My Sobriety Date: January 3rd, 1984

On December 31st, 2020 I am adding this update to this blog post.  I have not published any blogs here recently because wordpress made major changes to their platform that I don’t understand – but I am adding a short intro to this now in honor of my 37th Sobriety Birthday that I will be celebrating on January 3rd, 2021.

My next Zoom Workshop will start on January 3rd, 2021.  My sobriety birthday.  I have been clean and sober since January 3rd, 1984.  It will probably be quite emotional for me to do Part 1 of this workshop on my 37th Sobriety Anniversary.  

I started doing my Life-Changing Workshop in May of 2020 because of the pandemic. A major reason that I decided to do my workshop on Zoom, is to leave more of a record of my work in case I should end up being taken out by the virus.  I am in the susceptible Boomer group, so anything is possible.  (I haven’t gotten covid but I did have a minor stroke and some other physical issues this year – getting old isn’t for sissies.)  I believe that the approach to inner child / emotional healing that I share in the workshop is the missing piece – the missing perspective – of the puzzle of life that so many people have been seeking.  It is a formula for integrating intellectual knowledge and spiritual Truth into one’s emotional relationship with life.   It is the key to learning how to be more Loving to your self – and to turning life into an adventure to be experienced instead of an ordeal of suffering to be endured.  Zoom has proven to be a good vehicle for sharing this formula with people around the world.

It will be very interesting to me to do my workshop on my sobriety birthday – makes me emotional just to think about it.  As I say again and again in the article below, I am sooooo grateful for my recovery – and the life that it has given me for the last 37 years.  Here is the link to the Zoom workshop for anyone who wants to join me.  Such a blessed and Joy-filled life I have been gifted with because of being willing to follow where I was led in my recovery.

On January 1st, 2020 I am updating and doing some editing to this blog post that I put together 2 years ago using excerpts from different places in my writing where I talk about getting sober.  On Friday January 3rd, 2020, I will be 36 years clean and sober.

“I feel that my life Truly began on January 3rd, 1984.  That was the day I entered a chemical dependency treatment center (aptly called the Independence Center) and started to learn how to live life clean and sober.  One of the reasons I was able to stay clean and sober was because I had a considerable amount of ego strength.  I had some strengths and talents that caused me to think that I was better than other people.  That ego strength was my defense against the shame I felt at the core of my relationship with myself.  I had a capacity for denial and rationalization that had helped me buy into the lie that other people were to blame for the failed wreckage my life had become.

I used that ego strength – and the false pride that told me I was better than other people – to help me stay sober.  One of the ways I did that was to make my sobriety date very important to me.  If I drank again, I would lose my sobriety date – and there was no way I wanted people who had less sobriety than me to get ahead of me.  My twisted, distorted codependent thinking allowed me to turn sobriety into some kind of race that I was winning over some people.

My ego strength helped me to stay sober in the beginning of my recovery.  It helped me to stay sober long enough to get into recovery from my codependency.  My recovery from codependency led me into starting to dismantle my ego defenses.  Breaking through my denial and rationalizations helped me to start getting emotionally honest with myself.  Emotional honesty forced me to start owning the incredible reservoirs of grief and rage I was carrying.  By the spring of 1988, my ego defenses had been weakened enough that the dam broke and my feelings started pouring forth.  That was when I got the gift of entering another treatment center where I started learning how to deal with that grief and rage.

In that treatment center in Tucson Arizona I met one of the people who was going to turn out to be a true angel on my path.  A person who would come to my rescue in the summer of 1988 after an unimaginable experience had revealed to me my Karmic mission in this lifetime.  He offered me the use of his cabin in Taos New Mexico.  It was in Taos that I started writing.

I later got to watch this “friend indeed” – whose name was also Robert – die because his codependency would not allow him to stay clean and sober.

“As a young child Robert got the message that he wasn’t lovable but that if he was successful enough and made enough money he might earn the right to be loved. He was successful and made lots of money but it did not work to convince him that he was good enough. 

My friend had no permission from himself to receive love. When I published my book I listed him among people who had touched my life on the Acknowledgments Page. When he saw his name listed there he cursed me (his generation, and mine, were taught to relate to other men that way, to say ‘I love you’ by calling each other names) and cried briefly (which he felt was very shameful) and then he drank. In his relationship with himself Robert was too shame-based to believe that he was lovable. 

I believe that the great majority of Alcoholics are born with a genetic, hereditary predisposition that is physiological. Environment does not cause Alcoholism. Robert was not an Alcoholic because he was shame-based – it was because of his shame that he could not stay sober. He had a blustery, ‘hail-fellow-well-met’, in your face kind of ego-strength that was very fragile. As soon as he got sober his ego defenses would fracture and the shame underneath would cause him to sabotage his sobriety. 

That doesn’t mean that people who can stay sober don’t have shame. Some of us just have more ego defenses that buries the shame deeper. That is good news in early sobriety because it helps one to stay sober. It can be bad news later on because it can cause us to resist growth and to not have the humility to be teachable.  The reason that I am alive today is because I was able to go to treatment for Codependence in my fifth year of recovery while working as a therapist in a treatment center. I had sworn that I would kill myself before I drank again and the feelings which were surfacing had me close to it when I went to Sierra Tucson. That was where I met Robert.” – The Death of an Alcoholic – codependency kills alcoholic

One of the cornerstone principles of the twelve step process is humility.  Humility is required for growth to occur.  On one level what humility means is to be teachable – to be open to growing and learning. ” – Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in the Light Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life Chapter 6: ego strength and self worth 

On January 2nd, 2018 I am putting this blog post together using excerpts from different places in my writing where I talk about getting sober.  Tomorrow I will be 34 years clean and sober.  An unbelievable miracle that I have achieved one day at a time – sometimes an hour at a time, sometimes 5 minutes at a time.  I have immense gratitude for the gift of sobriety – as I say in the quote above, I feel like my life began on January 3rd, 1984.

“When I first came to 12 step recovery I was appalled to think that I had to admit that I was powerless.  Then when they told me that I had a disease I was relieved to think that all those years of insane behavior were not my fault.  I still had problems with powerlessness and surrender however.  To surrender meant to be a loser in my mind.  What helped me was when someone told me that surrender didn’t mean I was a loser, it just meant that I was smart enough to join the winning side.

One thing I sometimes say in AA meetings is that I was a ‘Frank Sinatra’ type of alcoholic.  I used to sit in bars and get teary eyed when they played My Way – because I was doing it ‘my way,’ I thought.  One of the first things I had to surrender to, was realizing that my way wasn’t working very good.  One of the next things I had to surrender was my subconscious belief that it was not possible to live life without drugs and alcohol.” – The Miracle of The Twelve Step Recovery Process: The first three steps

“Twelve step recovery is a program of empowerment.  Many people erroneously assume that the fact that first step involves admitting powerlessness means that 12 step recovery disempowers people. The Truth is exactly the opposite.

It was only when I admitted that I was powerless to control my drinking that I gained the power to stop drinking.  As long as I was trying to control my drinking out of ego and will power, I was powerless to stop drinking alcoholically.  It was when I opened up to getting help from a power greater than myself that I gained the power to transform my life.  (There are some people – alcoholics – who can stop drinking using will power.  They are what is referred to in the program as dry drunks.  They are some of the most miserable, resentful, angry people on the face of the planet – because they have no spiritual belief system that is Loving.)

In the beginning for me, that power greater than myself was just the group – the people I met at AA meetings.  Those people shared their stories, their thoughts and feelings, in a way that I identified with.  Previously I had thought I was the only one who thought those kind of insane thoughts and had those kind of feelings of utter despair and hopelessness.  When I first got to AA, I realized that I was not alone – I felt a connection to these people, felt a part of something larger than myself.

I however, had a real problem with the talk of God that I heard at meetings.  I was raised in a shaming religion that taught me I was born sinful and shameful.  I was emotionally and spiritually abused as a young child by being taught that God loved me but might send me to burn in eternal damnation in hell.  I was taught that being human was shameful and sinful. (In one of my articles in my series on sexuality, gender, and relationships, I explained that it is not necessary for a person to be raised in a shaming religion to get the message that it is shameful to be human: Sexuality Abuse – the legacy of shame based culture.)

So, I had a real problem with even using the word God.  And this was not just because of my personal experience, but also because of what I had learned about the history of the planet.  I saw that throughout history “God” had been used as an justification for genocide, torture, plunder, and rape.  I saw that a civilization based upon the “command” to go forth to subdue and conquer, not only destroyed peoples and cultures that were much kinder and more Loving than the conquerors – but was an integral part of going a long way towards destroying the planet we live on.

In my younger days I had been involved in activism with Native Americans – whom I could clearly see had been victimized by subdue, conquer, and slaughter mentality of the dominant culture.  I found much beauty and harmony in the respect for nature and natural laws that was involved in the Native American concept a Higher Power – The Great Spirit.  In the beginning of my book, I state some reasons that I wrote it – which included the following sentence. 

“This is my way of standing up for my Truth, and of honoring “All My Relations,” which is a Native American term that refers to the Great Spirit whose essence is present in everyone and everything.  We are all related to everyone and everything.”

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

If I had been told in January 1984, at the beginning of my recovery from alcoholism, that the only way I could quit killing myself with alcohol was to accept the standard version of “God” – I would never have gotten sober.  I would have been dead long ago.  But what I was told, was that I needed to find a concept of a Higher Power that worked for me – a Higher Power of my own understanding.   That was what saved my life – the revolutionary concept that I could develop my own idea of a Higher Power, and develop a personal relationship with that Higher Power that did not have to conform to what anyone else believed.

So, in the beginning of my recovery, I allowed the fact that people in meetings – whom I identified with – seemed to have found a way to live life that worked for them, to help me stay sober one day at a time.  I used the group as a power greater than myself, while I worked on trying to find a concept of a Higher Power that would work for me.

In those early days, I would call that Higher Power:  The Great Spirit – or The Force.  I remembered clearly that when the Star Wars movies first came out, I strongly resonated with the idea that “The Force is with you.”

It was when I was about 3 months sober that a book came into my life that altered my life, and my perspective of a Higher Power, immeasurably.  The miracle of the “coincidence” of discovering that book – a book that reached out and grabbed my attention from the paperback rack in a grocery store – is something that still reduces me to tears of Joy and Gratitude 20 years later.  I quoted that book several times in my book – and in this article I am going to use a quote from an online book I wrote that includes a quote from my book within it.  That online book is the one that I wrote about the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. . . . .

“One of the first things I was guided to, when I was only about 3 months sober, was a mind boggling, paradigm smashing book called Illusions by Richard Bach.  It presented me with concepts that it took me years to understand intellectually.  But I knew instantly that the book was full of Truth.

In order to become aligned with Truth so that we can stop the war within and change life into an easier, more enjoyable experience, it is vitally important to become clear in our emotional process and to change the reversed attitudes that we had to adopt to survive.  Those reversed attitudes are what cause our dysfunctional perspectives – which in turn, have caused us to have a lousy relationship with life. 

I am going to quote from a book now, and again a little later, that is my own personal favorite book of Truth.  I feel a great deal of Truth in this book.  It has guided me and helped me to remember my Truth and to become conscious of my path.  It was a very important part of my personal process of enlarging my perspective – of being able to see this life business in a larger context. 

It is a book called Illusions by Richard Bach.  This is one of my favorite quotations from that book. 

The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. 

What a caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.

The “depth of your belief” is about perspective.  If we are reacting to life emotionally out of the belief systems we had imposed on us as children we will then see change as tragedy and feel that being forced to grow is shameful.  As we change our attitudes toward this life experience, when we can start viewing it as a process, a journey, then we can begin to see that what we used to perceive as problems are really opportunities for growth.  Then we can begin to realize that even though our experiences in childhood have caused to think of ourselves as, and feel like, lowly caterpillars – we are in Truth butterflies who are meant to fly. 

We are all butterflies.  We are all Spiritual Beings.

I used to use the caterpillar – butterfly quote a lot when I spoke.  I would usually say something like “a measure of your Spiritual Awakening” instead of “mark of your ignorance” in order to soften it a bit.  We codependents are such experts in beating ourselves up and shaming ourselves, that we tend to see the word ignorance as being something that is our fault.  In fact, the word ignorance refers to a lack of knowledge, of not being informed.  The reason we didn’t know how to set boundaries, or have healthy relationships, was because of ignorance caused by not having anyone to teach us – no healthy role models, no resources for learning how to be healthy.  We not only did not have resources to teach us how to relate to life and other people in a healthy way – we were taught the very opposite of healthy behavior in most cases.” – Attack on America – A Spiritual Healing Perspective

The caterpillar and butterfly quote was incredibly powerful to me.  I saw quitting drinking as a great tragedy – as the end of life as I knew it.  And gratefully it was the end of life as I knew it, and the beginning of life as an adventure in learning to Love.

It was the concept that I could develop a belief in a Higher Power of my own understanding that helped to empower me to realize that I had a choice in the beliefs and definitions about “God” that I was allowing to dictate my relationship with life.  It was this revolutionary concept that started me on the path to realizing that I was Lovable – that I could reconnect with, and access, an Unconditionally Loving Universal Force in a way that would help me remember that I am a beautiful butterfly that can Fly.” – A Higher Power of my own understanding 2 – the beginning of empowerment

“I am what researchers are now calling a “Type A” alcoholic.  That means that my genetic predisposition to alcoholism was so strong that the only way I could have avoided being an alcoholic was to never have taken a drink.  I got drunk the very first time that I had the opportunity to get drunk.  I also had a blackout the first time I got drunk.  A black out is when someone loses consciousness even though they are still walking and talking and appearing to be somewhat normal.  There is a gap in the memory (What did I do last night?) because of the effect of the alcohol on the brain.  I would wake up the next day not remembering anything after a certain point in time.  I wouldn’t know how I had gotten home, where my car was parked, and sometimes I wouldn’t know who I was with.  I had blackouts – with increasing regularity – starting with the first time I got drunk and continuing for the 17 years that I drank.

Alcohol saved my life.  I think that I would have killed myself if I had not discovered alcohol.  I was so terrified of life and people and felt so inadequate to cope with life.  Alcohol (and later drugs of various types) gave me permission to be human – which the environment I grew up in had not.  With alcohol I could loosen up and interact with other people.

At the end of my drinking days – which had been hell for a number of years – the Universe led me through many applications of the Cosmic stick to go home to Nebraska for the Holidays in December of 1983.  While there my parents – who had learned about alcoholism because a cousin of mine had gotten sober – did an intervention on me.  They asked me to go into a 30 day treatment program.

I can remember sitting with them in the office of the person who did the intake evaluations and feeling completely trapped.  By this time I had no money and no car, and I had been counting on them to be good enablers and loan me the money to get me going again.  The thing that really got me though was when my father said to the intake person “We want to get help for him because we love him a lot.”

