working the Third Step ~ ASKing for Help updated

September 4, 2019 – I have been meaning to update this page for quite awhile – and am just now able to find time to do that.  It was quite a journey since April when this whole owning I have a choice to focus on the part of the glass that is full exercise started.  In this update, I am going to start with my last posting on this page on June 21st, and add the updates I made on my Working The Third Step page.

“5/21/19 – So, there is good news and bad news.  The good news is that I got a new car – it is a silver 2012 Hyundai Sonata . . . . . .  Someone on Facebook asked how I was able to do it financially.  Here is my reply:

“Basically I needed to accept that the only realistic way to get reliable car is to be willing to take on a payment – so I chose to do that. No down payment and first payment due of just over a couple of hundred dollars in 45 Days and every month after that. Living month to month I didn’t want the payment, but I needed the reliable vehicle. So, accept the things I can’t change (that my car had broken down and was no longer reliable) and change the thing I can change (my attitude towards taking on a payment.) Very happy to have the car.”

So that is the bad news, I had to take on a payment.  I live month to month and am very grateful every month that I have enough to pay the rent.  So, adding another payment was not something that I wanted to do. But as I said, accept reality as it is and make an attitude adjustment if necessary to take the action that I need to take. . . . . . Now I have a new payment due on June 15th and then less money coming in the end of June.  Not sure I would have taken on the payment knowing that – but I didn’t know that, which is perfect in the Cosmic Scheme of things.  Things could be pretty hairy at the end of June – when it is time to pay rent for July.  I did get over $500 in donations from my appeal – and am incredibly grateful for the support and the prayers and good wishes from everyone.  I may have to be asking again in June, but I don’t have to know today how things will be then.” – Working the Third Step latest news

May 23 at 1:37 PM –
So, there is good news and bad news. Bad news is my new car broke down on I-5. The good news is that I was just coming up to a rest stop within 15 miles of where Darien lives. I am up here for his 8th grade graduation tomorrow.

May 23 at 9:58 PM –
So, about my new car breaking down. It turns out it has a 30 day warranty (I didn’t buy the long term one) – but the work has to be done by CarMax. So, closest one to where I was at was in Modesto – so I had to car towed there. Good news, it was covered by warranty. Bad news Modesto was farther than my roadside assistance covered for towing – but only 9 miles, so good news the towing company gave me a deal and it will be a lot cheaper than if I had the car towed to a local garage as I had originally been planning. Also good news – they are going to give me a loaner car – which is important because bad news they won’t even look at it to see what is wrong for at least a week. So, going to Modesto tomorrow after Darien’s graduation ceremony.
What happened was the check engine light came on – and it lost a bit of power – just as I was coming to the rest area. I checked the book and is said an emissions problem and you can probably still drive it. Bad news, is that as soon as I started driving out of the rest area it started making noise and coughing and bucking. So, stopped right there. Don’t know how serious it is, but sure glad it didn’t happen any time in the 227 miles I had driven up until there. Some of it is really in the middle of no where. Could have broken down by the elk herd and I would have been in big trouble. 🙂 So, more will be revealed – as usual. Thanks for your good wishes – will keep you all posted.

May 31st

Got a call today from the woman at CarMax in Modesto about my car.  Turns out is was a factory recall on that year and model – and I am going to get a new engine in my new car.

June 11, 2019
There is good news and bad news.  The good news is my car has a new engine in it and I am going up to pick it up (and pick Darien up) on Thursday.  The bad news is that the first payment is due on Saturday and I don’t have it at this point.  Finances are beyond tight right now.  My credit cards are maxed out.  One client who owes me money hasn’t been able to pay it yet and another that told me Monday that he was going to buy more changed his mind.  I really need the Universe to kick down enough to catch up a bit right now.  I need at least $300 – and a $1000 would be even better.  Reminds me of some times in the past when I really needed a miracle, and I don’t know where it is coming from.   I AM Radiantly Beautiful, Vibrationally Healthy, Joyously Alive, and Abundantly Prosperous!  Abundantly Prosperous!!!

June 29, 2019
So, again there is good news and bad news.  As I said below on May 21st, “The April sales are what I get paid for at the end of June.” – and I got that payment today, it is $250 to $300 below my normal payment – and things are very tight for paying the rent this next week.  The good news is that I got my car payment made (thanks to help from some Eskimos) and made 2 credit card payments in the last week – and that I have made payments on 2 other credit cards that are due on the 1st.  The bad news is that I don’t know where the money to pay my and Darien’s cell phone bill – which is also due on the first – is going to come from.  So once again I can use a miracle like back in 1995.  ASKing for some financial support from the Universe again.

July 1, 2019
There is good news and good news.  The Universe – and some new clients – did kick down enough abundance to get all the bills due on 1st and 2nd paid, and to have enough for the rent.  Also good news is the next bills aren’t due until the 8th and 9th.  In the meantime, Darien and I are going back to Nebraska to see my mother who is in her final stages before escaping the body that is failing her.  I would really love for the Universe to kick down enough to catch up a bit right now.  I would love at least $300 – and a $1000 or two would be even better

July 17, 2019
There is good news and good but sad news.  My mother passed away on the morning of July 13th.  It’s good news because her suffering is over and she has gotten to escape from a body and mind that have been failing on her for the last few years. It is, of course, also sad news.  I am going home to Nebraska for her funeral on Friday.  Her passing means that my financial situation has been relieved in a considerable way for now and the foreseeable future.  So, the request for the Universe to provide enough to get out of the hole I was in, was answered in a way that I didn’t expect.  Good news, but sad also.

Posted 4/21/19

I need help right now, and I am working the Third Step by ASKing for help. 

“4/21/19 – So I was able to get enough money together to rent a car to pick up my grandson – that is the good news.  The bad news is that my car had a blown head gasket, and maybe a cracked head.  Those are not good things.” – Working the Third Step ~ ASKing for help

“I freely share so much information on my site because – as I say in the article above – I believe it is my Karmic Mission in this lifetime.  I want to share the Joyous message and the precious information that I have discovered – and it is what I need to do for my Recovery and Spiritual Path.  It is not such a great strategy when it comes to finances however.;-)  So Donations to the Cause / Love Offerings / Spiritual Tithes are always appreciated if you feel my sharing has helped you in your Healing / Recovery process and on your Spiritual Path. If my writing has helped you remember Truth that brings you some Joy and inner peace, and your Spirit moves you to send some Love back my way – there are donation links here.” 

“. . . . it can be easier to be a channel for Love to flow through than a receptacle for Love to flow into.”

I went through 30 day treatment programs twice.  Once while getting sober in Lincoln Nebraska in 1984 – and the second time in my fifth year of sobriety to deal with my codependency.  That second one was in Tucson Arizona – and I mention both of them in the beginning of a blog post entitled MY SOBRIETY DATE: JANUARY 3RD, 1984.

In the first treatment program, I was nearing the end of my 30 days and was getting very scared about whether I was going to be able to stay sober out in the world.  I had hit bottom and had nothing – no car for sure.  I was going to be living in the suburbs with my brother in city I had not lived in for 14 years – and was worried about even getting to meetings.

Once I surrendered to being in treatment, the program became a very safe place for me – it felt like a vacation from life.  Of course, it took me awhile to surrender.

“One of the first surrenders that I had to make was to let go of doing things ‘my way.’ (I used to sit in bars and get tears in my eyes over Frank Sinatra’s recording because I was also doing it ‘My way.’)  I had to start listening to those weird people who were telling me that I could live without alcohol. Then I had to start letting go of my belief that life was impossible without drugs and alcohol.” – Grave Emotional and Mental Disorders – AA language for Codependence  

“So I went into a treatment program in Lincoln Nebraska.  For the first two weeks I really resisted being there.  I thought the people were weird and I certainly didn’t need any of this religious God crap that they were talking about.  I called friends back in LA and complained about how I was locked in this horrible place.  (No doors were locked.)

The turning point came for me when some druggy friends back in LA offered to buy me a plane ticket back to the coast.  That was the point where I had to admit to myself that I had a choice.  I had spent my whole life being the victim because I didn’t believe I had choices – now I had a choice.

So I had to take a good look at myself and my life and see if I wanted to return to the way I had been living.  When I looked at how messed up – (God, what an understatement.  As I wrote that last sentence, I started crying remembering what a hell I had been living in.  At some point in treatment I realized that the song that described what my life had been like was Desperado – “Your prison is walking through life all alone.”  “You’d better get down off you fence and let someone love you before it is too late.”  After I got sober I swore to myself that I would kill myself before I would ever take another drink.)

When I took a realistic view of what hell my life had been, I had to admit to myself that I didn’t ever want to live that way again.  So I turned down the plane ticket and surrendered to trying to learn the things that those weird people were trying to teach me.” – The Path of one Recovering Codependent ~ the dance of one wounded soul The Awakening Begins in the Joy2MeU Journal quoted in A Higher Power of my own understanding 2 – the beginning of empowerment

So, towards the end of the 30 days, I didn’t really want to leave.  I went to my counselor to share my fears.  I said, ‘I don’t even know how I will get to meetings.’  That was when he told me that the way I would get to meetings was to ask for rides.  I was horrified.  Asking for help was the last thing I ever wanted to do.  That would be admitting I was a failure, that I was a loser.  Then he told me that asking for help was part of working the Third Step of the 12 Step Recovery program.  I later came to realize that ASKing for help was an important part of Metaphysical Law.

