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...

Choices

 

You Can Hang On To All The Old Ways of Doing Things.

The Essence of That Is

You Give Your Allegiance To Teaching And Re-Enforcing Fear;

or

Start The Process Of Letting Go.

By Doing So It Follows Naturally That You Will Begin To Teach And Re-Enforce The Concept Of Self-Love.

Remember This

It's Only A Process

And

It Undoes Years Of Training.

Fearfulness is An Idea

Fearfulness is an idea and so are you. In perception, everything you experience is an idea.

As you begin to explore your life, it is important to free yourself from the ideas that burden you or inhibit you. There is no right way to free yourself, but in every case the first step is to be willing to look clearly at your perception of how you think things are.

When you can honestly see the effect of a habit, substance or concept, you can offer to the universe your willingness to eliminate it from your life.

Some have used the words "addiction, obsession or compulsion" to describe something their ego believes it must have or do, in order to survive.

This is a useful concept to understand. It applies not only to the physical substances but to behaviours, things, people and beliefs.

All addictions, obsessions or compulsions are imprisoning. It must be remembered that it is not the thing itself that binds you, but your belief in IT and your ego believes that IT is necessary for you to have so you can continue on in life’s journey.

When you attempt to overcome an addiction or obsession or compulsion through sacrifice, by only giving up the thing while retaining the belief that IT is a necessity for you to have faith in to do for you what it has always done, you are not free.

Freedom is attained when you become willing to accept that the thing itself is unnecessary, and your faith in IT is released and turned back into the universe to find ITs way home. At the same time you become willing to search out a thing called spiritual and become involved.

If you are willing to be free, then the Pattern you are living, working in conjunction with a Higher Power, will reveal freedom to you. IT may come in strange ways from places you would least expect it, but it will be shown to you. IT will be yours to act on and you will know what to do and how to do IT, probably even where to do IT; when to do IT is always left up to you. You may not like what is revealed but there IT will be staring back at you waiting for you to do something with IT.

An imprisoning idea is any idea that inhibits your enjoyment of your abundance and or the expression of your creativity or the full experience of God's joy.

Your abundance or the expression of your creativity or the full experience of God’s joy may seem different, but their effect is the same.

Experience Has Taught Me That

Sooner or Later

I will have to deal with the concept that:

“IT Is Waiting For Me

To Do Something With IT.”

Things I Have Learned While I Sat & Listened

When the trauma in life has been hidden away from our conscious mind for prolonged periods of time, what I have found is that the integration of new information about the past is a deeply disorganizing and disorienting exercise to attempt. Basically it plays hell with my self esteem, that much I know is true.


Mother Nature "knows" when to shut people down who are caught between the rock and the hard place ... Festinger’s theory on Cognitive Dissonance. She also knows when it is time to open people up again, to begin the process of reintegration, to open up those things to the light of day that have been compartmentalized at great cost over the years. It is important to understand that the reopening and shining the light of day into the darker and deeper reaches of the past can be a painful thing to do.

One of my greatest eureka’s came when I noticed that as people recovered their own feelings, their sense of their humanity, they also came to a place of realization about the gravity and the grief from their past that has not been dealt with, and just how inhumane it was to have been them for prolonged periods of time. This was big for me. It is during this period of recovery that people often come to a greater sense of unhappiness and of sadness. This can be very painful and is referred to in the recovery material as the Original Pain work. The end product of recovery is that the individual ends up with more of themselves available to have a life with, with more of their truth(s) at their finger tips, and with more opportunities for an authentic and satisfying life style.


this observation came overtime ... lots of it ...NDT

The Laws of Paradox at Work!

Ask yourself whether you are happy? Then notice that when you do, you cease to be so ... The Laws of Paradox at work!

A long time ago long before I ever considered writing these lines, I made an interesting discovery. At the time it was more of an observation then discovery. It took all the intervening time for me to realize I had made a discovery, I suppose it was the slowest epiphany on record. What I also discovered was that most people in some way shape or form have been aware of it since the dawn of time. Yet, I think the word discovery is appropriate, because even though well known, I had never come across it described or theoretically explained by the relevant branch of higher learning, which in my case happens to be psychology.

So, directly and indirectly I spent the intervening 25 or so years, nearly a quarter century, investigating this elusive phenomenon, directly or indirectly in my practice of psychotherapy.