I had never before heard my father use the term love in reference to me.  [He still to this day has never been able to tell me that he loves me. (My father died in May 2005.  On his death bed I told him I loved him – and the best he could say in return was “Same here.”)]  I can remember thinking at that moment, “Oh crap, now I have to do this.”  As if his using the word love was some sort of currency that obligated me to do whatever he wanted.

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

“12/24/11 ~ As my 28th sobriety birthday approaches in 10 days or so, I have been reflecting back on what an incredible miracle my life has been since January 3rd, 1984.  This page was originally just an article in a series of articles on “A Higher Power of my own understanding” – an article in which I talk about how the 12 step program of Alcoholics Anonymous saved my life.  Two years ago, on my 26th sobriety birthday I added some quotes below the article from some of my writing in which I talk about my drinking and early sobriety.  This year it was very appropriate for reasons that shall be obvious, that I share something I have shared in AA meetings on many occasions – including I am sure in many of my birthday meetings – but I don’t think I have ever written about.  (It possible I have, since I have written so much – but oh well.)

When I first got sober in a 30 day treatment program in Lincoln Nebraska, I got very afraid as it came time to leave treatment.  I felt like I had been in a safe haven for almost 30 days, and I wasn’t sure how I would fare back out in the world again.  (This was when I learned a very important lesson about working the third step when I went to see my counselor right before I was to get out.)

I couldn’t conceive of staying clean and sober for a year.  I couldn’t remember the last time I had gone for more than 3 days without something – drugs or alcohol – to take the edge off.  The one exception to that was one time about 2 years before I got sober when I quit drinking for 30 days to see if I wanted to die as much when I wasn’t drinking as when I was.  It wasn’t much of a test however, as I was still smoking some dope occasionally – plus I was starring in a play and having an affair with a married woman who was in the play with me, so had plenty of distractions to help me in my dry period.  At the cast party for the play I had a beer and just kind of forgot about ever thinking that drinking was a problem.  I was back to drinking alone to black out within a couple of weeks after that.

Anyway, I couldn’t imagine a year sober – and at the same time, I saw people who made it to a year and then drank again.  I was afraid of making it a goal to get to a year – because it was such a long time away, and also because I didn’t want to set myself up to feel like if I got there I had it made.  So, I decided to make my goal to reach 100 days – which was an impossibly long period for me at that point.  And then once I got to 100 days, I made my next goal 1000 days.  I would mention when I took my birthday cake after I reached 1000 days that my next goal was 10,000 days.  It seemed like an unfathomably distant goal.  Well, some time this year – in May I think – I passed 10,000 days clean and sober.  Mind boggling!  Talk about a miracle!!

As you can see from the comments I added two years ago after the article – I am Truly a miracle.  Among those comments below above is a quote from an article in my Joy2MeU Journal entitled: The Awakening Begins.  I decided to add an excerpt from the next article in that series – entitled: The Emotional Awakening Begins – to this page to commemorate my 28th sobriety anniversary and to be reminded of how far I have come since 1984.

“When I first came to recovery I knew a lot about emotions and had almost no permission to feel them personally.  I had no permission to feel them personally because my emotional programming from the role modeling of my parents in childhood taught me that men have only one emotion – anger – and that it wasn’t OK to be angry at women – since my mother’s definition of love included the belief that you can’t be angry at someone you love, meaning it was not OK for me to be angry at her.  My emotional palette, in terms of my personal unconscious relationship with my emotions, consisted of one color – anger – that was only truly acceptable to feel towards men.  Consciously, in my personal view of my self, I believed I was a very emotional person with a full palette.

I also knew quite a lot about emotions because I had spent many years in Hollywood pursuing an acting career.  I understood the human emotional process enough to see clearly that all humans had the same basic emotions – no matter how different their outside circumstances, or the details of their stories may have been.  When I had the right role I could play an audience like a emotional musical instrument. 

In retrospect, I believe that my acting was one of the reasons I was still alive.  I got much needed emotional release through the characters I played.  It was the type of emotional release that did not do anything for me personally in terms of healing (it is very important to own our feelings, crying for someone else is emotionally dishonest – the reason someone else’s pain affects us is because it triggers our own) – it just allowed me to vent some emotional energy, which kept me from exploding or imploding.  (The other major reason that I was still alive is that I had alcohol and drugs to help me keep the pain at bay.  Without alcohol I do think I would have killed myself before I was 21 because I was so emotionally isolated and had so much pain and rage stuffed inside – in fact I made a bet with a friend my freshman year in college that I wouldn’t live to graduate, the bet was a case of beer.)

Whenever I started working on a new character, the first thing I would try to decide was what the characters ‘gut level fears’ were.  I would pontificate to other actors about how people were driven by their gut level fears – and feel very proud of my ability to create real living breathing character studies based on my methods.  (I specialized in very intense characters who were very wounded – alcoholics, addicts, loners, crazy people, etc. – like “duh” I wonder why.  I even once for an on camera personalization exercise did Hamlet’s soliloquy ‘To be or not to be’ where he is contemplating suicide, using a drink instead of a dagger as the prop.  My acting teacher was convinced I was suicidal – I thought it just showed how brilliant I was that I was able to ‘act’ suicidal.  Denial is an amazing thing!)

So, my focus as an actor was on what fears drove my characters – but I personally had no fear.  When I first went into the Chemical Dependence Treatment Center where I got sober I heard people at meetings or in lectures mention being afraid.  I have a very clear memory of sitting in one of my first AA meetings where someone talked about being afraid and thinking “Who are these people!  So afraid.  I’ve never been afraid – they stuck guns in my face and I wasn’t afraid.  These people are wimps!”

I had no permission in my subconscious programming, in the definition of what I learned men feel from my male role model, to have fear.  I was incapable of consciously acknowledging fear in my personal process because it was unacceptable.

My self image on a conscious level was of being Mr. Nice Guy.  I would do anything for you, and I was always pleasant and entertaining.  My self image on an emotional level – my protective armor that I wore unconsciously – was of the ‘man in black.’ The strong quiet type that you didn’t want to mess with because you could see in my eyes that messing with me would be very unpleasant.  (This was a defense I developed when I was being a revolutionary and carrying a gun – I was in some pretty hairy situations and the defense served to keep me alive.)  I had a force field that I put up around myself to protect myself.  I knew how to put off vibes that said very clearly ‘stay away.’

One of the important breakthroughs I had during my 30 days in treatment came in my third week there.  My counselor was not sure how to handle me because of my intensity and the fact – which, since it was where I derived much of my ego strength, I made very clear – that I was a ‘Hollywood Actor.’ (The treatment center was in Nebraska – a long way from Hollywood.)  So, in consultation with the other counselors they decided to keep me off balance by switching me between therapy groups – and giving each of the male counselors a shot at me. 

There were three primary groups for men and usually a person was in one group the whole time they were in treatment.  In my third week, I showed up for group and was told that I had to go to a different group.  They refused to tell me why this was happening.  In about the middle of the week, I was in a group where for the first time I got to experience a full-on mirroring of myself.  The previous week in my primary group I had been confronted about putting up a barrier to scare people away – and I had responded by denying it and tearfully saying how I loved people and would never try to scare them away.  Well, in that other group I got to sit and watch another man get confronted about the same thing and deny it just as I had done – and I saw myself in him so clearly that I had to immediately point out that I could see he was not being honest because watching him I realized that I had not been honest.

At the end of this week of switching back and forth between the three groups, I was in a group with a grizzled old counselor who had been around for many years.  He asked me if I had learned anything from all the switching around and then sat and listened patiently while I expounded on all that I had learned. 

    When I was done, he asked quietly and quizzically “And you didn’t know why we were doing that, did you?”

    “No,” I said “I had no idea.”

    Then he sweetly smiled and drove home the point, “Well, maybe it is not important for you to know why something is happening then.”

    Shot the heck out of some of my control issues right there.

This treatment center worked with what was called the ‘Minnesota model’ in dealing with emotional issues.  What that meant was that they identified 6 primary feelings and forced us patients to identify our feelings only using those words.   The 6 were mad, sad, glad, hurt, afraid, ashamed.  That drove me crazy.  One of the defenses that I used to distance myself from my feelings was not naming them.  They forced me to start naming my feelings.  I couldn’t say “I was confused,” or “irritated” or “apprehensive” or “annoyed” etc.  I had to name a feeling.  It really drove me crazy since I did not know on a personal level what feelings really were, let alone what I was feeling.

I was forced to start trying to figure out what I was feeling – and to stop being in my head all of the time.  One of my primary defenses against feeling my feelings was to be in my head.  In my early recovery I had to start paying attention to what was happening in my body from the neck down – because that is where emotions manifest.

Since I was so out of touch with my feelings, I had to come up with clues for myself.  Things that I could notice that would be a clue to me that feelings were going on.

By the time I got done with the 30 day program I was really in touch with my fear.  I realized that rather than never having been afraid – the truth was that I had been afraid of everybody and everything since I was a kid.  I was absolutely terrified of leaving the treatment center because I was so scared that I would drink again.  I could see clearly what a hell my life had been and I did not ever want to go back to living the way I had been.  I swore to myself that I would kill myself before I took another drink.

So wanting a drink became my most important early clue to tell me that I had some feelings going on that I needed to deal with.  When I caught myself, while watching TV, really watching the beer commercials, I would have to stop and say, “whoa, that beer really looks good – I must be feeling something.”  Or when I was driving down the street and noticing every cocktail sign and liquor billboard –  that would be a clue that I needed to do a little emotional inventory.

One of the classic moments came because of a friend who was a musician.  He was having trouble staying sober while he was playing – so a few of us would go to an AA meeting on Friday or Saturday night and then go to whatever Lounge he was playing at.  It was a very good opportunity for me to be around drinking with a bunch of safe people and get used to not drinking in a social setting.  But there was one night when I realized that I had some feelings going on that made it unsafe for me to be in a bar.  My clue came when I started tearing up while my friend played what to me was a very sad ballad.  It was real progress for me to recognize that I was emotionally vulnerable and needed to get out of there.  Pretty funny in retrospect.  The sad ballad was “Jose Cuervo, he was a good friend of mine.””  – The Path of one Recovering Codependent ~ the dance of one wounded soul The Emotional Awakening Begins in the Joy2MeU Journal

A very valuable lesson – I don’t have to know why something is happening in order to accept that it is part of the Divine Plan somehow.  Things often haven’t gone the way I wanted them in the last 28 years – and over and over again I have been grateful when I looked back and saw the perfection of my Higher Power’s plan for me. (Something I talked about in the comments I added to my working the third step page (next excerpt) in commemoration of this birthday.)  Onward and upward for the next 10,000 days.  Happy Birthday to me!!!!!!!!”  – Joy to You & Me and Joy2MeU Update February 2012

“I celebrated my 17th sobriety birthday on January 3rd.  17 years is pretty much incomprehensible for someone who couldn’t go for 3 days without a drink or a drug.  It doesn’t seem like it went fast though – rather it seems like I have lived 7 or 8 lifetimes since 1984.  It is important for me to remember where I came from, and how far the Spirit has lead me on this journey.  As they say, the qualities of my problems has greatly improved. 😉

It is especially important for me to remember that right now, because I have been going through one of those difficult times in recovery.  There are times when everything is flowing fast and furious, with miracles popping up every time I turn around.  Then there are other times when it seems dark and murky – like I am trying to move through quick sand and not making any progress.

When I am in one of the difficult times, it is so important to observe myself so that I can catch myself when I start going into shame and judgment.  This disease is so insidious and powerful.  It puts up huge resistance to change and then turns around and tells me that I am not changing fast enough – that I am not doing enough, not doing it “right.”

As I say many times on my web site, the challenge for us is to have compassion for ourselves, and to accept wherever we are at as being a perfect part of the process, rather than punishment for being bad.  My critical parent voice wants to beat up on that wounded little boy in me whose father raged at him, who couldn’t protect his mother, and who was taught that god was judgmental and punishing.

I have to call on the defense attorney within to stand up to the prosecuting critical parent and the judge who wants to sentence me to suffering.  Sometimes it is easier than others.  Sometimes it is important just to accept that I am feeling overwhelmed, alone, and worn out – and to let myself indulge a little.  A few days ago, I let myself just kind of wallow in the part of me that feels like a wounded animal who wants to crawl into my cave and lick my wounds.

Accepting and embracing that part of me for a few hours – allowing myself to crawl into bed with a book and some chocolate – allows me to get through it and come out on the other side in a way that fighting it never does.  The disease wants to tell me that when I am feeling bad it will last forever.  That is a lie.  Accepting where I am at without shame and judgment and reminding myself that this too shall pass is an important part of maintaining some sense of balance today.

I think part of what I have been going through is a planetary thing – the process has cycles and this seems to be a murky one.  Part of it is the changes I am making in my life that I spoke about in my last newsletter.  Being in transition is always a difficult time.  I sometimes think about how it must feel to be a caterpillar in the cocoon – being torn apart and put back together as a butterfly.  That is kind of what happens in recovery – except we get to be conscious of the tearing apart process in a way that I am sure caterpillars are not.  A dubious gift if you ask me.

I also, have just gotten aware in the last couple of days that I may have had some denial going over the holidays.  I thought I had sailed through the holidays without hitting any of those pot holes of grief over being alone – the pot holes that used to be huge abysses (is that a word?).  I even congratulated myself on how I had succeeded in taking all of the emotional charge out the holidays – when I used to really feel lonely and have great sadness over being alone.

It seems I may have some of that grief and loneliness after all.  It is natural in my process that, sometimes when I am consciously choosing to focus on the part of the glass that is full, I overshoot a little and indulge in a little denial about the part that is still empty.  Oh well.  Got caught being human again.” – Joy to You & Me and Joy2MeU Update January 2001  
“On January 3, 2002 I will celebrate 18 years of being clean and sober.  I have actually been clean and sober now for longer than I drank and used.  An amazing miracle that has unfolded one day at a time.  Some of those days were excruciatingly painful – full of hopelessness and despair.  In early recovery, I didn’t make it through those days sober because I wanted to be sober – or because I wanted to be alive.  I made it through one day at a time because I was terrified of returning to, and getting stuck in, the hell I had been living in for the last 4 or 5 years of my drinking.

There is an old AA saying that: Alcoholics Anonymous doesn’t open up the gates of heaven and let us in – it opens up the gates of hell and lets us out.  When I got released from my alcoholic hell, what I found myself experiencing was life.  The very thing I had been drinking to cope with!

What I realize now, is that I was released from alcoholic hell and found myself in codependent hell.  My relationship with my self and with life condemned me to codependent hell – and alcohol and drugs had given me a vacation of sorts from dealing with the fact that I did not have a clue of how to live life in a functional way.