“God works through people.  We all have had Eskimos in our lives, angels disguised as people.  We are not alone in this process – we can’t do it alone.

I need to ask for help and then let go of rather the person I am asking can in fact help me.  I need to take the risk and let go of the outcome.   What I need will come from someplace.  There is a verse in the bible that says: (paraphrased??)

Ask and ye shall receive.

Seek and ye shall find. 

Knock and the door shall be opened.

ASK.  By asking – either God or another person – I am setting energy in motion in the Universe.  Once the energy is in motion it comes back to me at some time from some place.  I have to put it out before it will come back.  What I sow I reap.  The Universe works on the principle of cause and effect.  It is very important for me to get proactive in my own life by taking the risk of asking for help – and it is much easier when I can let go of my picture of how, and when, that help is going to manifest.” – Working the Third Step ~ ASKing for Help

So there is great news and not so good news.  The great news is the my grandson Darien is here.  I got enough money to rent a car to go and pick him up yesterday – and he will be here for a week over his Spring Break. (I summarized my relationship with my step grandson in my Update last year: https://www.joy2meu2.com/update-june-2018 ). The not so good news is that my car is back running now after some expensive repairs, but is very iffy in terms of taking any trips out of town.  So I need to be looking for another car at a time when my finances are in really poor condition. 

It was kind of humorous to me – my Higher Power’s sense of humor – that I have been posting on Facebook in the last week about the good news bad news (coffee on my keyboard, car breaking down close to home) challenges in my life.

Robert Burney is feeling blessed.

April 9 at 10:14 AM · 

So there is good news, and bad news. The Bad news is that I spilled a cup of coffee on my wireless keyboard yesterday – it is not working very good any more. The good news is that forced me to drive from Cambria to Pass Robles on highway 46 so that I could see how lush and green the hills are after all the rain.

Robert Burney is in Cambria, California.

April 16 at 4:04 PM · 

So, there is good news and bad news. The Bad news is that my car broke down. The good news is that, it is within a mile of my place. Just walked home with some bags of groceries so they won’t spoil as I wait for an hour for tow truck. Going to take another load now.

On my Spiritual Tithes page I talk about that good new bad news paradox – something I talk about in my book also.

“It is because there is more than one level of reality that life is paradoxical in nature.  What is True and positive on one level – selfishness out of Spiritual Self, can be negative on another level – selfishness out of ego-self.  What a caterpillar calls the end of the world, God calls a butterfly.

Humans have always had expressions that describe the paradoxical nature of the life experience.  Every ending is a beginning.  Every cloud does have a silver lining.  For every door that closes, another door does open.  It is always darkest before the dawn.  Every obstacle is a gift, every problem is an opportunity for growth.

These are all expressions that refer to the paradoxical nature of life – the seeming contradictions that are a result of the multiple levels of reality.  When we start to understand and recognize that there are multiple levels of reality, then we can begin to unravel the paradox and see how all of the pieces fit together perfectly.” – All quotes in this color are from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

“Giving and receiving are inseparable parts of one dynamic energy exchange / flow.  I mention often that everything is both good news and bad news because there are different levels to this life experience (what a caterpillar calls the end of the world, God calls a butterfly) – so also, giving and receiving are two different levels / facets of the same dynamic.  When one is giving freely from the heart (not the codependent types of giving we learned in childhood, i.e.:  giving to try to prove our worth / taking ego strength from giving to someone we feel superior to / giving as a way of manipulating to get what we want), one is giving to Self and Honoring the Spiritual Truth that we are all connected.  It is what I call both selfish and Selfish (one of my phone clients who didn’t like the word suggested that Soulfish would sound better. (To me that sounds more like seafood, but oh well.)

It is Soulfish because I Know that giving is an act of Love, is Honoring my True Self.  Opening to receive is also an Act of Love.  Asking for help and allowing someone else to give to me, is giving them the gift of allowing them to Honor and demonstrate Love for their True Self – and for the Truth that we are all ONE.

It is out of Soulfish purpose that I freely share so much information on my web site.  In freely giving Love I not only open to Love flowing into my life, but I am also manifesting Love into the Collective Consciousness and reminding you of the Truth of who you really are.  The more of you that remember who you Truly are and open up to Love flowing into your life, the closer we get to the Hundredth Monkey Effect that will bring about critical mass in the energy field of Collective Human Intellectual Consciousness and allow us to escape from the polarized thinking that has kept human beings warring on each other for thousands of years. (The New Age – An Age of Healing & Joy )

It is selfish because I know that aligning with Spiritual Truth and Metaphysical Law is what is going to make my life experience less painful and more Joyous in the long run.  It is also selfish because writing for this web site has served my recovery – and helped me to bring in enough money through selling my books (and in the last 3 + years [19 + years now in 2019] doing phone counseling) to continue to have the freedom to focus on my mission, to devote my time and energy to following my path. . . . . . . I freely share so much information on my site because – as I say in the article above – I believe it is my Karmic Mission in this lifetime.  I want to share the Joyous message and the precious information that I have discovered – and it is what I need to do for my Recovery and Spiritual Path.  It is not such a great strategy when it comes to finances however.;-)  So Donations to the Cause / Love Offerings / Spiritual Tithes are always appreciated if you feel my sharing has helped you in your Healing / Recovery process and on your Spiritual Path.” – Metaphysical Law: Giving and Receiving ~ Donations / Love Offerings 

In 2000 I received the gift of a donation from someone in Minnesota who believed my work had changed her life.  She sold a house and sent me $5000.  That allowed me to get moved back to Cambria and get a little garage apartment that I lived in for the next 5 years.  I wrote millions of words in articles for my website and books in that little apartment.  It was Truly a gift from another person that helped me to give to a multitude other people in the years since then.  In October of 2000, after being in the new place for a couple of months, I felt comfortable enough in my new environment to take a deep dive into my fear of intimacy issues.  I didn’t know that I was doing that when I started writing an Update Newsletter for the people on my website – but it was the most important single Update in my personal process since starting my first website in 1998.

“Anytime I have a chance to speak my Truth, to share the beliefs and knowledge which I so passionately embrace, I get to touch the Divine.  I get to be a channel for Love to flow through.  (One of the things I want to talk about in this Newsletter is that it can be easier to be a channel for Love to flow through than a receptacle for Love to flow into.) . . . . .

. . . . I learned to give power to the positive feedback – not as proof of my worth – but rather as messages of encouragement from my Higher Power.

Example:
I have inner child places within me that:  are starving for love, affection, and touch;  are desperately romantic and aching for my princess to come;  that believe I am not worthy of receiving love in a romantic relationship but that I will never be complete without one;  that are profoundly lonely.  I also have an emotional reality that as an adult I have – because of my issues and patterns – been very deprived of companionship, love, affection, touch, etc.  Because of these factors, I would be emotionally triggered by songs.  All those wonderfully codependent songs about the type of codependent love we learned about growing up.  By giving power to those songs I was at the effect of them – so that I could be driving along in a good mood and have a certain song throw me into my deprivation pain.

What I did is change my relationship with those songs.  I choose to believe that those songs were about my relationship with my Higher Power rather than a woman loving me.  That turned those songs from emotional triggers that threw me into pain to messages of encouragement that could sometimes – because of perfect timing – help me to access Joy. 

The same thing can be done with feedback from other people.  We do not define ourselves by what others tell us.  We can look at what others tell us as messages. 

The ones who are shaming and abusive are demonstrating for us how the disease works.  Once we are able to start having a more objective view of the process (to stop taking it personally), we can see them reacting out of their own fears, out of their wounded inner child places.  They are being used to communicate with us and help us learn about our own wounds and the disease.  They are teachers who – by acting out of their disease – are forcing us to start protecting ourselves by learning to have boundaries.

The ones who are telling us good things are passing along messages of encouragement from our Higher Power.  Goddess Strokes.  That way, it doesn’t matter what their motive or agenda of is – because the are just being a channel, rather they know it or not.  It doesn’t matter if they are being dishonest and codependent – they are still capable of being a channel, and of giving us an opportunity to practice receiving.

My resistance to opening up to receive Love would cause me to minimize positive feedback by telling myself that the other person wanted something from me, or was just being kind, or whatever.  I spent several years in recovery practicing saying just plain “Thank You.”  Instead of minimizing (oh it was nothing), joking it away, turning it back on them (oh you are really the one who ___), or dismissing it because I suspected the other persons motives or mental health.  The feeling deep within was that if someone was loving and positive towards me, it was either a sinister plot or there must be something wrong with them.