What I had noticed a long time ago was that happiness is not something that happens at random fault.

This thing has form and it follows rules and they seem to be:

o Happiness does not happen because of good luck or because the fickle finger of fate picks you out for some grand event. No one is special.

o Happiness is not something that can be purchased nor can it be controlled or for that matter caused to occur on command by some grand authority.

o Happiness particularly does not depend on the world about us, although conversely the world about us can affect some of the various outcomes of it.

o Happiness seems to be more an interpretation of the world both about us and within us, all taken in some sort of strange mix or recipe that is constantly changing and is difficult to replicate.

o Happiness, in fact, seems to be a condition that we must be prepared for, that we must cultivate, and then be prepared, if necessary to de¬fend, but not from a place of unity but rather from a place of deep privacyas an individual.

o It also seems that people who learn to work with inner experience(s) will in fact be able to determine the quality of their lives as it relates to having or not having happiness, which, it seems is as close as any of us can come to being happy.

o It also seems a given that we cannot reach happiness by consciously searching for it. The very effort of trying to search for it seems to defeat our every effort to have or possess it.

o Happiness cannot be owned; it can only be experienced.

o Happiness seems to be the process of being fully involved with every detail of your life, subjectively not objectively.

o The key statement in describing the process of being involved in life seems to be as completely as possible, and completely as possible does not seem to depend on any opinion or definition of what is good or bad or how those cognitive markers are held in the mind of the beholder. Just because you are prepared to fight to the death for your beliefs doesn’t mean they are true.

o Happiness seems to occur because of the intensity of the involvement with life and not in the outcomes that intensity seems to want to provide so that it could be easily seen and judged by others.

o Degree of intensity of the involvement necessary to induce happiness will vary from individual to individual as well as situation-to-situation. Thus it follows that degrees of intensity i.e. very intense to mildly intense is not a marker that can determine the outcome of creating happiness. It is just a necessary factor that varies from time to time.

o The Laws Of Paradox seems to effect the outcome of having some or not; for instance: don't aim for it because the Laws Of Paradox will tend to cause you to increase the size and shape of the target you have set for yourself and then at the same time cause you to miss with greater frequency. Something like Chinese handcuffs, the harder you try the more difficult it becomes.

o Happiness and success cannot be pursued for their own sake.

o Happiness and success, to be most effective must sneak up from behind and envelop us ... It is something that happens to us while we are busy doing something else … as the inadvertent, unintentional after-effect of our efforts to simply get on with the business of being ourselves and by doing whatever is next simply because it is there and needs to be done. Then this seems to need to be taken into consideration with the effort made by the individual to be willing to work in the shadow of his or her spiritual self and then deliberately attempting to work with the spiritual forces of the Greater Way of Things.

Again paradox. The Art of Trying Not to Try.

So how can we reach this elusive goal that cannot be attained by a direct route? My practice and practices of the past 25 or so years has convinced me that there is a way.

It is a circuitous path

Of going nowhere the long way

In search of someone who was not lost

And there all along …

You,

And

It can only begin

With a willingness

By the participant

To want to make the journey.

Feeling Like You Are In Charge Of Life

Feeling like you are in charge of life … having a sense of control … is never easy … sometimes it’s painful.

In the long run, Optimal Experiences can add up to A Sense Of Self and more importantly to A Sense Of Mastery Of Self. These are different places in the psyche and when they are in a healthy ratio … very complementary.

The sense of Optimal seems to be influenced directly by the sense of, and again, the degree of or intensity of, one’s participation in life.

The participation and intensity factor being a determin¬ing factor in the recipe for contentment. Again paradox, because participation in combination with intensity seems to be as close as we can come to actually having happiness in any objective form.

Through my practice I tried to understand and appreciate as exactly as possible how people felt when they most enjoyed themselves, and more importantly, why they were enjoying themselves. My practice involves people from all walks of life, some who could be considered as "experts in their field" … artists, athletes, musicians, chess masters, mothers and heart surgeons, people who seemed to spend their time in precisely those activities they preferred and in the fashion that they preferred. After listening to their accounts of their lives … what it was like for them to do what they were doing, it became apparent that for some, happiness and optimal experiences were interchangeable and formed the basis for an individual’s innate ability to be in sync with the deeper, unseen, spiritual or esoteric aspects of life … The Way Of Things.