I am very, very grateful now that I am a recovering alcoholic.  If I had not found alcohol and drugs, I would have killed myself in one way or another in my late teens or early twenties.  My 17 plus year drinking career kept me alive long enough to be present when planetary conditions changed so that the New Age of Healing and Joy could dawn in human consciousness.  Long enough to have available to me, the tools and knowledge to be able to heal my wounded soul and learn to live life in a way that works.  Long enough that first Adult Children of Alcoholics, and then Co-Dependents Anonymous meetings, were available to help me in my healing process.

The dysfunctional dance of Codependence is caused by being at war with ourselves – being at war within.

We are at war with ourselves because we are judging and shaming ourselves for being human.  We are at war with ourselves because we are carrying around suppressed grief energy that we are terrified of feeling.  We are at war within because we are “damming” our own emotional process – because we were forced to become emotionally dishonest as children and had to learn ways to block and distort our emotional energy.

We cannot learn to Love ourselves and be at peace within until we stop judging and shaming ourselves for being human and stop fighting our own emotional process, until we stop waging war on ourselves.

Detachment and Delayed Gratification

I can see now, that the reason I was able to stay sober was because of two concepts that are invaluable to any healing or growth.  The first one made the second possible.  It is the first of these concepts that is the single most important step in the inner healing process – the one that I stress so much to anyone I am working with on how to change and improve the quality of their lives.

That concept is detachment.

Codependence is a compulsively reactive condition.  I had gone through life like a pin ball – bouncing / reacting from one point to the next, from one person to the next.  It was never my fault.   Someone, or something else, was always to blame for how messed up my life was – for how awful I felt inside.  I focused on blame and resentment because the only alternative that I knew was to blame myself.  I was at war inside of myself – and because I was taught to look outside for definition and worth by the society I grew up in, I tried to assign the blame externally for that internal war.

At the core of codependency is shame about being human.  This shame was caused by a polarized, black and white intellectual paradigm that empowered the perspective that the only alternatives for evaluating worth, for determining value, are right and wrong.  Human beings are incapable of being perfect based upon a perspective in which the only alternatives are right and wrong.

Codependency is a dysfunctional relationship with life, with being human.  It is the dance I learned to do as a little kid.  It is a dance whose music is generated from fear and shame, to a rhythm dictated by black and white thinking.  It is a dance characterized by movement between extremes – blame them or blame me, overreact or underreact, less than or better than, success or failure, win or lose, etc., – which makes balance impossible.  There is no middle ground in a dance that can only be done right or wrong.  There can be no inner peace.

Since I was continually attempting to do life perfect (or rebelling by going to the opposite extreme) according to false beliefs about the nature and purpose of being human, I could never have any inner peace.  I judged my self and my life experience, both consciously and unconsciously, out of a dysfunctional polarized belief system – so that it was not possible to stop being at war within.  At the core of my being I felt like I was a defective monster, some kind of shameful, unlovable loser – and I tried to deflect some of that pain by blaming others.

No wonder I drank.  Alcohol – and later drugs of various kinds – saved my life.

The first thing I had to do to get sober was to detach enough from my personal reality – from my hellish emotional pain and shame, from the intellectual garbage generated by my twisted codependent thinking – to become conscious of the reality that alcohol was not working for me anymore.  I had to get conscious enough to be able to realize that it had been many years since alcohol had given me the relief and good feelings that it had when I started drinking.

With any addictive, mind / mood altering substance / behavior, the very thing that brought some relief from the internal war and mental anguish – the substance or behavior that gives us feelings of being high, of rising above our lives of quiet desperation, of feeling good –  becomes something that we feel is necessary just to feel normal.  Then eventually, normal becomes very low indeed.

I had to detach from myself enough to look at my life from a perspective that allowed me to see that maybe my behavior had something to do with why I was so miserable – but that is was not because I was a shameful being.  The twelve step concept of powerlessness – the idea that alcoholism was a disease rather than a weakness of character – allowed me to detach and view my behavior, my drinking and using, with enough objectivity to start seeing reality with more clarity.

Once I surrendered to the reality that alcohol was hurting me rather than helping me, then I could make some effort to start living life differently.  It was necessary for me to get a detached, objective look at myself in order for me to get honest enough with myself to decide that it might be better for me to get sober.  I did not stop drinking because I wanted to stop drinking.  I stopped drinking because alcohol and drugs were not working for me any more.  When I was able to look at reality with some detachment, I could see that what I thought was the solution had actually become the most pressing problem.

The second concept that was so valuable in staying sober and starting to change my life, was the concept of delayed gratification.  When I first started recovery, I thought that living life one day at a time was a revolutionary concept for me.  But looking back now, I can see that living life one day at a time is what I had been doing all my life.  The difference was that I had been living out of instant gratification.

As I describe on my page The codependent three step – A Dance of Shame, Suffering, & Self-Abuse, codependency is a vicious, compulsive, self-abusive dynamic – an prison that we are trapped in as long as we are reacting.  In my codependent dance I was the victim of myself, I was my own perpetrator, and I rescued myself in ways that were ultimately self abusive.   The shame and pain I was feeling was causing me to feel like a victim, the critical parent voice in my head was beating me up for being a stupid loser, and I was rescuing myself with drugs and alcohol.

In early recovery, I learned to think the next drink through to the consequences before picking it up.  In other words, think about how I would feel about myself tomorrow if I take a drink today.  And be conscious enough to tell myself the truth that I didn’t want just one drink – I wanted oblivion, unconsciousness.

So, I started living life one day at a time from a detached place of consciousness that was aware of cause and effect – and understood that not indulging in instant gratification today would help me to not hate myself so much tomorrow.

Detachment allowed me to start aligning myself with the way life really works – cause and effect – and choosing delayed gratification one day at a time.” – Co-Creation: Owning your Power to Manifest Love

I have often said that Gratitude is not nearly a big enough word to describe how grateful I am and how blessed I feel to be in recovery.   January 3rd 2018 2020  is my 34th 36th sobriety birthday and I am profoundly, deeply, everlastingly grateful for the gift of recovery in my life.

“I am profoundly, deeply, everlastingly grateful for the gift of the 12 steps.  The process of learning to apply the Spiritual Principles in my life has changed my life from an unendurable hell to an adventure that is exciting and enJoyable most of the time.  The twelve steps work.  That is the bottom line.  They work to help a person transform their experience of life into something better.  They work to help a person learn to develop a relationship with life and self that allows room for inner peace, happiness, and Joy.  The twelve step process works to help a person open up to Love.” – The Miracle of The Twelve Step Recovery Process – a formula for integration and balance

1-1-2020 – still available on 12/31/20 – I have a page with special offers for this Holiday Season if anyone is interested.  And also wanted to mention my Mobile Friendly site that I launched in June 2018.

There are probably 5 or 6 million words in the two subscription areas of my site that I quote from in this entry.  I have a page with special offers on lifetimes subscriptions to those password protected areas: Dancing in Light and the Joy2MeU Journal.  Millions of words of content not available on Joy2MeU.

It is possible to get personally autographed copies of my books from my website Joy2MeU  or You can get my Books, eBooks, and Audiobooks through Amazon,  Books or eBooks through Barnes & Noble, or eBooks through Kobo.

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.

“I am inserting a note here for anyone who feels offended by what they see as a violation of the Eleventh Tradition of AA’s Twelve Traditions.  The 11th Tradition of AA is:

Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and films.

I routinely break my own anonymity in regard to the fact that I am a recovering alcoholic / addict and codependent because I do not believe I would be alive today if Betty Ford had not broken her anonymity in the late 1970s and brought the subject of alcoholism out of the closet into public view.  She is one of the people I dedicated my book to because I believe that I personally owe her a debt of gratitude for her courage and honesty.  Breaking my own anonymity is one way that I carry the message of hope that saved my life.  Anyone whose black and white thinking is causing them to rigidly interpret the Twelve Steps and Traditions enough to be offended, desperately needs to get into codependency recovery in my opinion.” – Robert Burney 2/10/04 

Illusions “The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah.”

My Sobriety birthday is tomorrow and in the course of putting together a blog about my experience of being clean and sober since January 3rd 1984, I came across a journal entry that doesn’t quite work in the blog post I am writing but which I wanted to share. In this journal entry I am talking about a couple of the powerful early influences in my recovery.

The first was Richard Bach’s book Illusions “The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah.”  I discovered this book in a grocery store book rack when I was about 3 months sober.  The title resonated so strongly with me that I knew I had to buy it though I had no idea what it was about or why I related to it.

Everyone has a time in their early Spiritual Awakening when some specific influence – a book, a teacher, a workshop, etc. – impacted them to a huge degree.  At the time we are ready to hear – the teacher appears.  This has happened again and again in my recovery – but the first real powerful awakening stimuli always sticks with us.  Illusions is to me a great book of Truth.  And it gave me a new huge paradigm to start exploring in my quest for Spiritual meaning in life.

The story of Illusions is that Richard Bach is out flying around the Midwest in an old biplane making a living by giving people rides.  He meets someone else who is doing the same.  This other person turns out to be a former mechanic who got in touch with his inner power and started working miracles.  He soon had people flocking around him because he was “The Messiah.”  He kept trying to tell people that they could do anything he could do because they were all connected to the Divine also.  But they wouldn’t listen to him.  Rather they wanted him to fix them – they didn’t want to do the work themselves.

He got tired of not being heard so one day he quit.  Here is an excerpt from the prologue to Illusions.

“And when the throng pressed him with its woes, beseeching him to heal for it and learn for it and feed it nonstop from his understanding and to entertain it with his wonders, he smiled upon the multitude and said pleasantly unto them, “I quit.”

 

For a moment the multitude was stricken dumb with astonishment.

 

And he said unto them, “If a man told God that he wanted most of all to help the suffering world, no matter the price to himself, and God answered and told him what he must do, should the man do as he is told?”

 

“Of course, Master!” cried the many. “It should be pleasure for him to suffer the tortures of hell itself, should God ask it!”

 

“No matter what those tortures, nor how difficult the task?”

 

“Honor to be hanged, glory to be nailed to a tree and burned, if so be that God has asked,” said they.

 

“And what would you do,” the Master said unto the multitude. “if God spoke directly to your face and said, ‘I command that you be happy in the world, as long as you live.’ What would you do then?”

 

And the multitude was silent, not a voice, not a sound was heard upon the hillsides, across the valleys where they stood.

 

And the Master said unto the silence, “In the path of our happiness shall we find the learning for which we have chosen this lifetime. So it is that I have learned this day, and choose to leave you to walk your own path, as you please.”

 

And he went his way through the crowds and left them, and he returned to the everyday world of men and machines.”

 

Here is a quote . . . from my book paraphrasing a story in Illusions.

“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 hold 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?” – Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls quoted in  – The Path of one Recovering Codependent ~ the dance of one wounded soul The Awakening Begins in the Joy2MeU Journal 

 

Joy2MeU Journal

The Joy2MeU Journal includes a personal journal of my recovery process as well as my personal story “The Path of one Recovering Codependent ~ the dance of one wounded soul.”  In it I share the story of my recovery.   I have a page that includes special offers on lifetimes subscriptions to the password protected areas of my website Joy2MeU.com: Dancing in Light and the Joy2MeU Journal.  Millions of words of content not available on Joy2MeU.

It is possible to get personally autographed copies of my books from my website Joy2MeU  or You can get my Books, eBooks, and Audiobooks through Amazon,  Books or eBooks through Barnes & Noble, or eBooks through Kobo.

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.

Co-creation, empowerment, and self-Love through Conscious Internal Boundaries Chapter 16

Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light  Book 1 Empowerment, Freedom, and Inner Peace through Inner Child Healing Chapter 16  More on Internal Boundaries

The last chapter is the article that I wrote for the series of articles on inner child healing.  This chapter is a combination of a webpage that I posted when I first put up my website in 1998, and a rough draft I wrote for my journal when I was first attempting to write this book.  It describes the same dynamics for setting internal boundaries that I have been talking about – but says it in some different ways, from some different angles.  I am including it here because I think there is value in it.

Internal boundaries are the key to Spiritual Integration & Emotional Balance

Loving internal boundaries can allow us to achieve some integration and balance in our relationships and our life experience.

“I needed to learn how to set boundaries within, both emotionally and mentally by integrating Spiritual Truth into my process. Because “I feel feel like a failure” does not mean that is the Truth. The Spiritual Truth is that “failure” is an opportunity for growth. I can set a boundary with my emotions by not buying into the illusion that what I am feeling is who I am. I can set a boundary intellectually by telling that part of my mind that is judging and shaming me to shut up, because that is my disease lying to me. I can feel and release the emotional pain energy at the same time I am telling myself the Truth by not buying into the shame and judgment.” – Quotes in this color are from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

We need to own that we have the power to choose where to focus our mind.

We can consciously start viewing ourselves from the “witness” perspective.

We all do this anyway but we learned to watch our selves from a place of judgment and shame.

It is time to fire the judge – our critical parent – and choose to replace that judge with our Higher Self – who is a Loving parent.

We can then intervene in our own process to help us be more Loving to self

What follows is an brief description of the four main relationships internally that are in need of boundaries.  These are levels of our being/dimensions of the self in which the concept of internal boundaries needs to be applied in order to change our relationship with ourselves into one that is more Loving.

Following that is a brief description of the benefits derived from focusing on having internal boundaries in our relationship with these levels of our being.

Within the Mental

Within the mental level of our being it is vital to start having a boundary between the part of our mind that is reacting to the childhood wounds and programming – the critical parent/disease voice – and the part of our mind that is telling us our intuitive Truth.

“One of the difficulties in this healing process is that even after we start to awaken to being butterflies, a part of our mind keeps telling us that we are low, crawling, disgusting creatures.

Taking the power away from that part of us is the key to the healing process.  A key to stopping the war inside.  We need to take the shame and judgment out of the process on a personal level.  It is vitally important to stop listening and giving power to that critical place within us that tells us that we are bad and wrong and shameful.

That “critical parent” voice in our head is the disease lying to us.  Any shaming, judgmental voice inside of us is the disease talking to us – and it is always lying.  This disease of Codependence is very adaptable, and it attacks us from all sides.  The voices of the disease that are totally resistant to becoming involved in healing and Recovery are the same voices that turn right around and tell us, using Spiritual language, that we are not doing Recovery good enough, that we are not doing it right. 

We need to become clear internally on what messages are coming from the disease, from the old tapes, and which ones are coming from the True Self – what some people call “the small quiet voice.”

We need to turn down the volume on those loud, yammering voices that shame and judge us and turn up the volume on the quiet Loving voice.  As long as we are judging and shaming ourselves we are feeding back into the disease, we are feeding the dragon within that is eating the life out of us.  Codependence is a disease that feeds on itself – it is self-perpetuating.

This healing is a long gradual process – the goal is progress, not perfection.  What we are learning about is unconditional Love.  Unconditional Love means no judgment, no shame.”