By seeing them as channels rather than the source, it doesn’t matter what their motives are.   By seeing positive affirmation and validation coming from other people as Truly originating from my Higher Power, then I can be grateful to them for being a channel – not feel obligated to them because they are being kind to worthless, shameful me.

Now, through the miracle that this writing process is for me, we have come back around to “it can be easier to be a channel for Love to flow through than a receptacle for Love to flow into.”  I didn’t know I was going to write most of the above – and do not think I have ever quite broken the process of discerning between giving power in a healthy way to what other people say versus giving power to other people in a codependent way, in quite this manner.  I find it quite useful – I hope you do also.” – Joy to You & Me and Joy2MeU Update October 2000

When I went to the treatment center in Arizona, they had a tradition that was focused on opening to receive.  Every morning there was a group with all the people in treatment – usually 50 some people.  Everyone would be given a few minutes to share what they were feeling and learning.  This tradition was that, if someone said “I feel loved!” – the whole group would shout at them, “You are loved!”  One was supposed to open their arms and take it in through their solar plexus chakra – which is the chakra where we take in and manifest out of.

My first week or so there, I thought that was the cheesiest thing I had ever heard – and you would never catch me saying that.  Because my ego was in control. 

By the third week I was milking it for all it was worth.  I would say, “I feel supercalifragilisticexpialidociously loved!  And have 50 people shout that back at me.  Then get hugs from 50 people.  I didn’t need any coffee on those mornings.

It was learning to open to receive that made it possible for me to publish my book Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls – a story with some really amazing miracles. The Path of one Recovering Codependent ~ the dance of one wounded soul Leap of Faith ~ Publishing The Dance.

So, one more time in my recovery, I am ASKing for help.  I am putting out a request – ASKing for some help here on Facebook and in my WordPress Blog – from the Universe (and any Eskimos and Angels out there willing to be channels for Love to flow to me) – to help me through the opportunity for growth the Universe is presenting me with right now.  If you could make a donation or buy something, it would be really great. Here is a sale page with some great offers on my books, audios, phone / Skype counseling, and my workshop. https://www.joy2meu2.com/joy2meu-sale

Here is my working the third step page: Working the Third Step ~ ASKing for Help

Here is my Spiritual Tithes / Love Offering page: Metaphysical Law: Giving and Receiving ~ Donations / Love Offerings 

I am a Magnificent and Powerful Spiritual Being full of Light and Love!

I am Radiantly Beautiful, Vibrantly Healthy, Joyously Alive, and Abundantly Prosperous! Abundantly Prosperous I say.  (It is important to do positive affirmations as if they are already the Truth – because they actually are on a Spiritual level 😉

With wishes of Joy & Love & Abundance to U & Me ~ Robert

 

 

 

 

The True Nature of Love – part 4, Energetic Clarity

“The key to healing our wounded souls is to get clear and honest in our emotional process.  Until we can get clear and honest with our human emotional responses – until we change the twisted, distorted, negative perspectives and reactions to our human emotions that are a result of having been born into, and grown up in, a dysfunctional, emotionally repressive, Spiritually hostile environment – we cannot get clearly in touch with the level of emotional energy that is Truth.  We cannot get clearly in touch with and reconnected to our Spiritual Self.

We, each and every one of us, has an inner channel to Truth, an inner channel to the Great Spirit.  But that inner channel is blocked up with repressed emotional energy, and with twisted, distorted attitudes and false beliefs.”

(All quotations in this color are from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls)

“It can be relatively easy to access Love and Joy in relationship with nature.  It is in our relationships with other people that it gets messy.  That is because we learned how to relate to other people in childhood from wounded people who learned how to relate to other people in their childhood.  In our core relationship with ourselves we don’t feel Lovable.  That can make it very difficult to connect with other people in a clean and energetically clear way that helps us to access Love from the Source instead of viewing the other person as the source.  We are so defended, because of the pain we have experienced, that we are not open to connecting with others.  If we haven’t done the grief work from the past we are not open to feeling our feelings in the moment.  As long as we are blocking the pain and anger and fear, we are also blocking the Love and Joy.  The more we heal our emotional wounds and change our intellectual programming the more capacity we have to be in the moment and tune into the Love within. 

I will discuss further in the next column in this series, how to differentiate between looking outside for the source and combining our energy with some outside influence to help us access the Source within.” – The True Nature of Love-part 3, Love as a Vibrational Frequency

(If you have not already read part 3 you may wish to do so before reading part 4 – all internal links in this column/web page/blog will open in a new browser window so that you can read them and then be back at this column when you collapse the window.)

As I say in the quote above from the last column in this series, relating to nature is easy – relating to other people is messy.  That is because we did not learn how to have a healthy relationship with ourselves in early childhood.  We have to clear up our relationship with our self in order to see our self clearly before we can start to see our relationship to other humans clearly.

And I want to make a point right at the beginning of this article that this is a gradual process of finding a sense of balance – not an absolute destination.  The language I have to use to describe this multi-leveled, multi-faceted growth process is very limiting. 

“Unfortunately, in sharing this information I am forced to use language that is polarized – that is black and white.

When I say that you cannot Truly Love others unless you Love yourself – that does not mean that you have to completely Love yourself first before you can start to Love others.  The way the process works is that every time we learn to Love and accept ourselves a little tiny bit more, we also gain the capacity to Love and accept others a little tiny bit more.

When I say that you cannot start to access intuitive Truth until you clear out your inner channel – I am not saying that you have to complete your healing process before you can start getting messages. You can start getting messages as soon as you are willing to start listening.  The more you heal the clearer the messages become.”

So, with that qualification about the limitations of language, I am now going to try to communicate as clearly as possible how clearing our relationship with ourselves can help us to be energetically clear in our relationship with other people and with life.

Giving power away

Many of the expressions that are in common usage in the language of human interrelationship are incredibly accurate on multiple levels.  One such expression is ‘giving your power away.’  If we are not clear in our relationship with self, if we are reacting to the definitions of self that we learned in childhood, then we are giving power away both literally and figuratively on multiple levels.

The level that most people are not aware of, and that is important for the focus of this column, is energetically.  When we give power away to other people because our relationship with self is dysfunctional, we actually allow cords of energy to tie us to those people.  These cords (ribbons, cables, tethers, threads, strands) of energy exist on the Etheric plane – which is where the Life Force energy runs through the chakra system.

We can literally be drained of our Life Force by these dysfunctional connections to other people.   All of us learned to allow ourselves to both be drained of Life Force by others as well as to steal Life Force energy from others to survive.

We need to steal Life Force energy from others because we are blocked from clearly accessing our own Life Force energy by our dysfunctional relationship with self.  Because our inner channel is not clear.  In clearing up our inner channel to tune into the higher vibrational emotional energy of Light, Love, Joy, and Truth, we are also accessing our own Life Force energy.  (The Life Force energy and the vibrational range of Light, Love, Joy, Truth, and Beauty are not the same thing but they are intimately interrelated.)

So, when I talk about giving our power away on an energetic level, it is an actual drain of energy, of power. Our codependence/ego defense system is set up to help us survive by trying to keep us from being drained of power at the same time it tries to steal energy from outside sources.  Since we cannot clearly access the Source energy we have available to us to within, we look externally for sources of power and energy.

Codependency is outer or external dependence.  We are dependent on outer or external sources to feed us the energy we need to survive.  We make people, places, and things and/or money, property and prestige the Higher Power that we look to as the source of our energy, our power.

We are attached to those things literally on an energetic level by the cords of energy that are created on the Etheric plane due to the relationship between the bodies of our being that exist on that plane – which includes our mental and emotional bodies.

(I am now going to use a quote from my Trilogy, and again a little later in this column a continuation of this quote as well as a quote from another article, that are part of my Joy2MeU Journal and are only available to subscribers of that Journal.  I apologize for that to all of you that are not subscribers.  This is not an attempt to get you to subscribe – although it would certainly be OK if you decided to do that – it is just the best way I can find to facilitate communicating what I am attempting to communicate here.  For those of you who are not subscribers, there is plenty of material on this web site to focus on that will help you clear up your relationship with your self without having to understand the more metaphysical aspects of this life experience.  In fact, many people focus on the metaphysical aspects as a way of avoiding doing the emotional healing – so sometimes it is best not to get too caught up in the metaphysical.)

“The holographic illusion which is the Physical plane is composed of multiple levels of illusions.  The most basic illusion within the Physical plane is that substance and separation exist.  They do not.  Everything in the physical universe is composed of energy.  This energy interacts to form energy fields.  These energy fields interact according to energy patterns to form other energy fields, which in turn interact according to energy patterns to form other energy fields, which in turn interact….etc., etc.  The interaction of the One energy produces energy fields on the sub-subatomic level.  These energy fields interact to produce subatomic energy fields, which in turn combine/interact to produce the energy field that we call the atom.  (Remember energy fields are formed by energy vortex interaction, and atoms are are little bundles of swirling energy.)  These atoms interact/combine to form the energy field that is the molecule.  Molecular energy fields interact to form every type of substance/matter which humans perceive.