There is a quirk that comes along about here in my observations that those who seem to possess this facility of being connected to the Greater Way Of Things do not make it an overpowering overt practice of attempting to be connected. It seems that they just get on with what they are doing, in fact, it seems that whatever it is that they are doing hardly ever gets noticed as being the spiritual but the sense of it seems to be that spirit is ever present in what ever it is that they are doing. For some reason they have it or it has them. This facility is considered by mystics and theologians as the essence of life and sometimes referred to in esoteric literature as the processes of the soul.

An Optimal Experience can be described as that state of mind, body and soul in which the individual is so involved in what he or she is doing that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so amenable that individuals will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of the experience of doing the thing.

Conversely: An addiction is an activity or substance we repeatedly crave to experience, and for which we are willing if necessary to pay a price or negative consequence .

There are pretenders to the Optimal Experience and by this I mean that they don’t seem to have depth of heart. Those who seem to fall under the category of pretender are often defined as being addicted, or being compulsive or obsessive. They seem to be striving for the Optimal Experience but without the sense of soul or without a perception of the spiritual connection. Again Horvath’s definition of addiction rears its head, because it is almost the right recipe but … the soul or the heart aspect is missing. The motivational factor of why we do this … searching out the optimal or searching out the addictive experience … seems to be the same … it is done for the sheer joy of doing it and nothing else seems to matter.

Ask any heroin addict.

So over the past 20 or so years I sat with well over a thousand souls from many different walks of life and I simply observed. My time in the trenches suggests that it does not seem to matter; men and women, young and old; regardless of cultural differences, describe Optimal Experiences in the same way. It somehow has for them the connection to or with a deeper, inner, mystical or esoteric experience; this connection is always reported as being an essential for the process to be complete or full … oddly enough, it does not seem to matter the language or the culture that are used to frame the description of the experience. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Office Worker, Housewife, Trucker, it usually is described in a similar fashion.

I have read and been in contact with other therapist worldwide and they report similar findings. I also understand that a formal research paper was done at University of Chicago and in conjunction with the University of Milan on this topic. The concept of spirit in the therapeutic process has been discussed and argued many times. The concept being a part of the Greater Way Of Things or Being Hooked Up To Spiritual seems to be an intrinsic part of a recovery process. The Introduction Of Spiritual has been found useful by therapists who study the human dilemma … it seems to help people search out their own forms of happiness quotients, life satisfac¬tion formula(s), and fundamental motivation; by anthropologists or recovery counselors who are interested in the phenomena of collective sparkle and rituals. The problem is; the spiritual connection is not just an academic subject; it is a process that needs to be experienced.

The Business Of Any Therapy Practice Is To Provide An Opportunity For The Individual To See Themselves Differently … Thus A Secondary Object Of The Process Is To Provide An Opportunity For The Individual To Be In A Place To Improve Their Quality Of Life; Spiritual Connectedness Seems To Want To Point That Way.

Experience Has Tuaght Us 175 Missing Pieces

#75 - On Seeing Clearly the Fantasy and the Reality


EXPERIENCE has taught us that to mature and heal we must come out from our soul’s hiding place and move out into a world with which we are unfamiliar to face our destiny, whatever that may be.

So it is important to know that we took shelter there for many good reasons. Basically, the drama and trauma early in our life’s experience came on like gangbusters, and we were overwhelmed at every conceivable level.

Simply too much noise, and the soul said, “No more, I’m stopping here . . . only a fool would go any further.”

Yet There It Waits,

But Only For Those Who Dare.

Experience Has Taught Us ---175 Missing Pieces is available at http://www.amazon.com/

So You Think You Have Problems

taken from Cape Town News     http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-10712323  the whale breached and I guess did not notice the boat ... here is the after math ...

An Observation on Truth ... Projection Makes Perception

“Projection Makes Perception” ... ACIM ... page 445 in the Text.

The Observation:
By deliberately changing the internal image of who we think we are ... the defining quality of our reality ... We can change our world. Perhaps the only limits to our life and circumstance are the ones we whole heartily believe in.

Just because you are willing to fight to the death for your beliefs does not make them true.

The Experience:
I, like many, have had a series of experiences in my life that brought me to a place of understanding that we only seem to be separate ... we only seem to be in our own special, little and separate realities ... but ... in actual fact we are all connected and all part of the Greater Whole ... all part of the Way of Things ...

