This is Chapter 13 from Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in the Light Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life
“When I was working on these two chapters focused on codependency and the New Age Movement, I got an e-mail from someone who had recently ordered my book Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls that said the following:
“Dance, Dance, wherever you may be. That’s what the Lord of the Dance said He. Dance, Dance, wherever you may be and I’ll be with you in the Dance said He.“
The trick is to change the music! I got it! The trick is to get free, so you can dance to a different music. The freer you get the more you hear, or should I say feel or see the music. You did a great job – Thanks
“The dance of life for humans has been grounded in shame and fear, empowered by belief in separation, lack, and scarcity. These are lower vibrational emotions and beliefs based on the three dimensional illusion that humans experience as reality. As long as the dance of humans harmonizes to music – vibrational emanations – that are rooted in shame, fear, and separation the only way to do the dance is destructively.”
“It is on the Spiritual Plane that the highest vibrational frequency range naturally available to human experience is generated (by the Souls). This frequency range is the transcendent Emotional energy of Love. This Love frequency range also contains frequencies which are experienced as Truth, Joy, Beauty, and Light as well as sometimes being called; the God within, the Goddess within, the Christ within, The Holy Spirit, etc.”“
The later two quotes are from my page: The True Nature of Love – part 3, Love as a Vibrational Frequency. The second one in a different color because it is a quote from my Trilogy that I used on that page. I believe that the first part of the person’s e-mail – up to “I’ll be with you in the Dance said He.” – is from a song called Lord of the Dance.
What is important about this e-mail I received is that the person did “get it.” We need to change the music we are dancing to – and in order to do that we need to change the subconscious intellectual paradigm that is dictating our emotional reactions. And we cannot do that without doing the deep emotional healing.
“We grew up in dysfunctional families living in dysfunctional societies that were part of dysfunctional civilizations. The definitions we learned in childhood about who we were, how life works, and how to relate to other people were false, distorted, and twisted. Because the definitions, attitudes, and beliefs we were programmed with in childhood were false, they set us up to have emotional reactions to life that gave us inaccurate information.
“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 True Nature of Love – part 4, Energetic Clarity
Our emotions are what drive us, what propel us, through life. Our emotions tell us who we are. If our relationship with our own emotions is messed up, we cannot see reality clearly.
If life is a dance, then our emotions provide the music. Dancing in the dark according to rules that are dysfunctional is not much fun. Dancing through life believing that we have responsibility for the feelings and behaviors of others, doesn’t allow us to relax and enjoy life very much. Believing that we have to earn love by doing the dance “right,’ by being perfect, in order to reach the destination where we will get to live happily-ever-after – sets us up to be unhappy and blame ourselves for being unworthy and unlovable.” – Emotional Honesty and Emotional Responsibility Part 2 – codependence recovery
It is through doing our deep emotional healing and changing the subconscious intellectual paradigm – changing the music that we are dancing to – that we can start having discernment internally that allows us to more clearly hear / feel the messages of our intuition. There is a huge difference between our emotional truth – the feelings that are triggered by our emotional wounds and/or created by the perspective we are viewing life from – and intuitive Truth that is coming from our Soul. As long as our emotional truth – what we feel – is being dictated by childhood emotional wounds and the perspectives of self and life learned in childhood, then our relationship to this human dance will be dictated by music provided by our damaged ego self rather than the intuitive Truth that is coming from our Spiritual Self.
Codependence The Dance of Wounded Souls
“Truth, in my understanding, is not an intellectual concept. I believe that Truth is an emotional-energy, vibrational communication to my consciousness, to my soul/spirit – my being, from my Soul. Truth is an emotion, something that I feel within.
It is that feeling within when someone says, or writes, or sings, something in just the right words so that I suddenly feel a deeper understanding. It is that “AHA” feeling. The feeling of a light bulb going on in my head. That “Oh, I get it!” feeling. The intuitive feeling when something just feels right . . . or wrong. It’s that gut feeling, the feeling in my heart. It is the feeling of something resonating within me. The feeling of remembering something that I had forgotten – but do not remember ever knowing.
In this dance of life that we are doing there are different levels – even of Truth with a capital T. There are ultimate Truths, and there are relative Truths. The ultimate Truths have to do with the eternal, everlasting reality of the God-Force, the Great Spirit. The relative Truths have to do with each individual’s own intuitive guidance. These are the messages we receive individually to get us from point A to point B on our individual paths. The guidance we get from our Souls that tells us what the next thing in front of us is.
Our individual, relative Truths expand and grow as we expand and grow. We each have our own unique path to follow – our own individual inner guidance system. No one can tell you what your path is! Your Truth is a personal thing. Only you can know your Truth.
It is through following and being True to our individual Truths, as they relate to our path through this physical experience, that we reach balance and harmony with the ultimate Truths.” – text in this color is used for quotes from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
We have been dancing through life in disharmony and imbalance – in dis-ease. It is by clearing up our relationship with our own internal process – so that we can change our core relationship with self and life – that we can start to dance with some balance and harmony to the music of the ultimate Truth of Love and Joy.
