A Codependent Relationships

• Denies the need for the individual to be in a relationship with or have the assistance of … a Higher Power…. A Power Greater Than …

• Is based on self-hate from shame and guilt (repressed more often than not).

• hides this shame and guilt under the guise of love of or for another (attempting to appear as indispensable … there are many variations on a theme around this one).

• Places the answer to ridding ourselves of our shame/guilt outside of our selves. (This is based on the deeper assumption that the Self is not good enough to be a part of … thus broken … and the answer to ridding the Self of life’s pain must be other than where the Self is … outside of the self)

• Assumes that something fundamental is lacking in the Self … being broken as mentioned above … and if the Self could just find that something or someone or someplace then It would be happy … thus co dependents take prisoners … are obsessive and compulsive.

• Affixes expectations for “better” on the others, and the special rela¬tionship so formed … be that with a person or a place or a circumstance … somehow, as if by magic, the relationship will make things better… but the attempt is always self-defeating because it denies the truth of the identity and purpose of the other(s) involved in the special relationship … they can’t be real and maintain the neediness undercurrent of the special relationship … they were created for a purpose by the Higher Power also and there is a strong possibility that their purpose was not just to make your life a better place to be. This is the process of transference and it invalidates the sense of the other person’s rightful place in the universe … they are in fact a part of God and God’s plan too.

• Is based on the scarcity principle, that there is only a limited amount of love to go around (and only insiders or blood relatives count and all the others should be excluded.)

• Becomes the focus of our anger and resentments. Because when the others won’t give us what we know they have … are hiding from us what it is that we need to be happy … we get angry and resent them for hurting us … deliberately.

• Shifts responsibility for our happiness to those others and the supposed special relationship(s). (For example, "If only you were or would be such and such, then I would be happy.")

• And finally, the ego (false or co-dependent self) uses the special rela¬tionship to attack the other(s) by projecting our own shame and guilt onto them but it does this by promising them salvation and happiness and fulfill¬ment.

These factors outlined above seem to be one of the better descriptions of a working definition of co-de¬pendence.

All of these characteristics pointed out above are related in some way to the core issues of co-dependence, issues like denial, control, difficulty trust¬ing, low self-esteem, difficulty handling conflict, and difficulty giving and receiving love.

Lessons Learned From Life’s Experiences

 • Have Empathy For The Source Of Your Pain. Who, What, Where, When and Why. There is the strongest possibility that whatever is causing you pain may be reflecting you back to you.

 • Rational Thought Won't Work. My rationalization is Biased by my experience. That much is true. My Experience influences my best thinking. Again True. And my rational thinking is pre determined by the aftermath of my experience. Therein lay the Bias. So what makes sense to me might not be either sensible or reasonable, the problem is, it makes sense to me. There are times when I am prepared to fight to the death for those beliefs; that doesn’t make any of those beliefs either True or Right. They are just my belief(s) biased by my experience.

• There Is Something At Work Behind All This And That Is Beyond Me And My Self Centeredness And All That I Can Imagine. A Force far greater than me. Can you imagine that. Imagine something you couldn’t possibly imagine.

 • Be Prepared To Re Examine Your Motives And Your Reasons As Well As Your Morals For Doing What You Do. This gets to be interesting when you discover how to use rigorous honesty and apply it to self.

• In Order To Do Your Journey You Will Have To Confront Evil. This is true. It has happened to me several times in my life. It happened at times and in places that one would not necessarily think it would be present but it was. Evil does not have to be coarse. It can be ... but sometimes it is very subtle.

 • Never Say Never. Occam’s Razor underscores this sentiment ... “Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate” … see reverse side … the Principles of Parsimony. The precursor to the KISS principle.

• You Can't Change Human Nature. The only thing you can change is Your Mind About Human Nature.

 • Human Nature Is The Curriculum Of Life. It Is What You Do With It, That Matters.

 With Time Spent On The Path

There Will Come A Time

When You Can Return To The Starting Gate

And See It For How It Truly Is

For The First Time

“With Eyes Unclouded By Longing.”