All energy fields are temporary effects of energy vortex interaction.  (Temporary is a relative term.  Physicists measure the lifetime of some subatomic particles/energy fields in quintillionths of a seconds, while the planet Earth has existed for billions of years – both are temporary.)  The energy patterns which govern these interactions are also energy fields in and of themselves.  For example – the individual human mind is an energy field, but it is also an energy pattern that governs the flow of communications between a humans’ Spiritual being and physical being, and within the seven bodies which make up the humans’ being.  (The seven bodies and the mind will be discussed later.  Note that attitudes in the mind can block the flow of communication from the Soul because the mind is an energy pattern.)

Each energy field vibrates at certain frequencies, and is interrelated and interdependent with all other energy fields.  Each letter in this sentence is an energy field composed of energy fields vibrating at certain frequencies, each combination of letters that forms a word, each combination of words that forms a sentence, etc., etc., etc.  (Millions of atoms can go into making up a single letter – aren’t you glad you asked.)  Each word, each concept, each idea, is an energy field interacting according to energy patterns that are energy fields.

(Get the point?  The bottom line is that nothing is what it appears to be.  You are made up of the same subatomic, atomic, and molecular energy as the chair you are sitting in and the air you are breathing.  Just bring to consciousness for a moment the fact that your physical body vehicle is composed of an uncountable number of energy fields interacting according to energy patterns.  Just to imagine the number of energy fields interacting within your physical body at this moment is overwhelming.  Now think of the number of energy fields and energy patterns that come into play when dealing with something outside of yourself, and then of course there is your emotional body and your mental body, etc. – and you wonder why relationships are so hard.)” – The Dance of the Wounded Souls Trilogy Book 1 – “In The Beginning . . .”  History of the Universe Part V

The fact that the mind is an energy field that is also an energy pattern of interaction is very important to realize.  Communication from within (both internally between different parts of our being and from our spirit/Soul/Higher Power) and without – stimulation from our environment and everything/everyone in it – flows through the energy field that is the mind to our being.

Our experiential reality is determined by the interpretations of our mind – by the intellectual paradigm which we are using to define / determine / translate / explain our reality.  The attitudes, definitions, and belief systems which we hold mentally dictate our emotional reactions.  Attitudes, definitions, and beliefs determine perspective and expectation – which in turn dictates our relationships.  Our relationships to our self, to life, to other people, to The God-Force / Goddess Energy / Great Spirit.  Our relationships to our own emotions, bodies, gender, etc., are dictated by the attitudes, definitions, and beliefs that we are holding mentally / intellectually.  And we acquired those mental constructs / ideas / concepts in early childhood from the emotional experiences, intellectual teachings, and role modeling of the beings around us.  If we have not done our emotional healing so that we can get in touch with our subconscious intellectual programming then we are still reacting to that early childhood programming / intellectual paradigm even though we may not be aware of it consciously.

“The Truth is that the intellectual value systems, the attitudes, that we use in deciding what’s right and wrong were not ours in the first place.  We accepted on a subconscious and emotional level the values that were imposed on us as children.  Even if we throw out those attitudes and beliefs intellectually as adults, they still dictate our emotional reactions.  Even if, especially if, we live our lives rebelling against them. By going to either extreme – accepting them without question or rejecting them without consideration – we are giving power away.”

“It was impossible to start Loving myself and trusting myself, impossible to start finding some peace within, until I started to change my perspective of, and my definitions of, who I was and what emotions it was okay for me to feel.

Enlarging my perspective means changing my definitions, the definitions that were imposed on me as a child about who I am and how to do this life business.  In Recovery it has been necessary to change my definitions of, and my perspective of, almost everything.  That was the only way that it was possible to start learning how to Love myself.

I spent most of my life feeling like I was being punished because I was taught that God was punishing and that I was unworthy and deserved to be punished.  I had thrown out those beliefs about God and life on a conscious, intellectual level in my late teens – but in Recovery I was horrified to discover that I was still reacting to life emotionally based on those beliefs.

I realized that my perspective of life was being determined by beliefs that I had been taught as a child even though they were not what I believed as an adult.”

“I went home to do some writing and was pretty amazed at what it revealed.  I realized that I was still reacting to life out of the religious programming of my childhood – even though I had thrown out that belief system on a conscious, intellectual level in my late teens and early twenties.  The writing that I did that night helped me to recognize that my emotional programming was dictating my relationship with life even though it was not what I consciously believed.

I realized that the belief that “life was about sin and punishment and I was a sinner who deserved to be punished” was running my life.   When I felt “bad” or “bad” things happened to me – I tried to blame it on others to keep from realizing how much I was hating myself for being flawed and defective, a sinner.  When I felt good or good things happened I was holding my breath because I knew it would be taken away because I didn’t deserve it.  Often when things got too good I would sabotage it because I couldn’t stand the suspense of waiting for god to take it away – which “he” would because I didn’t deserve it.

I could suddenly see that I had been playing a game, with that punishing god I learned about in childhood, for all of my adult life.  I tried not to show that I enjoyed or valued anything too much so that maybe god wouldn’t notice and take it away.  In other words, I could never relax and be in the moment in Joy or peace because the moment I showed that I was enjoying life god would step in to punish me.” – Joy2MeU Journal Premier issue The Story of “Joy to You & Me”

We cannot get clearly in touch with the subconscious programming without doing the grief work.  The subconscious intellectual programming is tied to the emotional wounds we suffered and many years of suppressing those feelings has also buried the attitudes, definitions, and beliefs that are connected to those emotional wounds.  It is possible to get intellectually aware of some of them through such tools as hypnosis, or having a therapist or psychic or energy healer tell us they are there – but we cannot really understand how much power they carry without feeling the emotional context – and cannot change them without reducing the emotional charge / releasing the emotional energy tied to them.  Knowing they are there will not make them go away.

A good example of how this works is a man that I worked with some years ago.  He came to me in emotional agony because his wife was leaving him.  He was adamant that he did not want a divorce and kept saying how much he loved his wife and how he could not stand to lose his family (he had a daughter about 4.)  I told him the first day he came in that the pain he was suffering did not really have that much to do with his wife and present situation – but was rooted in some attitude from his childhood.  But that did not mean anything to him on a practical level, on a level of being able to let go of the attitude that was causing him so much pain.  It was only while doing his childhood grief work that he got in touch with the pain of his parents divorce when he was 10 years old.  In the midst of doing that grief work the memory of promising himself that he would never get a divorce, and cause his child the kind of pain he was experiencing, surfaced.  Once he had gotten in touch with, and released, the emotional charge connected to the idea of divorce, he was able to look at his present situation more clearly.  Then he could see that the marriage had never been a good one – that he had sacrificed himself and his own needs from the beginning to comply with his dream / concept of what a marriage should be.  He could then see that staying in the marriage was not serving him or his daughter.  Once he got past the promise he made to himself in childhood, he was able to let go of his wife and start building a solid relationship with his daughter based on the reality of today instead of the grief of the past.

It was the idea / concept of his wife, of marriage, that he had been unable to let go of – not the actual person.  By changing his intellectual concept / belief, he was able to get clear on what the reality of the situation was and sever the emotional energy chains / cords that bound him to the situation and to his wife.  He was then able to let go of giving away power over his self-esteem (part of his self-esteem was based on keeping his promise to himself) to a situation / person that he could not control.  He gained the wisdom / clarity to discern the difference between what he had some power to change and what he needed to accept.  He could not change his wife’s determination to get a divorce but he could change his attitude toward that divorce – once he changed the subconscious emotional programming connected to the concept.

Falling in love with a dream

It is letting go of the dream, the idea / concept, of the relationship that causes the most grief in every relationship break up that I have ever worked with.  We give power and energy to the mental construct of what we want the relationship to be and cannot even begin to see the situation and the other person clearly.

Far too often – because of the concept of toxic / addictive love we are taught in this society – it is the idea of the other person that we fall in love with, not the actual person.  It is so important to us to cast someone in the role of Prince or Princess that we focus on who we want them to be – not on who they really are. In our relationship with our self, we attach so much importance to getting the relationship that we are dishonest with ourselves – and with the other person – in order to manifest the dream / concept of relationship that will fix us / make our life worthwhile.  Then we end up feeling like a victim when the other person does not turn out to be the person we wanted.

“A white knight is not going to come charging up to rescue us from the dragon.  A princess is not going to kiss us and turn us from a frog into a prince.  The Prince and the Princess and the Dragon are all within us.  It is not about someone outside of us rescuing us.  It is also not about some dragon outside of us blocking our path.  As long as we are looking outside to become whole we are setting ourselves up to be victims.  As long as we are looking outside for the villain we are buying into the belief that we are the victim.

As little kids we were victims and we need to heal those wounds.  But as adults we are volunteers – victims only of our disease.  The people in our lives are actors and actresses whom we cast in the roles that would recreate the childhood dynamics of abuse and abandonment, betrayal and deprivation.”

