TVS

I spent some time at the Valley ... it was said in those days that you were at the Valley for a season ... it was one of the best times in my life ... have a look ... Neil








http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReG9Kd-caJM

Don't Just Love It

Peace

Peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. Peace means to be in the midst of all those things and still be calm in your heart ... from my friend Cleone

Over and over, I have followed my own advice on what I think I should do and how I think I should do it. Each time “It Came Up The Same”, I have failed. 

There are times when the desperation inside of me becomes so overwhelming; I don’t think I can go on for another moment. 

But as I quiet my mind and close my eyes I notice, for the first time in years, that there is a part of me that remembers the truth of whom I am.  It speaks to me in a voice that is neither male nor female and reassures that all is not for naught. 

Imagine that, from deep inside a Voice Of Sanity, a reassurance, comfort and truth. This is a Voice that I recall from my childhood, soft and certain, It reminds me of my Maker and It tells me I am part of all that is.  One with! I am part of the plan too and I belong, no longer left out.

"No Child of God can be less than perfect."

There is warmth and a comfort that comes over me as I sense this Presence deep within me.  Oh, It is hard to discern at first, but each time I acknowledge It to be alive and well within me, I feel It grow and become more pronounced and defined, and more a part of my life. 

I feel the pieces of me beginning to come home from their hiding places and take their rightful place within me. 

The missing parts of me are beginning to fall into place, as if some giant hand is now beginning to put me, the jigsaw puzzle, back together again.

Experience Has Taught Me

That I know that I have many avenues open to me and it really is a simple decision

A or B

Choose the new and unfamiliar, take the risks and begin to experiment with something that I have discovered within me, something totally new and unfamiliar

Or

Do it the old way and take one more step towards death.

Which will I choose?

“A Power Greater Than Me” to me means: 

The Metaphor

1

It has been my belief since my earliest memory that “I am alone and my world is a dangerous place”. 

My life seems to affirm this to me daily. 

I have found that I can only acquire the relief and happiness that I think I want by doing something, getting something and or consuming something. 

There are times when I feel I am so desperate, lost and alone. 

I have learned that when my best efforts fail me, I have gathered habits along the way that I can depend on.  These habits are creations from outside of me and they are "magical".  They take their form as substances, actions or facilities, things that I use daily just to get by on. 

I know that I can always reach out to them and rely on them.  It is sad but true that these “magical” chattels are my addictions, obsessions and/or compulsions.

As I still my thoughts and close my eyes, I begin to realize that I have placed the scant shadow of my faith in a place and on activities that are misbegotten. 

I am beginning to admit to myself that my beliefs are not really true.  The various forms of my beliefs, my addictions, obsessions and/or compulsions are devices that have only brought me pain. 

I am admitting that I have no control over them. In fact; I have given them all my power. 

I also notice that they have no power of their own. 

They sit there like lifeless forms, shadows or ghosts, awaiting only the wind of my restlessness to stir my soul and scatter them.

I admit that I have been insane and I wonder about what may lie before me as I begin my journey toward finding the world of my sanity. 

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?

Dragging Home The Invisible Bone Part One

Dragging Home The Invisible Bone

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 counter-productive 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[1]

Square Holes

Larger mallets

Simply Don’t Work

---

[1] EHTU – 175 #66

Wisdom is Dispatched

Wisdom is Dispatched in Odd Ways ... here is one

Secrets, Melodrama And Misdirection Are Our Livelihood

Secrets and Melodrama are our livelihood, they are our stock and trade. We are good at manufacturing them and we are good at keeping them and we are good at misdirecting others away from the truth so the truth won’t be noticed and so we can safeguard our own little world.  We are good at demanding that others adhere to our need for them to keep our secrets, because we know that without them keeping our secrets none of the melodrama that we believe we so desperately need would exist … really. 

Secrets, Melodrama And Misdirection Are Almost Like Substance That We Abuse.