Occam's Razor, … the principle is attributed to the mediaeval philosopher and Franciscan priest named William of Ockham (1280/1349). At the core of the Razor it assumes that simpler explanations are inherently “better” than “complicated ones” … is also referred to as the Principle of Parsimony .

The scientific method of hypothesis generation and testing relies heavily on this as a principle of discernment … a powerful tool.

Here are some other interpretations:

•  One should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything.
• One should always choose the simplest explanation of a phenomenon, the one that requires the fewest leaps of logic.
• Don't make unnecessarily complicated assumptions.
• Make things as simple as possible - but no simpler .
• KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid!
• The principle states that one should not make more assumptions than the minimum needed.

 It underlies all scientific modeling, theory building and psychological and sociological reframing.

The Razor admonishes us to choose from a set of otherwise equivalent models, ideas, explanations of and for a given phenomenon, situation or circumstance … choose the simplest explanation or route … the simplest one is often as not … the best one.

In any given model or “pool of information”, Occam's razor helps us to “shave off” those concepts or complications, variables or constructs … “thoughts and beliefs” … that are not really needed to explain the phenomenon or the circumstance … gets rid of the window dressing … the very stuff that we get lost in as we try and solve our problems from our own pool of knowledge and experience.

The Way Of Things

Conflict in social interaction comes in many forms: brute force, implacable institutions, and internal divisions among one's friends, fellow workers and family. If there is to be an opening in any situation, a way through to resolution, we are going to have to be willing to listen to what we have to say to ourselves about ourselves, and at the same time not be caught in the reactive nature that has brought us to impasse in the first place.

Insights don't come easily, as you probably are discovering. It takes a great deal of strength to detach you and be honest. After all, we all have vested interests in whom and what we think we are and what is going on around us. This is the stuff that gives us our definition of who we are, and we tend to seek out those situations, people and events that support what we have come to learn about ourselves in the first place.

It’s a cycle; nothing more, nothing less.

We may even begin to notice that along with our cleanest dirty shirt and good intentions, we have also carried with us the seeds of our own pain. Our expectations, our needs sometimes come home to roost, and to act out because that is what "they" most perfectly do. After all it makes sense, after all it’s the way it's always been done.

So if it is a prison that we are in, then we have to be open to the examination of every aspect, just to find that loose brick or vent duct so we can actually begin our escape from our false self into our real self.

The Momentum of Co-creation

There are things that are hard to move past, hard to see past ... hard to let go of ... that much I know is true.

But it is also true that your sense of self is a major contributing factor to this world being here and being the place it seems to be. That is a very important concept. Most don’t ever consider that as a fact, but it is. For all intents and purposes your world, and my world seem coherent ... it seems to adhere to the Way of Things ... at least as you and I understand them.

This phenomenon called life that you and I share with all the rest of the lost and wandering souls on the face of this planet has some interesting twists and turns tucked away in it.

Here is one. However we view it, there are the avenues that if we invest our belief(s) and faith in ... that force begins the momentum of co-creation ... most never realize that. So this place and the way we think it is, is a result of how we think it is, stop and think about that for a moment, because if you notice then how you think can be profound. Then the fact of the Way of Things is that life is exactly the way it is supposed to be, just how we all thought it up to be.

Next! This place where we live is a perfectly balanced place ... very often it is precariously balanced ... but perfectly balanced none the less. Don’t confuse that with Healthy by the way. We as travellers on the good ship Earth have set it so. This Precariousness of Life is something that is a reflection of our opposition to both the Creation ... and the Creator.

After all, what the heck would he or she know about anything that affects us down here on this speck of star dust in the Milky Way ...

The opposition to how things are and the Way of Things starts with just one thought ... now the oddity of the situation is ... so does The Awakening, which is the alignment with the Way of Things. Just one thought but in a different direction. As I come out of my trance-like sleep and see what lay before me ... I see life ... I see death ... I see happy and I see pain ... I see suffering ... both justice and injustice and I see opulence ... I see so many things that at first it is hard to keep my eyes open. Then my eyes accustom themselves to all that is and I see the grandeur in the process of God’s Law and at the same time, the flaws of Man’s Law. And I begin my journey toward God’s Law and the Way of Things ... away from my ego and toward my spirit.