The truth of the matter is we can learn things about life and the way of things by looking out into our world but there seems to be more to be learned if we look inward. It’s a different sort of thing... not the reality we might first expect, but something that is actually far more a part of my day to day reality than I might have expected at first.

By looking into what I suspected was my tiny interior I have discovered that there is more in there then there is in the vast expanse of all that is out here. It was in the examining of my inner vision that lead me (or anyone else who looks) to the universal conclusion of we are all part of the Greater Way of Things.

...I am connected...

...I belong...

...I am that I am

In my heart I am free...

When you look inward, it seems to me that the universal conclusion that is there to be discovered by each of us, is that we are all here to learn and to act in the service of the Greater Way of Things. Another interesting discovery that happened to come to the surface is that when we die there is as great a diversity of experience as there is when we are living... Of course where this all seems to end is that the farther you go inward the more you realize you are intrinsically part of the whole ... of all that is ... the Way of Things...

“I Am!”

Concepts adapted from Willis Harman (1919-1997) former director of policy research at Stanford Research Institute, Former President of the Institute for Noetic Sciences and a consultant to Fortune 5000 corporations ...

"Global Consciousness Change: Indicators of an Emerging Paradigm" by Duane Elgin

As the world's senior scientists have warned, the industrial era paradigm is now generating far more problems than it is solving. The only way the human family can understand and solve these problems is by shifting to a larger paradigm that includes the entire Earth as a living system. Such a transformation seems to be underway. Peter Drucker, the well-known management expert, is just one observer who believes that the western world is undergoing a paradigm change:

"Every few hundred years in Western history there occurs a sharp transformation. Within a few short decades, society -- its world view, its basic values, its social and political structures, its arts, its key institutions -- rearranges itself. And the people born then cannot even imagine a world in which their grandparents lived and into which their own parents were born. We are currently living through such a transformation."

"As pervasive as the communications revolution is, it seems to be taking place within a larger and deeper revolution in consciousness and culture. We are living in a time of paradigm shift. What should we call the emerging paradigm? In this report, we are calling it the "reflective/ living-systems" paradigm or perspective. This name incorporates the two primary features of this perspective. The first is our growing capacity for self-reflection. ...A second hallmark of the new consciousness is its 'whole-systems' or 'living-systems' view.

"...in the emerging perspective, seemingly empty space is not empty, but filled with immense amounts of energy. Our cosmos is seen as a living, unified system. This new paradigm moves from a view of separation and isolation to one of profound wholeness and interconnection. At a fundamental level, people are viewed not as separate beings, but as intimately involved with one another in the deep web of life. If everything is intimately interconnected, then the quality and integrity of all kinds of relationships are of paramount concern. A natural expression of this paradigm is to bring into balance all the key relationships in our lives -- inner and outer, masculine and feminine, personal and global, intuitive and rational, and more. This perspective tends to bridge differences, connect people, celebrate diversity, harmonize efforts, and look for higher common ground.

http://vivianjoslovo.blogspot.com/

A reflective/living-systems orientation brings a unifying approach and offers hope in a world facing deep material, social, and spiritual fragmentation."

Duane Elgin is an internationally recognized speaker, author, and social visionary who looks beneath the surface turbulence of our times to explore the deeper trends that are transforming our world. In 2005, Duane received the Japanese “Goi International Peace Award” in recognition of his contribution to a global “vision, consciousness, and lifestyle” that fosters a “more sustainable and spiritual culture.” His books include: THE LIVING UNIVERSE: Where Are We? Who Are We? Where Are We Going? (2009); PROMISE AHEAD: A Vision of Hope and Action for Humanity’s Future (2000), VOLUNTARY SIMPLICITY: Toward a Way of Life that is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich (1993 and 1981), and AWAKENING EARTH: Exploring the Evolution of Human Culture and Consciousness (1993). With Joseph Campbell and other scholars he co-authored the book CHANGING IMAGES OF MAN (1982). In addition, Duane has contributed chapters to sixteen books, and has published more than seventy articles.

Food for Thought

The business of Creative Thinking (incubation): is the business of using the mind’s deeper processes to work on solving life’s problems without the outer bench markers of “my ego” to assist in the process. Better said, it is getting past the habits of my own best thinking. The habits of my own best thinking were developed in “school of hard knocks”.

