Chapter 25: (v.2) A Lost Opportunity - Exploitation/The Magical Drum Game/Betrayal - The Anger With The Family Is Still There!

The following days, Christos noticed that he could do more of the things he feared to do, like going out for coffee and trying to communicate.

He knew that his progress was credited to the self-knowledge team. Meeting people who had progressed further in their spiritual evolution was beneficial for Christos. They accepted him more than his fellow students, who retained competitive behaviours learned from their families.

Another factor contributing to the team's greater acceptance was the improvement in his self-esteem.

Now, he could immediately identify which roadblocks to communication people used. He often found himself at a loss for how to react, failing into familiar patterns: first, he would become paralyzed by fear, then, after a time, he would erupt in anger, directing his frustration at inanimate objects. However, a transformation occured within him, as if what he had learned up to that point was beginning to feel like second nature.

“You are walking,” the Teacher figuratively told him one day. “Keep it up, you are doing well!”

During one of his outings, Stella, a member of the student group, seemed to always be around him.

“When I first met you,” she said taunting him, “I thought you very dumb, but maybe you are simply dumb, just not too much!”

Not knowing how to respond to this, Christos mumbled meaningless words, being unable to answer.

“What’s the matter?” the girl said laughing with her friends. “Are you a mute?”

Interpreting her behavior as demeaning, Christos felt humiliated and his predicament worsened.

However, Stella continued to orbit Christos, and it appeared that she sometimes touched him with her body as they walked.

Christos could not understand why she did that and he only spoke tersely to her, giving one-word answers. She asked him about his hobbies, general interests, and finally, if he had a girlfriend.

“No, I don’t have one,” Christos replied. Then he sank deeper into depression, uncertain if he would ever find a girlfriend, and entered a state of self-pity.

On the other hand, after hearing his reply, Stella made a pause of one minute in her speech. Then, breaking her silence, she suddenly uttered, "So how do you. . . get along?"

Christos thought of resorting to a vulgar reply, however the thought alone of doing this made him shy away from it.

He then recalled the previous summer with the Teacher, remembering the time when he was made to shout vulgarities. The Teacher told him then that he made him cross mountains, so when he would become more socially active, the small hills would be easy.

“I get along well with the hole in my bed!” Christos replied finally.

Stella didn’t continue the conversation and Christos started to believe that she felt offended by his words. He began to fear that this time, he would be totally rejected. Both her and the group of people that were with him, they would reject him because he said something bad.

Surprisingly for Christos, not only did nobody reject him, but at the time of their departure, Stella approached him and said, “Would you like to escort me to my home?”

Though baffled by Stella's request for him to escort her to the door, Christos agreed, considering the higher crime rate in her neighborhood.

“Okay, I will accompany you,” he said to her.

After saying farewell to their fellow students, they headed towards Stella's. Christos wondered why their other friends kept staring at them while they were leaving.

They sat on the stair steps, outside her house and talked.

“I don’t have any boyfriend now,” Stella told him. “From time to time of course, I go out for a coffee with an ex for some chit-chat!”

“Oh, really?” asked Christos not understand why Stella told him all these things.

Stella continued the conversation, talking in general about herself and her relationships. After twenty minutes, she yawned, “Ahhh, I’m sleepy! I think I should go to bed!”

“Okay, goodnight then!” Christos said. “Nice chatting with you!”

Upon returning to his flat, he found himself unable to comprehend what had occured. He decided to discuss it the next day with the Teacher.

The next day, the Teacher told him, “You missed an open opportunity to get closer to her, and maybe even start a relationship!” The disappointment was evident in the Teacher's expression, reflecting how Christos handled the situation.

“But how was I supposed to know?”

“She told you that she goes out with her ex-boyfriends occasionally. Do you really believe that she only goes for chatting? She said that because she wanted to spend the night with you. Or maybe she even wanted to have an affair!”

“I guess it didn’t occur to me to think that!”

“Look, Christos, you are partially right, because nobody ever taught you these things!”

“What should I do now?”

“Next time, in a similar situation, try to infer the hidden messages from the context!”

***

In the following days, Christos continued attending university lectures. He couldn’t pay attention however, being distant and closed to himself, lost in his thoughts.

Even though Stella did not reject him because he used, according to his opinion, offensive language, in the end, the possibility alone that something between him and her could have happened activated a fear inside him that wouldn’t go away. Not being able to find a solution, Christos eventually called the Teacher to talk.

