This is Vivian Nukuzola Dlabantu

This is Vivian Nukuzola Dlabantu

She is 47 years of age, She is a mother of two daughters … 22 and 7 years respectively … She is a qualified pre-school teacher and she is furthering her education by studying on Saturdays for her Level 4 at Cape Town College … she is in her final year of study… she operates on the thinnest of budgets a preschool, day care some times orphanage for the babys of Jo Slovo ... and she has been doing this for over 25 years ... What she needs is some help with what she does ... the best help is some money. everything that she needs to operate is available in South Africa she just has to be able to buy it, thus money to augment her costs ... not a great deal ... just some ... I have raised money for her from here ... there are some highschool kids here in Victoria taking this on as a project ...and now I appeal here on this blog to some help ...for Vivian and her kids

The Crèche: it here that she holds her preschool … what I was able to determine is that she has approximately 105 children that range in age from 0 to 6 … split into two groups … about 35 children (0-2) at her home and 65 to 70 (2-6) children at The Crèche



She is the founder and head of the Masikululeke Pre-School and Nursery School, Joe Slovo Park … Joe Slovo is an unincorporated community … that is: a squatters encampment within the area surrounding Cape Town… near Milnerton.

The people who come here are from the country side and some are from countries north of ZA as they attempt to escape the war and troubles in their home land.

She originally founded her entire operation in 1990 in an old shipping container. She did it with her own money; she was later assisted by Chuku Town, she now has a pre-school registered on small, modest premises… she applied for assistance through Ikamva Labantu… this organization supplied some money and is her only source of income presently.

The Lions Club of Tableview now assists her in her efforts … Gisela Weitz President of the Table View Lions Club and the Lions Club is a supporter of Vivian and her 105/110 children...



Here is the Lions Club in November 2008 doing what they call Kilometer of toys ... they spend a Saturday and Sunday in mid November to collect toys for Xmas gifts for kids who would other wise get nothing ...

Vivian also makes the school premise available as a collection point and shelter during fires or other disasters. One of the most major concerns in the community is fire because of the flimsy nature of the house construction … the lack of running water etc … once a fire gets started it can run a much through the community and destroy what little they in moments …




The Crèche is a 6 meter sq building that serves as office, staff, class (2)and store room.

She has a Nursery that operates in a tiny, poorly equipped house. Her home …



The two schools are open from 7 to 16h00, run by a staff of 3 plus Vivian. She and her crew also cook breakfasts and lunches for 105 children daily. they also often supplies food for dinner to the parents who themselves have absolutely nothing. Some of the children have homes and when necessary she hires transport to fetch the children from home to school.












She has virtually adopted most the children … for all intents and purposes …

Vivian is now the local authority on matters of day care and child and family care and she advises 18 other pre-schools in Milnerton and Blaauwberg area. She affectively acts as an outreach person for the Ikamva Labantu program … she operates educational programs, bookkeeping, food hygiene, the handling of social, funding and admin problems for the locals…

She empowers women.

She teaches the community responsible committee work & how to implement projects/processes.

She is the founder and leader of the Pinkster Group… A boys and girls drumming group for 7-11 year olds.

She is the founder and leader of Amajika A girls dance group for 7-11 year olds which already performed on TV and at a municipal events.

She is an advisor on Joe Slovo Park Advisory Committee, and a Member of Joe Slovo Park Disaster Committee … Communal and Pre-school Vegetable Garden Projects (also involving the school’s children)

What she is planning to do: Parent Coaching: She is a firm believer that good values start at home; Vivian plans to start classes on parenting skills and healthy nutrition, and classes for youths on teen pregnancies, HIV/AIDS, rape, abuse and domestic violence, drugs and alcohol abuse.

I met her and what I found in the midst of all these kids … she is a bubbly, cheerful, loving personality, Vivian runs the schools competently on a minimum budget and that is an understatement … with an admirable balance between good discipline and fun. She is the sort of person for whom nothing is ever too much, and she has a natural talent to create instant enthusiasm for her vast social engagement, commitments and vision.

We talked about the kids. She took me on a tour of Jo Slovo and what became apparent was that she is encamped at what we could easily call the front door of Hell. What she does every day is rush in every day and rescue little kids from some of the ugliest realities then she feeds and hugs these little people. These children would not otherwise stand a chance…

She has children billeted out through the community simply because there are no parents ... they are dead.

She educates them because she knows that education is the only route out for all these kids …

She told me stories of what some of these kids have gone through and by the end of our first visit she was in tears and so was I … and all we could do was hug each other …

I had a wriggle in my schedule later in the week … and my host Gisela Weitz, President of the Tableview Lions Club, wanted to know what I wanted to do on the Thursday afternoon … I wanted to go back and spend more time with Vivian … so we did but before we went back on a second unannounced visit … we stopped and picked up food staples for Vivian and the Kids … it was an amazing afternoon … more tears and more hugs … and a promise that would carry her story home with me and see if support and sponsors could be found …


Neil Tubb
Bright Star Canada
349 Vancouver Street
Victoria BC V8V 3T3
(250) 385 3181
neiltubb@shaw.ca
www.neiltubb.com
Hendrickse Foundation
Project Hope South Africa

Dignity Of Daring

Only to the extent that man exposes himself over and over again to annihilation, can that which is indestructible arise within him.

In this lies the Dignity of Daring…

Only if we venture repeatedly through zones of annihilation can our contact with the Divine Being, which is beyond annihilation, become firm and stable.

The more a man learns to confront wholeheartedly the world which threatens him, the more the depths of the Groundwork of Being Human are revealed to him and the possibilities of new life open for him.


The Only Way Out Is Through
Simple,
Just Hard To Do

Sarcasm, Wit and Wisdom Often Go Hand in Hand

TRIBAL WISDOM AND GOVERNMENT POLICY

Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.

However, in government they often try other strategies with dead horses, including the following;



1. Buying a bigger whip.

2. Changing riders.

3. Saying things like "This is the way we always have ridden this horse."

4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.

5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.

6. Increasing the standards to ride dead horses.

7. Appointing a tiger team to revive the dead horse.

8. Creating a training session to increase our riding ability.

9. Pass legislation declaring that "This horse is not dead."

10. Blaming the horse's parents.

11 Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed.

12. Declaring that "No horse is too dead to beat."

13. Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.

14. Do a Cost Analysis Study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper.

15. Declare the horse is "better, faster and cheaper" dead.

16. Form a quality committee to find uses for dead horses.

17. Revisit the performance requirements for horses.

18. Say this horse was procured with cost as an independent variable.

19. Blame the horse farm on which it was born.

20. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.

NDT: this made me smile until I realized just how true the underlying message was and then I really laughed

EXPERIENCE has taught us

EXPERIENCE has taught us that the process of accepting “life is not working the way we thought it should” often leaves us deeply shaken.

To heal ourselves and grow, each of us has to do what everyone else on the face of this planet has to do to come to spiritual completion. We have to surrender to the Greater Way of Things and experience that original pain that can only be discovered from our childhood, the pain we have kept bottled up inside for so long and avoided like the plague.

Opening the second eye is a more profound event. It requires something pro-active to happen. It requires an exchange between the seeker and the universe. The exchange happens on the path (and only on the path) as the seeker surrenders into the greater unknown. This always equates to surrender into the fear. It probably isn’t but that is what it equates to.

