As Long As I

It's not difficult to recognize how deep are the ways our mind has been conditioned to deal with unpleasant situations when we examine how we resist those situations.  Throughout our entire lives we have been encouraged to do anything we can to escape "from" rather then to explore and investigate "into" our unpleasantness.  Our society literally consumes tons of aspirin daily.  It is not just the physical pain we try and avoid, but all kinds of unpleasant conditions: boredom, restlessness, self doubt, anger, loneliness, hurt and the list goes on.  In our culture we do all we can to push these experiences aside,  or keep them at a distance.  When you think of "it" this way, we actually choose to be entertained in the fashion that we are. 

No Bus and Late for School

So

As long as I was pushing away the pain, it had me nailed to the wall.  But then I stopped resisting it.  I sort of let it in.  It was actually a relief.  I felt better in spite of it.  No longer at odds with everything.

adapted from How Can I Help Rass Dass and Paul Gorman

A Necessary Listen

Economics writer Tim Harford studies complex systems -- and finds a surprising link among the successful ones: they were built through trial and error. He suggests us to embrace our randomness and start making better mistakes.


http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_harford.html

I Got A Note In The Mail This Morning

Neil, for many years I felt I never fitted in ... even before my accident, and being 'popular' didn't really make it better. I use to party hard to be comfortable, of course that didn't make it any better either. Now, being stripped of everything I am forced to face myself...and I found that I'm ok. In fact I'm more than ok. But sometimes that old 'low self esteem, no confidence' ... that old me still shows up...but not for long though. As long as I 'fit in' with myself...that’s most important. I = numero uno!!


If I don't have to try hard with myself why do I have to do it for anyone else?

I should be good enough as I am.

As simple as that my friend.

Love yourself first and the rest will fall into place.

It’s easy and it works. I try to teach that to my kids, but it can get tricky.

I think that its best learnt with life’s lessons, unfortunately the hard way...otherwise the ego gets in the way and it can result in self obsession instead of that balance that is required in putting yourself first. But both son and daughter are good, thank God. We are a nice little uncomplicated trio:-) For now it’s working well.

CJ ...

Why are we afraid?

SIMPLE


We’re afraid because there appears to be no truth ... except in the most superficial way.

No one can agree on what “the realities” of any situation are or on just where meaning and importance lie.

One voter sees a truth about a particular politician, yet to another voter the reverse is true. An obvious truth for one city or nation is not true at all for a neighboring city or nation. Within families, merely discussing what is true or important about the smallest of issues can cause deep division. During televised games, not only do fans and commentators disagree about what just happened, but, in addition, each camera angle reveals a different “point of view.” And in a trial, a witness will swear in the name of God that he saw something different than another witness. This apparent absence of truth makes “getting at” the truth a world-wide obsession, despite the fact that we feel a nagging doubt about almost any pronouncement we make or hear someone else make.

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

Zen and the Art of the Fine Whine

Zen and the Art of the Fine Whine: It is in the incessant noise of critical complaining and whining where we learned to bond with people.

We, as co-dependents, use our problems, our ailments, our spectating into other people’s lives, world events or neighbourhood situations as a bonding formula. It is a negative recipe about what is wrong with me, or with you or with the world or how things are or should be that unites us in the moment. We Hope!

Classically, we either were or are subject of harsh criticism and dissection by others and today we analysis everything into a place where we turn into the harsh critics that haunted us in our childhood.

We know what is wrong with us and what’s wrong with others and we use that knowingness to cling to people, so that we can become the one who knows ... to become “special” finally ... to, at long last, be the one who is noticed because, when our history clearly demonstrates that we were ignored to the point of deep abandonment and abuse.

This is a learned defence strategy that has run amuck. One of the nasty facts that go with this format of needs fulfilment is that we actually drive those people out of our lives in our very efforts to bond with them. Why? Because our posture is highly manipulative, complaining and controlling ... the very thing we cherish, the very thing we desire, our sense of self, sense of belonging, sense of being special, is lost in the very efforts we put forth in our vain attempt(s) to resolve the problem that is really lodged deeply in our past and not in our present moment.

If we can know what we are really up against

Then we can do something about it.

Into The Light - CoDependency A Spiritual Journey ... to be Released in August 2011

The Way Of Things in Healing from Trauma

• ... When the trauma in life has been hidden from the conscious mind, the integration of new information about one's own past can be deeply disorganizing and disorienting. It can also disrupt one’s sense of self and worth.

• ... Nature "knows" when to shut people down because of PTSD. It also often knows when it is time to open people up again. The reintegration process needs to reintegrate the pain, the shame and the memories of the past. One needs to come to understand that compartmentalized pain and shame can only be held in at great cost to the beholder.

• ... Conversely, it is important to understand that the reopening process is also a costly/painful experience.

• ... It was disturbing for some to realize that to recover their own feelings and their lost humanity, they had to both realize and grieve just how inhumane their pasts had been.

• ... The path of recovery often takes people to a place of greater unhappiness while enroute. It is the Way of Things, and the Way of Things will eventually release the pain of the past in the present and give us back our future. So we can have the life we were intended to have.