To be able to think imaginatively or creatively,

We have to be properly prepared by life.

When a creative person is prepared by experience, education and concentration; when the problem or the creative necessity is addressed, visualized, struggled with or studied; when all the relevant data is fed into the unconscious mind, now is the time to let go. Let the deeper part of you ... the non egotistical aspect ... do its thing. Don’t give it a time line, just let go of the problem and let the deeper part of you deal with the problem. It is what I call the idea processor ... incubation. It works out of sight behind the conscious mind.

The state of our consciousness and the mode of our knowing about our world are both conditions that are predetermined by our experience with our world (operant training). If that learning is coupled with our attempts to undo some of our original experiences to offset our original pain, then all this processing can limit how we can see our problem or the possible solutions to the problems. The greater unconscious doesn’t have this problem but the conscious mind needs to step aside and allow the deeper processes to go to work.

Once we have inputted all (the information and experience) we can about the problem then the next step is to simply let go ... get out of the way ... let the greater part of our thinking apparatus do its work. Once we have acknowledged that we have done what we can do now is the time for the deeper forces to do their work ... let it happen. Let the incubation begin. Go do something else. It will happen in its own good time but the answers or thoughts will filter through into the conscious mind. Maybe be the conscious mind will notice things in your surroundings ... things that were there all along to be seen but never noticed as part of the solution. Sometimes it will be a totally new, fresh and innovative way of doing things or thinking about things.

Robert Louis Stephenson wrote his books this way. He suffered night terrors and to get around them he developed a creative thinking mode of using what he called the “pixies” (imaginary beings) to go off into his deeper unconsciousness and bring back stories for him to be entertained by rather than the night terrors that disturbed him. One of the stories that came out of all this was Treasure Island.

Albert Einstein dreamt E=Mc2 ... he saw it written in the dust on a mirror in his mind ... he awoke and wrote it down ... then he proved it.

Brahms and Mozart all reported similar processes of hearing or seeing things in their creative mind’s eye. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of examples.

Dr Richard Morse Bucke a Canadian psychiatrist and best friend of Walt Whitman, discusses this concept in his 1892 book Cosmic Consciousness.

Imagine That ... Wisdom Is Acquired

As people begin to notice that they had never fully met or come to know themselves or learned how to deal with their feelings or for that matter how to deal with their own immortality (because the set and various subsets of their life skills [they inherited] don’t work), they begin to suspect something is missing in their lives.

What most find out about themselves as they begin to investigate into what seems to be missing, is that who and what they think they are had always been encouraged to withdraw from their feelings, particularly those that are predetermined to be unpleasant or painful and thus labeled as bad or wrong. Blanket Coverage! The great unknown in this whole matter is held in the feelings that are being avoided ... they hold the secret to life’s deeper meaning, flavour and texture.

What they discovered about themselves was that the very thought of unpleasant now acted as gate keeper or keeper of the keys¾they have become their own jailer.

In their attempts to avoid: avoid fear; avoid feelings; avoid life; avoid pain ... they begin to notice that they need to avoid what was predetermined to be unpleasant is now locking the door to their future. They can’t be safe and at the same time have the life they say they want to have. Life is risk taking.

Life’s task at this point seems to be to move past the predetermined fear structure learned in early years and move out into the world and have the life we were intended to have.

Imagine That:

A Place for

My Fear, My Feelings

And

My Life

In

My Life

Open to Creativity --- Part Three --- The External Elements That Come Into Play Too

Externally all we need is two very basic concepts to be in place for us to play with creativity.

• Psychological safety: this is a place in my mind where I feel accepted, I have a sense of unconditional worth ... There is no external evaluation ... basically no criticism ... but what there is present is an empathic understanding by those who surround me of what I am trying to accomplish. I don’t have to live with the fear of the Judge peering over my shoulder making sure I am getting everything right their way no mine.

• Psychological Freedom: is fostered when I am permitted complete freedom of my symbolic expression. What I have come to learn is that this freedom allows me to think, to feel, to dream, wish and want the way I do; to be whatever is most true for me. This should not be confused with permissiveness, which is soft and indulgent; this freedom is permission to be free. I don’t need anyone’s approval ... which in actual fact is permission for the me to be responsible for what I do, how I do it etc ... under this umbrella of freedom(s) is also the freedoms for me to be wrong or afraid or to feel confused or not know.