The attitude / dream / concept that has all the power is internal – it is not really about the other person.  All of our emotional responses to life are based upon an internal relationship with our own intellectual paradigm / belief system / definitions.  Other people are actually actors that we cast in the roles of the movie that we are projecting from our own mind.  The foundation for what kind of movie we are making was laid in childhood due to our emotional wounds.  If we want to change the quality of the movie, we need to get to the subconscious attitudes by grieving / clearing the emotional energy.  Then we can change the music we are dancing to in our relationship with life and with other people.

Now, you have probably noticed that I have shifted from the metaphysical level back down to the practical level here – I am sorry if this is confusing. It can be difficult to speak about multiple levels simultaneously, but I find it necessary because it is so important to actually do the healing and not just get caught up in the intellectual gymnastics of trying to figure it all out.

The real point that I am trying to make here is that the healing process is an inside job.  No one outside of you can drain you of energy, or exert power over you, unless it fits into the intellectual paradigm that your emotional wounds have set you up for.  The cords / chains / threads of energy that connect us to other people connect us because of our beliefs.  By changing the beliefs we can disconnect from the unhealthy linkage we have to other people.  We can then learn how to connect energetically in ways that are healthy and Loving – We can learn the difference between healthy interdependence (which involves giving some power away over our feelings) and codependence.

“Codependence and interdependence are two very different dynamics.

Codependence is about giving away power over our self-esteem. . . . Interdependence is about making allies, forming partnerships. It is about forming connections with other beings. Interdependence means that we give someone else some power over our welfare and our feelings.

Anytime we care about somebody or something we give away some power over our feelings. It is impossible to Love without giving away some power. When we choose to Love someone (or thing – a pet, a car, anything) we are giving them the power to make us happy – we cannot do that without also giving them the power to hurt us or cause us to feel angry or scared.

In order to live we need to be interdependent. We cannot participate in life without giving away some power over our feelings and our welfare. I am not talking here just about people. If we put money in a bank we are giving some power over our feelings and welfare to that bank. If we have a car we have a dependence on it and will have feelings if it something happens to it. If we live in society we have to be interdependent to some extent and give some power away. The key is to be conscious in our choices and own responsibility for the consequences.

The way to healthy interdependence is to be able to see things clearly – to see people, situations, life dynamics and most of all ourselves clearly. If we are not working on healing our childhood wounds and changing our childhood programming then we cannot begin to see ourselves clearly let alone anything else in life. ” – Codependence vs. Interdependence

We can have healthy ties / threads / cords of energy connecting us to other people but only by learning to see ourselves clearly.  As long as our self definition is enmeshed with other people’s attitudes and behaviors, we are incapable of making True choices about our own best interests.  Until we start seeing ourselves clearly, we will continue to be energetically drawn to people who will recreate our childhood emotional wounds.

“3.  Our emotions tell us who we are – our Soul communicates with us through emotional energy vibrations.  Truth is an emotional energy vibrational communication from our Soul on the Spiritual Plane to our being/spirit/soul on this physical plane – it is something that we feel in our heart/our gut, something that resonates within us.

Our problem has been that because of our unhealed childhood wounds it has been very difficult to tell the difference between an intuitive emotional Truth and the emotional truth that comes from our childhood wounds.  When one of our buttons is pushed and we react out of the insecure, scared little kid inside of us (or the angry/rage filled kid, or the powerless/helpless kid, etc.) then we are reacting to what our emotional truth was when we were 5 or 9 or 14 – not to what is happening now.  Since we have been doing that all of our lives, we learned not to trust our emotional reactions (and got the message not to trust them in a variety of ways when we were kids.)

 4. We are attracted to people that feel familiar on an energetic level – which means (until we start clearing our emotional process) people that emotionally / vibrationally feel like our parents did when we were very little kids.  At a certain point in my process I realized that if I met a woman who felt like my soul mate, that the chances were pretty huge that she was one more unavailable woman that fit my pattern of being attracted to someone who would reinforce the message that I wasn’t good enough, that I was unlovable.  Until we start releasing the hurt, sadness, rage, shame, terror – the emotional grief energy – from our childhoods we will keep having dysfunctional relationships.” – Feeling the Feelings

It does not make any difference what our conscious intellectual beliefs are as long as we are reacting energetically to old programming.  That is why it is so vital to do the emotional healing.  In order to clear our emotional body of the repressed emotional energy so that we can change the intellectual paradigm that is embedded in our mental body / mind, it is necessary to do the emotional healing.  All of the intellectual knowledge of Spiritual Truth and healthy relationship behavior that we can acquire will not significantly transform the behavioral patterns that are being driven by the subconscious programming.  We cannot heal our fear of intimacy so that we can open up to receiving Love without feeling the feelings.

“This grieving is not an intellectual process.  Changing our false and dysfunctional attitudes is vital to the process; enlarging our intellectual perspective is absolutely necessary to the process, but doing these things does not release the energy – it does not heal the wounds.

Learning what healthy behavior is will allow us to be healthier in the relationships that do not mean much to us; intellectually knowing Spiritual Truth will allow us to be more Loving some of the time; but in the relationships that mean the most to us, with the people we care the most about, when our “buttons are pushed” we will watch ourselves saying things we don’t want to say and reacting in ways that we don’t want to react – because we are powerless to change the behavior patterns without dealing with the emotional wounds.

We cannot integrate Spiritual Truth or intellectual knowledge of healthy behavior into our experience of life in a substantial way without honoring and respecting the emotions.  We cannot consistently incorporate healthy behavior into day to day life without being emotionally honest with ourselves.  We cannot get rid of our shame and overcome our fear of emotional intimacy without going through the feelings.

Walking around saying “We are all one,” and “God is Love,” and “I forgive them all,” does not release the energy.  Using crystals, or white light, or being born again does not heal the wounds, and does not fundamentally alter the behaviors.

We are all ONE and God is LOVE; crystals do have power and white light is a very valuable tool, but we need to not confuse the intellectual with the emotional (forgiving someone intellectually does not make the energy of anger and pain disappear) – and to not kid ourselves that using the tools allows us to avoid the process.

There is no quick fix!  Understanding the process does not replace going through it!  There is no magic pill, there is no magic book, there is no guru or channeled entity that can make it possible to avoid the journey within, the journey through the feelings.

No one outside of Self (True, Spiritual Self) is going to magically heal us.

There is not going to be some alien E.T. landing in a spaceship singing, “Turn on your heart light,” who is going to magically heal us all.

The only one who can turn on your heart light is you.”

And, of course, the way we turn on our heart light is to tune into the energy, the power, of the Transcendent emotional energy of Love, Light, Joy, Truth, and Beauty.  We need to open up to receiving Love – and we cannot do that without changing our relationship with the child who we were.

“It is necessary to own and honor the child who we were in order to Love the person we are. And the only way to do that is to own that child’s experiences, honor that child’s feelings, and release the emotional grief energy that we are still carrying around.”

“A “state of Grace” is the condition of being Loved unconditionally by our Creator without having to earn that Love.  We are Loved unconditionally by the Great Spirit.  What we need to do is to learn to accept that state of Grace.

The way we do that is to change the attitudes and beliefs within us that tell us that we are not Lovable.  And we cannot do that without going through the black hole.  The black hole that we need to surrender to traveling through is the black hole of our grief.  The journey within – through our feelings – is the journey to knowing that we are Loved, that we are Lovable.”

The healing process is an inside job.

The relationship I need to heal is between me and me.  Everything in my lesson plan / life experience is there for me to learn from so that I can heal my relationship with me. All the people who play a significant role in my life are teachers reflecting back to me some aspect of my relationship with my self – with my humanity, with my emotions, with my sexuality, with whatever – that needs healing. Through healing my relationship with me I am owning and honoring my connection to everything.

There is nothing wrong with who we are – it is our relationship to our self that is so messed up.  We are all Spiritual Beings having a human experience.  We all have Divine worth as children of The Source.  We are all perfect parts of The Source.  In our relationship with ourselves on this level we need to learn to open up to receiving the Love that is our True state of being – that is why we are here.  To heal so that we can reconnect with Love.

I am going to have to put off talking about the details of energetic clarity in relationship and “how to differentiate between looking outside for the source and combining our energy with some outside influence to help us access the Source within” until my next column (this one is getting too long) in order to to make one point very clearly here.  It was impossible for me to start to get clear energetically in my relationships with others and life until I started to have boundaries that told me where I ended and other people began.  As long as I believed that I was responsible for other people’s feelings and behavior I could not start seeing myself clearly.  As long as I was looking to other people for the juice / energy / power to feel OK about myself, I was set up to be a victim and recreate the old patterns.

This is The big paradigm shift.  Shifting our intellectual paradigm – our attitudes, definitions, and beliefs – is necessary in order to raise our consciousness and open up to consciously accessing the Transcendent vibrational energy of Love, Light, Joy, and Truth.  I had to stop looking outside for the answers and start accessing the Truth within.  Only when I started to open up to the idea that perhaps, maybe, I was Lovable and worthy in a way that was not dependent on outside or external conditions, could I start to let go of defining myself in reaction to other people and other peoples belief systems.