Rightness is a result not a cause

There are two important places in our deeper consciousness, one is a place of “Rightness” and the other is a place of “Forgiveness” ... and one can’t exist without the other ... A full life requires that you hold no resentments against any one in life ...

Forgiveness is attained by recovering the energy that I have invested in protecting me from a world I thought would destroy me and investing that very same energy into my creativity ... thus becoming a co creator with the Creator ...

Universal Law: The possibility of all this ... thus both Life and Miracles are limited by what you believe as possible ... neither Life nor Miracles will violate your belief structure ...

For you to have the “More” and “Fuller” Life you were intended to have it is your job in this lifetime to expand your image and idea of how life is ... that is the quiet and nearly indiscernible necessity that lay behind life, creativity and co creativity.

It is dependent on your ability to see past what it is that you have been trained to see as real ...

... Rightness Is a Result Not a Cause ...

Lama Guendun Rinpoche: On Happiness

Happiness is not to be found with many efforts or will
But is here, nearby, in your relaxing and surrendering.
Don't worry; there is nothing to be done.
Everything that comes up to your mind has no importance because it has no reality.
Don't conceive any attachment for it.
Don't judge yourself.
Let it be.
Let it come up and down without changing a thing.
It all vanishes and begins again, endlessly.
Nothing but the quest for happiness prevents us from seeing it.
It is like a rainbow that one is always chasing without ever reaching it.
It is because it has no existence.
It has always been here and goes with you all the time.
Don't believe in the reality of experiences, good or bad.
They are like rainbows.
Because we want to grasp what is not to be grasped,
We exhaust our strength in vain.
As soon as we relinquish our hold, space is here, open, welcoming & comfortable.
So, do enjoy it.
Everything is yours already.
Stop searching.
Don't go into the jungle to look for the elephant that is quietly waiting for you at home.
There is nothing to do.
There is nothing to force.
There is nothing to desire.
And all comes by itself.

I heard my mother call my name

Old, dead woman, you’ve held sway for far too long.
You with your judgments.
You with your disapproval.
You with your conditional love.
You with your ideas about what is best for me.
You with your cancer legacy.
You with your attempts to control, even my death.
You with the siren song calling me to your grave.
Enough old, dead woman. You will s-mother me no more.
I will be my own judge.
I will seek my own approval.
I will love me.
I will decide what is best for me.
I will have my cancer my way.
I will control my own life.
And I will listen to your songs of death no more.



DF Feb 2010

Part One The Necessity of Creativity

The expression of any form of creativity opens the closets and the dustbins of the mind and begins the process of airing out the cobwebs. The process of being creative seems to be the process that as an aside brings healing. It does not seem to matter what is being created just that the process of creation seems to hold part of the secret of healing. Perhaps it is the deeper sense of being connected to a part of you that is connected to all that is, or perhaps it is just you getting past how you think for a short space in time.

There are certain truths that apply to all situations and one important one is; that before a wound can heal it must be seen. It needs to be exposed to the light of day. The act of exposing the wound to air and light of day is often as not a function of the inner drive of the creative soul trying to shed itself of something it never wanted nor was intended to have.

Why, because for most of us, these deep seated inner processes are bound up by shame, a shame that was acquired early on in life when no one noticed us or our efforts or our own particular expressions of creativity. They noticed what we did not do, not what we did. Our parents, our peers and our teachers became our prime sense of shame. Just think back and I am sure that you, just like me, can find a significant shaming event that slowed or stopped your creative energies.

Know this; the soul does not want the burden of the shame, but the ego is afraid of the pain that may be involved in processing the shame. Second: it can be counterproductive to force things into our way of doing things against these deep-seated inner processes of shame. Third: when you are depending on just you and just your resources for guidance through all this, know this: you are in serious trouble.

Round Pegs

Square Holes

Larger mallets

Simply Don’t Work

Part Two Creative Shaming: The Flip Side of Creativity

Creative Shaming occurs when we come in conflict with someone or something and they have a need to be in authority over us or our situation. What the recipe for the conflict seems to be is their need for authority over us being triggered by our neediness for (fill in the blank) that conflicts with their repressed neediness for (fill in the blank generally the same thing). Might Makes Right ???? … Oh Really

It is actually an ego defense strategy of reducing the perception of the sense of anxiety by attempting to gain authority over that which seems to remind them of their hidden pain. An outer fix for an inner condition. At best it is a temporary fix.