All this need for secrecy and melodrama is fostered by our sense of low-esteem.  Secrecy and melodrama is the evidence that we are not in denial that we are, in fact, in delusion. 

Denial is said to be a place in our consciousness where we know what the truth is and we simply won’t admit it out loud to anyone.  Whereas: delusion is a place in our consciousness where we really believe our own melodrama …it’s real as far as we are concerned …thus the need for secrecy and melodrama. 

It Is A Form Of Denial We Really Believe.

We hide behind our phoniness, our social images, our bodily images and we hope against hope that we really can beguile people into believing our fantasy as real. 

It follows that the basis for most if not all of our relationships is:

I’ll believe you are who you think you are, if you believe I am who it is that I think, say and act that I am. 

Unfortunately the truth of the matter is that we only fool and trick ourselves, and the intrinsic problem seemingly lost in this is, we can only do that trick and fool thing for short periods in time before we begin to do serious damage to ourselves..  The only ones who are seemingly deceived by our antics are those who have a vested interest in not being found out for themselves; not being found out so their world maintains the impression … delusion … of being safe … for them, and they are in the role they say they are and thus feel safe.  That does not mean safe by the way, the key word phrase in that sentence is Feels Safe.

You see the problem don’t you?

They have it too!

Oh yes, it may seem to take another form, it may seem to be socially acceptable … but they have it too.  They are part of the greater whole just like you and I. This becomes problematic by its very nature, why … because they are not about to admit that they have it too, to either themselves or anyone else.  No one wants to admit to having a problem that shames him or her. Thus the best way not to have one is to simply ignore it or soldier gather with people who are willing to agree that everyone is fine within the system created by that group, or willing to agree that someone else has the problem or is causing it … but it all boils down to The Sky Is Falling as per Chicken Little. 

The Great Producers of Melodrama in my life are:

OUR FAMILY OF CREATION

All too many of us come from low functioning families.  Families who are no longer available to us or cannot provide us with what it is that we need.  It is an essential in recovery that we build a new family, a Family Of Creation.  This is a family of friends and parental figures, a group of individuals who give something back as well as take: a family of friends who actually care about us for who we are.  A Family of Creation can include members of our family of origin as well as people who are completely unrelated and possibly unknown to each other.  The important thing is that they know you. Remember this:

****Our intimacy problems are not about who we are but instead about what happened to us.

****We find our humanity again by exploring and finding new families and becoming more affirming and understanding of ourselves and others.

The Journey of Discovery into finding our family of creation involves:

·        Looking at helplessness to find our learned powerlessness - the very thing that phantom control tries to cover up.

·        Becoming fluid not rigid - feeling our feelings and responding to them instead of reacting to them.

·        Making meaning and purpose out of what happened to us then and now.

·        Making boundaries that eliminates those individuals who use cynicism and critical shame to control and manipulate us.

·        Stopping the "Art of  the Fine Whine" as a method of Bonding and making friends

·        Using 12 Steps as a tool for the journey of self discovery and not making them the journey itself.

·        Coming to understand that most of our adult behaviours and actions are simply reflections from our past and as such give us the opportunity to look back into our childhood and see the abuse and neglect.  Knowing that if there is unfinished business from childhood then it is nature's way to escalate the situation and feelings so they can be resolved. Healing can take place only when we know what happened and how we felt at the time of the incidents, and when we have a good working appreciation of the legacy those incidents have left us with:

i.e.

·        Phobia's And Terror are windows to the frightened child

·        Depression And Isolation are windows to the hurting child

·        Self Hate And Self Hurt are windows to the shame-filled child

·        Intimacy Disorders are windows to the abandoned child

Einstein's Riddle the answer

house	1	2	3	4	5
color	yellow	blue	red	green	white
nationality	norweigian	dane	brit	german	swede
drink	water	tea	milk	coffee	beer
smoke	dunhill	blend	pall mall	prince	bluemaster
pet	cats	horse	birds	fish	dogs

Journey of Addiction

This Is The Journey Of Addiction.