Christos explained, “When I told Stella that I get along with my bed, our communication stopped for a while. I felt terrible, thinking she did it on purpose to punish me for my rude behavior.”

The Teacher replied, “You should know Christos, rejection from the opposite sex hurts twice as much.”

“Why does that happen?” asked Christos.

“Because when a woman rejects a man or the opposite, the whole manliness or femininity of the person is being rejected. And the fear of the man not being man enough, or of the woman not being woman enough, is a fear that is deep and primordial.”

“That sounds. . . deep,” Christos said, “but it doesn’t make me less afraid when a woman is about to reject me!”

“Then maybe something else is hidden here,” the Teacher said. “Can you find a past memory where you said forbidden words and were punished for it?”

Attempting to find relative memories, the only one that came to Christos’ mind was the one with the revue (Ch. 6).

“Have you changed registry to this memory?” the Teacher asked.

“Yes, I have,” Christos replied. “But why does my fear keeps coming back?”

“It could be for the reason we discussed before, that rejection from the opposite sex hurts more. It could also be a memory that is too painful to show itself.”

“What should I do?”

“First of all, see that you calm down,” the Teacher suggested, “and then get involved with something else. If there is a memory that is about to surface, it will show up, be sure about it!”

A few days passed and Christos calmed down and forgot the incident with Stella. At the end of the week, he attended the self-knowledge group meeting.

“Today,” the Teacher announced, “we will play the game of the soldier with the drum.” The Teacher continued, “You will imagine that you have a magical drum, with which you can make others do what you want them to do. Then you’ll write down what you imagined.”

Christos imagined that he went back to Aleksandroupoli and with that made his family (father, mother, brother) to dance all the time. They couldn’t stop dancing and he laughed as he felt satisfied by the sight. Then, some beggars came next to him and he used the drum to make them go away because they irritated him.

“The diagnosis of what you wrote is that you are still angry with your family Christos,” the Teacher said when Christos read what he wrote in front of the team.

“How did you figure that out?” asked Christos.

“Because you want to torture them!”

“Oh, I see. . .”

“What did you expect the beggars would do to you? Why did they bother you?” asked the Teacher.

“I thought they would ask for money,” Christos replied. “Beggars usually come to my father's office, they ask him money, he gives to them and then he gets angry for doing so!”

“And why do you get angry?”

“Because they exploit him!”

“So, you have exploitation inside you Christos,” the Teacher concluded.

“Me?” Christos asked surprised. “But I don’t exploit anybody! Others usually try to do that to me!”

“Remember the 4 modes, Christos,” the Teacher said. “It is a two-way street, what others do to you, you can do to others, under the right circumstances. In your case, your pride doesn’t allow to exploit exploiting yourself somehow!”

The Teacher went on, “I think that when others ask something of you, then you are feeling exploited.”

Reflecting upon this statement, Christos realized its truthfulness. Ever since he could remember, the picture he had for his father was that his clients exploited him and that made Christos fear exploit.”

“But why would I be afraid of exploitation?” Christos asked astonished.

“If someone exploited you, what would that mean for you?”

“It would mean that. . .” Christos started to speak but then became thoughtful again.

“That you become ridiculed because he makes a foul out of you?”

“Yes!’ shouted Christos. “Exactly that!”

“All our fears are connected to our existential fear, Christos."

“What should I do to overcome the fear of exploitation?” asked Christos.

“You will give more,” the Teacher replied, “until it no longer bothers you to give!”

Feeling reluctant, Christos experienced discomfort. But he knew that this was an exercise for his development. He finally said softly, “Okay, I’ll do it.”

The Teacher observed the unwillingness of Christos, and smiled. “Very well then,” he announced, “and now let us proceed with our next game!”

“And which one is that?” asked another member of the team.

“The anger game!” the Teacher replied.

“What will we do in this game?” Christos asked.

“You will try to become angry and you will try to imagine what you do when you become angry.”

The game started, but Christos couldn’t picture anything. His thoughts became chaotic and confusing and then a great fear covered him, as if he drowned and couldn’t breathe.

“I can’t go on," he announced to the team.

“What the reason you can’t?” the Teacher asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “This game has scared me a lot.”

“You fear your anger,” the Teacher said.

And then, lightning fast, a memory surfaced from Christos’ past:

Summertime, he must have been about four years old and he and his family went to the beach.

Christos and Michalis played in the sea. They didn’t know how to swim and walked on shallow waters. Then, without realizing it, the sea current drifted them to deeper waters where their feet couldn’t touch the bottom and they struggled to stay on the surface.

