Blog

There is No End Game.

In the past few days, between reading books, exchanging emails and dialogues, I have been shown the angst of trying to get a new response from an old system, and it is impossible.

It is my belief, you have to completely abandon the whole machine, for the machine was set up with a mindset that can't be changed. It will not allow a new viewpoint or new outcome.

The way our legal system is working is that it is not working…at least not for the ones who have been injured. It is however, working rather well for the Lawyers who get paid to reduce the action down to nothing. It is working extremely well for the perpetrators, and it isn't working at all for the injured party.

I don't know how the laws of the land were originally set up or why or what the expected out come would be, but I would have to say it is a colossal failure.

Just in our little town on the front page of the paper, you can read time and time again how the charges are reduced, and the perp has been saved from serving time.

Yet, there is no mention about the second party, the injured party and how they feel or what it has done to their lives etc. Where are the teams of people helping to see that the real innocent are taken care of???

I am not sure you can now turn that big machine around. For the judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys all know their part well, and it is a Justice System that is running without justice and no one seems to even care anymore.

It is a system that was supposedly looking to find the truth, when the truth oftentimes is reduced and tossed out.

IF this big machine called justice worked, we would be living in a land where the prisons would be shutting down due to lack of inmates.

As a victim in the system, my justice was not served at all. And there is no one in the Justice System who didn't know what my father did, yet for some odd reason, it works completely backwards…it works supremely well as Injustice.

This system is just another system in the lives of victims that doesn't work. It runs along the same lines as their childhood homes, where they innocent are treated unjustly, and the perps lives are given the utmost attention.

I am not certain I can even get you all to understand the wheels of justice are spinning in a totally wrong direction, and there are no cries of injustice, no picketing of the court house, nothing….silence, apathy.

Each time you read in the paper another reduced sentence, a plea bargain, a this or that, and the abuser walks away with a few days in jail, you are witnessing the system abusing the child again.

And no one says a word.

It is my belief, that we can't change that big machine, but the healing of abuse will have to come from a totally different angle. Our healing and wellness can't depend upon the system serving us justice and punishing our abusers, instead we have to find another way to heal.

We have to stop putting our faith in a broken system. Stop believing that the Justice System will crack down on crimes and lessen abuse.

Instead we will have to create a whole new system outside of the laws of the land, a system that deals with the victims…the hurting innocent.

Just as the church is unwilling to deal with the abuse of innocent children, so is the law. Their jobs are clearly to rescue abusers from their truth, while leaving children alone again with no adult hearing and seeing their abusers in their true colors…instead they take the black actions and bring it up to a gentle grey…beige even.

We the people of the land, have to find a new way to reach the abused children and heal them.

A way to reach them where they feel that their truth matters.

It is these unhealed wounded children who are the ones to next walk into the courtroom. Soon, they will be standing where their abusers stand. We are feeding an endless cycle the way the courts are set up now, there is no end game.

January 10, 2012
The Parent’s Wrongs.

In Alice Miller's book, "The Body Never Lies," she writes…

"Severe illnesses, early death, and suicide are the logical consequence of subjection to the laws that we call morality, although in fact they suffocate our true lives. This will continue to be the case, all over the world, as long as we show greater reverence to these laws than to life itself. The body rebels against such treatment, but the only language at its command is the language of illness, a language that is rarely understood as long as the denial of true feelings in childhood remain unrecognized."

"Many of the Ten Commandments can still claim validity today. But the Fourth Commandment is diametrically opposed to the laws of psychology. It is imperative that there be general recognition of the fact that enforced "love" can do a very great deal of harm. People who were loved in childhoood will love their parent in return. There is no need of a commandment to tell them to do so. Obeying a commandment can never be the basis for love." Alice Miller

What happens when the commandments are telling children who have been abused by their parents, it is of greater importance to try and love them, than it is to not.

And in fact, if you don't love them, you will go to hell. To be a good christian child, you must love and obey your parents…end of story.

In fact, there can be no story told from the viewpoint of the child.

Putting silencers on the child's experience and feelings is the cause of people being able to do things without feelings. Being able to do wrong toward others and selves, for they are disconnected to their feelings. And their feelings go against the commandments of God.

The God that I now know, is the God of truth, not the god of commanding abused children to love and honor their abusers. That is not a kind loving god, but a god similar to their parents.

The line that came quickly to mind after discovering my father, was "To Love and Fear"….and how those two feelings are diametrically opposed as well.

We need to make an addendum to the 4th Commandment, that says, "Unless your parents have abused you….than you are free to disregard this one….go in God's peace away from those that hurt you."

As long as this commandment is preached and demanded that abused children follow it, as long as society sees estrangement from family as bad, we will have hurt children going on to hurt their children. The cycle needs to be broken. We need to find the culprits in our moral codes that are keys to setting the children free.