The Hallmark Of Addiction is Loss Of Control

and

Its Sustaining Force Is Denial.

Denial isn't necessarily of the addiction, but of the expanded impact of the addiction in our lives.

Addiction Involves a set of compulsions, highs, habits, fantasies, and rituals, settings and beliefs that become repetitive, designed to produce a desired goal.  If we can't do the addiction, we can do the ritual or we can seek the setting or fantasy.

Discussion

The mind set ALSO creates the high.  An addict needs the settings, intensity, to find the high.  The addict can experience what is referred to as a contact high, that is they just have to be near to people they believe to be high and they will get off on the proximity to the drug of choice. 

Addiction is a set of urges that creates obsession and preoccupa­tion. 

Rituals contribute to the obsession and the high.  The settings become important parts of the high.

Adolescents, especially those who lack identity and socialization skills, tend to find that the rituals of addictive behavior help them socialize.  The drug-using groups often provide a place for the adolescents to socialize when they lack socialization skills.  When an adolescent has enough consequences, they end up in treatment.  Since adolescents are good at rituals, they go through the rituals of treatment quite well.  They learn treatment talk, group talk and the rituals of recovery talk. 

When people leave treatment and head back into their old familiar settings, there is something that happens that most are not ready for. Nothing has changed. It’s all still the same. The old gang is there. The families are still doing what they always did. The places where the pain, the abuse, the neglect are generated are still operating.  People still have the problems of how to socialize, Do I Fit In Here? and if they are not ready for their reality then they tend to lose their sobriety very rapidly and lean heavily on old habits learned in childhood. 

What they discover quickly is that the rituals of treatment don't work as well in the real world as they did on the therapist’s couch. So somewhere in the time frame from 6 days to 3 years the individual goes back to what he or she knows they can depend on ... drugging, drinking, lint ball picking, food addictions ... again.  Why do they go back? This answer is so simple.  It works. The no trust rule is invoked ... Don’t Trust Anyone and you won’t be hurt they withdraw back into themselves and do what they have always done ... do it on their own. 

For the addict it is a requirement that they need to deal with the settings and the rituals of their addiction, not adapt those rituals from their addiction to their next supposed new way of life. They need to deal with the context of their lives, their social conditions, their emotional conditions and the dynamics of the social setting where home is. This is not the same for everyone, but the necessity of doing is the same for all.  They need to deal with their family and learn coping mechanisms and survival skills that suit their lives today. The Adult Child needs to learn how to socialize with others as a key part of recovery.

The preoccupation and fantasies of the addiction may be the high.  But when they are not the high, they, the preoccupation and fantasies, will enhance the need for the high and set the individual up to act out with the substance of his or her addiction; because after all, I Know. Not really ... but!

Solution, we have to change what we think about.  Our beliefs, our mind set ... those things that create, enables and enhances the high.

On Seeing Clearly ¾ Especially Appearances

EXPERIENCE has taught us that this appearance of our outer improvement is a vain attempt to reshape the appearance of action into compliance with a certain set of unwritten, inner, self-justifying, deflective, image-shaping rules. 

Basically ... a flaw to cover a flaw. 

Two wrongs make a wrong.

This is referred to loosely as “self-image actualization”: if the rearranging of the outer world is done properly, then it will hopefully bring the beholder a sense of safety and serenity. 

The art of not doing what it is that I appear to be doing.

Try this: Make an art out of living life; make it be how you walk the walk.

It was a native shaman I knew many years ago who said to me that to begin to walk through life in "a sacred manner," was the beginnings of the development of a reverence for life, a reverence that we will all need to develop, sooner or later.  This reverence is not self-seeking, nor does it seek self-satisfaction, there is no deeper ego functions outside of the fact that the ego will participate in the process simply because it is there and a part of you in the first place.  Simply put, life is as it is, with no real beginnings and no real endings, edgeless … eternal.  I am the Alpha and the Omega, containing everything, lacking for nothing, everything being exactly as it is supposed to be.

