to be able to look at this deeper stuff, the deeper painful traumatic histories that we have, and to really make sense of it, to really change, manifest, grow, become healthier, nurture ourselves, be able to nurture others, to really become a deep channel for truth, become altruistic, to really have that capacity and use that capacity, it’s very rare. And that’s probably why my institute didn’t really take off back then. It was like, yeah, that’s not what most people really wanted in therapy.
I remember trying to even early on write up proposals to get grants for that and get other people on board, and it was like people weren’t interested in that. And I remember even then thinking, “Oh, I guess I didn’t write it well enough. I didn’t present my idea well enough.” And then 15 years later, I found one of the proposals I wrote and I went back and read it, and I was like, “Daniel, it was actually excellent. You nailed it all those years before. The problem was you were trying to propose it to a world that wasn’t interested in that.” I don’t want to say it was ahead of its time because that sounds arrogant and grandiose, but I think it was really ahead of its time.
The problem is, was it ahead of its time? Because is this something that will happen in the future of humanity? In 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, will these ideas become more accepted as truth by more people? Will this become less rare in our species? Well, all I can say is that for the sake of humanity, for the sake of the future children of the world, I hope so.