Tag: Knowledge

We no longer follow the truth…

About Faith, from the book, "The Voice of Knowledge" by Janet Mills and Don Miguel Ruiz. It is a long post, but I love the information in it. It explains that it is not what we believe, but what we put our faith behind…that steers our worlds. It isn't what we believe, but that we believe it.

"Faith is a force that comes from our integrity. It is the expression of what we really are. Faith is the power of our creation because we use faith to create our life story and to transform our life story. Different traditions have called this power by different names. The Toltec call it intent, but I prefer to call it faith."

"Let's see if we can understand why our faith is so important. When we talk about faith or intent, we are also talking about the power of the word. The word is pure magic. It is a power that comes directly from God, and faith is the force that directs that power. We can say that everything in our virtual reality is created with the word because we use the word for the creation of our story. Humans have the most wonderful imagination. Beginning with the word, we form a language. With a language , we try to make sense out of everything we experience."

"First we agree about the sound and meaning of each word. Then just remembering the sound of the words, we can communicate with other dreamers about our virtual reality. We give names to everything we perceive; we choose words as symbols, and these symbols have power to reproduce a dream in our head. For example, just hearing the word horse can reproduce an entire image in our mind. That's how a symbol works. But it can even be more powerful than that. Just by saying two words, "The Godfather," a whole movie can appear in our mind. The word, as a symbol, has the magic and power of creation because it can reproduce an image, a concept, or an entire situation in our imagination."

"It is amazing what the word can do. The word creates images of objects in our mind. The word creates complex concepts. The word evokes feelings. The word creates every belief that we store in our mind. The structure of our language shapes how we perceive our entire virtual reality."

"Faith is so important because it is the force that gives life to every word, to every concept that we store in our mind. We can say that life manifests through faith, and that faith is the messenger of life. Life goes through our faith and then our faith gives life to everything we agree to believe in. Remember, we invest our faith by making an agreement. We we agree with a concept, we accept the concept without any doubt, and the concept becomes a part of us. If we don't agree with the concept, our faith is not there, and we don't keep it in our memory. Every concept is alive just because our faith is there, just because we believe in the concept. Faith is the force that holds all of these symbols together and gives sense and direction to the entire dream."

"If you can imagine every belief, every concept, every opinion is like a brick, then our faith is the mortar that holds the bricks together. The way we start getting these bricks and putting them together is by using our attention. Humans can perceive millions of things simultaneously, but with our attention we have the power to discriminate and focus only on what we want to perceive. The attention is also the part of our mind that we use to transfer information from person to person. By hooking someones attention, we create a channel of communication, and through that channel we can send and receive information. This is how we teach, and this is how we learn."

"As I have said, our parents hook our attention and teach us the meaning of words; we agree, and we learn a language. Through language, the word, we start to build the edifice of knowledge. Together, all of our beliefs form a structure that tells us what we believe we are. The Toltec call this shape that our mind takes the human form. The human form is not the form of our physical body. The human form is the structure of our personal Tree of Knowledge. It is everything we believe about being human; it is the structure of our whole story. This structure is almost as solid as our physical body because our faith makes it rigid."

"You call yourself a human, and that is what makes you a human. Your faith is invested in your story – mostly in the main character of your story – and that is the main problem. The most powerful part of you your faith, is invested in the liar who lives in your head. Through your faith, you give life to all of those lies. The result is the way you live your life in the present moment because you have faith in the main character of your story. This means that you believe in what you believe you are without any doubt. The rest is jut action-reaction. Every habit is a setup for you to perform the role of your main character."

"The storyteller has power over you because you have faith in the story that it tells you. Once you support the story with your faith, it doesn't matter whether the story is the truth or not the truth. You believe it; you are done. Thy will be done. That is why Jesus said that if you have just a little faith you can move mountains. Humans are powerful because we have a strong faith; we have the capacity to believe strongly, but where is our faith invested? Why do we feel that we have hardly any faith? I can tell you that it's not true that we have so little faith. Our faith is strong and powerful, but our faith is not free. Our faith is invested in all of the knowledge in our head. It is trapped in the structure of our Tree of Knowledge."

"The structure is what really controls the dream of our life because our faith lives in that structure. Our faith is not in the voice of our story, and it's not in our reasoning mind. Just because we say, "I will succeed," doesn't mean that our faith follows the words. No, there may be another belief that is stronger and deeper, and that belief is telling us, "You will not succeed." And that is what happens. It doesn't matter what we do; we fail."