Codependent, shaming New Agers, Twelve Steppers, Spiritual Seekers, Health Fanatics
At the end of the last chapter of this work, I shared a quote from my online book about the Attack on America in which I called on spiritual and New Age teachers and healers and practitioners to be willing to be open to expanding their intellectual paradigm so that they could stop empowering polarity and shame about being human. I cannot emphasize too much how important this is – for all of us who are doing this healing and spiritual work.
I will be talking more about the metaphysical aspects of this in a later chapter, but in this chapter I want to focus on integrating Love into this human horizontal dance we are doing – and how vital and freeing it is to stop empowering polarity. Learning how to stop viewing ourselves, life, and other people from a black and white / right and wrong perspective is the key to manifesting Love into the World.
“I am mentioning it here because the sharing I am doing here about how I take power away from the black and white thinking in my internal process, is at the core of the work that I refer to in the slogan / bumper sticker Work for World Peace: Heal Your Inner Child. What I am talking about here, is how we manifest Love into our internal process – how to integrate Spiritual Truth into our emotional relationship with life. It is The Work – not just to learn how to relax and enJoy life, which it does make possible – but The Work that will change the condition of polarization of the Lower Mind. It is through doing this work individually that we will change the world.
So, I guess you can see why I think it is pretty important.” – May 23, 2001 Update Newsletter Part 2
It is very normal for people who are: spiritual seekers of the New Age or any type; trying to learn how to be healthier and have better relationships; in recovery and terrified of drinking and/or acting addictively again; attempting to find some meaning and purpose to life that makes sense and brings inner peace; etc.; to be shaming and judging of self and others because they are not in recovery from their codependency – are not doing the emotional healing that will allow them to change the subconscious beliefs that they learned in childhood.
“It is quite common – especially with “New Age” types, but also in 12 step recovery programs – for codependents to give other codependents the message that “you must be doing something wrong” or you would not be: 1. in financial difficulty, 2. sick, 3. out of a job, 4. in a relationship, 5. not in a relationship, 6. whatever. For people to judge others for how their life looks on the outside. No one has a right to judge someone else’s path. No one can know what Karma someone else is settling, and what is necessary to settle that Karma. If one person is able to cure themselves of cancer and another person dies of cancer – that doesn’t mean one person did it right and another did it wrong. Each of them is perfectly on their path. There is no right and wrong. We are all one. We all get to go home. We have different lesson plans while we are here. There is no right and wrong.” – Joy2MeU Journal: My Present Situation – Having “IT” together 6-99
This quote from the personal journal I share in my Joy2MeU Journal is something I wrote in 1999 while I was homeless – something I talked about in the Newsletter portion of my January 2002 Update.
“I spent 6 months in 1999 being homeless. Not on the street homeless – I had an office for my computer – but crashing on someone’s couch kind of homeless. The lessons in acceptance and patience and letting go that I learned during that time were sacred gifts. The level of faith that it forced me to access and practice, the depth to which I was forced to integrate my Spiritual belief system into my relationship with life, was a manifestation of Love from my Higher Power that I am now – and have been – reaping great benefits from.” – January 2002 Update Newsletter: Part 1
Being homeless for that period of time – something that happened because I invested in starting this web site – was a perfect part of my lesson plan. It was an incredible opportunity to practice what I teach. To keep affirming that my path was unfolding perfectly even as the human part of me felt abandoned and betrayed. It was an invaluable opportunity – a sacred gift – to work on not buying into the polarized perspective of my ego programming that was trying to tell me I was being punished for doing something wrong because of the external conditions in my life.
The fact that other people were giving me the message that I was doing something wrong – were saying things like, “what did you do to cause this?” or “how are you blocking abundance in your life?” – was additional practice in saying, “I am not doing anything wrong, I didn’t cause this, I am perfectly where I am supposed to be on my Spiritual path.”
It was a very important part of my recovery to stand up for myself in response to people who were conveying those types of judgmental statements. That doesn’t mean that I did not have some responsibility in creating whatever external condition those people were judging me for – or that I didn’t have a lot of issues around abundance that I have been working through for years. We have been creating cause all of our lives – and what is manifesting in our life right now may be a result of the unconscious behavior of many years ago. In other words, someone who has been on a spiritual path for 10 years gets some kind of physical illness – that doesn’t mean that their part in causing that happened since they started their spiritual awakening. It may be that many years of unconscious behavior have contributed to that condition – behaviors that we were powerless over in the years prior to recovery. So, when someone has a cold and you say, “well what are you doing to cause that?” – stop and think about the kind of message that conveys. It conveys a message that the other person is doing something wrong – that they are being punished. That is not a Loving message to convey. Why do it?
Of course, the reason why people convey messages like that is because they are judging themselves. The judgment externally is a reflection of the judgment internally. That is something I realized in early recovery when I was trying to learn how to get in touch with my feelings. I realized that if I went into the grocery store and experienced it as being full of jerks and idiots, that I needed to stop and ask myself what I was judging myself for that day. When I am judging and shaming myself, I have a very negative perspective of other human beings. When I am Loving myself by accepting that where I am at in this moment is somehow part of my healing process, then I have more capacity to accept that wherever you are at in this moment is okay also. By learning how to have compassion for me, I gain the ability to have compassion for you – to see you as a wounded soul doing the best you know how to do at this moment.