Fear is defined in the Course in Miracles as the absence of Love and it is a given in this business that it is far easier to hang on to what I know then it is to face the demons that hold me fast and frozen in my place.
 
As Scott Peck points out, we have to go through the pain, to embrace it, to process it, to reduce it and transform it; that is the only way out.

Dignity Of Daring

Only to the extent that man exposes himself over and over again to annihilation, can that which is indestructible arise within him.

In this lies the Dignity of Daring…

Only if we venture repeatedly through zones of annihilation can our contact with the Divine Being, which is beyond annihilation, become firm and stable.

The more a man learns to confront wholeheartedly the world which threatens him, the more the depths of the Groundwork of Being Human are revealed to him and the possibilities of new life open for him.



The Only Way Out Is Through
Simple,
Just Hard To Do

Crazy Horse Was More A Mystic

Crazy Horse was more a mystic then he was a warrior and if you take the time to note his accomplishments and capabilities on the battlefield then you can begin to appreciate his depth as a mystic.

He is often cited with one of the great miss-quotes in history: “It is a good day to die” but that is not the whole quote and it can only be appreciated for its true meaning in its entirety and if the truth were known probably only in its original tongue. Uttered in this form it seems to venerate bravery and bravado but the quote itself has nothing to do with bravery or warrior-ship or prowess in battle.

It has everything to do with spiritual completion and soulfulness, readiness and acceptance.

To understand this more fully, one just has to look back at the standard North American/European culture and notice that we look at life as though we were on a time line as if it were something that should be considered as being in a straight line.

If this were true, then it follows that the longer the line, the more we imagine (and imagined is the key word here) that we have lived this life to the fullest, and from that thought it naturally extrapolates that the length of the line defines the depth of the understanding and appreciation of life.

Most of us who have been lulled into our dream-like life styles and can now safely assume we are more complete in all facets of our beingness then those of us who have had shorter experiences then us.

This is all based on the concept that length of time in the trenches breeds wisdom.

Not necessarily so.

We mark our mortality or immortality by sneaking up on it, noticing it only when others pass off the face of this planet. It is only then that we can come and face our fears of the unknown, at their funerals, and then it is ever so briefly. And as we do so, attend the funerals and help perform the rites of passage into the next world and almost as an aside, and then only if we are paying close attention to all the asides, do we notice that we can get a glimpse of ourselves and our life’s experiences as it really is and not necessarily in the linear form we imagine it to be.

For instance, the death of the child is seen as tragic. True enough, but in some cultures they have an approach to death tragedy from a different Point Of View, one that is not nearly so linear but rather circular in prospective. To see this more clearly we have to notice the rites of passage ceremonies that Tribal societies all over this planet have. They have ceremonies that mark the rights of passage deliberately. They are initiation rites of completion and the interesting things is they seem nearly universal and that puberty is the event that is seen as that time when they have finally come full circle and moved into a place of completion, thus the celebration of the rites of passage, from incomplete to complete.

It is said that once past this threshold is passed over, the individual’s observation of life is forever changed, life now becomes an experience that is complete in and of itself and will always be complete and growth can now only be the expansion of that circle outwards out into life.

Something like the concentric rings in a millpond after the stone has dropped.

In Native North American society once the circle or hoop is formed, once the ring is complete, then anytime after that is a good time to die because the person will pass in wholeness, in completeness.

So the message that Crazy Horse spoke was not the message the untrained ear heard often credits him with saying. What he was telling his people was not about being brave or to be full of bravado and courage but to be calm and know that all is as it is supposed to be, life is complete in and of itself and whatever transpires next is not in the hands of the individual but it is all in the hands of The Creator.
Thus they went into the battle with the American 7th Calvary trusting in a power far greater then themselves knowing that what ever the outcome it would be right, and those that would pass on that day did so in completeness and those that stayed to live another day did so at the discretion of The Creator. They simply did what was next to be done.

Crazy Horse’s actual quote translates into English follows: “To day is a good day to die for all the things of my life are present."

The key to the quote comes in understanding that from the native prospective, wisdom and wholeness are not seen as a result of the passage of time necessarily; you don’t have to be old to be wise. But rather it is measure by how one lives each moment, in and to the fullness, by how they enter into each moment, with a sense of completeness by walking lightly.

Elders are respected for many reason but from this prospective it is because they not only are the complete in and of themselves but the have allowed their completeness, their hoop to expand and grow and touch others over their time on the face of this planet, they have walked lightly with fullness and are the carriers of the traditions and the history of their people.

So who is prepared to die?

Only he or she who has lived life fully and walked lightly into each of the next moments they have and will experience, because in doing so, they have accepted their completeness as a spiritual being, I am one with all that is, all that was and all that ever will be.

NDT: when I was researching Zen and the Art of Walking Lightly I came across the concept of Crazy Horse being a mystic ...

Statement of Truth ... One of Life's Little Secrets

Statement of Truth

A Truth Once Gained Is The Loss Of Innocence.

Self-inflicted denial and delusion are like old, warm, woolly sweaters that we wear to protect us from the cold, harsh, hostile world we live in. When truth is revealed, those old familiar sweaters can never properly fit over our souls as they once did.

The innocence of our childlike ignorance is lost the moment we come to understand that we do not rule the universe or any of its inhabitants, no matter how hard we might try.

Much of the human condition of suffering hangs on seeing or not seeing this simple truth; for suffering is a state of mind, not a condition of existence.

To begin a soul-searching journey is to begin to take our rightful place in this universe. There are requirements though, one of which is that we must come to terms with this simple truth or forever be bonded to a hell of our own making.

Freedom from the bonds of our past is freedom from the bonds of our own way of thinking. Thus, freedom from the prison of our own mind is freedom from the process of resistance, from a demon called against.

The walls of the prison of our own mind, and all the processes contained therein, are always made up of us against something.

Our very survival seems to be at stake.


But
Experience Has Taught Me
As I Give Over My Need to be Against, My Need to Hide, Then I Will Naturally Merge with All That Is…
The Way Of Things…


NDT: Extracted from Experience Has Taught Us --- 175 Missing Pieces ... Bright Star Press ... available on Amazon.com

A Message from Chief Arvol Looking Horse

Since he is a very honourable man and a true Holy Person, it's certainly worth everyone's time to read his words and consider them.

Mitakuye (my relatives),

I, Chief Arvol Looking Horse of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota Nation, would like to ask for this time for you to understand an Indigenous perspective in reflection of what has happened in America, what we call "Turtle Island".

For the past six years, my work has concentrated on an effort on uniting the Global community, through a message from our sacred ceremonies in recognizing a day of World Peace and Prayer on June 21st as a time to unite spiritually, each in our own ways of beliefs in the Creator. We have been warned from the messages, passed down from Ancient Prophecies of these times we live in today, but also a very important message of a solution to turn these terrible times around.

To assist you in understanding the depth of this message involves the recognition in the importance of Sacred Sites. It is important that you realize the whole interconnectedness of what is happening today, in reflection of the continued massacres that are occurring on other lands and our own Americas. I have been learning about these important issues of Sacred Sites since the age of 12, upon receiving the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe Bundle and it's teachings.