Thus the shame spiral gets passed on.

Now it is about here that the results of this authority shaming can be seen;

If a child has ever been made to feel foolish for believing himself or herself talented, then the act of actually finishing or completing something, a piece of art, a simple household task, etc will be fraught with intense internal shame, shame dialogues, scripts, self defeating acts and thoughts will storm through the mind and it will be next to impossible to do, if not impossible to bring the work to completion.

Many people begin tasks and they get well along in the process of doing them, and then they come to the wall. As they come near completing the task at hand then their works seems to suddenly and mysteriously drain of merit.

It's no longer worth the trouble.

To therapists, this surge of sudden disinterest ("It doesn't matter") is a routine coping device employed to deny pain and ward off vulnerability of being shamed upon completion. If I do nothing then no-thing or no one can hurt me.

This is called detachment.

Part Three Detachment: Their Way of Things

Those of us who grew up in dysfunctional homes learned to use Detachment as a coping device, and most of us learned to use it very well. It became Our Way Of Things.

This business of detaching is really a method of skimming close to boredom or anxiety and making it sound socially acceptable when in fact it is a form of dissociation and is actually a form of numbing out.
Dragging home the invisible bone in hopes of finally being noticed for my achievements in a vain attempt to gain approval from and in my family of origin can become a treadmill.

Here is the familiar family refrain:

In our family no matter how big a deal it was, they never seemed to notice.

They always found something wrong with it.

If I got all A’s and a B on my report card then B got all the attention.

Statement: “He forgot my birthday.” When the truth of the matter is he was unable to act on the birthday for fear of making a mistake.

Counter: "Oh, well, no big deal." When in fact it hurts to be forgotten by someone you hope loves and cares for you, so you diminish it and try to numb it out and pretend all is well.

A lifetime of this kind of experience, in which the deep need for recognition is routinely dishonored, teaches all that putting anything out for attention is a dangerous act and almost always a painful experience.

That is the pain of Operant Learning

or

Learning by Experience

Experience Teaches Us the Truth about the System it is Demonstrating ...

Not necessarily a Truth in a Life Sense.

There is a difference

And if we fall in to the trap of applying A System Truth on Life as a Whole then our perception of life as a whole is skewed and life is difficult indeed. 

This is a Life Truth 

I am Alone and my World is a Dangerous Place

My ego believes that I am alone and my world is a dangerous place.

Only by doing something or getting something or being somebody, will I attain the happiness and safety that I seek.

These are my compulsions-obsessions.

When my efforts fail, it tells me there are certain "magic" substances and habits that can always be relied on.

These are my addictions.

Feeling Like You Are In Charge Of Life

Moss Street Paint In

Feeling like you’re on top of things, having that sense that you are actually in charge of your destiny is never easy, and sometimes it is a painful thing to even consider attempting to do.

So, in the long run, our experiences will and do add up to a sense of self and if taken properly, processed and appreciated, then this experienced and appreciated process can morph into a way of thinking and being that can best be called the mastery of self.

This is a complex thing to accomplish, for some seemingly impossible. Doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be attempted, all that it means is that it seems to be next to impossible to do. It is the melding of two very different places in our consciousness into a healthy blending and ratio of deeper appreciation and understanding of the Way of Things.

The sense of being in charge seems to be influenced directly by the sense of and the degree of or intensity of one’s participation with life. Not how creatively we can hide, but rather how willing we are to participate with how life is.

There is a difference between being in charge and being in control.

• 
  
  Control is the utilization of the maximum method(s) necessary of making sure everything is exactly the way it is supposed to be according to me (my egotistical self) ... and that I am safe in my world... again according to me.
• 
  
   Where as being in charge is me having the confidence, the courage and the ability to cope with life on life’s terms without having to surrender my sense of self.

 Being in charge lets you decide what you want to do with life as it presents itself, where as control demands you follow learned patterns that you hope will save you from a world you thought would destroy you...