Adapted from Ed Schmookler

observations on the healing process

from Post Trauma Stress Disorder

Maybe This Is Not For Me? Thoughts on Step Five and Six

If this thought has not scampered across your mind yet, it just might shortly … all this thinking and all this writing … some of this stuff might just seem surrealistic or even scary.

Maybe it’s not for me?

That’s just your mind rationalizing and attempting to set up blocks to pain it anticipates … it knows it is right up there just waiting to jump out at you and hurt you all over again.

The truth of the matter is that this pain that we are attempting to rationalize our way around is really right out there in front of us … forming all our fears ... actually … it acts like a traffic cop, trying to organize how you think and how you should act and where we could go, who we could do it with and what to do when things become too much for us to handle, or so we sometimes think.

Sort of like, here … think me, I’m your worse fear … think me … I’m real …now do this … it doesn’t matter … this is all that will work … think me … I’m real… do this now or die.

The fear simply just sits there … waiting for us to make a move, but in this step our job is just to sit there and stare back … and notice, that’s all … notice and admit … but mainly notice … notice what it is that has held you prisoner all these years.

There will be many times during this process when you will feel anxious and afraid … and you may end up wondering what to do next.

Well … what to do next is simple … just follow the directions given in the step … with another person … that you trust … in the presence of what you have come to believe is your Higher Power … just examine and reveal … that’s all … just examine and reveal … Uncover … Discover … Discard

Know the feeling?

Action is the Key Word here.

Simply get on with it and do it.

The Second Awakening

The Second Awakening comes when the Ego emerges from its long sleep of Knowingness and dependency on itself solely for guidance. 

This is a much deeper and a more profound spiritual event. 

For this event to happen in any significant fashion the spiritual travelers must be willing to let go of what they think they know¾ego function, dependency needs etc¾and begin to trust in what they cannot see or for that matter what they probably do not readily relate to.

·       Having faith in …

Faith has strange mystical qualities to it that aren’t readily noticeable at first. 

Faith:

·       cannot think for itself:

·       does not have a consciousness.

·       will do what it does and where it is directed to do it, by it’s beholder. 

·       will do whatever it is directed to do faithfully; after all, that is its job. 

·       is blind.

So this business of having faith is as much a matter of where you place it, as it is a matter of having some.

If you have faith in something unreal or something unhealthy, then you will feed the unreality or the lack of health and your faith will actually turn into a vehicle that works against your process of awakening while you appear to be making every effort to awaken. 

·       Faith in something must be examined with great regularity.  Just what the frequency of regularity is, will determine your future more so then having faith in the first place. 

·       Note: as you examine this newfound faith you may notice your own self-centered motives at play under the thinly veiled guise of faith and spirituality. Creative selfishness.

·       The knack to the whole thing is to have some faith and then take direction from the experience of risking having that faith in the first place.  Then applying the wisdom and understanding gleaned from the risk taking and applying that into your next moment.

·       Then be prepared to either make change happen, or accept change as it happens to you.

This is difficult, because the factors that the Ego used to make judgment calls about life and change are now absent. 

·       Faith doesn’t have fear, hate, distrust, like, or dislike.  In fact those feelings hinder the process of faith. 

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 too.

Fear is defined in the Course in Miracles as the absence of Love¾with capital L¾ 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. 

For those who decide to face their demons, the decision to surrender is for life.  This decision will affect everything you do, touch, say and think. 

Again it is a given that the vast majority of people who say they want to change are simply too terrified of change to make change happen. 

Decisions have to be made. 

·       Do I stay? 

·       Do I go on ahead? 

·       What is it that I must do?

Know This

You came to this world singularly and unclothed. That is your path. The others that you encounter are here on the path with you and are on the same journey but they can only serve as guideposts for you, and they can only provide you the opportunity to find your own blind spots, that's all. 

There is a vast world of difference between solitude and loneliness and that is your discovery to make.

I am alone and my world is a dangerous place

“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 did was I learned to cope with “lonely” and I learned to deal with “abandoned and empty.” There were times when my normal was defined by 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 and I firmly believed I needed them. In fact as I look back on it now, they were "magical” almost. 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 the 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 two ago when I 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 thing I could have faith in. Why? Simple, because what I did, worked for me when nothing else was there ... but ... what I did was only ... Temporary ... But what I discovered that this faith thing was far broader then I had 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 as far as I was concerned. Those tricks of the trade really did not work all that well. It was about then in time that I bumped into The Door. It was about then that I penned There Is A Door ... It was about then that I began the journey into places and parts in me and unknown to me ... This Door was just there waiting for me to give over my fear and to place my faith in a new direction ... Within ... rather than Without.

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 do something with it. It was now a choice ... Go Exploring into the Unknown or Hang On For Dear Life and Hope that I was not going to be destroyed by the process I was born into. I had done the latter for years. I was about to begin the former ... 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?