The Detective who came to my home that day in 2004, to get my statement about my abuse from my father, says to me. "I hope this will not come between your relationship with your father."

Immediately a child will feel the alliance between the adults…and the closed ear for the child's story.

He didn't wonder how my father's treatment of me, how my mother's Active denial damaged me…and how my church's treatment of both had me living in a sea of adults who cared not a wit about the child's life…what it did to me.

In my humble opinion, it isn't the child and their tales or their willingness to speak of the deeds of abuse, but rather the moral viewpoint of the family dynamics.

Everything is setup with the 'ideal' family in mind. The perfect parents, lovingly caring and nurturing their children. Yet, the facts of the land are the complete opposite…and nothing has changed in the foundations of our religions and laws of the land.

We are all failing the children as long as we don't hear and see them in the reality of their lives and act accordingly.

To keep beating the drum of Love and Obey thy parents….while they are sexually and physically beating the child…is insanity. No one wants to point fingers and make parents pay.

Instead they will extract payment by taking another child's life…and turning their natural bright spirit and create another dark life…simply by turning their awareness away from the parent's wrongs.

January 9, 2012
Days to Slip By

My brother's Excel class had him calculating out the number of days he has lived so far, and I did the same. Today is number 19,365 for me!

That is how many mornings I woke up and seen a new day.

Yet for the first many thousands, I woke up living my life frozen in a pattern that was preset and one that seemed my destiny.

I even recall feeling the panic feelings of not being able to stop the way I was living, that there were so many people attached to the movement of my life. That me changing would be too disruptive, but that at some point, they will need me less and then there will be an opportunity to be free.

The more I explored how stuck I was, the more I wanted to live differently, but I had no idea how to suddenly change my life.

And then, Life seemed to suddenly change…and I followed it. But this time, I did it completely different. I hadn't realized at the time that I was going to transform my whole life. All I was doing was following my body and my feelings.

I just hadn't realized realized realized, that I hadn't been living my life from the inside out. I didn't really know how much of my life was lived for others, Until it came to me to follow my body and feelings.

The huge amounts of changes that ensued showed me how much of me and my life had been lived for others…and by me being fake.

I wouldn't have called it living fake, I would have said, "I am putting aside my feelings and my life unselfishly to make another happy." Believing that this is a kind and loving thing to do.

I lived 16, 775 days (yep I did the math 😉 pushing aside my feelings in order to make another happy. I lived disconnected from my body, disassociated from my emotions, and very focused on others…for thousands of days.

I would awaken each day carrying many lives upon my shoulders…worrying, wondering, thinking, and pondering their lives, giving very little thoughts to me and my life. My life was their life.

I had me pushed so far back, there wasn't but a teeny bit of me showing.

It seems impossible now. It seems scary to me to live a life with so little of me showing. To live without access to my feelings and emotions, to live stoically and remotely. To shut down and close off my life in order for another to be happy and at peace.

You can't go and get those days back, they have been breathed, lived and passed by. How much I missed, I can't even begin to imagine, how many emotions I pushed down and away for the sake of anothers is unreal. How they fit all stuffed within my body is remarkable…

For all that I stuffed down and away…never left. They just rode along waiting for me to one day focus on me.

The day I realized the truth of my life, the fact that my body has kept secure all my emotions, that none slipped by and away, was the day I began to live each day as me.

I began to feel…and feel and feel. Emotions washed over me, the terror, the helplessness, the empty trust, the negative feelings I had not looked at all came rushing in. Thirsty for me to feel. And I did.

My days were filled with past emotions and it felt like living on steroids. Eventually, the dam of emotions fell to a trickle…and I was able to live this day.

This day as it arrived, this emotion as it came, this moment in time…fully present.

I have lived without emotions or my feelings and it is a careless way to live. It leaves you caring less about your self.

Living days without a self isn't living…it is going through the motions without feelings…it is like living without a body or awareness.

Guess it is called unconscious being.

Trauma woke me up and actually trauma put me asleep…

I have lived life both ways, and there is no contest; being able to feel and allow each emotion to see the light of day is the only way to live.

Otherwise you are just breathing, unaware…counting years and allowing days to slip by.

January 8, 2012
How It Feels

I am reading "The Body Never Lies," again by Alice Miller.

What is really standing out to me this time around is the fact about feelings. Or the fact that it is more typical than not to not be aware of your true feelings.