And having compassion for me includes having the ability to set boundaries with you if that is necessary. As I have said previously, Unconditional Love doesn’t mean being a doormat. During that time that I was homeless – and many other times in my recovery – I was given the opportunity to stand up for myself externally as a reflection of what I was learning about having boundaries with the critical parent voice in my own head. The more I am able to have boundaries internally, the more naturally, normally, and spontaneously I found myself setting boundaries externally.
Learning to have internal boundaries allowed me to start changing my relationship with my self from the inside out – rather than trying to do things on the outside “right” to try to feel better inside. Healing is an inside job that needs to be done with compassion, patience, and Love, not something to be judged according to external conditions – or in comparison to others.
Moment of Clarity
Part of the reason I was able to stand up for myself and know that whatever was happening in my life was a perfect part of my path, was a moment of clarity I had in early recovery that I wrote about a few days after the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 – when I started to write my online book. I ended up not using the passage about that moment of clarity in that book – and now it fits in perfectly in this one.
Even though I was at a pretty rudimentary level of consciousness back in 1985 or 86 when this happened, I was open enough that I had started to experience moments of Knowing, feelings of intuitive Truth. I was already starting to access the mystical channel within me even though I had not yet at that time begun my conscious codependency recovery. I was awake enough to recognize moments of clarity – where an insight would come to me, and the Truth of it would resonate powerfully in my being. Here is that passage:
“Once such moment of clarity came one day at an AA meeting in my then home group in Studio City. It related to a news story I had heard earlier in the day. The story was about a man who had been drunk and had been driven home by friends. After getting home, he had gotten another set of keys and started off driving down the street in a black out. He had smashed his car into the front of a house and narrowly missed killing a little girl asleep in her bed.
The street was one that I had lived on towards the end of my drinking career. It was a street that ran off of Ventura boulevard into the Hollywood Hills – and then curved back down to the boulevard again after the name of it changed to Cahuenga West. I had thought living on that street was great because I could walk about a half a mile in one direction to a good drinking bar – and a half a mile in another to a party bar with live bands. I had gotten a DUI a few years before and had realized that drinking and driving didn’t mix – so with perfect alcoholic logic I would drink and walk.
I related to the story, not just because of the street, but also because I had driven so many times in black outs. For those of you who are not alcoholic, a black out is when alcohol causes some kind of short circuit in the brain. A person in a black out still walks and talks and drives – but has no memory of what occurred during the black out period the next day. I had a black out the first time I got drunk – and continued to have them for 17 + years of drinking.
Sitting in the meeting that day, I was of course, profoundly grateful that I had never killed anyone in a black out. That I hadn’t driven onto a freeway going the wrong way and ended up in prison for years having to live with wiping out a family. That I wasn’t the guy who had driven into the house the night before.
Beyond the gratitude however, came a profound Knowing. The insight that I had that day – perhaps my first experience of pure, clear humility – was that I wasn’t sitting in an AA meeting a couple years sober because I was better than the man who ran into the house. I wasn’t even sitting there while he was in jail because I had done something right while he was doing something wrong.
What I saw so clearly that day, was that I was where I was – and he was where he was – because that was how the Divine Plan was meant to unfold. That we were both children of God, extensions of the Divine, and that we each had a path we had come into body to fulfill. For whatever reason – Karmic Settlement, certainly playing a large part – he was perfectly where he was supposed to be and I was perfectly where I was supposed to be.
When I watched a good friend die of alcoholism a few years later (The Death of an Alcoholic – codependency kills alcoholic), besides learning some huge lessons in letting go and acceptance, I also saw clearly that he was following his path perfectly. That some people die of alcoholism, of drug addiction, of violence – and it is a perfect part of the unfolding of the Divine Plan.
In my Spiritual belief system, this perfect unfolding also includes death by terrorists who turn airliners into bombs.”
“What a caterpillar calls the end of the world, God calls a butterfly.”
That moment of clarity was a very powerful building block in the foundation of my Spiritual belief system. It is not okay in my Spiritual belief system to judge where another person is on their path. As I say in the quote from my Journal above:
“No one has a right to judge someone else’s path. No one can know what Karma someone else is settling, and what is necessary to settle that Karma.”
This is something I have been working to integrate into my emotional and intellectual relationship with life since that time. It was an invaluable insight for me in my process of learning to Love my self and honor wherever I am at on my path today. It is something that I have made great progress integrating – which is what allows me to work with other people in a way that is not shaming and judgmental, that gives me the space to allow them to follow their path.
“There were two interrelated things that I had to get clear about when I started working as a therapist: One is that I am powerless over other people – over the pace of their progress, over whether they hear what I am saying to them, over where their path leads. I watched a good friend die of Alcoholism (which is in a column in the Alcoholism section) and saw how clearly he helped other alcoholics stay sober because he couldn’t – he did more to keep more people sober than many of the sober people I know. I can’t know what someone else’s’ path is – therefore I can’t tell them what is right and wrong. What I can do is help them see themselves clearer (especially as to understanding how their childhood experiences have dictated their lives), see their choices and the possible consequences clearer, and know that we are Spiritual Beings going to boarding school not taking a test we can fail.