12 Basic Instructions for Step 4/5 and 6

1. Choose any one of the four umbrella topics, resentment, anger, fear or me and my sexuality: take for example resentment, but anyone will do.


2. Then simply begin a sentence with “I resent so and so” and don’t take the pen off the page until the thread is complete. Now the subject may seem to change often as the thread unwinds. It may not seem to be connected. Simply write on and on until the proverbial spool is empty, until you are empty. What I discovered as I did this purging on paper was that it often went on for 26 to 30 pages. Then it often took days before I was ready to write again. Not that it was traumatic . . . oddly enough it was not - I was just empty. Of course there were those times when the tears came, and when that happens, just let it happen.

3. In rotation, choosing one of the umbrella topics, and write about you and what happened to you or about those who influenced you from each of the four perspectives, and know that you will probably do so many times before the well is dry. You may have to visit each one many times.

4. It is imperative that you ask for assistance with Step Five.

5. Step Five requires the outside help of another living, breathing human being by its very nature. It is suggested that you find someone whom you can trust, possibly someone who will not be going through the rest of your life with you, like a priest or member of the clergy or your therapist as your helper or listener.

6. It is also suggested that you have someone else, a sponsor, someone who can be there just to bounce things off and to ask questions of when there is a need as you go through the process of developing your Step Four. Both are important.

7. Often as not, there will be things in Step Five that you will feel should never see the light of day, but to cleanse them, it is an absolute must that they be exposed to the light of day. Sometimes it is too difficult to reveal things with a sponsor or therapist. Choose a neutral third party who is well aware of the necessities of Step Five. Someone who, when you have completed your Step Five work, you can walk away from and leave it all behind.

8. The symbolic gestures are just as important as the work of the step. You may find that your Step Five individual may have a ritual or two that he or she suggests to you as follow through for completion of the step. Do them, it is important. There are many who are trained for precisely this function and if need be your therapist or counselor can assist you in setting yourself up with someone appropriate.

9. Take the time to research and come to an understanding of how different aspects of the recovery movement handle a fourth and fifth step. Attend some open AA meetings or some Al-Anon and NA meetings. All conduct what they call open meetings. Phone numbers are available in the yellow pages.

10. As a suggestion, after you have completed the day’s writing or even after you have allowed several days to pass following a session of writing, go back through the writing and pull out who/what happened and look for the patterns and how those patterns affected you both then and now.

11. Look for the legacy that Susan Forward suggests in her book Toxic Parenting, should be there, the ghost monsters and demons of Xmas past.

12. Ask yourself regularly, “What is the legacy?” Look for patterns! Always be looking for, “How am I complicit in my own pain?” and “What patterns have been established that contribute to my pain, my loneliness, etc.”

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Someone's Story

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The jungles of Nam caused it in some, the jungles of my childhood caused it in me.

I was a child, born unloved and sold, again and again, to men for money. Not just sold for sex, but for sadistic rituals as well, some in which my mother participated. To the point that my body was damaged (broken bones, etc.) not just my mind, my heart, my psyche. Given birth by a mother who didn't love me (she told me more than once how she tried to abort me before I was born). She was, in fact, my creator. A child's creator is the first source any child looks to for validation and love. Instead of validation, I was treated like I wasn't worth loving, was only good to be used and abused by others, not protected from torture, not taken to the hospital when wounded or broken, constantly told by men who were strangers, and my mother, that if I didn't submit, I would be killed. This went on for many years.

One creates any coping skills that will work if one is to heed the primal instinct to survive. Until one is no longer helpless, we remain passive, quiet, and ... endure. We escape to a world within our own minds - or latch onto other families that seem much healthier and fantasize that they are our true family. Or that we were kidnapped and are not truly part of the family that is abusing us. Denial works as well. "Don't remember". And we develop selective memory. Make up a different identity for ourselves. One that isn't "damaged goods". One that others can love. Deep down, suppressing the rising panic in our bones that keeps telling us that at any time, people are going to find out ... find out that we were never good enough to love from the beginning.

How, once we're grown, is this suppressed PTSD expressed? Some express rage outwardly. Violent outbursts. Terrible anger. Acting out. Others, like me, who were helpless to protect themselves from the beginning, learned to be very quiet and passive in order to literally stay alive, and directed the rage that had to go somewhere, inward. Once away from the abuse, those of us who were passive were now free. And as for me, no longer overpowered and raped regularly over 11 years by mother's customers, or locked in the basement, or hung by my heels and tortured, or forced to take drugs in order to be compliant - I was free. And with that freedom I ran. I ran with exhilaration. I ran with abandon. I ran from fear and pain. And ran ... and ran ... and ran.

And looked for places to hide. I saw all men as monsters and stayed as far away from them as possible. I rarely allowed myself to be touched. Or, as in the case of marriage, I did my duty in the bedroom, but my mind was carefully placed somewhere else ... anywhere else, so I could control the scream that would always start to rise from my belly, choking to get out my mouth. Somewhere deep inside, I sensed that if I ever started to scream, I would never be able to stop. And then I would be put away. Trapped again, but this time in some psych ward somewhere. Never free again. So I had to stay quiet. But this time, it was to protect my hard won freedom.