Alice writes, "Genuine Feelings are never a product of conscious effort. They are quite simply there, and they are there for a very good reason, even if that reason is not always apparent. I cannot force myself to love or honor my parents if my body rebels against such an endeavor for reasons that are well-known to it. But if I still attempt to obey the Fourth Commandment, then the upshot will be the kind of stress that is invariably involved when I demand the impossible of myself. This kind of stress has accompanied me almost all my life. Anxious to stay in line with the system of moral values I had accepted, I did my best to imagine good feeings I did not possess while ignoring the bad feelings I did have. My aim was to be loved as a daughter. But the effort was all in vain. In the end I had to realize that I cannot force love to come if it is not there in the first place. On the other hand, I learned that a feeling of love will establish itself automatically (for example, love for my children or love for my friends) once I stop demanding that I feel such love and stop obeying the moral injunctions impossed on me. But such a sensation can happen only when I feel free and remain open and receptive to all my feelings, including the negative ones."

"The realization that I cannot manipulate my feelings, that I can delude neither myself nor others, brought me immense relief and liberation. Only then was I fully struck by the large number of people who (like myself) literally almost kill themselves in the attempt to obey the Fourth Commandment, without any consideration of the price this extracts both from their own bodies and from their children. As long as the children allow themselves to be used this way, it is entirely possible to live to be one hundred without any awareness of one's own personal truth and without any illness ensuing from this protracted form of self-deception."

"A mother who is forced to realize that the deprivations imposed on her in her youth make it impossible for her to love a child of her own, however hard she may try, can certainly expect to be accused of immorality if she has the courage to put that truth into words. But I believe that it is precisely this explicit acceptance of her true feelings, independent of the claims of morality, that will enable her to give both herself and her children the honest and sincere kind of support they need most, and at the same time allow her to free herself from the shackles of self-deception."

"When most children are born, what they need most from their parents is love, by which I mean affection, attention, care, protection, kindness, and the willingness to communicate. If these needs are gratified, the bodies of those children will retain the good memory of such caring, affection all their lives, and later, as adults, they will be able to pass on the same kind of love to their children. But if this is not the case, the children will be left with a lifelong yearning for the fulfillment of their initial (and vital) needs. In later life, this yearning will be directed at other people. In comparison, the more implacably children have been deprived of love and negated or maltreated in the name of "Upbringing," the more those children, on reaching adulthood, will look to their parents (or other people substituting for them) to supply all the things those same parents failed to provide when they were needed most. This is a normal response on the part of the body. It knows precisely what it needs, it cannot forget the deprivations. The deprivation or hole is there waiting to be filled."

"The older we get, the more difficult it is to find other people who can give us the love our parents denied us. But the body's expectations do not slacken with age – quite the contrary! They are merely directed at others, usually our own children and grandchildren. The only way out of this dilemma is to become aware of these mechanisms and to identify the reality of our own childhood by counteracting the process of repression and denial. In this way we can create in our own selves a person who can satisfy at least some of the needs that have been waiting for fulfillment since birth, if not earlier. Then we can give ourselves the attention, the respect, the understanding for our emotions, the sorely needed protection, and the unconditional love that our parents withheld from us."

"To make this happen we need one special experience; the experience of love for the child we once were. Without it, we have no way of knowing what love consists of." Alice Miller

While I knew that having lived 46 years trying so hard to possess feelings of love and warmth toward my parents, and working at being a warmer person, it had never not once occurred to me that I wasn't the problem. That due to the lack of feelings of love didn't mean there was something the matter with me…but rather what I was trying to love.

I remember having odd and horrifying realizations about my self, when the lack of deep caring and love didn't arise from me, towards my parents. I would not even want to glance to long at this self that seemed to be so detached and cool. For what child doesn't want to be with her parents?

The double feelings that I had with the discovery that my father was a pedophile, was that I wasn't a broken love person. I wasn't cold or detached…I wasn't living in a broken body and cold toward family…I wasn't damaged…but my family was.

I am not sure I can tell you how it feels to believe you don't have access to warmth and caring or love towards parents…and feel you are damaged. That you arrived empty of that kind of love. Yet I knew I could feel, but couldn't carry those feelings to my parents.

It now gives me great peace to know I can't manipulate feelings…that emotions are natural responses, ones that come up without any assistance from me. It leaves me in a neutral position taking the lead from my body.

My body never lies…however, I have lied about my body.

I have lived faking my feelings.

Living a fake life.

But no more. Now, I simply agree with how It feels.

January 6, 2012
Peace Is.

What I read about the lower levels, (below 200 in consciousness) caught my attention.

"A prime difficulty with thoughts and behaviors associated with the energy fields below 200 is that they cause counterreactions. A familiar law of the observable universe is that force results in equal and opposite counterforce; all attacks, therefore, whether mental or physical result in countreattacks. Malice literally makes you sick; we're always the victims of our own vindictiveness. Even secret hostile thoughts result in a physiological attack on one's own body." David Hawkins, Power vs Force

As you are caught up in blaming and pointing fingers and attacking others, you are actually loading the gun to come back at you.