Michalis, on a desperate attempt to keep his head out of the water, pushed Christos’ head below sea level and Christos drunk a lot of water.

He didn’t remember what happened next, only vaguely that his father came to rescue and took them both out in time. And that he sat on the sand, spitting water, crying, furious and disgusted with his brother who almost drowned him.

Christos shared this memory with the group.

“The consequences of a memory like this,” the Teacher said, “is to have the belief that others don’t consider your life when theirs’ is at danger and that makes you feel anger and aversion.”

“I get it,” Christos said.

However, the Teacher persisted with the discussion.

“Why did you get angry with your brother, Christos?”

“Because he tried to drown me!”

“What does it mean for you if someone tries to drown you? Could it be that it is violence you fear?”

“I guess that yes,” Christos stated, “if we consider all the times violence was exercised on me, wouldn’t it be expected for me to fear violence?”

“Do not make excuses,” the Teacher said, “you’re not presenting yourself in front of the court. We are only being transparent, so that you understand better what defines you and so that you learn how to negate its effect on you.”

“I just didn’t expect that my brother would attempt to drown me, even if he tried to do so unwillingly.”

The whole group listened to Christos’ speech.

“I feel like he betrayed the love I trusted him with!”

Then another memory made its appearance:

He must have been around twelve, in the primary school and the kids he used hang out with always made fun of him, and couldn’t face them. He had asked his mother for help.

Then, one day, while they ridiculed him, his mother intervened and asked an explanation from the kids. A kid told her that Christos was not the good child she thought and that he call them names the other day.

Feeling that he lost his right, Christos run away. When Iulia found him later, she told him that she didn’t want him ever to leave the house again, and as a punishment, she made him sit in the corner of the veranda, isolated from other people.

Later that night, when his father returned, he told Christos, “You did the right thing to call names to those kids, they deserved it.”

Then his isolation was over and he felt relieved.

The Teacher remarked, “Here we have injustice, betrayal and isolation. We hadn’t found that memory Christos before.” Then he added, “This must be the remembrance that troubled you the previous days and wouldn’t come out!”

Realizing its truthfulness, Christos felt as if a piece of a puzzle went to its right place.

“In this memory, the kids said that you called them names, and then your mother, the female stereotype that you have inside, punished you with isolation!”

“I agree!” Christos replied. “And with the 'Stella' incident, I did the same thing! I close up inside and became isolated!”

“You see that you start making your own correct diagnoses?” asked the Teacher. “You are worth it!” Then he added, “Anyway, this explains why for so many years you lived in isolation.”

“My mother punished me many times with isolation in the past,” Christos said. “One time, when I yelled at a cousin of mine because he made a lot of noise, Iulia then locked me in a room for an hour.”

Christos then asked, “How can I stop isolating myself?”

“First of all,” the Teacher said, “we must find what causes you to isolate. From what I see from both of those memories, the cause must be inappropriate behavior.”

“My mother is a very proper individual!”

“I know Iulia for some time Christos, and good or bad, this is the truth.”

“Should I do a registration change at home then?” Christos suggested.

“Yes,” the Teacher replied. “But first it is better we found the role in your that this memory plays.”

“When I ask help from a person close to me, then eventually he turns against me, punishes me with isolation and I feel betrayed,” the Teacher said. “The consequence of this memory is not to be able to trust anybody!”

These words shocked Christos deeply, as he realized their truthfulness. He himself said before, on their first meeting with the Teacher, that his main complaint with his family was that nobody trusted him. And according to the four modes of human behavior(Ch. 19), he did this to himself, he wouldn’t trust him, and he also did it to other, he wouldn’t trust them.

“Indeed, it’s true,” admitted Christos feeling cold chill run down his spine as he realized the implications of his words.

The Teacher said compassionately, “You have to change this role, Christos, and you also have to understand that not all people betray.” Then he said, “It is a heavy burden for a child to feel betrayed at such a young age."

Christos thought about the lack of trust he retained towards his mother and how this resulted in a lack of trust towards society, friends but also to women.

The Teacher was right that betrayal could be something heavy for a child. However, his mother was only just a person. Not all people betrayed. Where were the women that were faithful as rocks? He didn’t meet them until then because they didn’t fit with his private logic, and that had to change!

“I will try to trust people more!” Christos announced to the group. “And mostly myself!”

The Teacher laughed and said, “It’s about time!”