Which brings me to the second thing, which I believe is a Spiritual Truth – I teach best what I need most to learn. I teach people how to Love themselves because I am trying to learn how to Love myself. I learned to always listen to what I was saying because, though I have no control whether anyone else hears me, I do have the power to choose to hear myself – and there is always something in what I am saying that applies to me and my process in that moment. . . . . I am in process just as my clients are – just as we all are. There is no hierarchy as far as I am concerned – just one wounded person / Magnificent Spiritual Being sharing what has worked for me with another wounded person / Magnificent Spiritual Being. I am doing what I need to do for myself, to heal myself – it doesn’t have to do with anyone else – that it helps other people is just a bonus (and an opportunity to settle Karma).” – Joy to You & Me Newsletter I – July 1,1998 quoted in Choosing a therapist or counselor with discernment
[I wrote a whole section here about how our language is polarized – which makes it very difficult to talk about the multiple levels of this dynamic without sometimes sounding like there is a right and wrong. I will probably include that in a future chapter, but want to note briefly here that when I am talking about judging another persons path I am talking about taking ego strength – feeling better than – by judging where they are in comparison to where we are, or where we think they “should” be. When we judge another human based upon the external conditions in their life, or their outward behavior or appearance, to feed our egos, we are being emotional vampires. We all need to observe our self (to make objective judgments about whether our behaviors are working for us) and others (to decided if they are someone we want to be around) – but to judge their worth as a being based upon externals, or to compare ourselves to them (either negatively or positively), is being codependent. In other words, we need to observe and make objective discerning evaluations not value judgments. (To say, “He is an idiot” is a value judgment. To say, “He is acting like an idiot” is focused on behavior rather than being which is good, but still involves some name calling / assigning a negative value judgment to behavior. To say, “From what I see of his behavior he must be really wounded and insecure – probably someone I don’t want to spend time with.” is a more objective evaluation.)
No one can see where another person has come from to get to where they are now – how much progress they have made on their path. None of us can know the depths of the wounds that are driving another persons behavior. No one can know what Karma another person is settling. A New Age spiritual seeker can be just as self righteously shaming as a religious fundamentalist when they making value judgments about other people based upon a black and white belief system – that is not Loving.]
curing cancer / manifesting abundance
One other thing I want to note from that quote from my journal. The thing I mention about cancer was a result of something that happened in a workshop I did at a Unity Church in Santa Barbara a few years back.
“If one person is able to cure themselves of cancer and another person dies of cancer – that doesn’t mean one person did it right and another did it wrong.”
In some context I mentioned someone I knew who cured themselves of cancer. Later when I was answering questions, a woman in the group asked a question that obviously was very emotional for her – and also made it clear that she had taken my reference to mean that her husband who died of cancer had not done his healing “right.”
At that point I got to share with that person, and the people in the workshop, the message from the passage above about our paths unfolding perfectly. The reason I want to make note of this here, is because of the irony involved in what happened in that workshop. I know a number of people that have been able to successful heal themselves of cancer, but the one I was thinking about whom I made mention of on that day is a perfect example of the kind of sophisticated level of the process I am talking about in this chapter – and in much of this online book.
That particular woman did not cure her cancer because she was so enlightened, because she was so far along in her recovery. It was because of her codependency that she was able to cure that cancer. It was a project to her. She was one of the types of codependents who are addicted to doing projects – and doing them perfectly. She used her black and white thinking to do the “right” things to cure her cancer.
Accessing and manifesting the power available to us from the Universe doesn’t require codependency recovery. This woman was a perfect example. She was doing it “right” – and because she was following a formula that worked, she was able to do something modern science says is impossible. But like so many codependents who believe they are doing it “right” – from health fanatics to anyone who believes their way is the only way to God to the New Age authors who tell people that Love and fear are the only choices – they will judge and shame other people for where they are at on their paths. Some of the more enlightened people, who have been on a spiritual / healing path for years, may do that shaming very subtly because their ego self image is invested in what a loving person they are – but unless their intellectual paradigm is large enough to be Truly Loving, a discerning person can sense their judgment (especially if you disagree with or challenge them.)
This experience with cancer for the woman I knew, did not help her relax in her relationship with life, did not help her to access more Joy in her life – because she was still relating to life from a black and white intellectual paradigm that required her to try to control life. She had been able to heal her cancer but hadn’t changed the fundamental music of her dance. When she finished her healing cancer project she went right back into her remodeling her house project to try to do that perfectly.
We cannot control life. Trying to control life will keep us in fear of making “mistakes,” of doing life “wrong” – will keep us destination oriented. We were programmed to relate to life as if it were a test we can fail. That type of relationship with life does not allow us to relax and be present in the moment today.
“Many of us have pursued healing and Recovery just like we did the rest of our lives – as if it were a destination to be reached where we would find “happily ever after.” We have gone to healers and psychics and therapists in order to learn the “right” way to do life.
Recovery is not a dance of right and wrong, of black and white – it is a dance of integration and balance. The questions in Recovery are: Is it working for you? Is the way you live your life working to meet your needs? Is the way you are living your life bringing you some happiness?“
Metaphysical laws can be used for purposes other than manifesting Love into the world – like the Americanized version of Buddhism I ran into years ago that used the vibrational power of chanting to manifest new cars or whatever. I believe that in this new Age of Healing and Joy our job is to integrate Spirituality into our relationship with life. We are here to heal our relationship with our self so that we can manifest Love into our internal process and into the world. It is by healing our codependency that we will not only learn to develop a more Loving relationship with ourselves so that we can learn to relax and enjoy life much of the time, but will also heal the human condition.