If it hadn't been for Byron Katie and her brilliant turn around, where I could see that who I was really hollering at was me, I would have kept loading the guns and attacking others. Instead I got very busy unloading my anger guns.

I have been very busy learning about the human mind, the psyche, and now the levels of awareness and energy that all contribute to the way a human being is…to say nothing of the treatment and beliefs they were taught as a child. Incredible that we even have any coherent beings walking this planet.

And it is my belief, the more we learn about what doesn't work, the more we can learn about what does. And our exquisite bodies are the key to unlocking all the mysteries. As Deepak Chopra has stated, "the mind is manifested in the body," and an angry mind creates disease.

I have found my ease and peace by learning about how truth or untruth affects my body and how I live my life.

I have learned by reading and doing, that what I put out indeed comes right back. There is no one out there to blame for my life but me.

David writes about peace.

"Peace can't be created this way; peace is the natural state of affairs when what's preventing it is removed. Relatively few people are genuinely committed to peace as a realistic goal, for in their private lives, most people prefer being "right" at whatever cost to their relationships or themselves. A self justified positionality is the real enemy of peace. When solutions are sought on the level of coercion, no peaceful resolutions are possible."

What I love is that peace is the natural state of affairs, when you remove what is preventing peace…peace is.

I had no idea that I had such huge mountains of stuff preventing me peace! When you can get to the place of loving what is, peace is.

January 5, 2012
Inner Level of Truth

While I thought that we all see life from different angles, I had thought it was from the level of our experience, but it may be more from the level of our awareness.

David Hawkins writes a neat example of how we see the world.

"Imagine a "bum" on a street corner: In an upscale neighborhood stands an old man in tattered clothes, alone and leaning against the corner of an elegant brownstone. Look at him from the perspective of various levels of consciousness, and note the inconsistency in how he appears to different people and viewpoints.

"From the bottom of the scale, at a level of 20, (Shame), the bum is seen to be dirty, disgusting, and disgraceful.

From the level 30 (Guilt) he'd be blamed for his condition: He deserves what he gets; he's probably a lazy welfare cheat.

At the level 50 (Hopelessness), his plight would appear desperate, a damning piece of evidence to prove that society can't do anything about homelessness.

At the level 75 (Grief), the old man looks tragic, friendless, and forlorn.

At a Conscious level of 100 (Fear), we might see the bum as threatening, a social menace; perhaps we should call the police before he commits some crime.

At 125 (Desire), he represents a frustrating problem – why doesn't somebody do something.

At 150 (Anger), the old man might look like he could be violent; or, on the other hand, one could be furious that such horrible conditions exist in our country today.

At 175 (Pride) he could be seen as an embarrassment or as lacking the self-respect to better himself.

At 200 (Courage), we might be motivated to wonder if there is a local homeless shelter – all he needs is a job and a place to live.

At 250 (Neutrality), the bum looks okay, maybe even interesting. "Live and let Live," we might say – after all, he's not hurting anyone.

At 310 (Willingness), we might decide to go down and see what we can do to cheer up that fellow on the corner; maybe we'd be motivated to volunteer some time at the local shelter.

At 350 (Acceptance), the man on the corner appears intriguing; He probably has an interesting story to tell; he's where he is for reasons we may never understand.

At 400 (Reason), he's a symptom of the current economic and social malaise, or perhaps a good subject for in-depth psychological study.

At the higher levels, the old man begins to look not only interesting, but friendly – and then lovable. Perhaps we'd then be able to see that he was, in fact, one who had transcended social limits and gone free a joyful old guy with the wisdom of age in his face and the serenity that comes from indifference to material things.

At 600 (Peace) he's revealed as our own self in a temporary expression.

When approached, the bum's response to these different levels of consciousness would vary with them. With some, he'd feel secure – with others, frightened or dejected. Some would make him angry, others would delight him; some he'd avoid, others he'd greet with pleasure. (And so it's said that we meet what we mirror.)

So much for the manner in which our level of consciousness – that is, the world we encounter as passive observers – decides what we see. It's true that we'll react to things in a fashion predicated by the level that we perceive them from, that is to say, external events may define conditions, but they don't determine the conscious level of human response. " David Hawkins

What I failed to take into consideration, along with the truth, is that we all see what we see depending upon our level of awareness. It isn't so much that the truth has different shades, but that we do.

We have darker shades of viewing life and you see how you feel or by your level of being.

I have learned that who I am to others, way depends on how they see themselves…and really their total understanding not only of self, but life and the Universe too.

I have felt many differing viewpoints of me…and how I was so wrongly perceived.