Once an adult, and on my own, I would protect what small space I might allow myself to claim with all that I had (I was simply on the road for years, never staying in one place for more than 3 months at a time). I stayed behind closed doors. Walled myself in where it was safe. Safety is paramount. Safety matters. Nothing else. Run, hide, find a place to be safe. But this seclusion intensified to the point of, as an adult, not being able to relate socially to most anyone in any normal kind of fashion. But that didn't even matter. I was safe. That's all that mattered.

How do some of us ever initially get into any relationships? And how do we think we will be able to make them work? Well, most of us don't reason it out on a conscious level. But we want to "fit in". We want to live a normal life, so ... we observe. Copy others who seem normal, and who other people seem to like, and we try to act that way. We look around and realize that it is a man's world, and try to find a strong man to protect us from all the "bad men" out there. Most often, though, we've walked into a relationship where the strong man is the very type of abusive person we most wanted to be protected from.

How? ... we don't know. How many of us can afford counseling to begin to tell us what we're doing wrong? That we're repeating patterns from our childhood and being subconsciously drawn to the "known" (an abuser) because that is less frightening then the "unknown". Who has time to figure that out when you're always running and looking for protection and trying to find love, be lovable, pretend to be like everyone else, and on and on and on. And God knows how many bad relationships we're in before we finally begin "to get" that, even in choosing a man to be with us, we can't even trust our own choices anymore. So now, besides not being able to trust the people around us, we must deal with the total shock of not being able to trust our own judgment to keep us safe, either.

So, even though the abusers are no longer with us - they are. They've become a part of us. Chase us inside ourselves, and keep us running, looking for ever more safe places to hide. And the rage? It yells at us that we are unworthy to be loved. Not important enough to be noticed. Or to receive kindness. Or to even seriously aspire to a life of happiness like others have. Like "the normals" do.

So, this inner directed rage becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of self-sabotage. Without being consciously aware - something good comes along and all the deeply ingrained tapes say "You don't deserve this - you're not worthy" and somehow ... somehow we shut down, stop the process of love and kindness coming our way because, deep down, we know we can't sustain whatever it is that these people think they see in us as "good". It must be a lie. We must have fooled them somehow and they'll find out that it's a lie and be repulsed by us. We run, so we don't have to face their rejection once they see that we are really not worth their effort.

We reject ourselves before they have a chance too.

Now, there are many kind souls, who with not a clue of what they're triggering in us, say to us "OK. That was your past. Don't live in the past. Just forget it. Live in the present moment. Make the best of your life now." A reasonable thing to say. But only if you've led a reasonable life and have had only a few minor bumps along the road. To those of us who have endured serious abuse, that statement is heard by us as "You are overloading me with too many facts I can't relate too. You're not important enough for me to listen to you anymore or try to understand. Get back to "acting" like a lovable person or you're just not worth the effort of knowing anymore." OK. Now we know. If we don't keep up the act of "pretending to be normal" rejection is sure to come. Be quiet. Compliant. Lovable. And never, NEVER tell anybody again who you really are.

The sad thing about this conclusion is evident. Because we can't suppress who we are indefinitely, so in order to maintain others good opinions of us, we must leave before they find out, once we've seen the indicators that they are acting as if there might be something they don't like about us. That's all it takes. Just one trigger. And we're off. Gone. Running. The cycle starts over again and again from one new town to the next. One new relationship to the next. Never staying long enough to get anything accomplished in our lives. Never making friendships that last. And if there are any children involved, most probably losing them somewhere along the way, in the blur of the fear that rules our lives.

Now, should one have the opportunity of eventually getting into counseling, the rudiments of why one is acting like this as an adult, are learned. Some tools are picked up, from various and sundry counselors to help us handle certain triggers when they arise. We are assured by the counselors that there is no cure for us. Just learning techniques that can be taught to us so we can "manage" our "illness". Those of us with PTSD who have had good counselors are the lucky ones. Many never get that far. They've either successfully committed suicide, become permanent recluses, or continue the rest of their lives "on the run."

As one who has lived, or attempted to various degrees, all of the above, I have arrived at a point in my life where I've finally landed. I've lived in the same apartment for almost 5 years now. I've made several friends that actually have remained my friends for over 12 years now. And I continue, cautiously, to make more friends. I've overcome many of my repulsions to men and actually find some of them attractive, interesting, intelligent, humorous and kind. And yes, have even allowed myself to receive love, and give love, to them. I never thought I'd make it this far. But if I can make it this far, I begin to indulge in the hope that maybe I can make it all the way. All the way to happiness and the never before experienced feeling of "completeness". A life of balance and beauty. Love and the ability to handle conflict in a reasonable, harmonious and respectful manner.

Now, it's time to work on self-sabotage. And ... to learn that the right men can be trusted. I need friends and family who believe in me. Encourage and support me in the inner work that I must do if I am ever going to exist in a truly loving relationship with them, and those I am destined to meet.