“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.”
Now there is nothing wrong with new cars, or any other material goodies. I would love to have a new car. But to access the power of the Universe and focus our energy on manifesting money, property, and prestige, is to be too attached to the Illusion. As long as we are looking outside of ourselves for the people, places, and things that will fix us and make us feel good about our self, we are stuck in our disease. As long as we are taking ego strength from comparing our self to others we are empowering codependency – which means we are empowering the illusion that separation is the highest Truth instead of connection, instead of ONENESS.
Dance of Karma
We are works in progress. Wherever we are at in this moment is a perfect part of our path – is a transitory moment in our journey through this lifetime. We are involved in a dynamic transformational process that is unfolding perfectly according to the Divine Plan of a Loving Universal Source. We are not in control of this process. What we can have some control of is our perspective of / attitudes towards / relationship with, the journey. By learning to accept where we are at today with compassion and Love, we gain the capacity to get some enJoyment out of this day of our journey. By learning to start stopping the shame and judgment internally, we start seeing with more clarity anything in our life that is not working in our best interests, so we can do whatever we are capable of today – in our imperfect human way – to change the things we have the power to change. We are co-creators here, not The Creator. And nothing we do as co-creators is powerful enough to cause us to be separated from The Source.
“Free Will – free will is an illusion that exists within certain levels of the illusion. On the highest level, we are all part of the ONENESS and nothing any of us do can change that – because ONENESS is the highest Truth. On Lower levels we have free will to a certain extent. All of our actions on the physical plane however are governed by the Law of Karma – so that free will exists within the context of Karmic settlement.” – New Age Misinterpretations of Metaphysical Truth
We do not have the power to separate from The Source because separation is an illusion. The Age of Healing and Joy which has dawned in human consciousness on the planet is an age in which the old souls are doing Karmic settlement for lifetimes of Karma. We are not being allowed to create new Karma in this lifetime – we are here to settle Karmic debts.
“We have all lived multiple lifetimes. We have all experienced every facet of being human. We are now not just healing our wounds from this lifetime, we are doing Karmic settlement on a massive scale, at a very accelerated rate.
Karma is the Loving, wonderful law of energy interaction which governs human interaction. Like the other levels of Universal Law, it is about cause and effect. In this case, “what you sow, you reap.”
Karmic Law dictates that every action of cause on the Physical Plane is paid for with a consequence of effect on the Physical Plane. In other words, no one can end up in the hole, or in some hell in an afterlife. (Hell is here on earth, and we have all experienced it already.)”
We do not have the power to do anything except the Karmic settlement we are here to accomplish. Abundance is a good example of this reality. Just because abundance has not manifested in our life financially does not mean we are doing something wrong – or that it is a situation that we necessarily have the power to change. Karmically it may be necessary for me, or any one of us, to learn to be fully alive and access Joy and serenity in this lifetime without ever having financial abundance.
“Abundance – as long as we are in the Karmic realm, let me address abundance. Some of us came into this lifetime with issues to heal around money and financial abundance. Other people had already done their healing around abundance issues – or will do it in some future life. People that have a very easy time manifesting financial abundance are not better than, or more evolved than, people who have struggled financially in this lifetime. It is just about having different types of paths – it is not something that rich people are justified in judging other people for (or vice versa), or that anyone needs to feel ashamed of because it means you are doing something wrong.
Now, all of us have childhood experiences that are reflections of the Karmic debts we need to settle. That means, that things in childhood wounded us around the issues we are here to work on and heal. So, like any other issues, abundance is an area that many people need to work on – to remove the dysfunctional, self sabotaging programming that comes from our childhood. As long as we are working on uncovering our wounds and healing them, we are doing our part in the process. It is important to learn to accept and Love ourselves no matter where we are in regard to any issue, and not give any issue (such as not having money) the power to affect our sense of self worth – or set us up to think that we are doing something wrong if we have not reached “there” yet. We may never get “there” in this lifetime – it is important not to buy into being the victim of ourselves in relationship to any issue.” – New Age Misinterpretations of Metaphysical Truth
There is no destination to be reached. Doing the work does not mean we are going to be rewarded in some specific way in this lifetime. Being willing to do the healing work does not necessarily mean we are going to get that special relationship or the financial abundance or whatever – in this lifetime. Doing the work makes us available for the possibility of having all of our dreams come true – it is not a guarantee the we will reach some specific goal / destination in this lifetime.
“So, I am walking to the post office exploring the idea of this new type of web page and the following interaction took place within me (in my inner reality these are fleeting thoughts rather than a formal conversation.)
ego/critical parent: “Your giving away all of this information for free and meanwhile you can’t even pay your rent. That’s really stupid”
Magical thinking inner child (who believes in fairy tales): “Oh, but we’re going to be rewarded. All kinds of good things are going to happen – including getting a lot of money.”