As we begin this journey … most of us make an uncomfortable discovery … we are not in sync with things, nor are things in sync with us.

So?

This process of walking lightly becomes the simple recogni­tion that the pain we suffer is caused by our thirst for the satisfactions of our own little desires, the ones we think we need so desperately to satisfy, willfully, as the expression of our newly found powerfulness.

Always trying to counteract the original forces of powerlessness from our earliest experiences.

Keeping us perpetually out of sync.

Remember The Working Miss-Definition Of Freedom:

What most people call freedom is simply their willful ability to satisfy their desires.

Walking the walk as a sacred exercise … developing a Point Of View … can leave you in a place of not being invested in any of the outcomes of your actions and that can lead to the satisfaction of the greater spiritual desire: freedom from the mind's incessant wandering and thirst for more. 

Under all this … lay the understanding and appreciation of Forgiveness.

For Your Journal: In Longhand: 

Forgiveness to me Means …  a page or two long hand in your journal.

Einstein's Riddle

There are 5 houses in 5 different colors. In each house lives a person with a different nationality. The 5 owners drink a certain type of beverage, smoke a certain brand of cigar, and keep a certain pet. No owners have the same pet, smoke the same brand of cigar, or drink the same beverage.
The question is: Who owns the fish?
Hints:

• The Brit lives in the red house.
• The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
• The Dane drinks tea.
• The green house is on the left of the white house.
• The green homeowner drinks coffee.
• The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
• The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
• The man living in the center house drinks milk.
• The Norwegian lives in the first house.
• The man who smokes Blend lives next to the one who keeps cats.
• The man who keeps the horse lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
• The owner who smokes Bluemaster drinks beer.
• The German smokes prince.
• The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
• The man who smokes Blend has a neighbor who drinks water.

Einstein wrote this riddle early during the 19th century. He said 98% of the world could not solve it. Its not hard, you just need to pay attention and be patient.

On Seeing Clearly And Taking Action

On Seeing Clearly And Taking Action

EXPERIENCE has taught us that each of us is in some way obsessed with self-improvement: trying to be better, always trying to have more, trying to be fixed, trying to help either ourselves or someone else; trying to appear different. There are hundreds of variations on this theme; some are very misleading and can be quite confusing if we take them only at face value. 

Frequently, we use those scripts and beliefs to trick ourselves into believing that all is well in our world, often in spite of overwhelming evidence that it is not. 

If we ever stopped to examine the reality of it all, we might just notice that things are not so good. 

Really!

Things I have learned:

There are a few things that I have learned on this journey and one important one is, Awakening is Not Analyzing … or … Analyzing is Not Awakening …  this one confused me for some time … I thought that if I knew, then I would know and if I was in a place of knowing then all would be fine in my world …

The problem with that is that I never got this theory on knowing to work all that well … but lord knows I tried …

I basically tried every variation on a theme …

I analyzed for the sake of analyzing … I analyzed the analysis … I look closely at my waking state and I analyzed what it was that I thought I did to keep me from being fully awakened into my world … whatever that meant … and understanding it … all at the same time.

What I discovered was Awakening is Awakening … and it has nothing to do with my understanding of it … oh there is an understanding that comes with it … but understanding will not bring it on ... no matter how hard I tried to make it work for me in that fashion …

Freedom and Happiness is not what it appears to be:

Working mis-Definition of Freedom and Happiness:

What most people call freedom is simply their willful ability to satisfy their desires. The call of I want more freedom, is the hue and cry of the false self’s need to fill an emptiness it senses within itself and has no idea how to fill. 

What I have come to understand about the statement: I want more freedom is; I want to be able to have more of what I want, when I want it, and in the fashion that I believe I want to have it in.