Our people have strived to protect Sacred Sites from the beginning of time. There needs to be an understanding in the concern of the protection of Sacred Sites that goes deeper than just the issue of Shrines built by humans. Our people have built similar objects and Shrines to identify and to remind the significance in the power of the Sacred Site. We have also witnessed them being destroyed for many decades, but we also realize it is what is underneath them that is important. These places have been violated for centuries and have brought us to this predicament that we are in concerning the unstable Global Level thus far. Look around you, our Mother Earth is very ill from these violations and we are at a brink of destroying a healthy and nurturing survival for generations to come, our children's children.

Our ancestors have been trying to protect our Sacred Site from the continued violations called the Sacred Black Hills in SD, "Heart of Everything that is". Our ancestors never seen this site from a Satellite view, but now that those pictures are available with modern technology, we see that it is in the shape of a heart and when fast forwarded it looks like a heart pumping.

The Dine have been protecting Big Mountain, calling it the liver and now that the coal is depleting, we are suffering and going to suffer more from the extraction of the coal and poison processes used in doing so.

The Aborigines has warned of the contaminating effects on the Corral Reefs from Global Warming, which they see as Mother Earth's blood purifier, our sacred water is being polluted.

The Indigenous people of the Rain Forest relay that the Rain Forest are the lungs and need protection and now we see the Brazilian Government approved the depletion of 50% of this Sacred Site.

The Gwich'in Nation has an issue of oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain, also known to the Gwich'in as "Where the life begins!"

The coastal plain is also the birthplace of many other life forms of Animal Nations. The death of these Animal Nations will destroy Indigenous Nations in this territory.

As these destructive developments continue all over the world, we will witness many more extinct Animal, Plant and Human Nations, because of the misuse of power that mankind has made and their lack of understanding the "balance of life". The Indigenous people warn that these destructive developments will cause havoc globally. There are many, many more Indigenous awareness's and knowledge of Mother Earth's Sacred Sites, connections (Mother Earth's Charkas) to our spirit that will surely affect our future generations. These people are still suffering from this contamination and their livelihood is being destroyed as I write this to you. There needs to be a fast move toward other forms of energy that are safe for all Nations upon Mother Earth. We need to understand the whole picture in the type of minds that are continuing to destroy the spirit of our whole Global Community. Unless we do this, the powers of destruction will overwhelm us.

Our Ancestors foretold that water would someday be for sale. Back then this was hard to believe, since the water was so plentiful, so pure, and so full of energy, nutrition and spirit. Today we have to buy pure water, and even then the nutritional minerals have been taken out; it's just empty liquid. Someday water will be like gold, too expensive to afford. Not everyone will have the right to drink safe water. We fail to appreciate and honour our Sacred Sites, ripping out the minerals and gifts that lay underneath them, as if Mother Earth were simply a resource, instead of the Source of Life itself.

Attacking Nations and having to utilize more resources to carry out the destruction in the name of Peace and elimination is not the answer! We need to understand how all these decisions affects the Global Nation, we will not be immune to it's repercussions. To allow continual contamination of our food and land, is now affecting the way we think. A "disease of the mind" has set in World Leaders and many members of our Global Community, with their understanding that a solution of retaliation and destruction of peoples will bring Peace. In our Prophecies it is told that we are now at the Crossroads, either unite Spiritually as a Global Nation, or be faced with chaos, disasters, diseases and tears from our relatives eyes.

In times of disasters it is sad to say that it is the only time that we unite spiritually, but we must not taint it with anger and retaliation. We are the only species that is destroying the Source of life, meaning Mother Earth, in the name of power, mineral resources and ownership of land, using methods of chemicals and warfare that is becoming irreversible, as Mother Earth is becoming tired and can not sustain any more impacts of war. I ask you to join me on this endeavour. Our vision is for the Peoples of all continents, regardless of their beliefs in the Creator, to come together as one at their Sacred Sites at that sacred moment of what is known as the Summer Solstice of June 21st, to pray and meditate and commune with one another, thus promoting an energy shift to heal our Mother Earth and achieve a universal consciousness toward attaining Peace. As each day passes bringing us to this day of concentration together, I ask the Global Nations to begin a Global effort, in knowing that each and every one of us are making a daily effort in waking to a gratitude of another day, that is gifted to us and begin to remember to give thanks for the Sacred Food that has been also gifted to us by our Mother Earth, so the nutritional energy of medicine can be guided to heal our minds and spirits.

This new millennium will usher in an age of harmony or it will bring the end of life as we know it. Starvation, war and toxic waste have been the hallmark of the Great Myth of Progress and Development that ruled the last millennium. To us, as caretakers of the heart of Mother Earth, falls the responsibility of turning back the powers of destruction. We have come to a time and place of great urgency. The fate of future generations rests in our hands. We must understand the two ways we are free to follow, as we choose the positive way or the negative way -- the spiritual way or the material way. It's our own choice -- each of ours and all of ours. You yourself are the one who must decide. You alone -- and only you -- can make this crucial choice. Whatever you decide is what you'll be, to walk in honour or to dishonour your relatives. You can't escape the consequences of your own decision. On your decision depends the fate of the entire World. You must decide. You can't avoid it. Each of us is put here in this time and this place to personally decide the future of humankind.

Did you think the Creator would create unnecessary people in a time of such terrible danger? Know that you yourself are essential to this World. Believe that!

Understand both the blessing and the burden of that. You yourself are desperately needed to save the soul of this World. Did you think you were put here for something less?

In a Sacred Hoop of Life, where there is no beginning and no ending!


Mitakuye Oyasin,

Chief Arvol Looking Horse
19th Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe


NDT: this arrived on my desk on Earth Day

It was Easy to Keep Clean .... Considered with the Passage of Time

It is written someplace or other that time reveals all to all who have the patience to wait for its passage. But sometimes the pain is too great, sometimes the need to find out Why is so strong that one has to push at life and find the answers more quickly. Some of us are content to wait, and some of us are not.

During the mid 1930's, MAHATMA GANDHI was travelling through India, campaigning for the freedom of INDIA from the British Raj. He had been jailed a decade before by the British, and when he came out of prison in 1933, he brought with him a single broken spoon and bowl. He ate, washed, and basically did everything out of this one set of utensils. Someone in his following noticed that he was doing so and felt that there was great meaning behind what he was doing, and so they began to do so also. This cult grew and grew, and the philosophy of the "ONE BOWLNESS OF LIFE "developed. Now the key here was that no-one had asked Gandhi why he did so. No-one had taken the time to come to the understanding of the Why's and the Where to For’s of his practice. One day, it was reported, one brave soul finally asked why Gandhi was living so to speak from one bowl. Now you have to understand that the group had grown over a period of six or so months to encompass several thousand persons. Gandhi replied to the young student that "It was Easy to Keep Clean".

Nothing great, nothing deep, just a very simple practice that made life easier and straight forward; we tend to over complicate our lives just for the sake of the *supposed* understanding of it. It just muddles and muddies the waters even more, the more we think about, and it has been found that if you set your mind hard enough to work on a problem it will always get an answer, "not necessarily" the appropriate one, but an answer none-the-less, just as that small group in India did when they tried to understand what Gandhi was doing when all they had to do was ask.

It supposedly allows the so called secrets of life to percolate to the surface, to be examined and adapted into the day to "terrible dailyness" of life and its' passage.


NDT: from unpublished work from 1998 ...