Adult on Spiritual Path: “Now, settle down you two. In the first place, it is very important and wonderful to give away what I have been given – that is how to keep the energy flowing – and that is what works, it is what I need to do for me/us. And I am going to do it because it feels good, it feels right – like the next thing in front of me to do. We’ll worry about the rent when it is time to pay the rent – for today, for this moment, we will do what feels right for today. And I need to tell you that our reward may just be to feel good about what we’re doing – and if that is all there is, that is still a wonderful gift. On top of that we are getting positive feedback from all over – and that is a great bonus. There may never be a lot of money, but that is not important. There is enough money for today. And we are very blessed to have something to do today that is fulfilling and makes us happy.”
So I set a boundary with the critical parent by not buying into the criticism, I set a boundary with my inner child by not building up expectations of some kind of reward, and I work my recovery program by focusing on the half of the glass that is full (my needs that have been met) and being grateful for the gifts I have been given, instead of allowing the disease to focus on fear and scarcity, on the half that is empty (my wants that have not been met.)
The purpose of doing the inner child healing work is to improve the quality of my life today – not to reach a destination or reward. Today, I have choices about how I respond to my internal process. Today, I can let go of the future and the past for this moment, which gives me the freedom to be happy and joyous in the moment for quite a few of the moments of my day.” – Setting Boundaries with inner children
The reward for doing this work is in the quality of our day to day life – and in our next lifetime. Of course most of us want very much to believe this is our last lifetime – but I believe that though we are close to graduation, we are not quite there yet.
“We who are doing this healing are about to graduate from the school of Karmic human experience. Any minute now . . . or any lifetime.
What graduation means is that we can be released from the Karmic merry-go-round, from the Karmic dance that was necessary because of polarization and “reversity.” It does not mean that we will cease to exist; that would be a pretty hollow victory indeed.
What I believe it means is that when peace prevails, when the thousand years of peace begins, when a balanced, harmonious, Spiritually aligned world evolves, then we can come back and play with all of our friends. With our Kindred Spirits and our Soul Mates, and in union with our Twin Soul.”
The destination thinking is part of codependency – part of the intellectual paradigm we learned in childhood. As I say in the quote from my book that I use earlier in this work, the Universe has the power to get us where we are supposed to be when we are supposed to be there – our choice is to follow the carrots or wait for the stick. The purpose of doing this healing is to be able to stop being so afraid of doing life “wrong.” The reward for remembering who we really are and doing what we need to do to tune in more clearly to our intuitive guidance is that we get to relax and follow the carrots. It makes life so much easier and more enJoyable.
“I learned to focus on my recovery as my number 1 priority because it worked to make my life easier and less painful in the long run. It took me years in recovery to really understand all of this – and to give recovery the priority focus – but eventually I came to understand that I could make a conscious choice to be a positive co-creator in my life instead of a negative one. That I could start creating cause that would have better effect.
I focus on recovery because it works. By paying attention, being conscious and willing, I get to follow the messages instead of forcing the Universe to use the stick on me. Choosing to make recovery the number one priority in my life makes life easier and less painful. Bottom line.” – January 2002 Update Newsletter: Part 1
“Recovery is a process of learning to forgive ourselves, of making amends to ourselves. It was not our fault.
Healing is, however, our responsibility. Today you know that there are choices – you know that there are resources and groups and tools – or you would not be reading this book.
The part of you that has been making up excuses for not getting more aligned with healing is your disease. Don’t judge yourself for it – observe it. Say to yourself, “Oh, isn’t that interesting, I don’t think I want to do that anymore.” Or you can say, “Hey, this denial is still working for me, I think I’ll stick with it for awhile.” Whatever works to make you happy. (You might want to remember, however, that if you don’t follow the carrots – the Universe will use the stick.)”
Comparison = empowering belief in separation
One of the ridiculous aspects of the condition of codependency, of the human condition as it has been dictated by planetary conditions, is that it has caused human beings to focus on differences between us and fear those differences, instead of seeing all that we have in common and celebrating our connection to each other.
“We are all more connected than we are different. As human beings, we share a basic emotional process that is the same for all of us. We share connections with other human beings that can allow us to feel on the same wave length with any human being in the right circumstances. We can watch a television show about someone who is completely different from us in terms of race, culture, language, etc. – and still resonate with them emotionally in a moment of tragedy, or triumph. Someone from our home town, who we might pass on the street without a second thought in the normal course of daily life, becomes a kindred spirit when we meet them in a foreign country.
Our relationship with a certain subject can cause us to feel a connection to someone else – because of their similar relationship with that concept or group or thing. Some examples: fishing or dogs or skiing or an athletic team or a specific cause or a certain philosophy, etc. Every human being on the planet is someone who we could feel connected to – feel on the same wave length with – in the right circumstances in relationship to some shared feeling, interest, and/or experience.
We are all kindred spirits in terms of our humanity – in terms of our relationship to the horizontal human experience. We are all kindred spirits with more connection than differences without even taking the vertical – the Spiritual relationship – into consideration.” – The True Nature of Love – Twin Souls, Souls Mates, and Kindred Spirits
Simply as human beings we are all connected in our experience of physical existence – are more alike than we are different in this horizontal dance we are doing. The outer / external dependence of the condition of codependency causes us to focus externally and fear the unknown – which means fear and judge other people based upon what we see of them externally. At the same time we are judging others based upon external appearances / conditions, we are trying to determine our own worth based upon external observation – and we are wearing masks and trying to hide the feeling of shame we are carrying deep within ourselves. A ridiculous, dysfunctional dance without even taking our Spiritual connection into account.