From both my practice and my own practices I have to argue that the process of wanting what you want as often as you want it … More … is not freedom, it is in fact a kind of compulsion that keeps one hooked into the delusion that more is better, or more is best, or more defines wellness; when in fact, it is truly the defining quality of our discomfort in the first place. The very thing that more was supposed to remove is defined by the need for more.

Circuitous and puzzling all at the same time because the very thing that we are taught is the answer to the conundrum is in fact what is driving the conundrum to continue endlessly.

A Working Definition Of Freedom can be summed up as:

Being able to have or not have what you want, without being lost in the drama of what appears to be happening in the unfolding process of having or not having.  Thus not having to react to life and life’s situations and defending yourself from the experience you are trying to have. 

Life does not have to be a Polar Bear Dancing Lesson

And Taking Action

On Seeing Clearly ¾

And Taking Action

EXPERIENCE has taught us that it (our experience) is both mindful and healing, and that we must attempt this ongoing experiment. It clearly demonstrates a willingness on our behalf to want to experiment with, and to want to enter into, an experience that might allow a fuller, more open relationship with a Higher Power.

The exercise is one example of “demonstrated willingness.” 

It has many faces and has been presented many times in many forms.  It is an understatement to say that this exercise tends to pit the ego against the Will of God, because that is exactly what it does, and that is the idea of the exercise. 

The exercise is simple enough, some may say too simple, but most find it to be work, and most have difficulty completing the exercise.

Here are the rules:

You may elect not to actually try this experiment, but if you do decide to experiment, then all that is required is simply imagining what it would feel like for you to thoroughly believe five simple statements. The exercise is this:  simply affirm, several times a day, day after day, for six months, the following statements, imagining the full meaning of each statement to the fullest extent possible for you at the time:

                   i.            I am not separate. I am one with All that Is, All that Was, and All that Ever Will Be.

                 ii.            I can trust.

              iii.            I can know.

               iv.            I am responsible.

                 v.            I am single-minded.

On Seeing Clearly Simple Truths

On Seeing Clearly  Simple Truths  

EXPERIENCE has taught us that if we have released our pain and faced our fears, searched out and exorcised our demons, then it is important that we know enough to let them go … leave them alone after that.  Don’t go back and play with them.  They are not entrails to be gone through, they are not a part of our identity, they are not who we are, they are simply manifestations of what happened to us.

So many of us treat this process as if it were once dirty laundry but now is clean, so we go out and gather it all back up, thinking we’ve found some lost possessions that need to come home. 

They are not.  They are simply the by-products of what happened. They're history let them go.

They are to be left at the side of the road for our Higher Power to pick up and use or discard as It pleases.

So here I sit, still exhausted but clearer of mind[1].

I have decided deep within me that I am ready. 

I have decided is the key phrase. 

I am ready to let go of all this stuff, all this mess. 

I close my eyes and I pray, probably for the first time in my life, I sincerely pray to my Higher Power and simply ask,  “Take all this from me.” 

I sense the presence of that Voice again.  It is here with me now, beside me and silent.  I can feel it, I can’t hear it, I can just feel its presence. 

Then I hear.

You have no burden to remove.  I did not error in your creation.  You are perfect, as are all my creations.  You are made in my image. I, as your maker, see only that, you are perfect in my creation, which is all there is to see for either you or me.

So I instruct you: You made your burden; you set it down; now, walk away from it. 

Simply leave “ It All” by the side of the path.  I will come in my own good time pick it up and put it to its proper use elsewhere in My Creation.  Simply go and leave it there for Me to pick up … whenever … later.

For the first time ever in my life I know absolutely that I am not alone. 

Others have stopped and they take me by my hand and we walk together toward our future. 

The future Our Creator intended for us to have.

Experience Has Taught Me That

I Am No Longer At Odds With Everything . . . I Am Free

I Am Free To Be as God Created Me

---

[1] Extracted from The Metaphor … a poetic rendering of the Seventh Step