An Old Man and His Heart

One day a young man was standing in the middle of the town proclaiming that he had the most beautiful heart in the whole valley.

A large crowd gathered and they all admired his heart for it was perfect. There was not a mark or a flaw in it. Yes, they all agreed it truly was the most beautiful heart they had ever seen. The young man was very proud and boasted more loudly about his beautiful heart.

Suddenly, an old man appeared at the front of the crowd and said, "Why, your heart is not nearly as beautiful as mine."

The crowd and the young man looked at the old man's heart. It was beating strongly, but full of scars, it had places where pieces had been removed and other pieces put in, but they didn't fit quite right and there were several jagged edges. In fact, in some places there were deep gouges where whole pieces were missing. The people stared. How can he say his heart is more beautiful? They thought.

The young man looked at the old man's heart and saw its state and laughed. "You must be joking," he said. "Compare your heart with mine, mine is perfect and yours is a mess of scars and tears." Yes," said the old man, "Yours is perfect looking but I would never trade with you. You see, every scar represents a person to whom I have given my love - I tear out a piece of my heart and give it to them, and often they give me a piece of their heart which fits into the empty place in my heart, but because the pieces aren't exact, I have some rough edges, which I cherish, because they remind me of the love we shared. Sometimes I have given pieces of my heart away, and the other person hasn't returned a piece of his heart to me. These are the empty gouges - giving love is taking a chance. Although these gouges are painful, they stay open, reminding me of the love I have for these people too, and I hope someday they may return and fill the space I have waiting. So now do you see what true beauty is?"

The young man stood silently with tears running down his cheeks. He walked up to the old man, reached into his perfect young and beautiful heart, and ripped a piece out. He offered it to the old man with trembling hands.

The old man took his offering, placed it in his heart and then took a piece from his old scarred heart and placed it in the wound in the young man's heart. It fit, but not perfectly, as there were some jagged edges.

The young man looked at his heart, not perfect anymore but more beautiful than ever, since love from the old man's heart flowed into his.

They embraced and walked away side by side.

Author Unknown


NDT: I stumbled over this years ago and it spoke to me ...

On the Art of Letting Go ... Sky Diving Can Be Fun

12 On Appreciating Deeper Processes - On the Art of Letting Go

EXPERIENCE has taught us that the art of letting go requires us to:

• Identify and name the specific upset, problem, or conflict.

• Reflect upon it from our powerful inner lives.

• Talk about it with safe people (note—begin with: “This reminds me of . . .”). Ask those safe people for feedback.

• Name the core issues, talk about them some more, and ask for more feedback.

• Select, if necessary, an appropriate experiential technique. Use the technique to work on specific conflicts and feelings at a deeper level (regression, confrontation, etc.). Talk and write more about it.

• Meditate and pray on the subject (give God a chance to participate).

• Seriously consider, “how might I benefit from this entire experience of facing my demons?”

• If you still feel incomplete, repeat any or all of the above.

• Then, when you feel ready - let go! Skydiving can be fun.


Skydiving Can Be Fun
The emphasis is on
“Can”


NDT: extracted from Experience Has Taught Us -- 175 Missing Pieces ... Bright Star Press ... available on Amazon.com ...

Macaroni and Cheese .....Safe Life Styles

I had some people in my office the other day and I had to wonder if the Road Less Travelled is Less Travelled for a lot of good reasons.

There are times when people are trying to, at the best of their ability, to put a relationship together and at the same time, not get hurt like they did the last time they attempted to have a relationship ... Oh how the Ghost of Xmas Past Haunts even the strongest of wills.

I for one have no idea how you do that ... that is have a relationship and stay safe ... that simply can not happen ... it doesn't work that way ... Life and love is about risk taking ... so it follows that if I am not going to put my effort into taking the risk rather I put all my effort and energy into trying to stay safe ... then the futility of the interaction will over take me and consume me ... and that seems to be the Ways of Things

I do believe that the finer tastes and flavours of life are lost on the macaroni and cheese life style I choose to live ... just to stay safe.

It seems that people who do this macaroni and cheese safe thing are consigned to their fate of repeating the old ... and living the humdrum ... with no idea that it is them that set it up ... it is them that is the root cause and they actually have the power to do something about it ... if they would wake up to the fact that this life they are having is theirs and it is theirs to do something with ...

It is not some miss fortune that is happening ... Its Life ... try having it ...


171 On Creation and Spiritual Awakening and Acumen
*********************************************************
EXPERIENCE has taught us that having faith that something we could not conceive of would actually help, if only we asked for help. Something we could not even imagine would help us if we asked, and then us seriously considering working with It.

Having faith in something other than just us.

Fascinating concept when we stop and think about it.


Other Than Just Me!


172 On Creation and Spiritual Awakening and Acumen
**********************************************************
EXPERIENCE has taught us that to grow we have to break out of the mould we built to save us from a world we thought would destroy us. We have to come back out into the place we considered so dangerous that it terrorized us.

No longer that lost soul hiding inside trying to grasp at straws and pieces of life’s experience as they drifted by the entrance to our cave.

No longer trying to force the world and what it represents to us into the cubby holes of our minds for safe storage and for our own personal consumption later on, whenever that is.


No Longer At Odds With Everything


NDT notes to myself after a difficult session and extracts from Experience Has Taught Us-175 Missing Pieces published by Bright Star Press and available on Amazon.com

Here I am ... alone ... once again

Here I am ... alone ... once again ... there is a pattern.

I’ve been here dozens and dozens of times in my life. When I get to this place my problem seems to be; I follow my own advice. I do things my way. It simply doesn’t work and I know it; but I do it anyway. I feel like a failure when this happens.

There are times when I feel so desperate lost and alone. There are times when everything seems to overwhelm me. I don’t think I can go on for another moment.

I notice someone walking on this path; he is up ahead of me. This person “seems to know” his way around on the path. I watch ... It’s obvious that he has walked his walk before.

I approach him. We talk. He asks if I need company on my journey. I say “yes.”

There is one thing that I know for sure, I am sick and tired of being sick and tired. When I say “yes” it is a relief, a weight is lifted off my shoulders.

We sit down together and talk some more. I tell him just how desperate lost and alone I feel. He suggests to me that we could quiet our minds if we closed our eyes and turned our thoughts inward. He told me just to let my feelings be what they are; feelings. Don’t analyze. Just notice. Just sensory input about the world I seemed to be lost in. He said “ride them like a magic carpet.” They don’t define you; they simply define the path you will need to follow to get through all this stuff called your life.

It was then that I noticed there were parts of me that I have never ever connected with. Instantly I knew that they had always been there; I just had no idea what they were for or for that matter what I could do with them ... if I did.

As I sat there quietly reflecting I sensed a deeper part of me and as I was to come to know, it was this part of me that remembers the truth of who I am.

My friend told me that we all have that place deep inside. He also said we have a journey we need to make together ... and if I were ready, we need to go.

A simple ok seemed to work and we were up and off on my journey. Then it struck me that we were up and off on my journey ... this person was With me. He told me that With is an important thing ... that we would be practicing it along the journey ... With! I had no idea what he was talking about but ...

As I walked with my new found friend I could feel the various missing pieces of me beginning to come home from their hiding places, and taking their rightful place within me. Those missing parts are beginning to fall into place, as if some giant hand is now beginning to put me, me ... the jigsaw puzzle, back together again.