It is also vital to start changing the dysfunctional, false, black & white beliefs, attitudes, and definitions that are dictating our emotional reactions to life.   Our attitudes, beliefs, and definitions determine our perspective and expectations which in turn dictate our emotional relationship with everything – with ourselves, with life, with other people.  It is very important to start taking the power away from those false beliefs in order to start changing our relationship with self and life.

“Perspective is a key to Recovery.  I had to change and enlarge my perspectives of myself and my own emotions, of other people, of God and of this life business.  Our perspective of life dictates our relationship with life.  We have a dysfunctional relationship with life because we were taught to have a dysfunctional perspective of this life business, dysfunctional definitions of who we are and why we are here.

It is kind of like the old joke about three blind men describing an elephant by touch.  Each one of them is telling his own Truth, they just have a lousy perspective.  Codependence is all about having a lousy relationship with life, with being human, because we have a lousy perspective on life as a human.”

This is what enlightenment and consciousness raising are all about!

Owning our power to be a co-creator of our lives by changing our relationship with ourselves.

We can change the way we think.

We need to detach from our wounded self in order to allow our Spiritual Self to guide us.

Between Mental and Emotional

Thoughts are not feelings and feelings are not thoughts – it is vital to start relating to our thoughts and our feelings separately.  There are feelings attached to thoughts and thoughts attached to feelings but they are two separate parts of our being.  They are intimately interconnected of course, but it is very important that we be able to start seeing clearly the difference between them.  Part of the dysfunction is due to enmeshment between the mental and emotional levels of our being.  Having a clear understanding of the difference between thoughts and emotions is vital in order to practice discernment and own our power to make choices about how we want to respond to life instead of unconsciously reacting our of the old wounds and old tapes.

The disease has power when we believe the critical parent voice.

When we are feeling something “negative” and buying into the negative messages is when we go into the downward spiral – when we crash and burn, go into despair and depression.

(Emotions have a purpose, they are not negative or positive in and of themselves.  It is our reaction to them, our relationship to them, that gives them value – ie, sadness is very positive when we are honoring our emotions by grieving – even if it doesn’t feel that way.)

“If I am feeling like a “failure” and giving power to the “critical parent” voice within that is telling me that I am a failure – then I can get stuck in a very painful place where I am shaming myself for being me. In this dynamic I am being the victim of myself and also being my own perpetrator – and the next step is to rescue myself by using one of the old tools to go unconscious (food, alcohol, sex, etc.) Thus the disease has me running around in a squirrel cage of suffering and shame, a dance of pain, blame, and self-abuse.

By learning to set a boundary with and between our emotional truth, what we feel, and our mental perspective, what we believe – in alignment with the Spiritual Truth we have integrated into the process – we can honor and release the feelings without buying into the false beliefs.”

The child in us has a reason to feel like a “failure.”

Because our parents weren’t capable of Loving themselves or of emotional honesty – we felt like there was something wrong with us.

We felt responsible for the deprivation or abuse or abandonment that we experienced.

“The hardest thing for any of us to do is to have compassion for ourselves. As children we felt responsible for the things that happened to us. We blamed ourselves for the things that were done to us and for the deprivations we suffered. There is nothing more powerful in this transformational process than being able to go back to that child who still exists within us and say, “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong, you were just a little kid.””

Within the Emotional

In order to start responding to life honestly in the moment from an mature adult perspective it is very important to start separating out the emotional reactions of the child from the emotional messages from our intuition.  The reason that we have internal conflict is because we have different parts of our beings reacting in very different ways.  The romantic within does not want to set boundaries in an intimate relationship for fear of making the other person angry enough to abandon us – at the same time that other parts of us (the rebel perhaps or the angry child) wants to push the person away so that we don’t get hurt.  It is very important to start understanding where these conflicting messages are coming from so that we can make choices about which parts of us we want to be in charge of our life.

“The next time something does not go the way you wanted it to, or just when you are feeling low, ask yourself how old you are feeling.   What you might find is that you are feeling like a bad little girl, a bad little boy, and that you must have done something wrong because it feels like you are being punished.

Just because it feels like you are being punished does not mean that is the Truth.  Feelings are real – they are emotional energy that is manifested in our body – but they are not necessarily fact. 

What we feel is our “emotional truth” and it does not necessarily have anything to do with either facts or the emotional energy that is Truth with a capital “T” – especially when we our reacting out of an age of our inner child.

If we are reacting out of what our emotional truth was when we were five or nine or fourteen, then we are not capable of responding appropriately to what is happening in the moment; we are not being in the now. 

When we are reacting out of old tapes based on attitudes and beliefs that are false or distorted, then our feelings cannot be trusted. 

When we are reacting out of our childhood emotional wounds, then what we are feeling may have very little to do with the situation we are in or with the people with whom we are dealing in the moment.”

Between Being and Behavior

Toxic shame is what cripples us emotionally and causes us to be our own worst enemy.  It is vital to stop giving the shame we feel the power to dominate our relationship with ourselves.  The more we can start integrating the belief that we are Spiritual Beings having a human experience into our relationship with ourselves the easier it becomes to start accepting our human limitations.

As long as we are expecting ourselves to be superhuman, to be perfect, we are set up to fail.  As long as we unconsciously or consciously give power to the toxic shame we feel deep within we will never succeed in learning to Love our self.  It is very important to start seeing our being as having Divine worth and our behavior as being the result of our humanness and our wounds in order to forgive and Love ourselves.

[When I use the term “judge,” I am talking about making judgments about our own or other people’s beings based on behavior.  In other words, I did something bad therefore I am a bad person; I made a mistake therefore I am a mistake.  That is what toxic shame is all about:  feeling that something is wrong with our being, that we are somehow defective because we have human drives, human weaknesses, human imperfections.

There may be behavior in which we have engaged that we feel ashamed of but that does not make us shameful beings   We may need to make judgments about whether our behavior is healthy and appropriate but that does not mean that we have to judge our essential self, our being, because of the behavior.  Our behavior has been dictated by our disease, by our childhood wounds; it does not mean that we are bad or defective as beings.  It means that we are human, it means that we are wounded.

It is important to start setting a boundary between being and behavior.  All humans have equal Divine value as beings – no matter what our behavior.  Our behavior is learned (and/or reactive to physical or physiological conditions).  Behavior, and the attitudes that dictate behavior, are adopted defenses designed to allow us to survive in the Spiritually hostile, emotionally repressive, dysfunctional environments into which we were born.]

We need to have internal Boundaries with and between the emotional and mental components of our being so that we can:

– feel our feelings without being the victim of them or victimizing others with them;

– achieve some balance between feeling and thinking, intuitive and rational;

– know which feelings are telling us the Truth and which are reactions to old wounds so that we can discern between emotional honesty and indulgence.

Boundaries:

– with the disease/critical parent voice so that we can stop giving power to the judgment and shame on a personal level & stop letting our own mind be our worst enemy;

– between being and behavior so that we can take responsibility without blaming ourselves;

– with our inner children to allow us to Lovingly parent and set boundaries for the wounded children within which allows us to own the magical, spontaneous, creative, Spiritual child inside.

Boundaries which:

– allow us call on the Power Within any time, any place, that we need it;

– allow us Integrate the Truth of an Unconditionally Loving God-Force/Goddess Energy/Great Spirit into our experience of the process so that instead of just knowing Spiritual Truth intellectually we can start feeling it emotionally;

– allow us to relax and enjoy life more.

“It was vitally important for me to learn how to have internal boundaries so that I could lovingly parent (which, of course, includes setting boundaries for) my inner children, tell the critical parent/disease voice to shut up, and start accessing the emotional energy of Truth, Beauty, Joy, Light, and Love. It was by learning internal boundaries that I could begin to achieve some integration and balance in my life, and transform my experience of life into an adventure that is enjoyable and exciting most of the time.” – Chapter 16  More on Internal Boundaries  Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light  Book 1 Empowerment, Freedom, and Inner Peace through Inner Child Healing

When you purchase Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light   Book 1 Empowerment, Freedom, and Inner Peace through Inner Child Healing through Joy2MeU you get a personally autographed copy;-) but you can also purchase through Amazon.com or  Amazon UK or Barnes & Noble.

Available in eBook format Amazon Kindle , Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble Nook, and Kobo ereader

An unabridged audiobook version is available on audible.com, Amazon, iTunes.

The key to codependency recovery is the inner child healing work I describe on my site as well as in the book.  A key element of that work includes learning to set internal boundaries.  The formula that I pioneered for inner healing – which includes learning to set the internal boundaries – is something that I teach people through telephone counseling.  It is now possible to get phone cards for very cheap rates from many places in the world – and also to use Skype for free from anywhere in the world. I talk about how the phone counseling can work to really change a persons life for the better in a short period of time on this page which includes some special combination offers.

I also offer periodic day long workshops in Encinitas & Gilroy CA to teach people how to apply my inner child healing formula.  (There is now a downloadable MP3 recording available of my Life Changing workshop and I have a page with special offers for both the workshop recording and an MP3 download of Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls.)

Bringing Codependency Recovery Pioneer to the UK in 2017

Robert Burney’s Trip to UK canceled

May 27th, 2017 – I have decided to cancel the planned trip to the UK for October.  As we were closing in on finalizing the plans for my trip there, a major change took place in my life as I got custody of my 12 year old grandson.  At first it wasn’t clear if he would be living with me in the fall or not, so I pushed the trip back from September to October based on the possibility that he would still be with me.  Since then it has become clear that he will be living with me – and that taking an 8 or 10 day trip to UK would present significant challenges in getting taking care of him during that time covered.  If we would have had people signing up for the retreat and putting down deposits in the over 2 weeks since we posted the page, that could have impacted this decision.  But since no one has signed up, it seems as if it is part of the Divine Plan to go ahead with the cancelation.  Hopefully we can make this trip to the UK happen at some point in the not too distant future.  Maybe even next summer and I can bring my grandson along.

Robert Burney Trip to UK 2017

Robert Burney is an author, spiritual teacher and counselor.  His first book “Codependence – The Dance of Wounded Souls” has been called “one of the truly transformational works of our time” and he has been referred to as “a metaphysical Stephen Hawking.”   He is a counselor /coach and Spiritual Teacher whose work has been compared to John Bradshaw’s “except much more spiritual” and described as “taking inner child healing to a new level.”  His book “The Dance”  is an insightful, clearly written narrative that has helped countless people to understand and heal from the shortcomings of their relationships with self and others.  Robert’s work resonates strongly with those that have been fortunate enough to come across it.

Codependency Recovery / Inner Child Healing Formula

A pioneer in the realm of codependency recovery and inner child healing, Robert discovered and developed a pioneering holistic approach to codependency recovery – an inner child healing paradigm – that offers a powerful, life changing formula for integrating Love, Spiritual Truth, and intellectual knowledge of healthy behavior into one’s emotional experience of life – a blueprint for individuals to transform their core relationship with self and life.

This blueprint can be invaluable to people just starting the recovery / healing process, and is often the missing piece that people who have been healing /  recovering / on a spiritual path for decades have been seeking.  What is unique about the approach is that all of the tools are brought together in a focused system for achieving integration and balance – and even someone who has a very good therapist (or is a very good therapist) right now, can still find it very beneficial to attend one of his workshops.

Creating the Possibility of bringing Robert Burney to the UK

Robert Burney

In order to share his experience, strength and hope – and teach others his integration formula – Robert has offered intensive workshops and retreats in the US, Canada, and twice on the Spanish Island of Ibiza, as well as on cruises in the Caribbean.  In spite of having a healthy following in the United Kingdom Robert has not physically presented his work in a similar fashion.

Several years ago Angel Morrison (who had both attended a retreat in Ibiza and been on a cruise with Robert) suggested the idea of working to bring Robert Burney to the UK.  Angel understood the importance of expanding the knowledge of Robert’s work.  Rachel Hawadi who had read Robert’s work (and done phone counseling with him) agreed and the two agreed to volunteer and commit to making this a reality.  This has then given birth to a Facebook Group which aims “To make the possibility of bringing Robert Burney to the UK” in 2017.

As of February 14th, 2017, initial plans are being formulated.  The goal is to make this trip happen in September 2017.  This page is being created to survey people who might be interested in meeting and/or attending an appearance by Robert, to ascertain what formats people would like to have available and where it would be best to offer these opportunities.

Location

It is assumed that London would be one of the locations – and both Birmingham and Nottingham have been proposed by people interested.  Email us to let us know if you could attend in London or want to suggest another location in the UK.

Formats

In order to make the best use of Robert’s time the following mixture of sessions could be offered during the tour.

• 1 to 1 sessions: These could either be face to face/Telephone and Skype sessions for those in the UK.   Depending on availability these can be 1 hour sessions.   Given that the unique selling point of this tour is being able to see Robert face to face it would seem that a “face to face” would be the main offering.

• Weekend Retreat: A residential retreat in a comfortable, peaceful setting starting on Friday with a 6:30 arrival, dinner and a session until 10 pm.  An intensive session on Saturday which would end on Sunday around 4 pm.  It would be important to ensure that those attending have excellent food and a general feeling of being cared for.

• 5-day Retreat: A transformative retreat for those needing a radical overhaul in a similar setting as the weekend retreat but going deeper with more workshops, 1 to 1 sessions.  The setting will also be comfortable and nurturing.   There should be an additional offering of holistic therapies e.g. massages, reflexology, yoga, deep breathing, walks etc.

• 1 day Intensive workshops: These would follow the exact same formats that have been offered and could be done both during the day or evening.  More than likely, evening sessions could be more successful in London – although it would need to be for 3 evenings in order for Robert to teach the formula that he teaches in his Intensive Workshops.  There might be a requirement to juggle between different towns in the UK.

Please send us some feedback so that we can ascertain the amount of interest and what people are interested in so that we can know if we can make this possibility manifest this year.  Email us to let us know.

Here is some of the feedback from the Intensive Training Workshops / retreats that Robert has done in the past.

“I found this session to be very useful in seeing the what & the why of “my” reality.  The understanding I have gained gives me hope in my future.  This has been the greatest gift I have ever given myself.”

“I really enjoyed Robert Burney’s Intensive Training on inner child work. . .  I had many revelations about my inner child and how I can reparent and stop the critical parent that has followed me my whole life. . . Thank you so much Robert.  You are a truly unforgetable person. So glad I said yes to attending.”

“Exceptionally understandable; very clear.  This was LIFE Changing – I am so thankful.  I would Absolutely recommend it.”

“Robert Burney’s training day was so inspirational and enlightening.  He was loving and warm and presented profound life changing material in a very not intimidating way.  Magical!”

“My life has been much better since I went to your seminar.”

“Brilliant.  Liberating.  So profound it is sometimes ! hilarious  I feel you completely get the dynamics of the human experience and the truth you teach can set people free.”

“It was very empowering, uplifting and gave me new hope.  The information was invaluable.”