In order to get clear on how to connect to others in a healthy way we must first realize and define how we are separate from others.  On the level of our physical being, our ego-self, we are separate and need to own that before we can open up to consciously experiencing how we are connected to everyone and everything.  We need to see our relationship with ourselves clearly in order to see our relationships to others clearly.

One of the things that I had to get clear on in order to start learning who I am was selfishness.  I had been taught that it was bad to be selfish and that I should do things for others.  I learned to steal energy from others through what I was telling myself were unselfish acts.  I was just being a “nice guy” and did not expect anything in return – Bull.  I always had expectations – I just was not being honest with myself about them – because I had been trained and conditioned in childhood to be dishonest with myself emotionally and intellectually.

I had to come to a realization that there is no such thing as an unselfish act.  If I rescue a stranger from a burning car wreck, it does not have anything to do with the stranger – it has to do with my relationship with myself.  I believe that every thing a human being does has a pay off – and it was a very important part of my growth process to start looking for those pay offs.  I had to learn to get honest with myself and stop buying into the illusion that anything I did was for some one else.  I had to stop looking outside for the energy boost I got from doing something nice so that I could own that the energy boost came internally.

The power / energy / juice that we need comes from within – not from outside.  People, places, and things can sometimes help us to access the power that is within us – but they are not the source of that power.  The source is within!

It has always come from within – we were just trained to look outside for it because of the reversity of the planets energy field of emotional consciousness has caused human beings to do human backwards.  Codependence is a disease of reversed focus – looking externally for that which is available within us.

“Codependence is also a disease of reversed focus – it is about focusing outside of ourselves for self-definition and self-worth.  That sets us up to be a victim.  We have worth because we are Spiritual Beings not because of how much money or success we have – or how we look or how smart we are.  When self-worth is determined by looking outside it means we have to look down on someone else to feel good about ourselves – this is the cause of bigotry, racism, class structure, and Jerry Springer.

The goal is to focus on who we really are – get in touch with the Light and Love within us and then radiate that outward.  I think that is what  Mother Theresa did – I can’t know for sure because I never met her and it can be difficult to tell looking from the outside where a persons focus is – Mother Theresa could have been a raging codependent who was doing good on the outside in order to feel good about herself – or she could have been being True to her Self by accessing the Love and Light within and reflecting outward.  Either way the effect was that she did some great things – the difference would have been how she felt about herself at the deepest levels of her being – because it does not make any real difference how much validation we get from outside if we are not Loving ourselves.  If I did not start working on knowing that I had worth as a Spiritual Being – that there is a Higher Power that Loves me – it would never have made any real difference how many people told me I was wonderful.” – Question & Answer Page 2

The relationship I need to heal is between me and me.  Everything in my lesson plan / life experience is there for me to learn from so that I can heal my relationship with me (which will heal the Karma I need to settle.)  All the people who play a significant role in my life are teachers reflecting back to me some aspect of my relationship with my self – with my humanity, with my emotions, with my sexuality, with whatever – that needs healing. Through healing my relationship with me I am owning and honoring my connection to everything.

There is nothing wrong with who we are – it is our relationship to our self that is messed up.  We are all Spiritual Beings having a human experience.  We all have Divine worth as children of The Source.  We are all perfect parts of The Source.  In our relationship with ourselves on this level we need to learn to open up to receiving / accessing the Love that is our True state of being – that is why we are here.  To heal so that we can reconnect with Love.

We can have healthy ties / threads / cords of energy connecting us to other people but only by learning to see ourselves clearly.  As long as our self definition is enmeshed with other people’s attitudes and behaviors, we are incapable of making True choices about our own best interests.  Until we start seeing ourselves clearly, we will continue to be energetically drawn to people who will recreate our childhood emotional wounds.

“Both the classic codependent patterns and the classic counterdependent patterns are behavioral defenses, strategies, design to protect us from the devastating pain and debilitating shame of being abandoned because we are flawed, because we are not good enough, not worthy and lovable.  One tries to protect against abandonment by avoiding confrontation and pleasing the other – while the second tries to avoid abandonment by pretending we don’t need anyone else.  Both are dysfunctional and dishonest.”  – Codependent Relationships Dynamics – Codependent & Counterdependent Behavior

On an energetic level, abandonment means getting unplugged from our energy source.  Abandonment feels life-threatening because the cords that bind us to other people, and feed us Life Force energy, gets unplugged and we do not know how to access that energy for ourselves.  That is why it is so important to learn to plug in internally, access the Transcendent emotional energy of Love, Light, Joy, and Truth that is available to us within.

It is very important for us to learn to let go of our unhealthy attachments to other people and outside sources so that we can access the power from the Source that is available within.  Learning how to define ourselves as separate, how to have boundaries that tell us who we are as individuals, is a vital step in starting to see ourselves with more clarity so that we can see others and life with more clarity.

And once again here, I want to make the point that clarity with our self is not an absolute destination.  This healing is a gradual process of finding a sense of balance – a sense of what clarity feels like, so that we can look for and recognize when we have it and when we do not.   In order to do that it is vital to learn how to be emotionally honest with ourselves so that we can be discerning in our relationship with our own mental and emotional process. Through that honesty we will achieve some energetic clarity as well.

Through that energetic clarity we will be able to access Love from the Source – and we will learn to Love and trust our Self to guide our self through this boarding school that is life as a human.

Robert Burney is a pioneer in the area of codependency recovery / inner child healing. His first book Codependence The Dance of Wounded Souls has been called “one of the truly transformational works of our time.”  It combines Twelve Step Recovery Principles, Metaphysical Truth, and Native American Spirituality with quantum physics and molecular biology in a Cosmic Perspective of Codependence & The Human Condition.  It is possible to get personally autographed copies of his books from his main website Joy2MeU.com or from a Mobile friendly site.  You can also get Books, eBooks, and Audiobooks through Amazon:  Books or eBooks from Barnes & Noble or eBooks thru Kobo    Here is a page with special offers for his books. 

His website Joy2MeU.com offers over 200 pages of free original content  on codependency recovery, inner child healing, relationship dynamics, alcoholism/addiction, fear of intimacy, Twelve Step Spirituality, New Age Metaphysics, emotional abuse, setting boundaries, grief process, and much more.  The Joy2MeU website is designed in an ancient design program which is not mobile friendly.  A new site – joy2meu2.com – is a redesign of joy2meu.com in a mobile friendly format. The Joy2MeU2 siteindex page that will help you to access most of his articles on mobile friendly sites (around 170.)

The True Nature of Love – Part 1, what Love is not, The True Nature of Love – Part 2, Love as Freedom, and The True Nature of Love – Part 3, Love as a Vibrational Frequency have previously been published here on WordPress.  This is Part 4, and articles 5 and 6 of this series are now exclusively available in the Dancing in Light pay to view component of Joy2MeU.com There are special offers for Dancing in Light and Joy2MeU Journal (where the Trilogy quoted can be accessed) subscription areas of Joy2MeU.  The Dance of The Wounded Souls Trilogy Book 1 “In The Beginning . . .” (is never going to be finished – the first book is not, let along the other two.  Writing it was a process that helped me make a paradigm shift, not a project that was ever meant to be finished.  The story of publishing Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls is told on this page:  The Path of one Recovering Codependent ~ the dance of one wounded soul Leap of Faith ~ Publishing The Dance

Chakra Levels of Consciousness

This is an excerpt from Attack on America – September 11, 2001  A Spiritual Healing Perspective & Call for Higher Consciousness  Chapter 9

“I have – in several places in this online book – referred to chakra levels of consciousness.  One of the perspectives which I find useful in understanding, and trying to communicate, different levels of this dance of life is to relate levels of consciousness to the chakra system.  I am going to use an excerpt from my Trilogy (the indented text), to discuss the chakra system in relationship to levels of consciousness – and am going to intersperse this excerpt with a few comments about both the personal healing process, and the human condition as we are experiencing it in this fateful fall of 2001.

The chakra system of the human body exists on the Etheric plane in the subtle body.  The chakras are bioenergetic centers which are gateways through which the flowing energy of the higher frequencies, including the Life Force, enter the human body.  These energies then are dispersed throughout the chakra energy system.  (The pressure points of acupuncture are smaller energy centers – junctions in the network – of the chakra system.)  Each chakra can be thought of as acting like a physical heart, in that energy is flowing into and out of the different levels of the system through each chakra, just as blood flows into and out of the heart.  (The heart is in fact a physical representation of the chakras, with blood being a physical symbol of the Life Force energy.  The heart is, of course, part of a closed system while the chakra system is open to the Universal flow.)  Just as blood nourishes and feeds the physical body, so does the energy of the higher frequencies nourish and feed the bodies of the spirit – including the physical body.

The chakra system within us is open to the Universal flow, but we are not open to that flow as long as we are damming our feelings.  We cannot freely access the Life Force energy available to us until we clear up our relationship with ourselves and start tuning into Love and Joy from the Source within – instead of looking for it externally.

