On Seeing Clearly Perhaps For The First Time

It’s fine to look at my past to see where some emotional or behavioral pattern is coming from. But this has limited healing benefits. The past can’t be accurately reconstructed or interpreted.

So it’s pointless to ask what is “real”.

Instead, I must see all versions of the past that are in my mind and forgive each one.

Then I am free to return to the truth that I have never left God’s Heart .

EXPERIENCE has taught us that life is scripted and that we will follow those unconscious scripts as if our lives depended on them. Those scripts have themes. Here is a collection of the most common dysfunctional themes:

• We use external frames of reference. We focus all of our attention on what our circumstances are or on what our partners are doing or not doing, and then we judge ourselves accordingly.

• We use our relationships as if they were substances like alcohol or drugs. We treat people as if we were addicted to them, and believe we can't function independently of them or without the relationship we have with them.

• We cannot define our psychological boundaries readily. We don't know where we end and others begin. We tend to take on the problems of others as our own.

• We try always to make a good impression on others. This is a way in which we try to control the perceptions of others. We are people-pleasers.

• We do not trust our own ideas, perceptions, feelings or beliefs. We will defer to the opinions of others and not stand by our own ideas and opinions, and always seek validation. We are never really sure.

• We try to make ourselves indispensable to others. We will knock ourselves out to take care of things for others that these same people could actually do for themselves.

• We play the martyr; we learn to suffer, and we do it gallantly. We will put up with intolerable situations because we think we have to, or because we don’t know when enough is enough.

• We are skilled at controlling others. We try to control everything, but usually fail because it really is an impossible task.

• We are out of touch with our true feelings. We distort our feelings and express them only when we believe it is justified to do so, when we believe there is a very good reason. As often as not, the very good reason is not the truth or the real reason for the feelings in the first place.

• We are gullible. Because we are not in touch with our feelings, we lack discernment. We are bad judges of character, and will only see what we want to see.

• We have lost contact with our spiritual selves. We are often cut off from the spiritual side of life, even though we work hard at appearing to be spiritual and may think we are deeply spiritual. A little denial goes a long way.

• We are fearful, rigid, and judgmental. Black and white thinking dominates our lives¾love me or hate me, for or against me. Never any middle ground.


Remember this: that deep within your mind you are always sensing something … it is simply what the mind does … and it does it well … but the point of the exercise of being here on the face of this planet … seems to be … to account for who I am … not how I feel. How I feel may assist me in that facet … but it is not an end in and of itself.

NDT: this is part of the Intro to Zen and the Art of Seeing Clearly Perhaps For The First Time ... I extracted some of this from Experience Has Taught Us---175 Missing Pieces ... and the original Idea came from a workshop I attended in Tuzon Arizona on Native Spiritual Healing ... put on by University of Oklahoma ... all books available at Amazon.com