ENTRAPPED BY THE MERRY GO ROUND: ERIC CLAPTON

...................................................................................................................................................

Our brain stem, the part of the brain that insures survival is like an enormous computer with every single one of our experiences burned and stored into it's files as a picture.  We can replay the emotions attached to these pictures at all times.   Even though we might have forgotten about the experience and even though the picture might be unconscious, we react from this deep reservoir of emotions from our past just the same.
"I thought I'd shaken the memory" writes Richard Pryor in his autobiography. "Guess not"
"Had me a ghost rattling in the attic.   It did not matter that I lived in a big house behind a gate in Los Angeles, some half a country from the bricks and bars of the old neighborhood."
We carry the colors of the familiar family courtyard experiences within us and see the world and ourselves through its glasses.
Musician Eric Clapton, in sobriety after years of substance abuse and break-ups asked himself: "were these the conditions that had governed my feelings about my mother and was I still unconsciously trying to replicate that relationship? "I think so".
The theme of his relations was rejection and abandonment and he was resurrecting this theme over and over.
Clapton was born an illegitimate child, which was a big stigma in 1945 working class Great Britain. Instead of owning up to the truth, the family sacrificed the child.   Mother left the country and mother's grandparents raised Eric, telling him they were his parents and his mother was his sister. As children always do, the child picked up on the lie, the guilt, the awkwardness and the anger of the adults, with the result that he became intensely confused and embarrassed about his origins. The mark resulted in Eric withdrawing into himself, while music became the healer, wiping away confusion and fear.   A mixed bag it was, since music became his glory, while withdrawing set up the decades long dark merry go round.
When he was nine years old Eric's mother suddenly came back from Canada, married with two children.   Even though Eric had pretty much figured out the truth, he was sacrificed once more: not one family member spoke up and explained the situation.   One evening when they were all sitting in the front room of their tiny house, Eric suddenly blurted out to his mother: "Can I call you Mummy now?" Mothers answered: "I think it's best, after all they've done for you, that you go on calling your grandparents Mum and Dad."
Clapton writes of the nine year old Eric: "in that moment I felt totally rejected. I had expected that she would sweep me up in her arms and take me away to wherever she had come from. It was beyond my grasp. My disappointment was unbearable, and almost immediately turned into hatred and anger. I became surly and withdrawn, rejecting everyone's affections, as I felt I had been rejected. Only my favorite Aunt Audrey was able to get through. I would often abuse her and be openly cruel to her, but deep down inside I was very grateful for her love and attention".
Little Eric only knew how to survive by doing what had been done to him.   Yet the coping tactic, brilliant at the time, without fail turned out to be self-defeating in adulthood. "I found a pattern in my behavior that had been repeating itself for years, even decades". "Bad choices were my specialty, and if something honest and decent came along, I would shun it or run the other way. It could be argued that my choices reflected the way I saw myself, that I thought I wasn't worthy of anything decent, so I could only choose partners who would ultimate abandon me, as I was convinced my mother had done, all those years." "No wonder I was living it all out again in the present. My low self-esteem had dictated all my choices. I had chosen what I knew and was comfortable with, but they had all been unworkable situations... it seemed like I would never be able to break the mold".

Although not all of us are born illegitimate, are abandoned by mother or never know their father, the principle is the same: each and every one of us in our own unique way has become a puppet on the strings of past lacerations.   Thus, we keep resurrecting the same old fates and keep going around and around in the same old fateful vicious cycles.
The merry go round presents us with a triple whammy of smoke and mirrors:
   1. We cannot see what we are doing, because we are in it and on it and it is in us.
Clapton could not see that he actively resurrected rejection through sabotage, through addiction, chronic infidelity, withdrawal and anger, until he went into treatment.
Ex-wife Pattie Boyd explains: "he had the most disconcerting ability to switch off, regardless what was going on around him or who he was with, and withdraw so deeply into himself that he wouldn't communicate, just gave off a dark vibe so that whoever was around would know he didn't want to see them and slink away".
Clapton was so angry that sometimes he would invent mock dramas, just to be able to pick a fight. Even near death accidents or life threatening illness did not wake him up.
   2. The merry go round keeps us stuck in reflexive and reactive behavior.  Reflexive behavior is without a conscious thought and reactive behavior is acting out feelings - often unconscious - without being aware of them and talking about them.  Both reflexive and reactive behavior are the opposite of taking control. making luck, creating change and mastering your destiny. 
Stuck and clinging to the habitual and familiar we only do more of the same old - same old and therefore generate the same old outcome.   We don't wish to do so.   We actually have a deep longing to finish up the old and have a different and better outcome.   It's just that we don't know how to get there.
Even sober and after some time in treatment Clapton relapsed and wrote in his diary: "I'm back where I started – jealous and rejected..."
   3. The merry go round prevents us from seeing, receiving or creating the new and our very best.  Buried by the layers of marks Boyd kept re-living her past, feeling powerless, while mark and merry go round prevented Pryor from seeing and enjoying his value an success, and made Clapton insecure, shun the good or run the other way.

We can break the mold. We don't have to sacrifice ourselves. We can finish up the old.
We can create what we never had before and dare not dream of having.  You can read in the article Breaking the Mold and Making Luck, how to do so.

Quotes from:
*Clapton, The Autobiography, by Eric Clapton, 2007
*Wonderful Tonight. George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me, by Pattie Boyd, 2007