Just as this bum, I am a lady and they bring their own definition of me to me, and it is colored by their own self awareness. The lower the level, the worse of a person I become.

This has freed me to be me…and to make choices based on what I felt was the best for my soul.

What is also interesting, or at least it bears noting. It seems that the choices that are good for the soul, are not so good for the pride/ego person.

My old choices that helped me thrive in the lower levels are now extremely unappetizing to me now. It is like you lose the taste for old habits…the magnetism loses its attraction to you

What is also very cool, is that no one but you can change the level of your consciousness, its energy field is derived by your thought patterns and beliefs. What you believe…is your level of consciousness.

David Hawkins writes about making a leap in awareness.

"On our scale of consciousness, there are two critical points that allow for major advancement. The first is at 200, the initial level of empowerment; Here, the willingness to stop blaming and accept responsibility for one's own actions, feelings, and beliefs arises – as long as cause and responsibility are projected outside of oneself, one will remain in the powerless mode of victimhood. The second is at the 500 level, which is reached by accepting love and nonjudgmental forgiveness as a lifestyle, excercising unconditional kindnes to all persons, things and events without exception. (In 12-step recovery groups, it's said that there are no justified resentments -even if somebody "did you wrong." you're still free to choose your response and let resentment go.) Once one makes this commitment, he begins to experience a different, more benign world as his perceptions evolve." David

Beauty indeed is in the eye of the beholder…You simply can't see that which you are not aware of within you…the less of your self you know and undertand, the less of me you understand and know.

The more I have learned about me, the broader I view the world…the world is seen from our inner level of truth.

January 4, 2012
Enjoying LIfe together

Yesterday I spent creating two Mitten Tree Ladies…who are so full of, (as one woman put it,) exuberance. I love the fabric and the feelings these ladies have. Their spirits are imbued with self power.

And working with sweater fabric has been a new challenge, but I love the way it adds a new dimension…the feeling of winter.

This Evergreen batik fabric was a challenge, just to see what colors would go with it. I put down the white and black and greys and whites and was surprised it would go….and the brights flowed too. I add colors by feeling and never know what will be allowed and what will have to go.

As I was waiting for the above pictures to be downloaded on to this site, I was reading in David Hawkins book, Power vs Force.

"Force is limited, whereas power is unlimited. Through its insistence that the ends justify the means, force sells out freedom, for expediency. Force offers quick, easy, solutions. In power, the means and the end are the same, but ends require greater maturity, discipline, and patience to be brought to fruition."

"Great leaders inspire us to have faith and confidence because of the power of their absolute integrity and alignment with inviolate principles. Such figures understand that you can't compromise principle and still retain your power." David Hawkins

What really caught my eye, is that Force Sells out Freedom…and it will justity any means to get what it wants.

Acting out in this moment of time, to ensure a peaceful end…really?

Is not your life created by each step in time?

It is insane to think that all the steps of force will in the end deliver a relationship of empowerment. You can't steal power and have a strong individual left standing.

I have seen families in the FALC, and even those who have left the church behind, but not the force driven relationships, force their children…by not letting them have their freedom.

It has shown me how it was so imperative that I give my children the power to make their own choices. That is freedom. Letting them decide…especially when it went against my values or viewpoints…or basically against me. That was when it mattered most. And I let them. I not only let them, but had to do so willingly in complete agreement, that yes, they are allowed to go against me. In fact, if they feel so drawn to, they must…they have to follow their own inner feelings, NoT Mine.

My earlier mothering instincts were to force them to do as I did…yet after I gave my self the power to walk differently than my parents, it would have been hypocritical to not let them do the same. And they did.

It takes great discipline and patience to watch your children grow into their own maturity and lives…but what freedom and joy to allow them them to be free thinkers and free movers, to not be attached at the hip of me….doing and saying and being…Like puppets on my string.

I truly believed in my own freedom and my authentic power…and that belief powered and gave me strength to give the same to my children.

It really does take great patience and discipline to stay in the mode of freedom of choice and empowerment…allowing them to be free, for you can't know if they will freely chose to be with you.

"If you love someone, set them free….If they come back to you their yours…" You will then have two free spirits enjoying life together.

January 3, 2012
Who are You Bringing to This New Year?

I made no resolutions for this upcoming year; I promised it nothing, hoped on even less, and expect zero from the year…for I now realize it isn't up to a year, an event, a somebody or something to deliver to me that which I desire…it is up to me.

Expecting things from a new year is pretty much hopeless, for the year is waiting on you.

You and only you will make 2012 a year to be remembered.

However you spent last year, you will spend this year, Unless and Until you change that which you are doing, saying and being.

Last year for me was one of great learning, yet on the outside the average person wouldn't have been able to see the inner changes that went on inside.