This felt very good.

NDT: GROUP HANDOUT

January 2004... Feedback from a Client

January 2004

After considerable deliberation and several attempts at putting into words what is most important about what I have experienced with Neil’s guidance, the results are as follows.

Because, even though I am aware of it, I have not let go of all areas of my control and organization issues, I have categorized the “Most Important(s).”

The Most Important Moments

The Most Important Lessons

The Most Important Knowledge Gained

# 1 overall Most Important


Most Important Moments

What I remember as the first remarkable moment of importance was when, after a particularly challenging session with Neil, the fog of fear and clouds of confusion shifted and I had a glimpse of endless blue sky, felt the warmth of radiant sunshine and experienced a moment of incredible peace. Even 10 seconds in this state, made all the painful, emotional work, the struggling to see with closed eyes, the fearful moments of recollection - worthwhile. Even when the next step into a downpour of cold, stinging, wet conditions reminded me that there is so much more intense work to do, I could clearly recall those seconds of sweet blissful serenity and I knew I could, and would experience it again.

Most Important Moments

There was a time in my recovery {only one he asks?} that I thought I could handle something that is strongly suggested to avoid at that particular place in one’s healing. I had let myself be part of a relationship and in typical fashion; I let myself think I could run, when in fact I was barely crawling. Therefore, when it was halted very suddenly, I was devastated. I was sitting at the dining room table crying hysterically, my entire body vibrating as though in seizure, unable to draw a breath of air. At this point the person with whom I had been involved, stood up, turned out the light and walk away from me quietly leaving by the front door. This, of course, doubled the already impossible amount of devastation I was feeling. A mille-second before the point of passing out, due to the inability to draw air into my lungs, I became still and very much aware of a sensation like a hand touching my head ever so gently. In that instant, calmness replaced the hysteria and I knew I was not alone.

An interesting note:

I am presently working once again, on the “With” part of my healing and encountering a resistance. I have not recalled the moment of which I just spoke for about five years. I was pondering the subject of “Most Important” then set it aside to return my attention to the challenging subject of “With” . In the split second between the two bodies of work, the memory of that feeling of being touched by the Hand of God presented it’s self like an oasis in the middle of a dessert. As Neil would say Imagine That!

Most Important Lessons

Without a doubt, one of the most valued lessons I learned from my sessions with Neil, is how to clear the storage shelves in that “old back shed” of my mind. There was stuff there that I had been saving as long as 40 years. And by the time I learned how to deal with this stuff the selves were just about collapsing. The process of going back and remembering, then looking at and feeling the item, followed by seeing the affects it’s had on my life was monumental. But when the light of understanding switches on and I can track how the path of the issue influenced and directed my path, the ability to discard the burden and alter the power I permitted it to hold over me is liberating.

The same applies to things told to me by the people I listened to as a child. Some of those teachings do not apply to me today {and in some cases did not or should not have applied to me back then}. By tracing the origin and observing its affect, I can re-assess its value and decide whether or not it is healthy for me now. This process facilitates change. And change is good!

The Most Important Knowledge Gained

• Guilt, Regret, Deceit and hate {fear}cause “dis-ease"
• We cannot change the past.
• Our lives are just as they are meant to be.
• Surrendering to our Higher Power is Liberating.


The #1 overall Most Important is…….

I accept that every aspect and event of my life occurs as a necessary part of a bigger plan about which I do not, cannot and do not need to know or understand.
It is not good or bad, right or wrong.

It simply is!~

C
January 2004
Victoria

There's more............



There's more..............

Neil,
After writing, re-writing, reading, re-reading, printing and re-printing and another reading I have a few truths to tell you.

1 - I wrote this in the manner I did because I think I’m good at writing, I like to put it out there and hopefully someone will critique it.

2 - I am trying to please you.

3 - I’m not entirely sure I know what is most important to me, but these things have made a remarkable difference in my life.

Love,

C


NDT: this came via email . in January of 2004 ...

HEALING THE BODY

HEALING THE BODY

James Joyce wrote of one character, "Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body."

A B C's of "Spiritual" healing

a) Meditation practice and its progressive tendency begins with techniques for bringing us to an awareness of our bodies.

b) This is especially important in a culture such as ours, which has neglected physical and instinctual life.

c) In meditation, we can slow down and sit quietly, truly staying with whatever arises.

d) With awareness, we can cultivate a will¬ingness to open to physical experiences without struggling against them, to actually live in our bodies.

e) As we do so, we feel more clearly its pleasures and its pains.

f) Because our acculturation teaches us to avoid or run from pain, we do not know much about it.

g) To heal the body we must study pain.

h) When we bring close attention to our physical pains, we will notice several kinds.

i) We see that sometimes pain arises as we adjust to an unaccustomed sitting posture.

j) Other times, pains arise as signals that we're sick or have a genuine physical problem.

k) These pains call for a direct response and healing action from us.

Now the complicated Stuff

However, most often the kinds of pains we encounter in meditative attention are not indications of physical problems. They are the painful, physical manifestations of our emotional, psychological, and spiritual holdings and contractions. Reich called these pains our muscular armor, the areas of our body that we have tightened over and over in painful situations as a way to protect ourselves from life's inevitable difficulties. Even a healthy person who sits somewhat comfortably to meditate will probably become aware of pains in his or her body. As we sit still, our shoulders, our backs, our jaws, or our necks may hurt. Accumulated knots in the fabric of our body, previously undetected, begin to reveal themselves as we open. As we become conscious of the pain they have held, we may also notice feelings, memories, or images connected spe-cifically to each area of tension.

As we gradually include in our awareness all that we have previously shut out and neglected, our body heals. Learning to work with this opening is part of the art of meditation.

Spiritual Principles for Recovery

Initially, we have to focus on honesty, open-mindedness, willingness, humility, and acceptance.
The practice of the Principle Of Honesty starts with admitting the truth about our life and continues with the practice of honesty on a daily, moment to moment, basis.

When we say, "I'm in recovery" it may be the first truly honest thing we've said in a long, long time.

We begin to be able to be honest with ourselves and, consequently with other people eventually.

Change and recovery doesn’t happen overnight.

If I've been thinking about acting out on my stuff I need to ask myself; have I shared it with my sponsor, my therapist or my group; have I told anyone else or am I still keeping secrets?
To practice the Principle Of Acceptance we must do more than merely admit that we have problems.

When we accept our problems for what they are, we accept that they are not the working definition of self.

When we accept our problems for what they are, we feel a profound inner change that is underscored by a rising sense of hope.

We also begin to feel a sense of peace.

We come to terms with our obsessions, compulsions and addictions in our recovery processes, and with this we come to appreciate the meaning and comprehend the realities these eccentricities have in our lives.

We don't dread a future of recovery practices, of attending meetings, of interpersonal contact, of doing step work; instead, we begin to see recovery as a precious gift, and the work connected with it as no more trouble than other routines of life.


NDT The young man in the picture is from Vissershok School in the Western Cape of South Africa

A Friend Has Pass --- Ode to a Friend

I had not seen Tom in years ... We had not spoken in years either ... I had made several efforts to track him down but that was to no avail...