“Robert is a very , compassionate intuitive, and intelligent soul who shares his insights to you in such a clear, fun, and poignant way that your life will be forever changed.” –  Testimonial Page for Robert Burney Seminar

Email us to let us know if you are interested.

The key to codependency recovery is the inner child healing work I describe on my site:   A key element of that work includes learning to set internal boundaries.  The formula that I pioneered for inner healing – which includes learning to set the internal boundaries –  is something that I teach people through telephone counseling   (It is now possible to get phone cards for very cheap rates from many places in the world – and also to use Skype for free from anywhere.)  I talk about how the phone counseling can work to really change a persons life for the better in a short period of time on this page which includes some special combination offers.

Reading my book Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls  (links to all of my books in hard copy, ebook, and audiobook format are on that page – or you can get Books, eBooks, and Audiobooks through Amazon) would really help you take your understanding to a whole new level.  Understanding codependency is vital in helping us to forgive our self for the dysfunctional ways we have lived our lives – it is not our fault we are codependent.

In the last few years I have also published two more books that can be very helpful. Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light Book 1 Empowerment, Freedom, and Inner Peace through Inner Child Healing and Romantic Relationships ~ The Greatest Arena for Spiritual & Emotional Growth.  I have special offers for either or both of these books (or for all three of my books) on this page.

I also offer periodic day long workshops to teach people how to apply my inner child healing formula.   (There is now a downloadable MP3 recording available of my Life Changing workshop  – and I have a page with special offers for both the workshop recording and an MP3 download of Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls. )

Codependency causes us to feel like the victim of our own thoughts and feelings, and like our own worst enemy – recovery helps us to start learning how to be our own best friend.  Getting into codependency recovery is an act of love for self.

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)

Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light ~ Chapter 1 Introduction to Inner Child Healing

Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light

Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light Book 1: Empowerment, Freedom, and Inner Peace through Inner Child Healing (aka A Formula for Spiritual Integration and Emotional Balance)

““One of the reasons for the human dilemma, for the confusion that humans have felt about the meaning and purpose of life, is that more than one level of reality comes into play in the experience of being human.  Trying to apply the Truth of one level to the experience of another has caused humans to become very confused and twisted in our perspective of the human experience.  It is kind of like the difference between playing the one-dimensional chess that we are familiar with, and the three-dimensional chess played by the characters of Star Trek – they are two completely different games.

Codependence The Dance of Wounded Souls

That is the human dilemma – we have been playing the game with the wrong set of rules.  With rules that do not work.  With rules that are dysfunctional.” – Author’s Foreword, quotes in this color from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

This book is about healing.  It contains tools, techniques, and insights into the healing process that work in a powerful, effective way to change the quality of the individuals life experience for the better.  They work because they help the individual to align with the way life really works instead of expecting it to be something which it is not.

The approach to healing detailed on these pages is one which has evolved in my personal recovery since January 3, 1984 and in my counseling practice since 1990.  I have been guided to discover and develop an approach to inner child healing that offers a powerful, life-changing formula for integrating Love, Spiritual Truth, and intellectual knowledge of healthy behavior into one’s emotional experience of life – a blueprint for individuals to transform their core relationship with self and life.

My work is firmly grounded on twelve step recovery principles and emotional energy release / grief process therapy.   I specialize in teaching individuals how to become empowered to have internal boundaries so they can learn to relax and enjoy life in the moment while healing.  It is the unique approach and application of the concept of internal boundaries, coupled with a Loving Spiritual belief system, that makes the work so innovative and effective.

My belief is that we are Spiritual Beings having a human experience and that the key to healing (and integrating Spiritual Truth into our emotional experience of life) is fully awakening to our Spiritual connection through intellectual reprogramming, emotional honesty, grief processing, and inner child work.   It is not necessary to agree with my Spiritual beliefs to apply the approach I share on these pages to help you transform your experience of life into an easier, more Loving and enjoyable journey.  I consider Spirituality to be a word that describes one’s relationship with life – and anyone, regardless of religious belief or lack of it (who is not completely closed minded), can benefit from doing this work.

The wounding that needs to be healed is the result of being raised in a shame-based, emotionally dishonest, Spiritually hostile (based upon belief in separation rather than connection) environment by parents who were raised in a shame-based, emotionally dishonest, Spiritually hostile environments.  The disease which afflicts us is a generational disease that is the human condition as we have inherited it.  Our parents did not know how to be emotionally healthy or how to truly Love themselves.  So there is no way that we could have learned those things from them.

We formed our core relationship with ourselves in early childhood and then built our relationship with ourselves on that foundation.  We have lived life reacting to the wounds that we suffered – and the programming we integrated – in early childhood.  Living life in reaction to old wounds and old tapes is dysfunctional – it does not work to help us find some happiness and fulfillment in life.

The approach that is detailed on these pages does work.  It works to help the individual being learn to relax and enjoy life in the moment.  It works because it entails healing the wounds from the inside out – it is focused on changing our core relationship with ourselves.  Once an individual starts loving, honoring, and respecting her/him self more on a core level, everything on the outside changes.  External manifestation such as setting boundaries, seeing life and other people more clearly, letting go of trying to control and the worrying that accompanies those attempts, stopping the victimization, etc., start becoming more automatic and intuitive.

“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.”

There are a multitude of teachers, books, churches, etc., these days that are telling us that we need to learn to love themselves – but no one really tells us how to do that.  Learn to Love your self.  Easy to say, hard to do.  Love is like faith, in that both are pretty meaningless as intellectual concepts.  Love is a verb.  Verbs are about action.  Learning how to be more Loving in how we treat our self is the challenge.

The approach to healing detailed in this book is a formula that can help people learn to be more Loving to them self.  We learned how to relate to self, to life, and to other people in early childhood from people who were wounded in their childhoods.  We have been reacting to the intellectual programming and emotional wounds of our childhood ever since then.  In order to change our relationship with self and life, it is necessary to change the subconscious and conscious programming that is causing our relationship with self and life to be dysfunctional.  In order to start having some peace within us, it is necessary to be healing our emotional wounds and to stop our minds from being our own worst enemy.

The approach to inner child / emotional healing shared herein is the missing piece – the missing perspective – of the puzzle of life that so many people have been seeking.  It is a formula for integrating intellectual knowledge and spiritual Truth into one’s emotional relationship with life.   It is the key to learning how to be more Loving to your self – and to turning life into an adventure to be experienced instead of an ordeal of suffering to be endured.

It is possible to feel the feelings without being the victim of them or victimizing other’s with them.  It is possible to change the way you think so that your mind is no longer your worst enemy.  It is possible to become empowered to have choices in life at the same time you are letting go of trying to be in control.  Life can be an exciting, enjoyable adventure if you stop reacting to it out of your childhood emotional wounds and attitudes.

The tools and techniques, insights and beliefs, set out in this book work.  They work to support the idea that each and every one of us is Lovable and worthy.  They work to help change life from an unbearable ordeal to a often enjoyable adventure.  Try it – you might find it works for you also.” – Chapter 1 Introduction to Inner Child Healing from Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light Book 1: Empowerment, Freedom, and Inner Peace through Inner Child Healing (aka A Formula for Spiritual Integration and Emotional Balance) by Robert Burney

When you purchase Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light   Book 1 Empowerment, Freedom, and Inner Peace through Inner Child Healing through Joy2MeU you get a personally autographed copy;-) but you can also purchase through Amazon.com or  Amazon UK or Barnes & Noble.

Available as eBook from Amazon or Amazon UK or Barnes & Noble or Kobo ereaders

Special offers available for Dancing in The Light plus Telephone / Skype Counseling.

An audio book version of Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light Book 1: Empowerment, Freedom, and Inner Peace through Inner Child Healing (aka A Formula for Spiritual Integration and Emotional Balance) is available on  Audible, Amazon, and iTunes.

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Chapter 13: Changing the Music: Love instead of fear and shame

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

A Higher Power of my own understanding ~ Balance on the horizontal, Integration of the vertical

I mentioned in my February column in this series (A Higher Power of my own understanding 2 – the beginning of empowerment) that the twelve step recovery concept of powerlessness was actually a step towards empowerment.  Codependency and recovery are both multi-leveled, multi-dimensional phenomena.  What we are trying to achieve is integration and balance on, and between, different levels.  One of the ways it is helpful to me to think of this is in terms of the horizontal and vertical.  The horizontal is about being human and relating to other humans and our environment.  The vertical is Spiritual, about our relationship to a Higher Power, to the Universal Source.

In this context, what we are trying to achieve in recovery is to integrate the Truth of a Loving God-Force / Goddess Energy / Great Spirit into our relationship with the horizontal,   That is what helps us to achieve some balance in our emotional, physical, and mental relationship with being human and in how we relate to other humans and our environment.

Living life on life’s terms according to the definitions, beliefs and attitudes we learned in early childhood does not work.  As I say in my book:

Codependence The Dance of Wounded Souls

“Learning discernment is vital – not just in terms of the choices we make about who to trust, but also in terms of our perspective, our attitudes.

We learned about life as children and it is necessary to change the way we intellectually view life in order to stop being the victim of the old tapes.  By looking at, becoming conscious of, our attitudes, definitions, and perspectives, we can start discerning what works for us and what does not work.  We can then start making choices about whether our intellectual view of life is serving us – or if it is setting us up to be victims because we are expecting life to be something which it is not.” – quotations in this color are from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

As I point out often in my writing, the intellectual paradigm that we are allowing to dictate our relationship with life – the attitudes, beliefs, and definitions both conscious and subconscious – are what determine our expectations and perspectives and those in turn dictate our emotional reactions and relationships.  In order to change how we are relating to, and reacting to, being human we need to change the intellectual beliefs that are dictating our relationship with being human.

It is vital to start realizing that we have the power to make choices about what attitudes, beliefs and definitions we are allowing to dictate our relationship with life.  We do not have to keep being the victim of the beliefs that were imposed upon us in childhood.  We do not have to keep living life based upon shame, fear, and scarcity just because that is what was role modeled for us by the adults who were our higher powers in childhood.  Once we recognize that we are powerless to make life be what we want it to be out of our ego programming, then we become empowered to change the quality of our relationship with life.

By owning that we have the power to make choices about our perspective of life – and to choose a spiritual perspective – we can vastly improve the quality of our human experience.  This is what I am trying to communicate in this series of articles on a Higher Power of my own understanding.  It is specifically what I talked about in my March column here: Spirituality – a broader perspective.

Looking at the horizontal and vertical dimensions of life helped me to start being and to start doing in a more balanced way.  It helped me to stop being a human doing – thinking that what I accomplished, or how I looked, on the outside is what gives me worth.

I talked in my last blog about the transcendent emotions of Joy and Love and how we can access these emotions by being in the moment when relating to nature for instance.  I am going to close out this months column with a quote from one of my Update Newsletters where I talk about transcendent vertical emotions and horizontal human emotions.

“I capitalize words such as Truth, Joy, and Love in my writing because that capitalization indicates that I am referring to the Transcendent vibrational energy that flows through the Illusion on the vertical plane.  When I do not capitalize joy and love, I am referring to emotions of the horizontal plane. . .  . .

. . . . . Happiness is a term I use in relationship to external circumstances.  It (happiness) comes from doing, experiencing, interacting, etc.  Joy – with the capital J – is about being, not doing.  This has to do with the different dimensions – horizontal and vertical – of this human experience that I talk about in the Trilogy, and mention in various articles including the online book I am now writing

    “The horizontal emotion of joy can feel very much the same as Joy – and can in fact help us to access the Transcendent emotional energy of Joy.  But the horizontal emotion that is joy is a relative reaction to external stimuli.  That is, joy is felt because of some outside or external condition that raises our vibrational frequency within the vertical component of the horizontal emotional spectrum.  This can be: an accomplishment such as achieving a goal or winning a contest; the feeling we get from experiencing the Love of another being – or an animal; a sensual experience such as the taste of food, or the feel of silk, or the touch of another being; or any of a number of other types of stimuli that are dependent upon outside circumstances or agencies.  There is nothing wrong with feeling joy in reaction to these outer or external stimuli – what is dysfunctional is believing that they are the only source of joy.  When we buy into the belief that the only joy or happiness we can experience is dependent upon external circumstances or outside agencies then we are giving power over our relationship with self to the illusions – we are worshiping false gods.

    The Transcendent emotional energy of Joy on the other hand has nothing to do with winning or accomplishing – it is about being.  About tuning into the Joy that is the Truth of who we really are – Spiritual beings who are part of the Holy Mother Source Energy.  It is about the Love that is our True essence.  Outside influences can help to remind us of this connection – a sunset, a baby, the Love we see reflected in another’s eyes – but the connection is made in the quality of our interaction with that outside influence.  It is in being in the moment that we can tune into the Love, Light, and Joy of our connection with everyone and everything.

    There is nothing wrong with feeling joy at doing, or receiving, or experiencing, on the human level – but the more that we are aligned with Truth, the more we can magnify those moments of joy to include the Joy of being Unconditionally Loved and Lovable.  This also helps us stop giving power to the illusion by believing that something or someone outside of us is the source of Joy – the Source is within.” The Dance of the Wounded Souls Trilogy  Book 1  History VI

In recovery, we start learning how to change our relationship with life so that we can be present in the moment, so that we can own our True Self and our connection to the Source. . . . . ” – March 2004 Update Metaphysical Addendum page

In adding this article as a page on my Joy2MeU.com in September 2006, I decided to add a quote from my book about “the quality of our interaction” dynamic that I mention above.

“The first time a messenger came to me carrying the message, the reminder, that I was a Spiritual Being having a human experience, I got really angry.  My first reaction was anger.  My first thought was, “That means that I’ve got to be out among them.”

I never wanted to be out among you-all.  I always wanted to go up on a mountain and meditate my way to God.  What I have learned in this healing process is that I find God through “being out among them,” through my human relationships.  We are here to learn to relate to each other.  We are here to learn to Love ourselves and each other.

One of the ironies of this whole business is something that physicists have learned from quantum physics.  They have learned that the physical world is made up of energy fields that are temporary manifestations of energy interactions.  All of the energy fields of the physical world are temporary.  Some last for fractions of a second, some last for billions of years – but they are all temporary illusions.

This means that the Truest reality in the physical world is in the interaction.  It is in our interactions that we can access Truth and Joy and Love.  In other words it is in our relationships.

The most real thing here, the place where the highest Truth exists, is in the interactions: in our relationships.  Our relationship with ourselves is a reflection of our relationship with our Creator, with the Great Spirit.  And our relationship with ourselves is reflected out into our relationship with everyone and everything in our environment.

Spirituality is about relationships.  God exists in the quality of our relationships.