"That is why you cannot change yourself just by wishing to change. No, you need to really challenge what you believe you are, especially the beliefs that limit the expression of your life. You need to challenge every belief that you use to judge yourself, to reject yourself, to make yourself little."

"I remember one of my apprentices asking me, "Miguel, why is it so difficult to change my beliefs?" And I told him, "Well, you understand the concept that what you believe you are is not the truth; it's a story. You understand that very well, but you don't believe it. And that is what makes the difference. If you really believe it, if your faith is there, then you change."

"So yes, it is possible to change what we believe, to recreate the dream of our life, but first we need to free our faith. And there is only one way to free our faith, and that is through the truth. The truth is our sword, and it's the only weapon we have against the lies. Nothing but the truth can free the faith that is trapped in the structure of our lies. But with our faith invested in the lies, we no longer see the truth. The lies blind our faith, the power of our creation."

"Blind faith is a powerful concept. When our faith is blind, we no longer follow the truth…" Don Miguel Ruiz

February 26, 2012

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How we were treated.

I listened to the book, "The Voice of Knowledge" by Janet Mills and Don Miguel Ruiz, and found this part to hit close to home.

"When we discover that we are not what we believe we are, the foundation of our entire reality begins to collapse. The whole story loses its meaning, and this is very frightening."

" I was not afraid in the desert that night. But when I recovered, I felt fear because nothing in my story was important any longer and I still had to function in the world. Later, I discovered that I could rewrite the story of my life. I could recover the structure of what I believed and rebuild it without the lies. Then life went on as it did before, but the lies no longer ruled my life."

What I too recall is that you are left without a place to put your faith, you no longer can support the lies, yet you haven't rebuilt your life without lies.

The difference between a structure of lies and a structure of truth is so completely different…

You may think of 'the lies' having to be big, but the little ones you park your faith behind are equally as devastating to your life…when you believe them.

I discovered thousands of lies that I had built my life upon. He writes about two rules to avoid getting caught up in lies.

"Don't believe yourself and don't believe anybody else – all of the lies that come from the voices of knowledge won't survive your skepticism. Being skeptical is not about being judgmental; it is not about taking the position that you are more intelligent than others. You just don't believe, and what is true will become obvious. This is very interesting because the truth survives your skepticism even if you don't believe it. That is the beauty of the truth. The truth doesn't need anybody to believe it. The truth is still the truth whether or not you can believe it. Can we say the same about lies? No, lies only exist because we believe them. If we don't believe in lies, they simply disappear." Don Miguel

Isn't it amazing that by not believing yourself or others, the truth will rise to the surface, for the truth doesn't need anyone to believe it, it just is.

By removing your faith in what you believe, you are then putting your faith in what you don't believe…but what is. I am not certain I can articulate this, so I highly recommend reading this book.

But, in my own life, there were great big lies that I put my faith behind, and those lies had baby lies that I put my faith behind and I didn't allow any of my faith to be used for the truth.

It seems we are given only so much faith, and if we invest it in lies, it leaves little faith for the truth.

When I withdrew my faith in the lies…I had ample faith to then put into what was the truth.

He further writes, "Many lies enslave us, but only one thing can free us, and it's the truth. Only truth can set us free from the fear, the drama, and the conflict in our lives. This is the absolute truth, and I cannot put it more simply than that."

"The Voice of Knowledge rules your life, and it is a tyrant. If you refuse to obey that voice, it becomes quieter and quieter, and speaks to you less and less until it no longer controls you. When the voice loses power over you, lies no longer rule your life, and you become authentic again."

"The Voice of Knowledge is not real. Before you learn to speak, your brain is like a perfect computer, but without a program. when you are born you don't know a language. It takes several years for your brain to mature enough to receive a program. Then the program is introduced to you mainly through your parents, as well as other people around you. They hook your attention and teach you the meaning of words. You learn to speak, and the program goes inside you little by little by agreement. You agree, and now you have a program."

"Well, if you are the computer, then the knowledge is the program. Everything you know, all of the knowledge in your head, was already in the program before you were born. I can assure you that none of us ever has an original idea. Every letter, every word, every concept in your belief system is part of the program, and that program is contaminated with a virus called lies."