He was somewhere in southern Florida ... and I was on the west coast of Canada ... but through the process of a "reunion organizing committee" I came to learn that I had only missed him by a hair's breath ... He has just passed off the face of the planet ... it was sudden ... I'll be finding out the details later in the month after a fellow reunionite visits southern Florida and gets the details ...

It is with sadness at first that I recalled Tom ... I think it was more that I missed him ... he just slipped past me ... that I had been close to finding him ... and that sadness passed quickly ... it was then the old stories just floated to the surface of my mind ... the good times we had together and now for as many days these stories keep coming to the surface. Smiles rather than tears. Some good laughs too.

I can remember the names of the kids we worked with at the Valley ... some of the antics we got ourselves into ... the sojourns to Toronto ... good God we had fun ...

I miss him ... I just never thought he would slip away quickly like that ... in the back of my mind I hoped that we still had time for one more get together ... one more bullsh_t session ... a time to let down our hair ... but and here is the counter weight to all that ... we had fun ... and for that I will always remember ...

As we used to say at Twin Valleys School ...

Thanks For Sharing ...

Take care Tom you're missed


NDT: ode to a friend ...

Self: I have a problem. Dream: here let me show you

Self: I Have A problem ...

Dream: Here Let me Show You

Dream One ... I come out of my work place and I can't find my car so I can leave.

Dream Two ... I am at the first tee and the ball keeps on falling off the tee and I can't get into the game ..


NDT: Hugh Prather's quote ... I Touched the Earth the Earth Touched Me ... and a clients Dream journal...

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

Born Into It

My House, I planted that tree in 1952





My School, Balacava Street School










We are born into a life.

The life is waiting there.

We don't pick it, we stepped into it: parents, first-born or last, that part of the country, this part of the world, and our appearance, the efficiency of our brain.

Then comes a time when we realize that we also have choices. So we start the task of building our own life - an impossible task if you consider the number of days we are given to complete it since our awakening to this statement of fact.
*************************************************************
I was a single child born into a post WWII home in a small town. My mom and dad worked for the local utilities company. That’s where they met. After I arrived on the scene my mom stayed home with me for about five years.

My mom went back to work when I was five, but only after some discussion with my father, because after all, no wife of his was going to work. But she did, and life went on. Baby-sitters were the order of the day, especially during the summer months. We lived in a two-bedroom house on a street full of two and three bedroom homes, all built posthaste at the end of the war. Our town had a Saturday market (Horton/Manitoba Street).

There were no large supermarkets to speak of until the A&P Store opened on what was once a park and then all the other major stores followed and the town was transformed from sleepy rural to quiet backwater. The focus of the townspeople’s lives centered around what happened on the railways, the town’s major employer. (This photo is of the New York Central Railstation taken from the parking lot of the now defuncted A&P Store.)



There were seven different railways as I recall. Who was being bumped on which seniority list or who was or was not on which spare board were all current topics of discussion over coffee or over clotheslines on Mondays. Monday was always washday. That was just the way things were.

The local newspaper measured big events, ‘who’ was who and ‘how’ they were doing was reported weekly in the Hatched, Matched and Dispatched column on Saturday. You could always find out who was visiting whom and who was away on holiday and where they could afford to go. It must have been a burglar’s fondest dream.
*************************************************************


However, and this is the significant part: it is less important for us to complete the task of building our life than it is to recognize that we must begin.. Remember it is not a race.


NDT:I extracted part of this from my Step Four and Step Five Guide ... Publisher Bright Star Press and available at Amazon.com ... this was really the start of my journalling ... someone said ... tell your story and this is how I started it ... sans photos of course ... Lynne and were visiting there in 2004 and she took a ton of photos ...

On Spiritual Recovery

The Spiritual Recovery process has some very predictable “need to’s” in it.

I caution here; there is a difference between “want to’s” and “need to’s” and the vast majority of us tend to lean on the side of “want to’s” until our life becomes so unmanageable and painful that ... we’ll do anything, even do the "need to’s” just to get by.

“Need to’s” become a very important term in the process, they are the grandchildren of things that got missed in early childhood. In the Spiritual Recovery process if you forget or miss or don’t honour them, then it may seem that all is for naught. All sorts of things happen. Anxiety, anger, fear, neurotic behaviors, phobias, various addictions can and do kick up and we go out as it is termed and do research or whatever the current buzz phrase is for acting out. The list is quite extensive.

There is a particular ordering in the acquiring of these "need to’s” and it is likely to be different for each of us. It really does not matter how we got them, but it does seem to matter how we process them.

I.e., in the various literature sources for 12 Steps it is pointed out that not until the steps are done and done in order and done thoroughly will results happen ... this is true for whatever the approach you choose to try:

It is something like trauma first aid. It does not matter how the injury was caused, but it matters immensely how the patient is treated and in what order the treatment is applied.
If the proper treatment follows the 3 B’s –
Breathing, Bleeding, and Broken.
Then following the proper order tends to keep the patient alive.
Of course there are exceptions, and it is understood that no rule is fixed.
... But ...
It is a simple pattern and it works.


Occam’s Razor

NDT ... this is a handout for group on the week of 6th April ...

The Essence of the Change and Recovery Process - Extracted From Experience Has Taught Us - 175 Missing Pieces

52 On Seeing Simple Truths ... Into Blind Spots

EXPERIENCE has taught us that the essence of the change and recovery process is the absolute necessity of seeing what it is that we have been blind to most of our lives.

There are many reasons for this.

Those people who work almost exclusively with recovery in treatment centers have found that, before individuals are really stable enough to be placed back in the real world and make it, they must in some way come to terms with the hidden demons they carry. That does not necessarily mean coming to a resolution, but simply acknowledging reality as it is.


Seeing What I Am Blind To
 

53 On Seeing Simple Truths ... Into Blind Spots

EXPERIENCE has taught us that: Working a program or a process someone else’s way rather than our own way, and Following and demonstrating discipline (which has its roots in discipleship) to a place where we have actually sat down with another living, breathing, human being in the presence of our Maker and revealed all, creates that opportunity to begin to notice that:


(A) We Have Blind Spots
(B) There Is Something In Them
(C) Whatever Is In Those Blind Spots May Be A Major Contributing Factor To Our Experience Of Life Being Unpleasant. 



54 On Seeing Simple Truths ... Into Blind Spots

EXPERIENCE has taught us that the comprehension of the ins and outs of the recovery process derives from the premise of the hidden demons running the show, and that any or all hope of change and/or recovery is lost on the unhealthy dependence upon what we know.

Know this; recovery is subjective, not objective.

It is the appreciation of the experience, not the knowledge of what the experience was, or is, or is supposed to be.

Wisdom arises out of an experience with, not the spectator’s understanding of, the experience. The understanding of an experience can flow naturally from the experience of with. There is a natural order to this, and the secret is being a participant rather than a spectator.

If we cannot see into our own blind spots, it follows that we cannot see the real monsters that control our lives.

In healing and recovery we cannot see while we are busy sitting on our backsides. Only by becoming pro-active in our own processes do we get to see into our blind spots.


Statement Of Truth: I Can’t Make Things Different By Keeping Them The Same

 

55 On Seeing Simple Truths ... Into Blind Spots

EXPERIENCE has taught us that the very nature of the recovery process is to get to a place where things are seen and experienced differently. A place where we can allow Spirit to become a willing part of our internal process of integration and healing.