When I look at a beautiful sunset – I am a temporary illusion and  the sunset is also a temporary illusion – the most real, God-like quality is the energy of Beauty and Joy that I allow myself to access by being open and willing to experience the sunset.  If I am caught up in one of my ego’s “trauma dramas,” then I will not be conscious of the sunset or open to experiencing the Joy and Beauty of the moment.” – Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

Logo of Joy2MeU.com website of codependency recovery expert inner child healing pioneer Robert Burney

Integrating Spiritual Truth (the vertical) into our relationship with being human (the horizontal) is powerfully facilitated by the approach to inner healing that I describe on my site in the inner child healing section and that I teach people in my telephone counseling and Intensive Workshops – I highly recommend it for improving the quality of your relationships and life experience.

I am going to be in Boston area next week – at the New England CoDA Convention and doing a workshop on November 23, 2014.

The Metaphysics of Emotions – emotional energy is real

The following are some excerpts from my eBook The Metaphysics of Emotions – emotional energy is real.

The Metaphysics of Emotions – emotional energy is real

“. . . . . That was the day that I started experiencing and understanding that emotions are actually energy – are something that is very real.  Thus the title of this ebook The Metaphysics of Emotions – emotional energy is real.  This ebook is a follow up to my ebook The Law of Attraction – Misunderstood & Misinterpreted A Larger Spiritual Paradigm.

My reasons for publishing these ebooks are summed up in the following paragraph from my ebook The Law of Attraction – Misunderstood & Misinterpreted.

“I am publishing this book because I believe that the way the Law of Attraction is being taught by most people who are teaching it today is not ultimately Loving.  I believe it is being taught in a way that makes many of the people hearing it feel ashamed;  in a way that causes people to focus on reaching a destination at the expense of being present in the now;  in a way that reinforces the delusion that there is something inherently wrong with being human, with human beings.  It is also being taught by most spiritual teachers in a way that discounts and devalues emotions and emotional healing.”

This ebook The Metaphysics of Emotions will be part two of the hard copy book that will be titled:  The Law of Attraction – Misunderstood & Misinterpreted A Larger Spiritual Paradigm – including The Metaphysics of Emotions.  (I haven’t published the hard copy book yet and am not sure when I am going to.)  In this ebook I will address the Truth as I understand it – that is, that emotional energy is real.” – Author’s Foreword

Table of Contents

Author’s Foreword

The Metaphysics of Emotions

Mystical messengers and Master Teachers

emotional energy is real

Metaphysical = beyond the physical

Dysfunction both Eastern & Western

A Larger Perspective

Feeling the Feelings – grief / emotional energy release

Energetic Clarity

quantum physics

Etheric plane

Tuning into Love instead of fear and shame

Etheric X-ray

Multiple Levels / Perspectives

Progress not perfection

Spiritual Beings having a human experience

” . . . . . In the ebook that I am publishing this ebook as a companion to – The Law of Attraction – Misunderstood & Misinterpreted –  I talk about some of the reasons I believe these mystical messengers / spiritual teachers are giving out messages that are affected by codependency.  Those include black and white thinking and shame about being human, but the discounting of emotions is the one that this ebook is addressing.

Emotional Energy is Real

Codependence The Dance of Wounded Souls

“The dance of wounded souls is a self-perpetuating cycle of cause and effect that has evolved into becoming the Human Condition.  That dance of Codependence – as it can now be called – is both a cause, a tune that we have been dancing to, and the effect, the dance itself.  Codependence is not the original cause – it is a cause in the self-perpetuating cycles of cause and effect that have dictated the course of human evolution.

The original wound, which I will discuss a little later, had the effect of creating a Spiritually hostile condition on this planet.  That Spiritually hostile condition then became a cause with many consequences.

One of the most devastating of these consequences, or effects, was that human beings began to express emotions in destructive ways.  Because the channel between Spiritual Self and human self was disrupted by planetary condition, the human ego began to develop the belief that it was separate from other humans and from the Source.  This belief in separation made violence possible.

The violence, caused by the false belief, meant that humans could no longer enjoy a free-flowing emotional process.  As a consequence, emotionally-repressive environments evolved in the social systems on this planet.  Human beings were forced to adopt defense systems that included the belief that emotions were negative and had to be suppressed and controlled.  This was necessary in order for human beings to live together in communities that would insure the survival of the human race.

It is not necessary any longer!  And it is dysfunctional. 

The act of suppressing emotions was always dysfunctional in its effect on the emotional, mental, and Spiritual health of the individual being.  It was only functional in terms of physical survival of the species.

We now have clearer access to Spiritual healing energy and guidance which allows us to become aligned with Truth so that emotions will not be expressed in destructive ways.  We have the tools, knowledge, and guidance to allow emotional healing to take place, to allow the individual to enjoy the flow of healthy emotional process.

Attempting to suppress emotions is dysfunctional; it does not work.  Emotions are energy:  E-motion = energy in motion.  It is supposed to be in motion, it was meant to flow. 

Emotions have a purpose, a very good reason to be – even those emotions that feel uncomfortable.  Fear is a warning, anger is for protection, tears are for cleansing and releasing.  These are not negative emotional responses!  We were taught to react negatively to them.  It is our reaction that is dysfunctional and negative, not the emotion.

Emotional honesty is absolutely vital to the health of the being.  Denying, distorting, and blocking our emotions in reaction to false beliefs and dishonest attitudes causes emotional and mental disease.  This emotional and mental disease causes physical, biological imbalance which produces physical disease.

Codependence is a deadly and fatal disease because of emotional dishonesty and suppression.  It breaks our hearts, scrambles our minds, and eventually kills our physical body vehicles because of the Spiritual dis-ease, because of our wounded souls.

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.” – quotes in this color are from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

Emotions are real.  Emotions are energy that is manifested into the body in a dimension, on a level, that cannot be seen or measured in any concrete way.

Traditional Western medical science has discounted emotions because it can not be measured or detected as tangible, physical substance.

“Traditional Western medical science has ignored and discounted the spiritual and emotional components of being.  The traditional medical perspective in relationship to any physically or psychologically manifested dis-ease is limited by a left brain (concrete, rational) intellectual paradigm which is entirely focused on that which can be seen, measured, quantified.  Therefore, any spiritual, emotional, and mental dis-ease is seen as resulting from biochemical, physiological, physical conditions.  Doctors (which includes psychiatrists of course) – and other traditional medical and mental health professionals – were trained to identify mental and emotional problems as biological and to see the solution as chemical.

There are certainly neurobiological aspects to any behavioral manifestation, but it is not possible for a scientific perspective which requires empirical proof to truly ascertain the cause of any condition – because emotional and spiritual components of a human’s being can not be quantified.  In other words, brain chemistry is definitely out of balance in relationship to any physical disorder or mental condition – including OCD, Bi-Polar Disorder, Depression, etc.  That imbalance in brain chemistry definitely has an impact on emotions – but it is not possible to say absolutely which is the cause and which is the effect.  The chicken and egg conundrum.  In other words, did the emotional trauma and the fear and shame based relationship to life cause the chemical imbalance in the brain – or did the chemical imbalance come first.  Traditional Western medicine is not holistic – it does not treat the whole being, it treats symptoms.  Medication is necessary for some people.  It is an invaluable temporary help for others.  It is not the whole answer.  The great majority of doctors are limited by their training, the intellectual paradigm which determines their perspective, to believing that they do know the answers.” – Obsession / Obsessive Thinking Part 1

In the quote above I use the word empirical – a word that I mention in my ebook on the Law of Attraction that led me to the word metempirical – beyond experience, beyond evidence and observation.  It is actually very easy to observe when someone is having feelings – but there isn’t any measurable, discernible substance to those emotions, thus they have been discounted in Western Civilization.”

“. . . . . . A key line in this is that ‘The attitudes, definitions, and belief systems which we hold mentally dictate our emotional reactions.’  This is a key point in the Law of Attraction teachings – and it is the Truth.  We need to change the intellectual paradigm that is dictating our relationship with life in order to learn to be positive co-creators in our lives instead of the negative co-creators we were programmed to be in childhood.  It is vital to change the intellectual programming – it is the only way to change our emotional experience of life.  That is one of the reasons it is so important to align with the Law of Attraction – so that we can start creating more positive effect in our lives.

What so many people who are teaching the Law of Attraction don’t seem to understand however – or at least don’t communicate it in how they are teaching it – is that changing that ego programming now does not make the emotional energy from the past disappear.  We cannot just start being in the Now and let go of the past (except in the moment – the more we heal the more ability we have to let go of the past and be present in the moment for more moments of the day.)  We have repressed, suppressed, pressurized emotional energy within us in relationship to our emotional wounds.  That is why it is so important to do the grief work to release some of that energy – to take power from those emotional “buttons” that dictate our reactions in intimate relationships.  We can’t just start being spiritual in our relationships with other human beings without healing those emotional wounds from the past – releasing some of that repressed emotional energy.

“If you have ever wondered why it is so much easier to feel Spiritual in relationship to nature or animals, here is your answer.  It was people who wounded us in childhood.  It is people who our egos developed defense systems to protect us from.

I have told people for years, that the only reason to do inner child healing work is if we are going to interact with other people.  If one is going to live in isolation on a mountain top meditating, it will be fairly easy to feel Spiritually connected.  It is relating to other human beings that is messy.” – Reprogramming our dysfunctional ego defenses”

“. . . . . The difference between the horizontal and the vertical emotions is what I was referring to in the Law of Attraction ebook when I wrote:  ‘. . . a statement from Marianne Williamson that “What is not love is fear.”  That is not only black and white but simplistic and linear as if Love and fear were the same type of emotional energy.’  As I have said, the goal is to align attitudinally with Love as the Truth – but that doesn’t mean we are not going to feel fear at times in our human adventure.

Marianne Williamson is obviously a powerful teacher of Truth, a mystical messenger carrying the message of Love – but she could use some codependency recovery to help her stop making black and white statements that are shaming and give people the impression they are doing something wrong if they feel fear.

All of us who are drawn to this healing, who have a soul compulsion to follow a spiritual path, who are in recovery seeking answers beyond what is available in most 12 step meetings, are old souls who are present in body in this lifetime to heal these wounds and settle Karma.  Marianne Williamson is obviously an old soul who has done much work clearing her inner channel to Truth and Love and Light, but I do wish she would recognize the importance of clearing our inner channels of the repressed grief energy.

“The planetary conditions that blocked humans from accessing Christ Consciousness – the vibrational Knowing of the Truth of ONENESS – were in place for tens of thousands of years. Conditions have now changed! We have entered a new time, an Age of Healing & Joy has dawned in Human Consciousness on the planet. All of the “old-souls” involved in healing in this time have the capacity to access the Truth of ONENESS and Love through their inner channel.

(The term “old-soul” refers to the stage of consciousness evolution an individual has attained by this lifetime – it does not mean better than, or farther along than, those who do not have to do the healing. There is no hierarchy in the Truth of a Loving Great Spirit – those who appear to have low, or no, consciousness in this lifetime are simply doing their healing in another space-time illusion parallel to this one. All old-souls are born at a heart-chakra level of consciousness and therefore have more sensitivity, and less capacity for denial, than other people. In other words, the gift of having access to Truth and Love carries with it the price of greatly increased emotional sensitivity.)

Due to the planetary conditions, the human ego developed a belief in separation – which is what made violence possible and caused the human condition as we inherited it. The reflection of that human condition on the individual level is the disease of Codependence. Codependence is caused by the ego being traumatized and programed in early childhood so that our relationship with ourselves and the God-Force is dysfunctional – that is, it does not work to help us access the Truth of ONENESS and Love. It is through healing our relationship with ourselves that we open our inner channel and start tuning into the Truth.” – Jesus & Christ Consciousness

It is important to own our horizontal human emotions at the same time we are aligning with Higher Truth attitudinally.  Developing a boundary between emotional and mental – relating to our thoughts and emotions as two different kinds / levels of energy, because they are – is the key to integrating Spiritual Truth into our emotional relationship with life.  We need to clear our intellectual programming (including subconscious) of false beliefs and dysfunctional definitions and attitudes, at the same time we are learning to be Loving, nurturing and compassionate in relating to our own emotional wounds to take power away from the repressed emotional energy from our past.  We need to set boundaries with both the critical parent voice and with the emotional wounds / inner children so that we can stop letting the past have so much power in how we are living today.

“One of most important steps to empowerment is integrating Spiritual Truth into our experience of the process.  In order to do that it is necessary to practice discernment in our relationship with the emotional and mental components of our being.

We learned to relate to our inner process from a reversed perspective.  We were trained to be emotionally dishonest (that is, to not feel the feelings or to go to the other extreme by allowing the feelings to totally run our lives) and to give power to, to buy into, the reversed attitudes (it is shameful to be human, it is bad to make mistakes, God is punishing and judgmental etc.)  To find balance within we have to change our relationship with our inner process. 

Feeling and releasing the emotional energy without giving power to the false beliefs is a vital component of achieving balance between the emotional and the mental.  The more we align ourselves attitudinally, and clear out our inner channel, the easier it is for us to pick out the Truth from amid the dysfunctional attitudes – so that we can set an internal boundary between the emotional and mental.

Feelings are real but they are not necessarily fact or Truth.

We can feel like a victim and still know that the fact is we set ourselves up.  We can feel like we made a mistake and still know that every mistake is an opportunity for growth, a perfect part of the learning process.  We can feel betrayed or abandoned or shamed, and still know that we have just been given an opportunity to become aware of an area that needs some light shined on it, an issue that needs some healing.

We can have moments where we feel like God/life is punishing us and still know that “This, too, shall pass” and “More will be revealed,” – that later on, down the path a ways, we will be able to look back and see that what we perceived in the moment to be tragedy and injustice is really just another opportunity for growth, another gift of fertilizer to help us grow.

I needed to learn how to set boundaries within, both emotionally and mentally by integrating Spiritual Truth into my process.  Because “I feel feel like a failure” does not mean that is the Truth.   The Spiritual Truth is that “failure” is an opportunity for growth.  I can set a boundary with my emotions by not buying into the illusion that what I am feeling is who I am.  I can set a boundary intellectually by telling that part of my mind that is judging and shaming me to shut up, because that is my disease lying to me.  I can feel and release the emotional pain energy at the same time I am telling myself the Truth by not buying into the shame and judgment.

If I am feeling like a “failure” and giving power to the “critical parent” voice within that is telling me that I am a failure – then I can get stuck in a very painful place where I am shaming myself for being me.  In this dynamic I am being the victim of myself and also being my own perpetrator – and the next step is to rescue myself by using one of the old tools to go unconscious (food, alcohol, sex, etc.)  Thus the disease has me running around in a squirrel cage of suffering and shame, a dance of pain, blame, and self-abuse.

By learning to set a boundary with and between our emotional truth, what we feel, and our mental perspective, what we believe – in alignment with the Spiritual Truth we have integrated into the process – we can honor and release the feelings without buying into the false beliefs.

The more we can learn intellectual discernment within, so that we are not giving power to false beliefs, the clearer we can become in seeing and accepting our own personal path.  The more honest and balanced we become in our emotional process, the clearer we can become in following our own personal Truth.”