Levels of consciousness can be directly related to the chakras.  As consciousness is raised, one moves up the chakras in terms of focus, perspective on life, until one reaches the fourth chakra.  This perspective on life has a direct influence upon the lower ego and human will.  The higher up the chakras one has evolved in their perspective of life, the more one’s lower ego is aligned with Spiritual purpose (the process of transformation that is known as the “death of the ego”), and the more one’s will is aligned with God’s will.

The First Chakra

. . . . .The perspective of the base chakra is survival.  This has been the level of focus for the majority of the human race for most of it’s recorded history.  From the perspective of a base chakra consciousness “survival of the fittest” is the law.  “Dog eat dog”, and “Get them before they get me” are attitudes that are centered in the base chakra consciousness. . . The driving forces at this level are fear of the unknown and different, and belief in lack and scarcity.

This focus on survival was somewhat necessary for the survival of humans in a physically hostile environment.  It was important for humans to learn to fear the unknown or they would not have learned to check the cave for saber toothed tigers before moving their families into the new digs. . . . . From the perspective of the base chakra the second chakra level is about reproduction to insure survival, and the third chakra level is about conquering to survive.  In other words, from the level of first chakra consciousness everything is viewed in relationship to survival.

Much of the population of the world – especially in Third World countries – is still operating at the level of just trying to survive.  12,000 people die of starvation every day in the world.  When one is starving, there is no time or energy to focus on emotional healing, or enlightenment.  For many people in the Middle East survival is the focus.  When one is suffering at this level it helps to have someone to blame – and a cause to enlist in.  Living a bare survival existence can make dying in what one considers a noble cause look like a very attractive alternative.

There are people in the United States that are living from a first chakra level of consciousness.  The reality is that those of us who had our sense of security and safety so shaken by the events of September 11th don’t live in the ghetto.  In a capitalistic society, the poor are the ones that are offered up in blood sacrifice.  Societies that had ritualized blood sacrifice as part of their religious and cultural beliefs at least honored those they offered – instead of trying to ignore them.  The poor among us have no security and safety.  The homeless have no security and safety.

The rituals of blood sacrifice in the United States include crack pipes and gang initiation.  A Palestinian who becomes a terrorist and a kid in South Central LA who joins a gang are reacting to the same basic emotional wounds.

The Second Chakra

. . . . . . The second chakra is related to sexuality and sensuality.  Once physical survival is no longer the paramount need, and physical security is secured to some degree of comfort – then the perspective of the lower ego and the will moves up to the level of the second chakra.  This perspective is about satisfying the need for sensual and sexual pleasure, and only incidentally about reproduction.

The debauchery and orgies of the Roman Empire occurred once their borders were secure and they had accumulated wealth – that is when their focus shifted to the second chakra perspective.  Sigmund Freud’s perspective was from the level of the second chakra, so that when he said that religion was sublimated sex, he was telling the Truth from that perspective – because everything when viewed from this level is about sex.

One of the reason for the level of intensity that extremist Muslims put into their religious zeal is that so much of their sexual energy is repressed and redirected into a religious focus.

Western civilization – and especially in regard to the Puritan heritage that has so afflicted England and the US – has a different type of dysfunctional relationship with sexuality.  (See third chakra below.)

“We live in a society where sex is somehow shameful and should not be talked about – but we use sex to sell cars.  That is backwards.  Human sexuality is a blessed gift to be honored and celebrated – not twisted and distorted into something demeaning and shameful. – (Text in this color are quotes from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls by Robert Burney)

The Third Chakra

The Third, or solar plexus, chakra located between the navel and the solar plexus, is about manifesting and receiving.  It is through the solar plexus that Love and validation can be taken in by someone who has the ability to receive – or in someone who is taught to feel responsible for the feelings of others, can be the conduit through which we can suck up the feelings of others.  It is also through the solar plexus that we can own the power to manifest – or if not aligned with the heart and Spiritual intention can often translate into power, mastery, and control.  The perspective from solar plexus chakra consciousness can produce great manifestation.  It can also focus on ego-gratification through an insatiable will to conquer, plunder, and subjugate.  The name of the game from the third chakra perspective is power, and the exercise of power on the physical level.  The third chakra perspective can be aligned with Spiritual purpose in order to produce manifestation on a physical level (including “miracles”), but from an exclusively third chakra perspective Spirituality has no place in the “real” world.  One of the reasons that Western religion has been so distorted is because of taking a third chakra perspective – i.e. using religion as a tool for exercising and maintaining power.

Anyone coming from an unenlightened, out-of-balance third chakra perspective believes totally in the Illusion.  In other words, what you own, how much control you appear to have, how much power you can exercise on a physical level, are the only real indicators of worth.  A good example of this perspective is the bumper sticker which says “The one who dies with the most toys wins.”  Win-lose, success-failure, are the parameters within which the third chakra person (or country, or whatever) operates.  Wealth is a tool in the power game to these individuals. Most of Western civilization is, and has been, stuck in a third chakra perspective.  Part of the reason for this being stuck, is that the transition up the levels of consciousness for much of the West skipped the second chakra level.  Because sexuality has been so repressed in the West, the healing and balancing of the second chakra has not been accomplished.  This results in repressed sexual energy being funneled into a third chakra perspective – and the needs of the second chakra level being viewed from the perspective of the third chakra.  This later type of imbalance, causes sex to be related to from a perspective of power and control that has little to do with real pleasure.

An unbalanced third chakra perspective promotes ego-strength rather than True self worth.  This ego-strength comes from attachment to the illusions – that is the things outside of self.  If the money, property, prestige, etc., of a third chakra person is taken away, then they don’t have anything left to live for – which sometimes results in Spiritual Awakening, sometimes in suicide of one form or another.

The world is so screwed up (from the perspective of chakra levels of consciousness) because a small percentage of the population which hold the power is stuck in a third chakra perspective and forces their values on the rest of the world.

The third chakra perspective also enhances the imbalance between masculine / manifestation and feminine / Spirituality because of it’s focus is only on masculine manifestation.  Thus the Feminist movement, rather than bringing about masculine-feminine balance – which was the True impetus of the movement – has instead led in many cases, to more women adapting a third chakra perspective.  The problem is in the perspective, the values, of the belief system that is the foundation of society.  Equality in a system that is Spiritually bankrupt, heart deprived, emotionally repressive and dishonest, is a goal that often leads to women giving up their heart connection in order to compete with men who have never been heart connected in a social system that does not honor the heart.

I saw a statistic the other day that stated that at the end of the Twentieth Century there were 485 Billionaires in the world – and the net worth of those individuals was more than the three billion (that is 3,000,000,000) poorest people on this planet.  Something is wrong with this picture.  The money changers are not only in the temple, but are in control of the system and are willing to kill the planet we live on in their short sighted, ego driven pursuit of power and control.  These people are trying to overcome their childhood wounding – the toxic shame and incredible pain of feeling unlovable – by proving their worth through success in a system that is based upon belief in separation.

“We live in a society where a few have billions while others are starving and homeless.  We live in a society which believes that it is not only possible to own and hoard the resources and the land but one which can rationalize killing the planet we live on.  These are symptoms of imbalance, of reversed thinking.”

The Fourth Chakra

The fourth chakra is the heart chakra.  The heart chakra is situated in the middle of the chest next to the heart.  It is upon reaching the level of the heart chakra that one starts awakening to the Truth of ONENESS and Love.  Opening of the heart chakra allows the flow of Love and compassion into consciousness.  The level of the heart is where integration and balance takes place.

Prior to this new Age, evolution of consciousness has occurred in increments over lifetimes.  In fact, most of the old souls in body at this moment were born at a heart chakra level of consciousness.  They were forced to close their heart chakras (especially in relationship to self) in childhood in order to survive in the Spiritually hostile, emotionally repressive environments into which they were born.  As these old souls start to awaken to the Truth of Spiritual purpose, they move upwards in levels very rapidly to return to the heart level.  (Being at a heart level does not mean that the lower levels are fully opened or that there are not issues that need healing in relationship to the lower chakras – it simply means that one has evolved to the level where their perspective is from the heart most of the time.  In fact, many of the old souls who are involved in healing today are out of balance in terms of financial survival because they avoided the third chakra level of learning how to manifest on the physical level.  To have bought into a system that was so out of balance in order to manifest financial abundance was not something that someone born at the heart chakra level of consciousness could have done without betraying themselves.) . . . .

The goal is to be centered in a fourth chakra level of consciousness – grounded in the Truth of Love and ONENESS – and to achieve balance with all of the other levels in relationship to the heart level.