There is a hook that goes with this; because these concepts are not limited to one’s work place but instead to all the situations that life provides, then to foster such beliefs in your surroundings, in your life style is fostering a way of thinking that provides and promotes the constructive aspects of creative breakthrough thinking for all.

Rising Above

The Conditional

And

Restrictive Thinking

Of Our Early Childhood

Open to Creativity --- Part two ---Necessities that Enhance the Process

Having An Internal Locus of Evaluation: I have to know who I am ... where I am going ... How I am planning on getting there ... be comfortable with all that and understand that it is ok to be wrong in my basic assumptions ... all at the same time ... I have to be comfortable being me ...

My creativity is not the measure of who and what I am established by the praise or criticism I receive from others or by my material well being or lack of it. It is the business of me being comfortable with me, not what I do or who I seem to be, but rather ... just with me being me.

This does not mean that I am oblivious to the insights of others, their judgements and or observations of me, I’m not, but the final evaluation on who and what I am lay in my own hands ... in my own orgasmic reaction to, and appraisal of, my creation, and for that matter Creation itself. It is right when it feels Satisfying and Authentic.

Having The Ability to Toy with the Elements and Concepts I am considering is the need for me to play spontaneously with the ideas, the colours, the shapes, the sizes, the relationships of the elements, people or situations I am working with. To be able to juggle elements into juxtapositions, to be able to shape wild and odd concepts and hypotheses, to take the given as problematic, to be able to comfortably express the ridiculous, to transform opposites into improbable but logical equivalents. It is from this spontaneous toying and exploration ... sometimes called play ... that a hunch arises and as that hunch moves more into consciousness it becomes a vision of what could-be and what could-be can become what is and as it does ... that is the product of creativity...

To Be Open to Experience --- Part One

To Be Extensionally Open to Experience: This idea of being Extensionally Open is the opposite to psychological defensiveness, of rigidity and rigid boundaries (with and in ... concepts, beliefs, perceptions and hypotheses), black and white thinking. Extensional Openness has room in it for growth and understanding because you are making it so.

When you are truly open you can listen and actually hear what is being said or in what is happening around you. You don’t have to be forming a defence strategy in your head while others are attempting to communicate with you in some fashion. Because you can listen, you are open to the total experience you are sharing at that moment in time.

This does not have to be with people BTW ... It happened once to me that there I was on a hot afternoon staring down a coiled rattlesnake ... It was years ago and I was in the RCMP ... and we were running radar on the TransCanada Hwy just west of Portage la Praire. I was in the ditch with the radar machine and the guys were down the road flagging speeders ... I was calling they were catching. I have no idea where he ... the snake ... came from or how he got to be next to me ... but there he was looking at me ... me at him ... I was trying to figure out what to do so I would not get bit ... then I just relaxed. I got into sitting with the snake and spent about an hour with him while he sunned himself and I suppose warmed himself up then off he went forging for his next meal. Just him and me spending part of an afternoon together ... it was interesting because at first it was very visceral for me then it sort of settled down through my body and I became accustomed to being with the snake ... I gave him a name, “Fred,” and we shared a bloc of time. I swore he could read my mind and I his, but when he warmed himself, off he went.

Or another example, you can tolerate ambiguity where and when it actually exists. Sometimes there is just no clarity for a situation in that moment and that is the way of things.

When you are truly open to an experience there is an ability to receive information from conflict ... especially from that body of information that seems to conflict with you or your own belief structure.

Nothing is personal in the sharing. Your identity is not caught up in the outcome of the conflict.

You display tolerance for someone else’s point of view. There is no effort to bring the sharing to a halt either openly or covertly because of the perceived stress or the grind from either any of the other parties to the conversation or situation or because of the information being shared. You are not taking it personally. There are literally hundreds of ways to close off the sharing of complex thoughts and concepts that seem to want to overpower you, but if you just stay steady in the moment and let it be what it is ... just a sharing and not an identity crisis ... you may find that some of these closure methods that you use to bring peace to the table actually feed the problem that is trying to be resolved...

But if you are Extensionally Open

Then you are free to be fully involved 

With the experience you are having

As your having it.
BTW
SKY DIVING CAN BE FUN