This next excerpt is from an article in which I stress the importance of recognizing the healing and recovery are a process.  Life is not about reaching destinations – it is a journey.  The goal is to learn to relax and enjoy the journey while we are healing.  When we are living life in reaction to old tapes and old wounds, we do not have the capacity to relax and enjoy the journey.

Etheric X-ray

“I learned in my own grieving process – and later applied in my work with clients – to pay attention to where the energy was manifesting in the body.  The grief associated with my emotional incest issues was being carried in my lower back on the right side.  As I mentioned above, this grief was near the second chakra because it was associated with my relationship with my own body and sexuality.  It was in my back because that is where I carry issues I don’t want to see.  It was on my right side – which is the masculine side – because it was blocking me in my relationship with my own gender, which was greatly affecting my relationship with women.

It would seem that the process of healing would be easier if we could go into a healers office and get an etheric x-ray taken of our emotional, mental, spiritual bodies as well as of our physical bodies. The diagnosis might come out sounding something like this:

Well, we have, what looks like a good 3 pounds of grief energy here in your back near the second chakra – that indicates some grief related to sexual issues that you don’t want to look at, probably some sexual abuse, or at the least some wounds in relationship to sexuality and gender.

And a good 5 pounds of grief around your heart chakra.  Those indicate multiple traumas to the heart – a strong pattern of looking for Love in all the wrong places, trying to fill your heart with love from external sources.

There is also some severe congestion in your throat area.  Your throat chakra is completely closed – which indicates an inability to own your voice and speak your Truth.  It also includes internal communication problems, that is blockage in your ability to trust your own intuition.  Which is related to the dark mass here in your forehead.  That is your third eye – or Spiritual vision – chakra, and shows that the intellectual programming in your mind is too limited and blocks your ability to see your self or life from an expanded Spiritual perspective.  etc., etc.

But the reality of how the healing process works is that we need to peel away the layers of our codependent defense system gradually.   There are healers who can tell us that we have these grief issues – as I stated in an earlier quote.

“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.” – Grieving – examples of how the process works

In the case study that I quoted earlier, I mention how I said to the man the very first session that there were childhood issues that were keeping from being able to let go.  I could have quizzed him more completely about his history and most likely have pinpointed that the time of his parents divorce was the crucial period in relationship to what he was going through when he came to me.  But that would not have helped him to get in touch with those issues in an emotional context.  He needed to go through the process of pealing layers of his defenses to gradually get to those specific emotional wounds.

There was a quote in a meditation book that I read a year before I went into treatment.  This was before I had surrendered to doing the emotional healing.  It was a message from the Universe that was part of my path of being led to do the emotional work.  It  really made me angry when I first read it.   A year later when I was in treatment, someone in my primary therapy group – which I attended at least once every weekday – would be asked to read the days meditation.  There were 5 or 6 daily meditation books lying around in that therapy room.  Whoever was asked to read the days meditation would pick one of those books and open it up – either randomly or specifically to the meditation for that day.  During my 30 days in treatment, I only was asked to read the meditation once.  I reached down on the floor and grabbed the nearest meditation book and opened it up.  I opened it up to the same quote I had read a year earlier.  It still made me angry.  It said something to this affect:

A knowledge of the path does not replace putting one foot in front of the other.

We are here to go through the process – to experience the journey.  The human part of me wants to jump to the end and get to happily ever after.  I needed to learn to accept that the process unfolded gradually, that there were always more layers of the onion to be peeled – and some tears to be cried with each level.

It is through experiencing the journey in the moment one day at a time, that we heal our wounds and settle the Karma we are here to settle.

The reality is that our emotional pain is so great that if all of our defenses and denial were stripped away at once, it would kill us.  So, getting such an etheric x-ray would only point us in the direction we need to travel – it wouldn’t help us skip any part of the process.  We get the guidance we need to know the direction to travel, by following the carrots – the messages from the Universe.  We don’t get to know what the future holds.  We do get everything we need for our journey one day at a time – even when it doesn’t feel like it.

“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.”” – Attack on America – Chapter 9

This last excerpt is important because it does emphasize that we need to go through the process – that life and recovery are a journey.  As the quote from my book that ended that excerpt states: “Understanding the process does not replace going through it!”   It doesn’t matter how much knowledge one has of the metaphysics, we still need to feel and release the emotions in order to clear our inner channel to Truth and Love.

“Each and every one of us has an inner channel.  We now have the capability to atone – which means tune into – to atone, to tune into the Higher Consciousness.  To tune into the Higher vibrational emotional energies that are Joy, Light, Truth, Beauty, and Love.

We can tune into the Truth of “at ONE ness.”  Atone = at ONE.  Atonement = at ONE ment, in a condition of ONENESS.

We now have access to the highest vibrational frequencies – we can tune into the Truth of ONENESS.  By aligning with Truth we are tuning into the higher energy vibrations that reconnect us with the Truth of ONENESS.

This is the age of atonement, but it does not have anything to do with judgment and punishment.  It has to do with tuning our inner channel into the right frequencies.

But our inner channel is blocked and cluttered with repressed emotional energy and dysfunctional attitudes.  The more we clear our inner channel through aligning with Truth attitudinally, and releasing the repressed emotional energy through the grief process, the clearer we can tune into the music of Love and Joy, Light and Truth.  

It is not easy because we have been taught to look at being human backwards.  We were forced to accept a reversed perspective.  We were emotionally and subconsciously programmed to react to life dysfunctionally based on reversed belief systems.

We are Spiritual Beings having a human experience.

NOT human creatures who have to earn Spiritual existence.  We are not flawed, shameful humans who have to do human perfectly, who have to do the “right” things in order to transcend.” 

In a quote I use later in this ebook, I state: ‘We are the music of The Great Spirit – we’ve just been way out of tune.’” – from The Metaphysics of Emotions – emotional energy is real

 These excerpt are from The Metaphysics of Emotions – emotional energy is real which is an eBook available on Amazon.com

Announcing that as of 8 am Sunday September 14th the eBook The Metaphysics of Emotions – emotional energy is real will be available via a discounted count down sale on both Amazon.com  and Amazon.co.uk

The Metaphysics of Emotions – emotional energy is real which is normally $9.95 will available at $.99 starting Sunday morning the 14th for a week  – with the price increasing by $1 every 32 hours. 

On Amazon.co.uk The Metaphysics of Emotions – emotional energy is real is normally £6.56 and will be for sale for £0.99 – with the price increasing by £1 every 32 hours.

Healing my relationship with my own masculine energy and with being male

This is an excerpt from my March 2007 Update Newsletter in which I am sharing my processing about healing my relationship with my own masculine energy and with being male – a subject that came up after I published my previous blog about traditional gender roles.

“Hello Radiantly Beautiful Spiritual Being,
As I am sitting here trying to get clear on where to start in writing this Update, I leaned back in my chair and gazed upward – and my focus went to the calendar on my wall. The picture on that calendar for the month of March is of a magnificent buck deer. Therein lies the tale. . . . .

. . . . What I realized this morning though, was that what I really need to focus on is something much more fundamental – that is, in fact, a cause of my fear of intimacy. That is, my relationship with myself as a man. That is the tale I need to tell – the message that came from looking up yesterday morning and seeing that magnificent buck deer on my calendar. . . . .

. . . . . As I mentioned here in what I wrote on the 5th, I am needing to focus some attention on my relationship with myself as a man, with my relationship with my own masculine energy. . . .

. . . . Now I am going to do some processing about my issues with my own masculine energy – but first an explanation of the importance, and meaning to me, of the deer.

Medicine Cards

One of the very valuable tools in my recovery – as I say in this quote from my book – was the Medicine Cards.

Codependence The Dance of Wounded Souls

“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.” – quotes in this color are from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

Though I don’t actually use the cards themselves in my life very often now, the totem animals – and the messages that they symbolically represent – are still very important to me. Those totem animals have been a factor in the calendars I have selected each year for many years. When I lived in Taos New Mexico, I was able to get a calendar that had different animals of the Rocky Mountain Region for each month – and most of those animals were totems in the Medicine Cards, and thus would give me a message / theme to focus on for the month. Once I moved back to California, it became difficult to find that type of calendar – and for several years I chose calendars that had one of my totems – the wolf – on them. In this quote from my personal journal in the Joy2MeU Journal – in which I am talking about my relationship with a male friend during some processing I was doing about my relationships with other males – I mention the significance of calendars in my recovery experience.

“When we communicate by e-mail about golf, I call him Arnie (as in Palmer) and he calls me Tiger (as in Woods.) In my replies, I found myself referring to myself as Tigger. I believe I mentioned some place in my writing, how a couple of years ago, when it came time to buy a new calendar, I bought a Winnie the Pooh one. The year before (I believe it was 1999) had been pretty rough, and I wanted to get a new calendar and mouse pad that was somewhat frivolous. For several years I had gotten a wolf calendar to go along with a wolf mouse pad. Wolf is one of my totems in the Medicine Cards – and symbolizes the Teacher. The first line in the Medicine Card book about the Wolf is “Wolf is the pathfinder, the forerunner of new ideas who returns to the clan to teach and share medicine.” Pretty appropriate for the role I seem to be playing in this lifetime. Also, wolves mate for life – a connection to my romantic fantasy issues.

While shopping for a calendar for 2000, I decided that, though wolf is a powerful totem for me that I honor and affirm, it was perhaps a bit too serious a theme for the coming year. I decided I wanted to affirm “lightening up” for the coming year – put out a request to the Universe for a year without quite so many difficult opportunities for growth. When I found the Winnie the Pooh calendar, it seemed to be a perfect symbol of having a lighter, more frivolous and happy year. And I got a mouse pad to match.

I don’t really remember reading Winnie the Pooh as a kid. I do have this feeling of connection to Tigger however. I think it is because of that song he sings, about what a wonderful thing it is to be a Tigger – and about how he is the only one. Something that a lonely, isolated boy could identify with – feeling different and unique, though I certainly didn’t think it was a wonderful thing.” Joy2MeU Journal: The Path of one Recovering Codependent ~ the dance of one wounded soul My Unfolding Dance 17 November 3, 2002

. . . . I referenced the calendar connection again in some writing I did in early 2004. In the processing I had done in my journal in November 2002, I had gotten honest with myself about how my acceptance of being isolated and alone was keeping me from being available for a relationship. In this quote from my journal in January of 2004, I make reference to the efforts I was making to get more involved with other human beings – and talk about another of the totem animals that is very important to me.

“Well, I get to start this morning looking above my computer at my new 2004 calendar. I had actually spotted the calendar I wanted before the end of last year – but was waiting for it to go on sale. I have this thing about paying full price for a calendar when I know they are going to go on sale soon. Probably a reaction to my old poverty consciousness. Choosing to wait, meant creating some irritation for myself when I would look up and see December instead of January for the first week of the month. Oh well.

I finally got a chance to get into San Luis on Friday and get the calendar I wanted – another Winnie the Pooh one. I talked in one of these installments (I think it was here) about opting for Winnie the Pooh calendars the last couple years as symbol of wanting the year to be more on the light and whimsical side. They actually had a Tigger one – Tigger being an “only one,” and thus the character I identified with the most because I felt so different and “not a part of.” But I decided that since a large part of the focus of my recovery these days is to learn to interact and play with the other kids in the Enchanted Forest, that I should stick to the Winnie and friends calendar.

I don’t actually have any memories of reading Winnie the Pooh in childhood, but my inner children relate to Tigger. In recovery I also relate to Winnie, who is after all a Pooh bear. Bear is one of my totems in the Medicine Cards, and is described as going within to access Truth – which pretty well fits my mystic role. It is in fact a West totem that is my East totem. East being the place of the rising sun and illumination. In other words, my illumination – my Awakening to the Light – comes primarily from looking within.

“The strength of Bear medicine is the power of introspection. It lies in the West on the great medicine wheel of life. Bear seeks honey, or the sweetness of truth, within the hollow of an old tree. In the winter, when the Ice Queen reigns and the face of death is upon the Earth, Bear enters the womb-cave to hibernate, digest the year’s experience. It is said that our goals reside in the West also. To accomplish the goals and dreams that we carry, the art of introspection is necessary.

To become like Bear and enter the safety of the womb cave, we must attune ourselves to the energies of the Eternal Mother, and receive nourishment from the placenta of the Great Void. The Great Void is the place where all solutions and answers live in harmony with the questions that fill our realities. If we choose to believe that there are many questions to life, we must also believe that the answers to these questions reside within us. Each and every being has the capacity to quiet the mind, enter the silence, and know.

Many tribes have called this space of inner-knowing the Dream Lodge, where the death of the illusion of physical reality overlays the expansiveness of eternity.” – Medicine Cards by Jamie Sams and David Carson

I will probably be talking some more about the Medicine Cards soon.” – Joy2MeU Journal: The Path of one Recovering Codependent ~ the dance of one wounded soul My Unfolding Dance 29 January 12, 2004 Monday 5:30 AM

It has been important for me in my recovery, to make choices and take actions in alignment with what I have been guided to focus on in my growth process. Even something as small as choosing the Winnie and Friends calendar instead of the Tigger calendar has power on a metaphysical level – in terms of bringing Spiritual intention into everything I do. Part of what I need to get clearer on in this processing, is the areas of my life that I need to bring more focused Spiritual attention to right now.

The processing I did in my journal and Update Newsletters – from the May 2001 Update that I mention at the beginning of this Update (which actually threw me back into the Pandora’s box of my fear of intimacy issues that I opened with my October 2000 Update) through the November 2002 journal installments – lead to me taking the actions that have put me in the relationship situation I am in now. In that same Dance 29 installment, I make clear reference to a lesson I am still working on learning today.

“It is very easy for me to write about how important it is to communicate in an intimate relationship – how vital it is to work through tough issues by talking about them. It is much harder in practice. The old theory versus actual experience conundrum. The very thing – that emotionally intimate relationships get messy – which makes it is so important for me to be willing to play with the other kids in the Enchanted Forest. The “messy” gift in my life today that has been made possible by the fear of intimacy processing that I have been doing here in this journal ever since writing my May 2001 Update put those issues in my face.

“The reality of my life circumstances right now, is that I am at a stage in my journey where I am pretty isolated and insulated. I am doing a lot of writing and a lot of phone counseling – so that my life in many ways is like being in a 12 step meeting almost all of the time. It makes it real easy to maintain a conscious contact Spiritually. Having relatively little contact with other human beings, beyond the superficial, makes it much easier to stay in serenity. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but interacting with other people gets messy. ;-)” – Joy to You & Me and Joy2MeU Update – May 23, 2001 quoted in the Joy2MeU Journal: The Path of one Recovering Codependent ~ the dance of one wounded soul My Unfolding Dance 29 January 12, 2004 Monday 5:30 AM

I am no longer living in comfortable isolation writing theoretically. I am in the Enchanted Forest interacting with other human beings. And it is much easier for me to focus on interacting with the 2 year old Darien kid than it is with the adult kids in my life. Sigh.