I wrote this down because I just needed someone to hear me. Hear what I've worked out so far. Where I've come from and where I'm trying to go. And know that with my last breath, I will never stop trying to be ... someone.

A MASTERFUL ILLUSTRATION

An aging master grew tired of his apprentice complaining, and so, one morning, sent him for some salt. When the apprentice returned, the master instructed the unhappy young man to put a handful of salt in a glass of water and then to drink it.

"How does it taste?" the master asked?

"Bitter," spit the apprentice.

The master chuckled and then asked the young man to take the same handful of salt and put it in the lake. The two walked in silence to the nearby lake, and once the apprentice swirled his handful of salt
in the water, the old man said, "Now drink from the lake."
As the water dripped down the young man's chin, the master asked, "How does it taste?"

"Fresh," remarked the apprentice.

"Do you taste the salt?" asked the master.

"No," said the young man.

At this, the master sat beside this serious young man who so reminded him of himself and took his hands, offering, "The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less … the amount of pain in life remains the exactly the same. However, the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things . . . Stop being a glass. Become a lake."

[Unknown]

#5 Process Of Recovery

Taking Back Your Projections.

When you attempt to become separate from what seems to give you pain, and please notice that I said ‘from what seems to give you pain’, and you do this by making “others” or “it” the wrong thing to do ... or ... being the bad one, or by knowing what is right and proper for everyone else ... always by being the peace keeper, or the hero, or the scapegoat, or by medicating your feelings with drugs and alcohol or distractions, you usually develop a life style based upon projection. You may twist reality to suit your need to be right etc. and justify your behaviour by making others wrong to justify your position, thought or activity.

Taking back these projections often requires the loving confrontation and support of group and/or family members, friends and business partners, your spouse or a therapist.

The projections tend to fall away slowly, often as not very slowly until finally enough of the denial is removed and the truth of who you and who others really are, is revealed to you.

Projection Make Perception

Projection occurs when you see split-off parts of yourself in other people ... You may not recognize them in yourself; they are hard to see. When you are protecting yourself from seeing those spilt-off parts of yourself, you may have trouble distinguishing between your internal world (fantasy) and the external world (reality). Things often as not, get very confusing and certain desperation seems to set up that drives compulsive behaviours.

Projection is complicated by the fusion of co-dependency and inability to feel and act separate from other people ... By seeing in others the very qualities that you refuse to acknowledge in yourself, this can allow you to continue on in your denial and delusion while at the same time avoiding taking responsibility for your own actions and feelings and for taking charge of your life.

Another important characteristic of the split-off parts is that the more they are ignored or denied, the more strength they gain as demonstrated by:

1. You may act out the part unexpectedly. For example, if your anger is split off, you may erupt in a fit of anger. It "happens to you" without you having much awareness.

2. Someone may act out the part for you.

Split-off parts are always outside your awareness.

Thought for the week

I am not separate.

I am one with

All that Is,

All that Was

and

All that Ever Will Be.

I can trust.

I can know.

I am responsible.

I am single-minded.

The Mythical Full-Length Mirror Of Self

Each of us, in turn, must go to a place and stand in front of The Mythical Full-Length Mirror of Self, if we are in fact to heal. It is a place where we come to know and see probably for the first time just how much “stuff” we really carry and how it drags us down and holds us from our future. The one we were intended to have.

To Heal we must own it! And become ready to consider casting it off.

The Process of Recovery is described as Uncover, Discover and Discard.

People have to know what they are up against. Where and how we carried it, and how our sense of evil spiritedness, of not being good enough, sometimes called incubus (from the Latin: evil spirited, devil or demon.  Things, metaphorically mostly, that most of us believe are locked down inside us and run our lives...).

It locks us into our guilt, hurt, pain and shame. How this burden of guilt, hurt, pain and shame serves as the drive engine for the behaviours that we hate about ourselves.

Those behaviours we can’t seem to stop doing and the ones that are killing us, the ones, oddly enough that we are trying to give up.

Ashamed and isolated and in the middle of a world,

That is full of people who are ashamed and isolated too,

Just like me and too terrified to admit it.

So now the opportunity sits here before me,

An opportunity both figuratively and literally,

To do something for the first time,

That is constructive,

About the state of my being.

Shame as an Identity

When one suffers from alienation, that means that one experiences parts of themselves as alien.  For example, if you were never allowed to express your feelings (anger, happy, sad etc) in your family then your feelings becomes an alienated part of you. And the outcome of that is you will feel shame when you feel particular feelings. This is a part of you that must be disowned or severed & avoided.

The problem with this is there is no way to actually get rid of your emotion without expressing them. For example, anger has odd qualities that most in recovery don’t associate with anger. Anger is self preserving, it is self protecting.  Without the energy of Anger we would all become door mats and people pleasers.

When we deny our feelings and push them aside shame is generated.  If left to its own devices shame becomes an identity. Now because it is so deeply and completely internalized shame stops having a proper place in our life. It no longer is a marker about what we are doing … it becomes who we are.  When it is completely internalized and becomes an identity, it is impossible for any of us to speak about how we feel think or wish because we have become the object of our own contempt.  I am shamed whenever I feel my feelings.

