Sooner or Later

On Seeing Clearly ¾ Perhaps for the First Time

EXPERIENCE has taught us[1] that all who enter this territory of willing exploration and recovery have to, sooner or later, put down their devices of mood alteration. 

These devices may be some variation on chemical or substance use, or they may be activities that we do as part of our daily rituals, or they may be people with whom we are in relationships. Still, they are devices that we use either overtly or covertly to mood-alter, and they stand between us and our escape from the prison of our minds.

Feelings like anxiety, suspicion, nervousness, and apprehension are signals to the psyche … warnings for the soul to “maybe” take cover. They are messages that are interpreted as something may be amiss … in my life … or that things are about to go amiss. The key words in there are “maybe” … not are … but “maybe”.  These feelings that I so despise and fear also trigger in me my need to mood alter … to hide … to use my best mood-altering device(s) … for protection.

The interpretation and understanding of those signals is something that we all learned to do at a very young age … it was a survival trick we learned … purely out of necessity  … to respond to … not react to … but what I have found out about myself on my journey is that more often then not … in my adult life today  …  most of what stirs my warning system are the parts of my mind that are continuously rattling around in my head … my thoughts …  trying to make sense out of old thoughts, memories and especially resentments … things that really have nothing to do with my reality today … outside of the fact that I am carrying them with me each and every moment of my day … in fact at this very moment.

With the peace of God comes awareness and intuition. These you can safely substitute for any form of fear.

 The Key Is Always In The Hand Of The Seeker

For Your Journal[2]

27)  How have your compulsions affected you physically? 

28)  Mentally? 

29)  Spiritually? 

30)  Emotionally?

31)  What is the specific way in which your obsessive-compulsive behaviour has been manifesting itself most recently?

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[1] Extracted from Experience Has Taught Us – 175 Missing Pieces … number 68 … published by Bright Star Press … Neil Douglas – Tubb

[2] Questions taken from Experience Has Taught Us … The First Steps … Searching for the Willingness to Change … Steps One – Five … published by Bright Star Press … Neil Douglas-Tubb Author

To Look At My Past

It’s fine to look at my past to see where some emotion or behavioural 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[1].

EXPERIENCE has taught us that[2] 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 our self 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.

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[1] Hugh Prather … extracted and adapted … from page 24 Spiritual Notes to Myself … published by Conari Press Berkeley California … 1998

[2] Taken from Experience Has Taught Us – 175 Missing Pieces … number 44 … published by Bright Star Press … Neil Douglas – Tubb …

Actions Are Not Spiritual

Actions Are Not Spiritual

Actions are not spiritual. I can “kill you with kind­ness” and drive people up the wall with positive thinking.

“Finding something nice to say” about someone is not practicing love. If I tell a friend that the person who cheated him didn’t mean it, I just make him feel more isolated and alone.

The world we live in is a living documentary on separation. Nothing within this world can prove the Oneness of all that is to us.

At the same time we’re not obliged to battle the negative interpretations of the world that some people have with positive interpretations just to balance things out.

Only when I turn to God can I see God.

·       Spirituality isn’t an affectation.

·       It isn’t wearing white cotton and talking like a God.

·       We can be spiritual without anyone knowing it.

·       We can heal without anyone knowing it.

·       We can awaken into the Oneness of all that is without anyone knowing that we have.

·       But if we start talking about our holiness—paint­ing a picture of how holy we are—we block our holiness.