Now about the importance to me of the deer totem in the Medicine Cards.

“I just went outside and saw a hummingbird. In the Medicine Cards hummingbirds symbolize Joy. I stood telling him/her how beautiful she/he was – and it flew to a flower so close to me that I could hear it’s wings humming. Majorly cool. Anytime I see a hummingbird I take it as a direct message from my Higher Power to remember that Joy is the point, the goal, what healing is all about. Joy and Love.

Animal totems have a very special meaning for me. The place where I walk by the ocean, is a place we call locally the East West Ranch. When I first moved to Cambria back in late 1989, it had been a ranch that went bankrupt. It is something like 600 acres, and sits between two of the main residential sections of the town – on the ocean side of Highway 1. Back then, it was posted with no trespassing signs, but there were spaces in the fence to climb over and get through – so the effect was that the signs protected the owners from liability but people could walk on the ranch as they pleased.

I Love this ranch space. When I was living in a place near the back edge of it in 1990, I would go for walks on the ranch all of the time. Near where I would enter the ranch, I could cross a small stream and come to a meadow in the woods. The meadow was a mound – and felt like sacred space to me. I would commune with the meadow and then walk up the hill through the woods. Coming out of the woods I could see the ocean and then walk down the hill to the bluffs overlooking the ocean. Along the part of the ocean that the ranch runs along there is no beach. There are bluffs with rocks and tidal pools below.

It brought me great pleasure and serenity to walk through my meadow and up the hill – or though a passageway through the trees that came out in a different part of the ranch. There was a place just after this passageway, where a tree stood alone. A tree that was bent over almost double, creating what looked like kind of a portal. I would visualize that being a portal to other dimensions or to the future where I was done with all the pain.

As I would walk through the woods, I would see deer. Deer in the medicine cards are about gentleness. Whenever I see a deer, I take it as a direct reminder from my Higher Power to be gentle with myself. I get to see lots of deer around here – to help me remember gentleness. (My landlady doesn’t like it that they come into her garden at night and eat the flowers – but I think it is cool.) As I came out on top of the hill where I could see the ocean, I would sometimes see whales. A whale – again in the medicine cards – is the record keeper, the keeper of ancient knowledge. It was symbolic for me because I felt that I was accessing ancient knowledge while writing my Trilogy.

1990 was a year before I first gave the talk that became the Dance of Wounded Souls. The only book that I was working on then was my Trilogy.” – Joy2MeU Journal: The Path of one Recovering Codependent ~ the dance of one wounded soul My Unfolding Dance 9 July 12, 2000

I don’t actually miss Cambria that much – although I do miss my walks on the Ranch. And I miss getting to see deer all the time. That is the reason that I chose a Deer calendar this year. The move to San Diego we made in September, is a perfect part of my Spiritual Path, and is working out quite nicely. Getting to do the Intensives regularly is a very important to me – and I am sure the grief groups are going to be a perfect part of the journey also – but I do miss the deer.

Among the gifts that Susan has brought into my life is encouraging me to do the Intensives, and moving to San Diego. I will be exploring more of those gifts on my fear of intimacy processing page.

Magnificent Buck Deer

In alignment with how this writing processing unfolds perfectly for me, the last line in that last quote mentions my Trilogy. That work: The Dance of the Wounded Souls Trilogy Book 1 – “In The Beginning . . .” is A Magical, Mystical, Spiritual Fable which is a book that probably will never be finished – and certainly won’t be part of a Trilogy. But it was the first writing that I did in 1988 after I had gone through treatment for Codependency. That body of work is what I thought of when I looked at the calendar with the magnificent buck deer on it. That Trilogy writing formed part of the foundation of what was later to become Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls.

“I started writing my book (what I hoped was just going to be one book because I really did not like writing 😉 The Dance of Wounded Souls in a cabin at 11,000 feet elevation on Taos Mountain in the fall of 1988. . . . .

. . . . . . That book evolved into being the first book of a Trilogy, and over the next few years I worked on it intermittently. Meanwhile, I was working on my emotional healing, and started working with others in helping them to access and release their grief.

I was looking at the work I was doing on internal healing, and the work I was doing on the mystical book as being two separate things. It never occurred to me to connect them. And then suddenly in early 1991, they came together. In some speaking engagements to talk about codependence, I heard myself answering questions with mystical statements that I had never even considered that I would make in public.” – Attack on America – Chapter 7 (Attack on America – A Spiritual Healing Perspective is an online book that I started writing a few days after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack.  I published it online as I wrote it – but subsequently moved the bulk of it to my Joy2MeU Journal.  It is also now available in the Dancing in Light pay to view section of the site.)

In my Joy2MeU Journal two part installment about publishing The Dance I talked about how the events unfolded.

“In the next month or six weeks, I also spoke publicly at a couple of other places. One was at the County Drug and Alcohol satellite office in Cambria – and the other was at a Speakers meeting for CoDA for Helping Professionals. (This was a short lived version of CoDA for counselors, therapist, and various other helping professionals who thought it would not be okay for them to share honestly in regular CoDA meetings – a manifestation of the codependent programming of keeping up appearances in my opinion, which I shared with them when I spoke.)

It was in those public speaking engagements that the inner child work I was doing merged with the mystical information that I was writing for the Trilogy. I can remember two examples of hearing “myself answering questions with mystical statements” – that I refer to in the quote from my Attack on America book above. One was while speaking here in Cambria – which was not a meeting but an informational event the satellite office was offering for the general public. In it, I shared my view that everything was unfolding perfectly from a cosmic perspective. Someone asked me if that meant that I believed that everyone who died in a plane crash was meant to die that day. I answered that yes that was what I believed.

The other one I remember was in the CoDA Speakers meeting in February. I have a memory of talking about the clinging creatures story I paraphrase from Richard Bach’s Illusions in Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls. The one where the creature that has learned to let go and go with the flow of the stream is viewed as a messiah by clinging creatures he flies over down stream. . . . .

It was in those talks that the seeds of my book sprouted.

“In the spring of 1991, Robert Burney was asked to speak in several different venues on the subject of Codependence. In the course of those speaking engagements he heard himself making statements to a general audience that he had never considered saying in public because of their controversial nature. To his surprise he found that the practical process level tools and techniques that he utilized in his private therapy practice were merging with mystical and magical knowledge he had acquired writing a book that was an adult fable about the history of the Universe – the first book of a trilogy.

Although he experienced a great deal of fear about making such controversial statements in public, he was compelled to further explore this message that he felt coming through him. He arranged dates in June of 1991 to give a talk in Cambria and Morro Bay, California. He then found he was unable to write the talk. The message that he was formulating was multileveled and nonlinear so that he found it impossible to organize his thoughts into a coherent presentation. His anxiety mounted as the date for his talk approached until in a burst of inspiration born out of desperation he wrote almost continuously for the last 48 hours prior to the talk. The presentation was scrawled on yellow legal pages that first time he presented the talk.

As he got ready to give his talk, he was overwhelmed with feelings of dread and experienced emotional memories of being stoned to death by an angry mob. He was convinced the audience would not be able to hear his message because of the outrageously controversial aspects of it but was compelled to go forward with it because of his personal Karmic need to take responsibility and stand up for his Truth. To his amazement, the audience not only heard what he was saying but cried tears of Joy in recognition of the Truth he was sharing.

That talk formed the basis for the book Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls. The message evolved and expanded over the years as he refined the techniques he was developing to facilitate Codependence recovery, but the basic structure of the book was essentially born in those two days of desperation. Robert made a trip from Taos New Mexico, where he was living at the time, to the Central Coast of California in the winter of 1995 in an attempt to raise funds to publish a book based on the talk. Because of that trip (which was a real leap of faith) he did receive the financing to start the publishing process in the summer of 1995. He returned to Cambria to set up his publishing company, Joy to You & Me Enterprises, in the fall of 1995. The official publication date of the book was January of 1996.” – Biographical information page

That first time I did the talk, at the Pewter Plough Playhouse in Cambria on June 16th 2001 before a crowd of over 50 people, it was literally on yellow legal pages.” – Joy2MeU Journal: The Path of one Recovering Codependent ~ the dance of one wounded soul Leap of Faith ~ Publishing The Dance

The Trilogy alternates between a narrative story line and a History of the Universe told tongue in cheek (including a recently discovered transcript of God’s thought process in deciding to create the Universe.;-) The narrative story involves my Higher Self appearing to me in the form of a unicorn running off a picture on my desk in Taos New Mexico in early 1989. My unicorn / Higher Self then takes me on a journey through time and space to help me learn the things I needed to learn. In one of the later chapters of that work, my Higher Self transforms from a unicorn to the form of a woman representing the Goddess Energy / Feminine Principle. During the course of my interaction with my Higher Self, a doe and two fawns had been playing a part in the unfolding story. After we had discussed some of the levels of healing that were affecting me and had caused my fear of intimacy, came this passage.

“Sorry about that,” I laughed. It was wonderful to laugh about where I had been – and was going back to – and not feel any shame about it. It was after all, only a part of my evolution. There Truly is no need to judge where I have been, or am, because it was/is just a step in my becoming process.

Just then my attention was once again caught by the deer. The doe and both fawns had turned and were looking back into the trees at that south end of the meadow. And what came walking out of the trees at that point was the most magnificent Stag deer that I have ever seen. He was tall and regal with the most magnificent set of antlers I had ever seen. I counted fourteen points in his incredible rack.

I . . . . . . stood up, staring in awe at this magnificent male animal. I was moved somewhere deep within my being, and tears sprang to my eyes from the emotions that the grandeur of his presence stirred up within me.

“Yes,” said my dream woman softly by my side, “he is magnificent. And he is you, that is that he is a symbolic representation of the magnificence of your own masculinity.”

I turned and looked at her, feeling an emotional surge in my chest as her words sank in.

“You see,” she continued, “you have, up to this point in your recovery, put much effort into healing the feminine within and your inner children – which are symbolically represented by the doe and her two fawns. But you have almost completely ignored the healing of your masculine. Your relationship with your father, and your disgust over the sins of man-kind, have led you to disown to a large degree, your own masculine energy. A very large part of your journey in the coming years will be to focus on the healing of your masculine so that you can own and honor what a magnificent male being you are.”

Tears were freely running down my face as I stood there looking at her. Then I turned and gazed once again at the magnificent creature. All four of the deer were standing there looking back at me with Love in their eyes. I could feel the Truth of her words, and along with the Joy that I was experiencing from the sight of this regal animal, there was a profound sadness at the realization of the depth of my masculine wounds. I was too overwhelmed with feeling at that point to speak. I just stood there gazing at the buck and feeling the urgency of my need to own my masculine self.” – The Dance of the Wounded Souls Trilogy Book 1 – “In The Beginning . . .” Chapter 10

It is now 3:07 AM on the morning of the 13th of March 2007. It was on the morning of the 4th that I looked up at my calendar and got the message from the Universe that I needed to look at a new level of healing my masculine – healing my relationship with my self as a man – in the context of the processing I already knew that I needed to do about my fear of intimacy issues and how they were affecting my life and relationship now. I will be doing that on the page (could even be more than one page) that will follow this one. I want to wrap this one up and get it posted – and my e-mail announcements sent out now. When I will have the next page ready to post, I really have no idea right now. Hopefully by the 25th, which will be the day after my next Intensive – the day I will be posting an Updated Intensive Testimonial page, as well as changing the Intensive page to raise the price for the next workshop.

There are 4 spaces still available for that next Intensive, by the way – so perhaps it will fill to capacity. More will be revealed. More will also be revealed about where my fear of intimacy processing will lead me. I know that I need to get clearer on where I am at, and what areas I may need some action, in order to get cleaner and clearer in my relationship with Susan. And I know that I need to take some steps to own my own masculine power more fully.

One of the key insights for me years ago, when I first started to focus on my issues with myself as a man, was one I mention in the following quote from my journal – that I had never had a clear image of what positive, strong and powerful masculine energy looks like.

“What I remember that morning was that I needed to own my powerful positive masculine energy. Years ago I had come to a realization (and I can’t believe I haven’t written about it somewhere – but can’t find it right now) that I had spent years working on healing my inner children and my feminine without even considering that I might need to heal my masculine. Like Duh! That was a time when I started reading authors like Robert Bly and starting to focus on healing my masculine. One of the things I realized then, is that I had no image of strong positive masculine energy – that I associated strong masculine energy with violence and anger and rage. That was when I came up with or discovered (maybe in Bly’s book Iron John the term “fierce determination” as a trait of powerful positive masculine energy. Focused power and fierce determination in doing, manifesting, standing strong – that was the masculine energy I discovered back then. That was the masculine energy I needed to rediscover and own on the morning of March 30th.

I started to see that I needed to start using my will power to stop playing small in my relationship with myself. To stop giving the pain so much power and to own that I have the power to have more positive control of my own internal process. I realized that I had gone out of balance in my relationship with myself, towards the feminine, feeling side of me – and that I wasn’t standing in my Truth with powerful Masculine positive energy. I needed to start being the Alpha male in my own internal process. In recent months I have noticed myself explaining the process of setting boundaries with the critical parent voice to phone counseling clients in an interesting new way. I would tell them that we don’t want to argue with the critical parent voice, we want to SLAM it with spiritual Truth. I have been thinking about the process of setting boundaries in a way that is like establishing who is in charge internally – who is the Alpha force. And that it was necessary to slam the critical parent voice – to own positive powerful force in my own internal process. This was a wonderful insight that is the key to taking control of my own inner process in a new more empowering way. In a way that will be more outward directed and focused on external manifestation and action than inner focused.” – Joy2MeU Journal: The Path of one Recovering Codependent ~ the dance of one wounded soul My Unfolding Dance35April 8, 2004

So, there are some areas in my life where I need to stop playing small and start focusing some fierce determination in making changes that need to be made in how I am relating to myself and life – so that I can start being clearer in my relationship. I have some idea right now what that might look like to some degree – and more will be revealed as I continue to process.

There is one additional thing that I am going to be including on this page – and that is an excerpt from Chapter 15 of Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in the Light Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life (the last chapter I have written so far of that work.) That is a chapter that is focused on masculine and feminine, and explains the difference in my understanding between different levels of masculine and feminine – and how those terms are related to the genders male and female. I want to include it in order to bring more clarity to the processing I am doing – for those of you who actually read this far and beyond.;-)”

As I said this is an excerpt from my March 2007 Update Newsletter – the actual Newsletter is much longer and I am going to include a link here to the excerpt about Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in the Light Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life Chapter 15 Masculine and Feminine

Joy2MeU Journal

 The Joy2MeU Journal and Dancing in Light are subscription areas of the Joy2MeU website.  There are special offers available for them on this page.

Medicine Card Book

The Medicine Cards (This link and the one on the graphic 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)