The very definition of therapy is to make the unknown known, thus returning choice to the individual.

A Course in Miracles defines a miracle as something that releases the past in the present and gives us back our future.

Within the therapeutic context this “miraculous” definition of healing is also the working definition of grief.


Every Problem Is A Spiritual Problem
And
Every Solution Is A Spiritual Solution

NDT ...Extracted From Experience Has Taught Us - 175 Missing Pieces --- Bright Star Press ...Victoria BC Second edition available via Amazon.com

If God’s not lost then why am I out looking for Him???

It was some time ago now, but one Sunday morning I sat bolt upright in bed, it was the 28th of March 2000, it was a sleep-in kind of a day … the title and the preface was there simply starring back at me, so there I sat in my house coat very busily writing out these thoughts as the sprang to mind. This is one of the writing projects that if I get the time I will expand it.

First and most profound …

If God’s not lost then why am I out looking for Him???

That one set me back on my heals … I mean … wow … what preponderance. There are several corollaries to this and they are as follows:

First … it also struck me that most of us are so busy trying to find our mythical centers. We miss the fact that we are on a pendulum like journey through both time and space. This journey causes us to pass through our centers only from time to time. Now that was important because it follows that most of the time … we are actually some place other than our centers. That is the way of things … a necessary definition of the journey. The term from time to time is only a point of reference; it is not a condition of existence. So most of the time is not one of those occasions or places when we are there at our centers; so it follows that if we are in fact on the journey that we think we are then we are not supposed to be at our idealized centers most of the time. If we were supposed to be there then it follows that our maker in all his or her wisdom would have placed us there … but He didn’t and here we are roaming through the universe in search of something that is not lost … Is it possible that we are just ignorant of the both the journey and the destination.

Second … Now that does not mean our center is unavailable to us, it simply means that we are not there in it at this moment. This is an important concept … Most feel or think that being at the center is the ideal … the thing that needs to happen for bliss and spiritual fulfillment to come our way … but what if that is a false myth of enormous proportions.

Third …What also struck me was that I could with very little effort communicate with my center by simply applying the Steven Spielberg concept of “ET phone home”. Just how you phone home is your particular conundrum, but my suggestion is, keep it simple.

Fourth ... Skiing, tennis, sex and skydiving are all richer ways to reach your center … where as prayer … meditation … or journaling are the simpler …my suggestion is to facilitate the basic idea of Keep It Simple… but I have jumped from perfectly good airplanes and survived to tell the tale.

How you do this connecting up stuff is your problem.

It really matters not.

Simply doing it, how is not so important as just get on with doing it ... by writing, thinking, wondering, risk taking, meditating, running or being in service and the list is endless. It is not what you are doing it is why you are doing it ... that is all that is important.

You don’t have to agree or even like those four thoughts, just work it to the best of your ability on any given day, then leave them go. That is the only rule. Give it some of your conscious mind’s time each day … that is all … then give it the space to go to work for you on its own ... on the deeper side of things ... in a place where your ego does not have access

Myself, I like writing, but that’s me.

I journal and journal and journal and that process gives me a sense of soulful satisfaction that really gives me that sense of connectedness to all that is …

The particular thought that got me going on this tangent was:

Change - real change - comes from the inside out. It does not come from hacking at the leaves of our attitudes and our behaviors with quick fix personality techniques. It comes from striking at the heart - the fabric of our thought, our fundamental, essential belief structures, which give definition to our character and create the lens through which we see the world. It becomes important for us to support within ourselves what we want to become, and we can do so by our interacting with others and formally supporting in them what they want to become.


NDT taken from a decade old journal ...

INTO THE LIGHT --- The Author’s forward

This is my tenth attempt at penning to paper my thoughts that accompanied me on my journey. This effort is really a twenty nine (29) or so year effort and overview of what I had to do (for me) to sort things through. So I could get on with me being me. Hopefully it will provide the opportunity for others to do the same for themselves.

What I needed to learn about ... was the monster that consumed me in a covert sort of a way. It consumes people who don’t even know they are being consumed. Most are too busy struggling with the symptoms to really notice what the hell they are up against or for that matter, knowing what it is that is really happening to them.

One of the symptoms of the disease is that it often tells the beholder of the disorder that they are perfectly fine, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Alcoholics and Addicts are the best/worst examples of this concept.

Codependency is an ugly thing. It respects no one, not social class, financial status, security, skin colour nor gender. One sure signs that this is alive and operating in someone’s life is they will often profess loudly “Not Me, No I Won’t, It Won’t Happen to Me, I Don’t Have A Problem.”

The Best Working Definition of Codependency is: I live my life adjusting to someone else's problems ... and those adjustments I've made so I could survive being me are now killing me, sometimes slowly and in some cases very quickly.

It consumes people’s lives ... it has so many faces that it is hard not to be confronted by it everywhere you turn.

This book is about what you do with it because if you don’t it will do something with you.

Every addict /alcoholic is a co-dependent but not every co-dependent is an addict/alcoholic.

It is a soul robbing thing.


NDT ... extracted from the soon to be published ... INTO THE LIGHT ... Bright Star Press ...

The Most Important Thing(s) I Have Learned So Far

The most important thing I have learned in doing my life and paying attention as I did it is:

When I come to the edge of my known universe, when I come to the end of where the light shines for me. It is from this point on that I have to be a risk taker. It’s when I have to go blindly off into something or someplace I have never seen or been before. Of course the alternative is possible. I can shrink away from moving forward—I can shrink away from exploring God’s Gift.

What I have discovered is: when I step off into my darkness and it is the darkness of my unknown, it is then that I grow. It is then that I come to know. It is then that I notice the light.


God Will Either
Provide Something Solid For Me To Stand On
When I Step Out Into My Unknown
... Or ...
I Will Be Taught How To Both
Build Wings And To Fly
On the Way Down

NDT: extracted from the soon to be published ... INTO THE LIGHT ... Bright Star Press ... I have no idea where this thought came from ... it is not mine ... It arrive on my desk one time in one of those emails that people pass around but for me it was profound and I never let go of the thought ...

True Confessions of a Therapist

There doesn't appear to be a way for me to give someone else what I know. All I can do is help create opportunities whereby they might see "different" for themselves.

When I do attempt to give someone else what I know or what I think I know and then make the fatal mistake of believing I have succeeded in passing on this piece of wisdom, I often discover I have not. I have often discovered to my own chagrin that by thinking I have succeeded in keeping someone from going through one more private, painful little hell, I haven't. And the long run always proves me wrong. That can be disheartening at times. It seems that it is a universal rule that they have to go through that private, painful, little hell for themselves. It is as if it was necessary, a rites of passage, part of the 'deal' of being here, it needed to be done - it seems as simple as that.

So …

The truth of the matter seems to be that each person has to learn 'it' for themselves and usually experience it over and over again before the message is ferreted out and understood at the deepest levels of the psyche.

And.

They seem to be able to do this better when I have stepped out of the shadow of my good-guy helper role and am just here as a facilitator.

So …

It's obvious to me now that many of the problems I have to face in my life are a result of how things were when I was growing up. This seems to be true for just about everybody else too!

It follows then, that my life's conundrum is:

So I am here spending the rest of my life suffering from personality traits I never really asked for.
Where is the justice in that?
Well, there isn't any ... is there!
But on the other hand I was never promised justice was I.