“The reason that we have not been Loving our neighbor as ourselves is because we have been doing it backwards. We were taught to judge and feel ashamed of ourselves. We were taught to hate ourselves for being human.
We are here to learn to Love ourselves so that we can Truly Love our neighbors. We’ve been doing it backwards: hating our neighbors like we hate ourselves.
It is kind of a cosmic joke, see. We have been taught that we are human and that it is bad and shameful, and that we have to somehow earn the right to be Spiritual. The Truth is that we already are Spiritual and there is nothing bad or shameful about “being human.”
We are Spiritual Beings having a human experience. We are here to experience feelings and touch and Love. The goal of the healing process is not to reach someplace where we are above all the human experiences and feelings. We are here to feel these feelings.
When we become willing to feel the pain, then we become capable of feeling the Joy. The Joy of doing this healing is incredible! Our job is to heal and enJoy. Our job is to be. We are here to be human beings, not human doings.
Our job is to follow the Joy to the Truth. Our job is to feel in the moment.
As long as we are reacting to old wounds and old tapes we cannot respond to the now. The more we heal, the more responsibility we have – that is, ability to respond. The ability to respond in the moment.”
The mystical Truth (which has now also been scientifically proven by Quantum Physics) that we all spring from the same Source – that we all are ONE with everyone and everything – makes this dance of codependency truly a tragically sad farce as long as we are still stuck in our codependency. Once we start to awaken and recover, then we can start to lighten up and not take this cosmic joke so seriously and personally. Then we can start accessing moments of Joy in our journey instead of always comparing how we feel to how the lives of others look on the outside.
“Looking outside of ourselves for self-definition and self-worth means that we have to judge people in order to feel good about ourselves. There is no other way to do it when you look outside.
We were taught to have ego-strength through judgment – better than, prettier than, smarter than, richer than, stronger than, etc., etc.
In a Codependent society everyone has to have someone to look down on in order to feel positive about him/herself. This is the root of all bigotry, racism, sexism, and prejudice in the world.
True self-worth does not come from looking down on anyone or anything. True self-worth comes from awakening to our connection to everyone and everything.
The Truth is that we are like snowflakes: Each individual is unique and different and special and we are all made from the same thing. We are all cut from the same cloth. We are all part of the Eternal ONENESS that is the Great Spirit.
When we start looking within and celebrating the Truth of who we Truly are, then we can celebrate our unique differences instead of judging them out of fear.”
Buying into the belief that outer or external circumstances are a measure of any human being’s worth makes the determination of self worth a competitive issue. In our codependency we look outside and compare our self to others to feel good about self – to gain ego strength. But as long as we are looking outside in comparison, there will always be people that we feel less than as well as people we feel better than.
In our codependency we put people up on pedestals as having made it. We buy into the illusion that they have arrived at “happily ever after” – because it means maybe we can get there also. We glory in their triumphs because we are like them and can vicariously share in how they must be feeling at such a moment. We have dreamed and fantasized about such triumphs / accomplishments / validation / vindication / success – so we share their glory because we can emotionally relate to such a moment. We make people stars because we want to be stars – we think that will help us feel worthy and lovable.
Once people are up on those pedestals however, we eventually feel jealous of them. They have made it – and we have not. They are enjoying the fruits of success and victory – and we are still trapped in our mundane lives. We end up resenting them and needing to pull them off of their pedestals.
Thus idolizing celebrities in our culture can quickly turn into a feeding frenzy of media vultures when that celebrity proves to be human. Talk about emotional vampires – the news media is progressively manifesting uglier behavior in their frenzy to suck emotional blood out of the triumphs and tragedies of others. This is a direct reaction to the emotional dis-ease of a society full of wounded souls who are starving for some emotional sustenance – so starved they will watch Reality TV to try to get an emotional fix.
Our codependent culture loves to see people become media stars, to put people up on a pedestal and shine the spotlight on them, because we all crave recognition and respect – we all want to feel valued and validated. External validation is not a bad thing, but if we think that is what gives us worth we are being codependent – and we are set up to keep chasing the ego validation that makes us feel worthy as long as we are looking externally to determine our self worth.
Some of the New Age authors and mystical messengers I mentioned in the last chapter have gotten quite caught up in being celebrities. Because they are not in recovery from their codependency, they can get sucked into the quicksand of money, property, and prestige – into the heady experience of other people putting them on a pedestal. It is pretty easy for any codependent to get caught up with being seen as an “expert” – as a messenger who has impacted the lives of others in a very valuable way. The fact that they may get caught up in their codependency does not diminish the value of the ways in which they have been teachers and way showers for others – what it means that they may lose the ability to have some healthy perspective on their own growth process.