My letting go on the inside was big. Letting go of things having to be a certain way or expecting things flowing and following a certain trail…disappeared.

I had been slowly loosening my grip on controlling things, and last year I was shown clearly how it isn't up to me.

While it is discerning to stand in a place of No Hope, No Expectations, No Control….it is very freeing. It isn't that I am hopeless, but that I am no longer hoping for things to be different than they are, nor are my expectations exceeding that which the Universe delivers.

I feel that I am closer than ever to being on the thin line of Now…and singing the same words of the Universe; One verse.

Just as I can't expect my body to lose weight without me participating, I can't expect the New Year to improve without me being an active partner.

The year is just a pile of days and how we live each day builds up the flavor of the New Year…and really each moment of every day.

Somehow we overlook this moment in time.

Yet yesterday was the first day we added to the Pile called New Year, what was it full of??? Today is the second helping we are adding, what are you doing today?

The year is of your making…this year is one in your life…Your life is being drawn as you walk through your days. What you do each day is you.

Each day you live your authentic truthful self is singing with the Universe…each day you put aside your feelings, and not say what you need to say, is another day given to denial.

We keep thinking denial is a big thing, but it is actually many little moments that go by where we are not ourselves.

We keep expecting the year to deliver to us authenticity, realness, truth, and strength, when it is our choice in each moment of each new year, that decides if our year will actually make a new us.

We somehow see the new year as a clean slate, when actually it is a year of new moments awaiting a new you. A you that will arrive that will make a new choice.

The only way you will get a new year, is if the you who arrives at each new day is willing to act and speak differently.

The year follows you…not you it.

We somehow have this all backwards, that you can leap upon the back of a white new year and be totally different, that the year will save you, create a newness that hasn't been part of you prior.

When in fact, just as we wake up to each day and greet each moment of time, we too step into the new year.

It isn't about the year….it is about the You in the year.

You bring all of you to this new year. All your actions of past sit with you as you sit staring at the new year.

Who did you bring to this new year?

What does she look like and act like?

Is she someone you would want as a friend and trust as a partner?

We keep looking for the year to change us into someone we may like or even love better, when the year has zero power.

Each of us brings to the year a self…and each of us is the designer and creator of that self.

A successful year to me is one that has required more and more of me and challenged me to be more of myself, not less. It has shown me places where I didn't arrive, where I denied myself and ducked in order to be 'liked/approved of/or loved.

What I bring to this year, is a me that wants to uncover more aspects of me that are not authentic. I want to live at peace with who I am and love being me…and finding joy along the way.

Who are you bringing to this New Year?

January 2, 2012
Wish For Your Self.

What a great year of learning, again.

Lessons seemed to continually line up to serve to me… more of me; more freedom, more letting go, surrendering and allowing, more ways to be expressive, a deeper understanding, followed by affirmations of what doing the opposite would look like.

I think I thought, that when I said I was going forth with love, peace and joy, like magic, that was what would follow. Wrong.

Instead I was served up all of my relationships were no love, peace or joy existed, and asked to redo myself there.

I was given opportunity after opportunity, sometimes many at a time, all clamoring for my attention…insatiable energies of need and control, that had kept me from peace or feelings of love or experiencing joy.

What I believe lots of folks believe, is that they stay in the same place, but instead of feeling anxious, controlled, resentful, rage, anger, tight restraint…they will just work harder to feel different.

To stay with same relationships, BUT feel differently about them.

Feel more loving…will bring up love. And to become peaceful where rebellious feelings explode…to dial down or to a different frequency.

That isn't what real love, peace and joy is.

That is denying what is there and forcing feelings. Which is to have false feelings of love, peace and joy.

Many believe you can simply just 'think' differently about an individual etc and like magic, feelings will change. That your feelings are the problem within the relationship…not that the relationship itself is where the troubles lie.

Seeing life differently is where the key lies.

I am reading, "The Body Never Lies" by Alice Miller. This is one of the first authors who addresses the child, instead of the parent…she sees abuse from the child's perspective and how the body feels and then how the child is made to 'feel different' in order to honor and love thy parents.

She writes, "The parenting approach know as "Poisonous Pedogogy" breeds overly well adjusted individuals who can only trust the mask they have been Forced to wear because as children they lived in constant fear of punishment. "I am bringing you up in the way that is best for you" is the supreme principle behind this approach. "If I beat you or use words to torment and humiliate you, it is for all for your own good."

"In this famous novel Fateless, the Hungarian writer and Nobel laureate Imre Kertesz describes his arrival at the Auschwitz concentration camp. He was fifteen years old at the time, and he tells us in great detail how he attempted to interpet the many grotesque and appalling things he encountered on his arrival there as something positive and favorable for him. Otherwise he would not have survived his own mortal fear."