Thus it follows that to feel shame is to feel exposed or be seen for whom we imagine us to be and who we imagine us to be is always a considerably diminished picture of who and what we really are.

George Eliot, Silas Marner, p. 150

"In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's."

-- George Eliot, Silas Marner, p. 150

An Interesting Place to Be

I seem to be pointed in an interesting direction now, but this is anything but easy, in fact it seems to be a lot like work.  I seem to have a good sense of my Higher Power now but I seem to be weighed down by who and what I think I am. 

Time to begin to examine who it is that I think I might be. 

So, I find a place by a mystical stream and take off this metaphorical backpack and begin to examine whom it is that I think and thought I was and am.

My pack is full to overflowing with stuff.  Old stuff, new stuff, embarrassing stuff, stuff I wouldn’t tell anyone, even on my death bed, and stuff I don’t even know that I have done.  There is so much stuff, I cannot count it all.  So I reach in and take hold of some stuff, a shiny sort of thing, and I begin to examine it.  I have been told to catalogue what I find, just for posterity’s sake.  Not too sure why, other then it sounded like something I should do and one of my fellow travelers said may be it was a good idea.  Out comes the shiny thing and I see me reflected in it and I sort of like what comes out, it shows me off to be a nice, loving sort of a person. I am actually sort of surprised, but I catalogue it and carry on. 

Then out comes a handful of goop, and it is black and sticky and smelly, and I just know everyone is looking at it and I am so embarrassed by it.  I catalogue it too and then set it aside. 

I watch both of these items in the light of day and notice something unusual. First the goop, as it is exposed to the light of day, it dries out and slowly the smell lifts. I notice that it could be brushed off, if I wanted.  I acknowledge this, and as I do that the shiny sort of thing, the loving parts of me, begins to melt into the pores of my being and become part of what I know about myself.  Interesting.

I check in with my Higher Power and I ask what should I do with all this stuff in the backpack?  That Voice of Sanity tells me, with great certainty, to continue until all is examined and catalogued. 

What a task; I don’t think I can go through with it, but I know I have to. It is part of my ritual of surrender. It really is my first action I have had taken toward my own recovery.  I carry on into my future.

 

. . . Experience Has Taught Me That . . .

I am thankful for the opportunity to come to know me

Thankful for the opportunity to learn to trust.

Codependency is a child's reaction to families that are messed up.

Codependency is a child's reaction to families that are messed up. It comes from; the children living their lives adjusting to someone else’s problem:

• Divorce

• Marital problems

• Affairs

• addictions

• Battering

• Abuse of all kinds like: unpredictability -- enmeshment -- abandonment -- emotional denial -- threats --neglect -- incest --parents being unhappy about themselves, their relationships and lives.

• Parents not dealing with their problems, expecting the kids to make it OK

• Lack of affirmation of self

• Parental unavailability which produces self-doubt in the child

• Shame inducing

• Excess pressure to fill the family needs Perfectionistic expectations -- covert stress and control -- issues of martyrdom by parents

• Children are overly involvement with parents' problems.

It is the crushing of our trust, identity, autonomy, safety, reality, self-image, industry, pleasure and creativity.

We learn to react to the needs, problems and dysfunctions of those around us, rather than to our feelings, our reality, our needs and wants. It comes from a child's insecurity of living with parents in a dysfunctional marriage—a family that produces fears, anxi¬eties, worries, phobias, hyper vigilance, and control issues.

As children we tried to make everything better and were unable to do so. We believed our survival depended on fixing the family. We be¬came over-responsible or totally irresponsible and swung frequently between the two places. The prem¬ises, the myths, our modeled behavior, rules, scripting and the repetition all contributed to our pain.

We re-enact dysfunction. As adults, we pass the legacy of our dysfunction and denial to whoever is handy: wives, husbands and children. As children we existed for our parents. The family roles were set up to take care of the parents needs—role reversal is abuse. Dishonest, spiritually bankrupt, hopeless, dysfunctionality, emptiness and undependability are all hallmarks of the dysfunctional family structure today. As the crisis and problems occur and recycle themselves in our present lives the solution to our healing lay back in the pain of our family of origin issues. We must go there and resolve our feeling for our healing to be affective. Nothing changes until it become real. We learned to protect, deny, obey and "live with” the intolerable. We have created a national parental protection racket. We try to believe that parents always did their best or at least tried to do their best. Not True! In protecting the family system we lose touch with the real source of our codependency and stay focused on symptoms not the problems.

Like a conduit, the child receives abuse and dysfunc¬tional lifestyle. We are unaware of the connection between our painful lifestyle and our unresolved childhood issues. Hiding what underlies our dysfunction makes change difficult, even impossible as long as the denial clouds our vision of the truth about what happened. Our behaviors, such as over-responsibility, enabling, excess tolerance of the inappropriate behavior in and by others; our mood swings or disordered eating and the list goes on and on, are truly expression of our compulsivity. It is our response to a system that did not meet our needs. The Fact Is We do not choose any of this. It may seem voluntary that we did or do what we do but we can only choose when we have full awareness, not just of the driving forces beneath the behavior, our feelings and our internal conflict. We subconsciously repeat the dilemmas, fears and pain of child¬hood—or we avoid repeating them to the point of going in the opposite extreme. 180 degrees from sick is still sick.