So ...

It seems that healing, health and life style are all really the same thing.

They are all simply habits. Habits that will, one way or another, develop along the way; learned as actions and/or reactions that should become involuntary or habitual at some point. Habitual, and hopefully, helpful towards discerning my life and what to do with it now that I am in the middle of it.

That's The Theory Anyway!

So it seems that there are more complex conundrums to solve as I move deeper into my journey. It seems that I have to overcome my original "involuntaryisms" - habits - the ones that I picked up early in life to save me from a fate that nearly scared me to death. The ones that helped me originally survive 'til now. I still carry them with me and use them daily.

Actually I trip over them now more then I use them but they are and were the habits that I really trust.

Here is the problem: These habits are the 'grandchildren' of those habits I used to survive, in the face of overwhelming evidence that I either wouldn't survive the next few moments or shouldn't have survived those few moments but did.

These 'grandchildren' of my survival traits are all cloaked in a strange aura that seems so inviting and strangely familiar but I am learning that they are dangerous. They seem to work best only in my mind.

What I am coming to learn is that when I (do) attempt to put those old habits into practice in reality ... they hurt, and cause pain for, both others and me.

But they are so familiar, and they are my habits.

NDT abstracted and adapted from Into The Light ... Bright Star Press ...

(Second) On the Subjects of Trust and Pursuit of Accuracy

Some people accept what is told to them as long as they feel they are gaining something.

They are complacent.

They tend to trust the word of so-called professionals, or those with more education, experience or notoriety than themselves. Instead of learning what they can about the subject, they simply swallow what is fed to them.

Some call this trust when, in fact, it is gullibility.

Trust is earned, not assumed.

Others take the time and make the effort to explore the validity and the authenticity of information on subjects with which they are not familiar.

This is not a matter of distrust.

It is simply confirming the accuracy of information that affects them, when the subject is out of the range of their own knowledge.

If Jack is offended by Jill verifying his information, Jack likely lacks confidence in the accuracy of his information.

NDT: This was written by my friend C.D. (Carol who travels in Ruby)it came from her journaling ... but we ... she and I ... used her 5 principles as the base line for Zen and the Art of the 5 Principles ... published by Bright Star Canada

I Leaned on the Metaphorical Door

As I leaned on this Metaphorical Door I discovered that The Nature of this Journey is to reach more deeply into me, to search out what I have never examined before.

I also started to travel with others. We banded together ... well sort of. They were dealing with the same issues of awakening I was.

In this crowd of people I had bumped into was somebody who had been on the journey for sometime.

We hooked up ... He seemed to know his way... He had some interesting and helpful suggestions about making the journey. Basically what he said was follow me ... So I listened ... for the first time in my life ... I listened ... and I followed along ... sometimes reluctantly but I followed ...

First was to Journal. He told me the trick to the whole thing was to reflection upon the reflections. What the hell did that mean?

It is not so important what you learn ... what is important is your experience in the process of learning ... that is the important bit. He told me that if I did this deeper appreciation of the journey and became less concerned with the destination and who it was that I thought I was and then at the same time reached into the deeper places in me, then I Will Find More.

He got serious here ... he cautioned that it may not be the More I thought I would find, but what it will be the More that is the Necessary More. The Necessary More phrase puzzled me for a while but ... I learned something from my friend: I Learned that the Necessary Moree is the essense of the change and recovery process and it is an absolute necessity for me to see what it is that I had been blind to for most of my life.

The Necessary More will, in fact, be made up of lost bits and pieces, thoughts, memories and emotions that have gone on to form habits, insights, principles behaviours and all my defense strategies. They are the things that I had come to depend on, sometimes overtly but mostly covertly, sometimes in a healthy fashion, and sometimes not.

Self was now becoming An Interesting Place To Be.

So I leaned on The Door ... Ever So Slightly and It Opened ...



Am I Dreaming Now?

I’m not so sure that I know whether or not I am … whatever is happening to me seems to be both very real and very surreal, all at the same time.

Before me is that bridge … I had seen it so many times in my dreams and now I am standing right there before it.

Where will it take me?


NDT Extracted and adapted from Zen and the 5 Principles of the Journey ... Publisher Bright Star Canada ... Oh Yes thanks Larry B wherever you are ... smile

First Steps

“I am alone and my world is a dangerous place”. There are times when I feel I am so desperate, lost and alone.

There were times when life was so heavy I could not imagine going forward at all. Moving through these heavy circumstances taught me things. What I learned was to cope with “lonely” and I learned to deal with “abandoned and empty.” To hide in lain sight.

There were times when my normal was defined by the depths of my Hopelessness...

I developed little tricks of the trade along the way just to get by on, especially when life was cloudy, grey and moving toward black. I found that I could depend on these tricks of the trade. (Sort of The Artful Dodger of the 20th Century). All these tricks of the trade had one thing in common; they hailed from outside of me. I never really noticed this for the longest time. They were things I had been taught by others who were experiencing their lives in about the same fashion I was. These tricks of the trade had odd qualities about them and I firmly believed I needed them. In fact, as I look back on it now, they were almost "magical”. And the key word in that statement is almost. They were things like activities, substances, rituals that I could rely on ... just to get through to the end of my day. They were there for me when nothing else was.

They worked beautifully or so I thought ... after all I did get through. I was also noticing that some of those people I was associating with were not making it. Their little tricks of the trade took them off the face of the planet ... figuratively, and in some cases literally.

It was back there someplace a decade or four ago when I first heard that I could look inward for solutions. I didn’t find any instant fixes but oddly enough I began to notice things.

One of the things I noticed was that I in fact had faith; this surprised me because in my opinion I had been forsaken by all that is and I was totally and completely on my own. I was the only person or only thing I could trust. Why? Simple ... because that worked for me when nothing else was there ... but ...it did so only Temporarily ... What I discovered was this faith thing painted with a far broader brush stroke then I imagined.

As I looked within I found myself acknowledging that the old faith and belief system was not all it was cracked up to be ... “Temporarily” was becoming a four letter word. Those tricks of the trade really did not work all that well. It was about then that I bumped into The Door for the first time. It just sat there and waited for me. I had the suspicion that it had been waiting all the while. It was about then when I penned “There Is A Door” ... It was about then that I began my journey into places and into parts of me that were foreign to me. This Door, I discovered, was just there waiting for me to give over my fear and to place my faith in a new direction ... Within ...

I began to notice the insanity of my old beliefs, of how and where I had placed my faith. I also noticed something else that was very important. I, like everyone else had faith ... It was there from the get go. It was as if we are all issued X Amount of Faith each day and it was up to us to determine how to use it. Life now had choice—Go Exploring into the Great Unknown or Hang On For Dear Life and Hope I was not going to be destroyed by the process I was born into. I had done the latter for years. I hid in plain sight. I was about to begin to try the former ... to search into the Adventure of Exploring. I had a choice now. A choice I never really knew I had. A choice of how I wanted to use my faith ... Within or Without ... I began to lean on That Door to see if it would open for me.

Experience Has Taught Me
That I am out of control
And
I know I am not happy.
I know that my beliefs have not and cannot make me happy.
I know I must find “different” to be happy.
Where will I look?
What will I see?
And who will help me?

NDT ... PS the eagle was in Lynne's back yard tree in Delta