"Probably every child who has suffered abuse must assume an attitude like this in order to survive. These children reinterpret their perceptions in a desperate attempt to see as good and beneficial things that outside observers would immediately classify as crimes. Children have no choice. They must repress their true feelings if they have no "helping witness" to turn to and are helplessly exposed to their persecutors. Later as adults lucky enough to encounter "enlightened witnesses," they do have a choice. Then they can admit the truth, their truth; they can stop pitying and "understanding" their persecutors, stop trying to feel their unsustainable, disassociated emotions, and roundly denounce the things that have been done to them. This step bring immense relief for the body. It no longer has to forcibly remind the adult self of the tragic history it went through as a child. Once the adult self has decided to find out the whole truth about itself, the body feels understood, respected, and protected."

"I call the violent kind of "upbringing" abuse, not only because children are thus refused the right to dignity and respect as human beings but also because such an approach to parenting establishes a kind of totalitarian regime in which it is impossible for children to perceive the humilations, indignities, and disrespect they have been subjected to, let alone defend themselves against them. These patterns of childhood will inevitably then be adopted by their victims and used on their partners and their own children, at work, in politics, wherever fear and anxiety of the profoundly insecure child can be fended off with the aid of external power. It is in this way that dictators are born; these are people with a deep-seated contempt for everyone else, people who were never respected as children and thus do their utmost to earn that respect at a later stage with the assistance of the gigantic power apparatus they have built around them."

"The sphere of politics is an excellent example of the way in which the hunger for power and recognition is never stilled. It is insatiable, it can never be entirely satisfied. The more power these people have, the more they are spurred on to actions of compulsory repetition, restore the initial feelings of impotence they were trying to escape; Hitler is his bunker, Stalin in his paranoid fears, Mao in the final rejection by his people, Napoleon in exile, Milosevic in prison, Saddam Hussein in his mortifying fall from power. What impelled these men to abuse the power they had achieved to such a pitch that it ultimately plunged them into impotence and powerlessness? I believe it was their bodies. Their bodies sustained the knowledge of the impotence they felt in childhood; they stored such knowledge in their cells, and they set out to force their "owners" to face up to that knowledge. But the reality of their childhood instilled such fear in the hearts of these dictators that they preferred to wipe out whole peoples, to exterminate millions of human beings, rather than confront the truth – their truth." Alice Miller

I am reading this book for the second time, and it once again has a much broader meaning to me, than the first time around. I am now able to see more potently the actual ways a child has to disregard its own body in order to survive, to look for 'positive' so not to drown in its own mortal fears…and how quickly an outsider can spot the crimes, while those within are unable to see.

I have experienced the view of being an outsider and the quick slamming of the door behind me as I stood on the sidewalk, for the 'family unit' couldn't withstand the truth…mine and theirs.

Their impotency against truth is what causes such insane behavior. Their lack of self power and worth has them snubbing outside…like that is where their truth lives…within us.

You can berate me and kick me out of your life, but your truth, just as in the Dictators of the past did…but you are kicking us so as to NOT feel and own your own truth.

I know that I have been kicked aside. And it has nothing to do with me, but it has much more to do with the individual's fear of their own truths. By keeping me out of their worlds, they like the 15 year old Hungarian Boy, keep their concentration camp a place of positive living…of love, peace and joy.

I am so grateful that I was able to have the courage to see my own truth…

What I didn't know, is that the most violent among us are those who are in mortal fear of seeing their childhoods in Reality's Light.

That their violent behavior is to keep themselves from feeling the truth about their parents.

So, as you go forth on this New Year's day, be careful what you seek for your self in 2012.

If you seek, like I did, a life filled with love, peace and joy; you will first have to find all the places you have it wrong. It has been 7 years of learning what isn't…in order for me to then set forth again.

My wish for you is your own wish for your self.

January 1, 2012
More Peace in 2012

"Power vs Force" by David Hawkins.

He writes explaining the difference between Power and Force.

"On examination, we'll see that power arises from meaning. It has to do with motive, and it has to do with principle. Power is always associated with that which supports the significance of life itself. It appeals to that part of human nature that we call noble – in contrast to force, which appeals to that which we call crass. Power appeals to what uplifts, dignifies, and ennobles. Force mus always be justified, whereas power requires no justification. Force is associated with the partial, power with the whole."

"If we analyze the nature of force, it becomes readily apparent why it must succumb to power; this is in accordance with one of the basic laws of physics. Because force automatically creates counter-force, its effect is limited by definition. We could say that force is a movement – It goes from here to there (or tries to) against opposition. Power, on the other hand, is still. It's like a standing field that doesn't move. Gravity itself, for instance, doesn't move against anything. Its power moves all objects within its field, but the gravity field itself does not move."