The Fifth Chakra

The fifth chakra is the throat chakra which is situated near the larynx.  The level of the throat chakra has to do with communication.  This is, of course, about communication in physical ways – speaking, writing, singing, various forms of art, etc. – about speaking one’s Truth.  Direct and honest communication is the key to relationships in this Age – all types of relationships.  This level of consciousness also is about Spiritual communication within – which includes emotional honesty with self.  It is about clearing our inner channel so that we are communicating with ourselves more clearly – and receiving communication from the Spirit more clearly.  Spiritual effort to clear up our communications both internally and externally through healing our emotional wounds and changing our intellectual attitudes to allow the free and clear flow of communication within our self and between our self and our Self is the focus of throat chakra level of consciousness.  The Hindu name for the fifth chakra means cleansed or clarified.  It is clear communication on all levels that is vitally important to healing and balancing our relationships with all the other chakra levels.

The Sixth Chakra

The sixth, or third eye, chakra is about Spiritual vision.  The “third eye”, located in the forehead above the nose, actually exists on the Etheric plane.  [All of the chakras exist on the Etheric, the reference here is to an actual third eye – an organ for seeing and discerning – that is an extension of the chakra.  It extends outward from the forehead in a spiraling fashion because it is, of course, an energy vortex. (It is the third eye that the spiraling horn of the Unicorn represents – and you wondered why a unicorn, right.)  This energy vortex is a frequency range which is part of the frequency ranges that constitute the inner channel.  This “eye” can allow access to Spiritual vision to some individuals even though the rest of their inner channel may be blocked.]

People who have a highly developed third eye – i.e. a relatively open sixth chakra – can be more tuned into their sixth sense.  The sixth sense is ESP, extra sensory perception, also referred to as psychic ability.  People born with a lot of psychic ability are souls (not necessarily old souls) who have done a lot of work on opening this chakra in past lives.  If a psychic is positively aligned, they can do a great deal of good and can be very helpful to souls awakening to their paths.  Any information coming from a psychic will be Truth relative to the psychics alignment, filtered through the intellectual paradigm that person is operating out of, and relative to your “need to know.”  (As has been stated, if you don’t have a “need to know” – in the Universe’s opinion not yours – then it won’t matter how many psychics you see.)  The greatest service that psychics perform is in helping people to expand their perspective.

Perspective is what the third eye symbolizes in relationship with the other chakras (like East on the Medicine Wheel.)  As with any other chakra, it is important to balance and integrate the perspective of the third eye chakra in it’s relationship to the other chakra levels of consciousness. . . . . .

The Seventh Chakra

The seventh, crown, chakra is located at the crown, in the rear of the top of the head.  It is through the crown chakra that the Light Force enters the body.  This is the level of God Consciousness.  Prior to this age, God Consciousness was only available to spirits/souls in body, in a very limited way – and then only with direct intervention by their Higher Self.  In this Age of Healing and Joy, God Consciousness is available to all old souls who clear their inner channel through healing or, and balance between, all of the chakra levels of consciousness.

In conclusion to this discussion of level of consciousness in relationship to the chakras, it will just be emphasized once again, that the Age of Healing and Joy is about integration and balance.  This means seeing life from a heart chakra level perspective (Love) while healing the lower chakra levels and integrating the higher chakra levels into a balanced relationship with self and life.” – The Dance of the Wounded Souls Trilogy  Book 1 History of the Universe Part VI “Notes to Earthlings”

Many of the spiritual teachers and new age authors and healers who I call on in an earlier chapter to stop giving out shaming messages are focused more on a 6th or 7th chakra level of consciousness.  They are interpreting mystical, intuitive information they receive through a limited polarized intellectual paradigm because they are not honoring and respecting the emotional component of being.  Anyone who is denying the reality and importance of emotional energy is not Truly centered in a heart chakra level of consciousness – or they would not give out these shaming messages.

We are Spiritual beings having a human experience.  We are not here to get Spiritual.  We are inherently, and eternally, Spiritual.  We are here to remember and wake up to our True Self so that we can integrate Spiritual Truth into our human experience.  Emotions are a vital and fundamental component in this human experience.

We are Spiritual Beings and we are here in these bodies, at this time, to do this healing.

So the bad news is that the world is a real mess because we have been doing it all backwards.  The good news is that it was all part of the Divine Script and that the healing has begun.

The good news individually is that the dance is changing, the healing and Joy are available to us now.  The bad news individually (from an emotional perspective) is that in order to do this healing, it is necessary to do our grief processing, to feel our feelings.  It is necessary to go through the black hole.

That is the reason we came into body in this lifetime – to go through that black hole, to do this healing!

The time has come for you to remember that.  This is your wake-up call.  It is not the first and it probably will not be the last.  But it is not an accident or a coincidence that you are reading this today.

It is time to stop the nonsense of believing that our purpose and meaning comes from the money, or the job, or the relationship.  We are here to be a part of the Transformational Healing Process that has begun on this planet – we are here to heal our relationship with ourselves, with our wounded souls.

This is an excerpt from Attack on America – September 11, 2001  A Spiritual Healing Perspective & Call for Higher Consciousness  Chapter 9

About the reference I made to the Black Hole.  That is something from my book.  I will share the quote from the book about the Black Hole as a way  of ending this blog entry.

“When I was willing to hear and see the messages – and take action based upon them – I began to discover the Truth around me.  There were certain books of Truth that I was led to that were especially important in my consciousness raising, in my Recovery process.  I am now going to quote a story from one of those books which means a lot to me.  It is a story from a book called Medicine Cards by Jamie Sams and David Carson.  This book deals with the Medicine Wheel, and the totem animals of the Medicine Wheel Spiritual beliefs of certain Native American tribes.

The subject of this particular story is the Swan totem – Swan power:

“As Swan looked high above Sacred Mountain, she saw the biggest swirling black hole she had ever seen.  Dragonfly came flying by, and Swan stopped him to ask about the black hole.  Dragonfly said, “Swan, that is the doorway to the other planes of imagination.  I have been guardian of the illusion for many, many moons.  If you want to enter there, you would have to ask permission and earn the right.”

Swan was not so sure that she wanted to enter the black hole,  She asked Dragonfly what was necessary for her to earn entry.  Dragonfly replied, “You must be willing to accept whatever the future holds as it is presented, without trying to change the Great Spirit’s plan.”  Swan looked at her ugly little duckling body and then answered,  “I will be happy to abide by Great Spirit’s plan.  I won’t fight the currents of the black hole.  I will surrender to the flow of the spiral and trust what I am shown.”  Dragonfly was very happy with Swan’s answer and began to spin the magic to break the pond’s illusion.  Suddenly, Swan was engulfed by a whirlpool in the center of the pond.

Swan reappeared many days later, but now she was graceful and white and long-necked.  Dragonfly was stunned!  “Swan what happened to you!” he exclaimed.  Swan smiled and said, “Dragonfly, I learned to surrender my body to the power of Great Spirit and was taken to where the future lives.  I saw many wonders high on Sacred Mountain and because of my faith and my acceptance I have been changed.  I have learned to accept a state of Grace.”

A “state of Grace” is the condition of being Loved unconditionally by our Creator without having to earn that Love.  We are Loved unconditionally by the Great Spirit.  What we need to do is to learn to accept that state of Grace.

The way we do that is to change the attitudes and beliefs within us that tell us that we are not Lovable.  And we cannot do that without going through the black hole.  The black hole that we need to surrender to traveling through is the black hole of our grief.  The journey within – through our feelings – is the journey to knowing that we are Loved, that we are Lovable.

It is through willingness and acceptance, through surrender, trust, and faith, that we can begin to own the state of Grace which is our True condition.

We are all beautiful swans who exist in a state of Grace, in a condition of being unconditionally Loved.  The dance of Recovery is a process of learning to accept and integrate the Truth of Grace into our lives.” – Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

There are two subscription areas of my website Joy2MeU.com.  They include several online books.  Most of the chapters of those online books are available only in the password protected subscription areas but several chapters are available on the regular Joy2Meu website.  Attack on America – September 11, 2001  A Spiritual Healing Perspective & Call for Higher Consciousness is available in both subscription areas.   The Dance of the Wounded Souls Trilogy  Book 1 – “In The Beginning . . .” is available only in the Joy2MeU Journal.  (In the Trilogy my Higher Self appears to me as a unicorn that gallops off of a picture on my desk in Taos, New Mexico in January of 1989 – thus the reference to the unicorn.)

There are probably at least 5 or 6 million words in the two subscription areas of my site that I quote from in this entry.  I have available a page with special offers on lifetimes subscriptions to those password protected areas: Dancing in Lightand the Joy2MeU Journal are for sale for $9.95 each or both for $17.95  Millions of words of content not available on Joy2MeU.

It is possible to get personally autographed copies of my books from my websiteJoy2MeU  or You can get my Books, eBooks, and Audiobooks through Amazon

I have special offers right now for anyone who would like to learn the formula I discovered for inner healing and Spiritual integration through telephone / Skype counseling.

The Medicine Cards (This link will take you to the page it is offered on Amazon.com) have been a very valuable tool in my recovery process.  Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to quote in Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls from: Medicine Cards by Jamie Sams and David Carson, copyright 1988, Bear & Co.  Reprinted by permission Bear & Co., P.O. Box 2860, Santa Fe, NM 87504. (Since the book was published they have moved to P.O. Box 3876, Gettysburg, PA 17325)