The e-mail about changing the music which I mentioned at the start of this chapter, was one of several e-mails I got while writing this that fit in some way with the process of the creating these last few chapters. Another one of them was an e-mail from one of the therapists on my referral page. He had dropped me a note to let me know he was working on creating a web site called Why Dr. Phil Failed Us. I will be interested in checking that site out once it is online because I really don’t know much about Dr. Phil – except that he has become a celebrity phenomena. I haven’t paid any attention to him, or watched what he does, because in my opinion (hopefully an objective observation) Oprah is still coming from a very codependent ego driven place – so anyone that she thinks is wonderful is not likely to be someone who would challenge her intellectual paradigm or the level of her personal emotional healing.
As I said in the last chapter, I believe that Oprah is a mystical messenger who has helped millions of people open up to larger concepts – has helped millions of people break out of limiting belief paradigms. But like any messenger / teacher / therapist / etc., she can’t lead people someplace she hasn’t gone herself. I am sure that Dr. Phil, like Oprah, can be very helpful to many, many people in exposing them to different perspectives of the healing and awakening process. And each of them is a wounded soul, a codependent, who is on a path that is unfolding perfectly for them. As with any therapist or author, sponsor or coach, counselor or healer, they may be very helpful to us at a certain stage in our growth – but that does not mean that we should put them up on pedestals. We want to honor and value anyone who we have found helpful, but it is important to use discernment in how much power we give to anyone.
“The reality is that inner child healing and codependency recovery are still pretty new – and many very well meaning professionals out there do not know a lot about this work. My approach to the work is unique and pioneering, and no one out there is doing exactly what I do and describe. You will find very few counselors and therapist who define codependence in as large a context as I do; many who do not see it as a Spiritual disease; many who have not done their own emotional work. . . . . . . . But you can find good people out there doing important work. You can find people: who can lovingly facilitate grief work; who can be very helpful in seeing your codependence when you are blind to it in certain areas; who are very good at teaching Loving Spiritual concepts; who can help you understand specific dynamics around such issues as verbal abuse or sex addiction etc. It is possible to find counselors and therapist who can be very helpful in your process.
What is important is to be careful about giving them too much power. The purpose of the work as I see it, is for each individual to become empowered to access and trust their own inner guidance. There will come a point when it is time to move on – or when you only need to see them once in a while. The goal is to stop making any outside source your higher power – including your counselor or therapist.
It is important to recognize that no one has the right to judge or shame you – especially a counselor. Counselors and therapist are wounded human beings who sometimes let their own agendas influence what they say to you. There may be things about you that trigger their wounds. Pay attention. Recognize if you have outgrown what they have to offer. Do not buy into thinking that because they were helpful for awhile, that means they are always right.” – Inner Child Healing – choosing a therapist or counselor with discernment
I also got an e-mail from someone who thanked me for how much my site had helped her – but asked “why do you share so much info on the internet? Usually people put a little to interest you so then you will go buy their book.” Here is part of my response to this person (who I haven’t been able to get a reply through to because her mailbox is full.)
“I was never very good at that business and marketing stuff. 😉 Actually, it is just how my path has unfolded. What I do is share my experience strength and hope. I feel that part of my mission in this lifetime is to serve as a messenger and that I get the honor and privilege of being able to share a very wonderful and Joyous message. So, I want to spread the word. Also, I have lots and lots of Karma to settle. ;-)”
There is another level to my motivation which has to do with molecular biology which I will touch on later – but the reason I am adding this here is that within a day or two of getting that last e-mail another serendipitous thing happened. I found a link to my site on another web site which commented on how much information I share on the site for free – and said that I share almost my whole book on it. That isn’t really true, the sharing the whole book part – although I do share a lot of quotes from my book Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls on the pages of this site. And a person can get a sense of my book from those quotes – but reading it is an experience in and of itself.
The thing that I have heard from so many people is that reading the book – or listening to the audio tapes – can bring about a shift in a person’s relationship with life. That reading the book can, in and of itself, bring about a change in the music one is dancing to – can help a person relax and start enjoying life a little more because their perspective of life and self has shifted into one more aligned with Love. That is the goal of codependency recovery in my view – to change the music of our human experience from a dance based upon shame, fear, and separation to a dance aligned with Joy, Love and ONENESS. It makes my heart smile to know that I was the instrument in creating a book that can facilitate a musical metamorphosis in the dance of life for others.
So, I guess that this last is my version of a marketing strategy. If you resonate with what I write here, there is a good chance that reading my book will help you change the music of your dance. But rather you buy my book or not, I hope you can hear the music of Love in Truth as I understand it. ;-)” – Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in the Light Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life Chapter 13: Changing the Music: Love instead of fear and shame
Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in the Light Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life is available in a subscription area of the Joy2MeU website entitled: Dancing in Light
A special offer for that subscription (as well as for the Joy2MeU Journal quoted herein) is part of the Holiday Special Offers posted a couple of days ago.
Much of the information on this page was incorporated into my eBook The Law of Attraction – Misunderstood & Misinterpreted A Larger Spiritual Paradigm
It is that feeling within when someone says, or writes, or sings, something in just the right words so that I suddenly feel a deeper understanding. It is that “AHA” feeling. The feeling of a light bulb going on in my head. That “Oh, I get it!” feeling. The intuitive feeling when something just feels right . . . or wrong. It’s that gut feeling, the feeling in my heart. It is the feeling of something resonating within me. The feeling of remembering something that I had forgotten – but do not remember ever knowing.” 
Articles 3 through 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
Codependency Recovery Expert Robert Burney 