"Force always moves against something, whereas power doesn't move against anything at all. Force is incomplete and therefore has to be fed energy constantly. Power is total and complete in itself and requires nothing from outside."

"It makes no demands; it has no needs. Because force has an insatiable appetite, it constantly consumes. Power, in contrast, energizes, gives forth, supplies, and supports."

"Power gives life and energy – force takes these away. We notice that power is associated with compassion and makes us feel positively about ourselves. Force is associated with judgment and makes us feel poorly about ourselves."

"Force always creates counterforce; its effect is to polarize rather than unify. Polarization always implies conflict; its cost, therefore, is always high. Because force incites polarization, it inevitably produces a win/lose dichotomy; and because somebody always loses, enemies are created. Constantly faced with enemies, force requires constant defense. Defensiveness is invariably costly, whether in the marketplace, politics, or international affairs."

"In looking for the source of power, we've noted that it's associated with meaning, and this meaning has to do with the significance of life itself. Force is concrete, literal, and arguable. It requires proof and support. The sources of power, however, are inarguable and aren't subject to proof. The self-evident isn't arguable. That health is more important than disease, that life is more important than death, that honor is preferable to dishonor, that faith and trust are preferable to doubt and cynicism, that the constructive is preferable to the destructive – all are self-evident statements not subject to proof. Ultimately, the only thing we can say about a source of power is that it just "is."

"Every civilization is characterized by native principles. if the priciples of a civilization are noble, it succeeds; if they're selfish it fails. As a term, principles may sound abstract, but the consequences of principle are quite concrete. If we examine principles, we'll see that they reside in an invisible realm within consciousness itself. Although we can point out examples of honesty in the world, honesty itself as an organizing principle central to civilization does not independently exist anywhere in the external world. True power, hen emanates from consciousness itself; what we see is a visible manifestation of the invisible."

"Pride, nobility of purpose, sacrifice for quality of life – all such things are considered inspirational, giving life significance. But what actually inspires us in the physical world are things that symbolize concepts with powerful meanings for us. Such symbols realign our motives wiht abstract principle. A symbol can marshall great power because of the principle that already resides within our consciousness."

Meaning is so important that when life losses meaning, suicide commonly ensues. When life loses meaning, we first go into depression; when life becomes sufficiently meaningless, we leave it altogether. Force has transient goals; when those goals are reached, the emptiness of meaninglessness remains. Power, on the other hand, motivates us endlessly. If our lives are dedicated, for instance, to enhancing the welfare of everyone we contact, our lives can never lose meaning. If the purpose of our life, on the other hand, is financial success, what happens after it's been attained? This is one of the primary causes of depression in middleaged men and women."

"The disillusionment of emptiness comes from failing to align one's life with the principles from which power originates. A useful illustration of this phenomenon can be seen in the lives of great musicians, composers, and conductors of our own times. How frequently they continue productive careers into their 80's and 90's, often having children and living vigorously until a ripe old age! Their lives have been dedicated to the creation and embodiement of beauty, which incorporates and expresses enormous power. We know clinically that alignment with beauty is associated with longevity and vigor -because beauty is a function of creativity, such longevity is common in all creative occupations." David Hawkins.

"Force always moves against something," is the line that really caught my eye. For I can tell immediately when I bump into force energy, they are always prepared for battle…seeing first the potential enemy before friend, they react in fear.

When I meet someone who operates in power, they are open minded, trusting, vulnerable, honest, safe…and there is nothing I can do to rattle their cage.

The complete opposite of folks who operate on Force. There is nothing you can do to prove trustworthiness, for they don't even entertain the idea, for they can't relax and let anyone in.

Dysfunctional families operate purely on force.

What I find is that there is nothing you as an individual can do to prove your own worthiness, for they see the world from their own front porch, and inside is unworthiness.

The view of the world is that of force…nothing is gained unless it is forced. They are afraid of no force living, of allowing and giving freedom, of entertaining the idea of self empowerment.

Power like gravity doesn't move against anything…it simply just is.

I am no longer against anyone, I am with me.

I walk not to prove anything, I walk with me.

There is a huge and slight difference between power and force and by chosing one or the other; the whole world changes.

Each person that switches their lives from force to power, creates a ripple affect, and there is one less person who has an enemy to fight…

Peace on Earth happens one person at a time…May there be more peace in 2012.

December 31, 2011

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30

I M Perfect, and it is impossible not to be.

Silence is upon them.

That is Me.

Feel Kind

Where Love Lives.

My Wonderful Life.

Where the Heart Lives

Signs of Change.

His Daughter to Live hers Well.

New Blog Site

Your Inner Spark