“There are times however, when life events feel emotionally battering. When the experience of life feels abusive. When if feels as if my Higher Power is being sadistic and anything but Loving. The tools still work at times like that – but they work in terms of giving me the patience to know that this too shall pass. They work to help me be gentle and kind to myself at times when I am very uncomfortable emotionally. If I try to force myself out of an emotionally uncomfortable place, then I am being judgmental and abusive to myself. I need to be able to accept wherever I am at – no matter how uncomfortable.” – News of the Adventure, June & July 2000
In August 2011, I posted this Note on Facebook. I ran across it on St. Patrick’s Day 2019 after answering a person who posted on my timeline about having chronic disease. I decided to make a blog out of what I shared in this note 7 years ago.
Earlier in the Newsletter quoted is this paragraph.
“It has just been so incredibly valuable for me to develop a level of consciousness from which I am observing myself. This is really the essential technique that allows me to have internal boundaries so that I can own my power to make choices instead of setting myself up to create a very negative emotional space by buying into the belief that I am the victim. Through having a detached observer within me, I can have a boundary between the emotional and the mental – between my feelings and my thoughts. There are often going to be times in life when I feel like a victim. The child within me, who was taught that life was about right and wrong – and if I was wrong I would be punished – reacts to life events not unfolding as I want, by feeling like I am being punished, like I am a bad boy. The core place within me where I feel unworthy and unlovable, the inner child who was taught that if I did life right I would be rewarded by living happily ever after, reacts to life events and other people’s behavior out of the feeling that I am shamefully defective somehow. It is reaction to the intense pain of feeling shameful and defective that I developed my codependent defense system of either blaming others or blaming myself and trying to kill the pain and shame with substances – it is the fear of that pain and shame that causes me to try to control life and other people.” – News of the Adventure, June & July 2000
Developing internal boundaries between the mental and emotional – so that we don’t allow how we feel to define our life for us (at the same time we are shutting up the critical parent voice) – is a vital part of gaining some freedom from letting the old wounds and old tapes define our experience of life. It is the combination of learning to have internal boundaries along with integrating a Loving Spiritual Belief system into our inner process that makes the approach to inner healing – that I teach people in my workshop and in telephone counseling and in my books – work to greatly improve the quality of our life experience. As I say in one of my articles:
“Codependency recovery / inner child healing is a way of life. It is a way to live life that works. It works to help . . . gain some freedom from the past. It is a path for living that . . . creates the space . . . to be present in the moment and be happy to be alive – to connect with Joy – some of the time. It is not something we do and then get on with our lives. It is something we do in order to Truly be alive.” – Recovery from Codependency / Inner Child Healing
So, I ended up saying all that as a prelude to sharing a quote from my book in which I talk about getting battered and bruised on our Spiritual Path – this quote is what came to mind for me this morning when thinking about feeling “battered” by life. This is an example of the Spiritual Truth that it was invaluable for me to integrate into my relationship with life.
“The prologue to Richard Bach’s Illusions contains a story about a colony of creatures clinging to the bottom of a stream. Here is a paraphrasing of that story.
One day one of those creatures became bored with the life of clinging and decided to see what would happen if he let go and got swept up into the stream. He wanted to see where the stream would carry him.
All of the other creatures laughed at him and made fun of him. “You can’t let go of the rocks, you’ll just get battered and bruised!” “It’s insane to let go of the rocks!”
This creature, though, wanted more out of life than just clinging to the rocks. He wanted to find out where the stream went. So he let go of the rocks – and sure enough he got battered and bruised and had to grab ahold again.
All of the other creatures ridiculed and laughed at him.
But he said, “I am going to try again. I believe that the stream knows where it is going. I want to see where the stream will take me.” So he let go again – and he got battered and bruised again. And then he let go again, and again, and again.
Each time he got a little less battered and bruised. Each time he got a little closer to being swept up in the stream.
Then finally one day he had let go enough times that he did get swept up into the stream. He was caught in the flow of the stream and swept forward.
He was flying!
As he flew along with his heart full of Joy and excitement he passed over another colony of clinging creatures that was downstream.
They looked up at him and cried, “Behold! There is a creature like us and he is flying! It must be the Messiah!”
He looked back at them and shouted as he was heading down stream, “No! You don’t understand. You can fly, too, all you have to do is let go. You are as much messiahs as I am.”
That is what this is all about! The second coming has begun! Not of “The Messiah,’ but of a whole bunch of messiahs. The messiah – the liberator – is within us! A liberating, Healing Transformational Movement has begun. “The Savior’ does not exist outside of us – “The Savior” exists within.
We are the sons and daughters of God. We, the old souls, who are involved in this Healing Movement, are the second coming of the message of Love.
We have entered what certain Native American prophecies call the Dawning of the Fifth World of Peace. Through focusing on our own healing the planet will be healed.
We all have available to us – within – a direct channel to the Highest Vibrational Frequency Range within The Illusion. That highest range involves consciousness of the Glory of ONENESS. It is called Cosmic Consciousness. It is called Christ Consciousness.
This is the energy that Jesus was tuned into, and he stated very plainly, ‘These things that I do, you can do also.” – by atoning, by tuning in.
We have access to the Christ Energy within. We have begun the Second Coming of the message of Love.
The dawning of the Age of Healing and Joy is the dawning of the Fifth World of Peace when humans will learn to walk in balance and harmony.
Now that is some pretty wonderful news, wouldn’t you say?” – Text in this color is from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
Letting go of the rocks – living outside the Matrix – can be terrifying and very painful at times. What is important is to own the feelings without letting them define us. We are here to do this healing so that we can own who we really are and integrate the Truth into our relationship with self and life. Here are a couple of more quotes from my book.
“Life is not some kind of test, that if we fail, we will be punished. We are not human creatures who are being punished by an avenging god. We are not trapped in some kind of tragic place out of which we have to earn our way by doing the “right” things.
We are Spiritual Beings having a human experience. We are here to learn. We are here to go through this process that is life. We are here to feel these feelings.“
“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.
The goal in this Age of Healing and Joy is integration and balance. To integrate the Spiritual Truth into our physical experience so that we can fill the hole inside and find wholeness within. As we integrate our True Spiritual nature into our relationship with our physical being we can begin to achieve some balance and harmony with and between all of the parts of our being.
This age is a time for growing and learning, a time to become conscious of the True nature of the Source Energy, a time of Spiritual Awakening. We have been given the wonder-full gift of having the ability and the tools to start integrating the Truth of a Loving Universal Force into our day-to-day experience of life. We now have the knowledge and guidance that we need to start bringing some balance to our relationships – with ourselves and our God/Goddess, with other people and the planet – so that we can live in a way that allows us to experience some Peace and Love on our life path.
We can heal our wounded souls enough to change the dance of life from a dance of endurance and suffering to a dance that celebrates living. We now have access to the power to transform the dance of Codependence to a dance of healing and Joy.”
Originally published August 23, 2011 as a Note on Facebook.
I have a special Holiday 2018 Offer Page available until March 25th, with special offers on my books, MP3 audio downloads, Life Changing telephone / Skype counseling and Workshop. I recently announced that I will be doing my Life Changing Workshop in Morro Bay California on March 24th.
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to quote from: Illusions “The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah” by Richard Bach. Copyright 1977 by Creature Enterprises, Inc. Reprinted in Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls by Robert Burney by permission of Bantam Doubleday Dell, New York, NY.