Many of us maintain our shame so our parents don't have to feel guilt. In role reversal and care taking children are set up to give meaning to parents' lives and as a result get lost or enmeshed in the parents' problems. The issues created become multi/intergenerational in nature. What doesn't get passed back gets passed around or passed on to the next generation. Our problems become our children's problems. Our children's problems become our cultural problems.

Family violence, social messages, school, church, culture and peers all play a part in creating codependents.

We live with an educational system that often:

• Stifles our ability to become who we were meant to be.

• Squelches our curiosity, creativity and interest. Smothers awareness of the awesomeness of creation. Breaks down creation into meaningless components.

• Forces us to stay within the lines with our crayons.

• Coerces us to memorize and repeat without understanding or interest. Compels us to compete and learn so little in such a long period of time.

• Denies our ability to question or think critically for ourselves.

• Demands of us to discover ourselves either as a failure or a success.

Survival in the system depends on one's ability to adapt to whatever school style or teacher style we happen to be in at the time and to be the recipient of the frustration of the teaching profession. This is codependency reinforced in our educational system.

Religion contributes with:

• Undercurrents of sexual shame, frequently over lapping onto female revulsion and hate. Concept of God as a judgmental, powerful, punishing father figure who selects those to favor and those to punish randomly.

• Focus on a God of miracles, of power, who alters the course of creation, who is jealous and petty, and vindictive. Over-ritualized liturgy. Religion being based on intolerance. Religious Institutions operating with addictive greed with a focus on punishment, shame and threats.

• Religiosity (an addiction) rather than spirituality. Religious arrogance. Religious extortion and exploitation & sick religious leaders.

Imago/Coupling ... Rules of the Road ... From Harville Hendrix

You have relied on yourself to find your mates and partners. The days of arranged marriages etc are over. We take what we get or so we think. There is a place deep inside each of us that wants to guide you in your search for the ideal mate, someone who will both resemble your caretakers and compensate for the repressed parts of yourself. You like every one else has relied on self and the thought of freedom of choice to handle this aspect or better said relied on an unconscious image of the opposite sex or the ideal work mate or ... and that image has been forming since birth. This is called the Imago ... Latin term for 'image.'

The Concept of the Imago: It is for all practical purposes, a composite picture of the people who influenced you most strongly at an early age. This may have been your mother and father, siblings, or maybe a babysitter or close relative. But whoever they were, they were, a part of your experience and your brain recorded everything about them … the sound of their voices, the amount of time they took to answer your cries, the color of their skin when they got angry, the way they smiled when they were happy, the set of their shoulders, the way they moved their bodies, their characteristic moods, their talents and interests. Along with these impressions your brain recorded all your significant interactions with them. Here is the important part, your brain didn't interpret this data; it sim-ply etched them onto a template.

It may seem improbable that you have such a detailed record of your caretakers somewhere inside your head when you have only a dim recollection of those early years. In fact, many people have a hard time remembering anything that happened to them before the age of five or six-even dramatic events that should have made a deep impression.

But scientists report that we have incredible amounts of hidden infor¬mation in our brains. Neurosurgeons discovered this fact while per¬forming brain surgery on patients who were under local anesthesia. They stimulated portions of the patients' brains with weak electrical currents, and the patients were suddenly able to recall hundreds of forgotten episodes from childhood in astonishing detail .

Our minds are vast storehouses of forgotten information. There are those who suggest that everything that we have ever experienced resides some¬where in the dark, convoluted recesses of our brains.

Not all of these experiences are recorded with equal intensity, how¬ever. The most vivid impressions seem to be the ones that we formed of our caretakers early in life. And of all the interactions that we had with these key people, the ones that were most deeply engraved were the ones that were the most wounding, because these were the encoun¬ters that seemed to threaten our existence (literally a death threat to the observer).

Gradually, over time, these hundreds of thousands of bits of information about our caretakers merged together to form a single image. The old brain, in its inability to make fine distinctions, simply filed all this information under one heading: The People Responsible For Our Survival. You might think of the imago as a silhouette with few distinguishing physical characteris¬tics but with the combined character traits of all of your primary caregivers.

To a large degree, whether or not you have been at¬tracted to someone depended on the degree to which that person matched your imago. A hidden part of your brain ticked and hummed, coolly analyzing that person's traits, and then compared them with your rich data bank of information.

• If there was little correlation, you felt no interest. This person was destined to be one of the thousands of people who come and go in your life with little impact.

• If there was a high degree of correlation, you found the person highly attractive.

This imago-matching process bears some resemblance to the way soldiers were trained to identify flying aircraft during World War ll. The soldiers were given books filled with silhouettes of friendly and enemy aircraft. When an unidentified plane came into view, they hur¬riedly compared the plane with these illustrations. If it turned out to be a friendly plane, they relaxed and went back to their posts. If it was an enemy aircraft, they leaped into action.

Unconsciously you have compared every man or woman that you have met to your imago. When you identified a close match, you felt a sudden surge of interest.

This is all hidden behind the scenes so to speak. It happens as a natural process without our thinking but and here is the important part it has far more influence in the day to day doings of our life then most would care to admit. All aspects of the unconscious mind have this unknowingness of process in common, after all you had no awareness of this elaborate sorting mechanism was there or that it was operating in your life. There is a place where you can catch a peek at it in action, in your dreams.

• If you reflect on your dreams, one thing you will notice is that your old brain capriciously merges people together.

• A dream that starts out with one person playing a part suddenly has another person filling that role; the unconscious has little regard for corporeal boundaries.

You may be able to recall a dream where your spouse suddenly transmutated into your mother or father, or a dream in which your spouse and a parent played such similar roles or treated you in such a similar manner that they were virtually indistin-guishable.

Self: I have a problem

Dream: Here let me show you.

This is the closest you will ever come to directly verifying the existence of your imago. But when you do the stemming exercises especially in the off hand you will have a chance to compare the dominant character traits of your mate with the dominant character traits of your primary caretakers, the parallel that your unconscious mind draws between spouses and care¬takers will become unmistakably clear.

Let's take this information about the imago and see how it adds to our earlier theories of attraction.

The question that I'm frequently asked when I talk about the uncon¬scious factors in mate partner selection is this: how can people tell so much about each other so quickly?

Are We Soul Mates?

The reason that we are such instant judges of character is that we rely on what Freud called “unconscious perception.”

• We intuitively pick up much more about people than we are aware of.

• When we meet strangers, we instantly register the way they move, the way they seek or avoid eve contact, the clothes they wear, their characteristic expres¬sions, the way they fix their hair, the ease with which they laugh or lie, their ability to listen, the speed at which they talk, the amount of time it takes them to respond to a question—we record all of these characteristics and a hundred more in a matter of minutes.

• Just by looking at people, we can absorb vast amounts of informa¬tion.

• When I walk to work each morning, I automatically appraise the people on the crowded sidewalks.

• My judgment is instan¬taneous:

A. this person is someone I wish I knew;

B. that person is someone I have no interest in.

I find myself attracted or repulsed with only a superficial glance. When I walk into a party, one glance around the room will often single out the people that I want to meet. Other people ¬report similar experiences. As a police officer on Hwy Patrol, I could pick out which cars had booze in them while cruising at sixty-five miles an hour and be right. A Free Lunch ... bet with my partner... depended on the “call” being right.

Our powers of observation are especially acute when we are looking for a mate/partner, because we are searching for someone to satisfy our funda¬mental unconscious drives.

We subject everyone to the same intense scrutiny: is this someone who will nurture me and help me recover my lost self?

When we meet someone who appears to meet these needs, the old brain registers instant interest.

In all subsequent encounters, the unconscious mind is fully alert, searching for clues that this might indeed be the perfect mate, or soul mate ... New Age red-herring phrase for an attempt to understand what was unnoticed consciously but felt deeply.

If later experiences' confirm the imago match, our interest climbs even further.

On the other hand, if later experiences show the match to be superficial, our interest plummets, and we look for a way to end or reduce the importance of the relationship.

Not everyone finds a mate or partner who conforms so closely to the imago.

Sometimes only one or two key character traits match up, and the initial attraction is likely to be mild. Such a relationship is often less passionate and less troubled than those characterized by a closer match. The reason it is less passionate is that the old brain is still look¬ing for the ideal ‘gratifying object,’ and the reason it tends to be less troubled is that there isn't the repetition of so many childhood strug¬gles. When people with weak imago matches terminate their relation¬ships, it's often because they feel little interest in each other, not because they are in great pain. ‘There wasn't all that much going on,' they say.’ Or ‘I just felt restless. I knew that there was something better out there.’

At this point in our discussion of partnering, we have a more complete understanding of the mystery of attraction. To the biological theory and the exchange theory and the persona theory and family systems dynamics theory I have added the idea of the unconscious search for a person who matches our imago.

Our motivation for seeking an Imago Match is our urgent desire to heal childhood wounds.

We also have new insight into conflict:

If the primary reason we select our mates is that they resemble our caretakers, it is inevitable that they are going to re injure, stumble over, and be blamed for awakening some very old and sensitive wounds; when we sink into this quag¬mire of pain and confusion, need and control, called “the power struggle” that is a sure sign That History’s Strange Tale is unfolding before us, actually better said, deep within us.

AMBER SMILES

Amber flame burns clear in the night.

Pain and Strain pushed out of sight

Caring is lost

In history's strange tale

Life's just the Past made present in detail

No one sees that Amber flame

It slowly consumes

And leaves only pain

It smiles

Neil Douglas–Tubb (1993)