"There's no need to judge the program as good or bad or right or wrong. Even if we don't like the program, nobody is guilty for sharing it with us. It's just the way it is, and it's wonderful because we use the program to create our stories. But who is running our life? The program! The program has a voice, and it's lying to us all the time."

"How can we know what the truth is when almost everything we have learned is a lie? How can we recognize what is real in us? Well, it took some time for me to find out, but I found out. Our emotions are real. Every emotion that we feel is real, it is the truth, it is. I discovered that every emotion comes directly from spirit, from our integrity; it is completely authentic."

"You cannot fake what you feel. You can try to repress your emotions, you can try to justify what you feel or lie about what you feel, but what you feel is authentic. It is real, and you are feeling it. There is nothing wrong with whatever you feel. There are no good or bad emotions; there is nothing wrong with anger or jealousy or envy. Even if you are feeling hate, it comes from your integrity. Even if it's sadness or depression that you are suffering, if you feel it, there is always a reason for feeling it."

"I discovered something very interesting about the human mind, something logical and important to understand. Everything you perceive causes an emotional reaction – everything. If you perceive beauty, your emotional reaction is wonderful; you feel great. When you are hurt, your emotional reaction is not so great. But you perceive not just the outside world; you perceive the virtual world you create in your head. You perceive not only your feelings, but your knowledge – your own thoughts, judgments, and beliefs. You perceive the voice in your head, and have an emotional reaction to that voice."

"Now the question is this; What is the voice in your head telling you? How many times has it told you, "God, I'm so stupid, how could I do that? I will never learn!" The voice of knowledge judges you, you perceive the judgment, and you have an emotional reaction. You feel the shame; you feel the guilt. The emotion is true, but what causes the emotion, which is the judgment that you are stupid, is not true; it's a story. Again, this is just action-reaction. What is the action? The action is the perception of your point of view, which means the perception of your own judgment. What is the reaction? Your feelings are the reaction, and you react to lies with emotional poison."

"Let's see if we can understand this a little better. Imagine that you have a dog. As you know, the dog is just a dog, and it's a perfect dog, isn't it? But what happens if you abuse the dog? What if every time you see the dog, you kick the dog? Very soon the dog will be afraid. You can see the emotions coming from the dog. It is angry; it might try to bite you or run away. Is there something wrong with the dog's emotions? Does the dog's anger make the dog evil? No, the dog's reaction is just the result of being abused. The emotion is helping the dog to defend itself. It comes from the dogs integrity." Don Miguel

What I love about the way he breaks this down is that we are programmed to believe in lies and taught how to act by how we were treated.

February 25, 2012

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Eyes of a Child

While mowing the grass last night it came to me that the attacking and jousting for position isn’t about whether there is abuse or not abuse, what was right or wrong, or even the way it is treated or not treated, but rather a more subtle yet ferocious component, it is the fear of no love.

I have mistaken this for the strength of love, but it is actually velocity of fear.

Many of the old Masters and wise teachers have all alluded to this; you get to live your life based on fear or on love.

What we are experiencing is as old as time, the two energies showing their true natures, two sides meeting and clashing, the polar opposites opposing each other.

Fear is False Events Appearing Real, so what we really have is the battle between the truth and what is not the truth.

Don Miguel Ruiz writes, “You know, most people around the world believe that there is a great conflict in the Universe, a conflict of good and evil. Well, that is not true. It’s true that there is a conflict, but the conflict only exists in the human mind, not in the Universe. It’s not true for the plants or the animals. It’s not true for the stars and the trees, or for the rest of nature. It’s only true for humans. And the conflict in the human mind is not between good and evil. The real conflict in our mind is between the truth and what is not the truth, between the truth and lies. Good and evil are just the result of that conflict. The result of believing in the truth is goodness, love, happiness. When you live your life in truth, you feel good, and your life is wonderful. The result in believing lies creates what you call evil; it creates fanaticism. Believing in lies creates all of the injustices, all of the violence and abuse, all of the suffering, not only in society but also in the individual. The Universe is as simple as it is or it is not, but humans complicate everything.” Don Miguel Ruiz

Life is really this simple, it is or it is not.

What we are arguing about is what is or what is not.

Who is or who is not.

It isn’t complicated or deep and children do this well.

Don Miguel writes, “"As little children, we are completely authentic. We never pretend to be what we are not. Our tendency is to play and explore, to live in the moment, to enjoy life. Nobody teaches us to be that way; we are born that way. This is our true nature before we learn to speak."

This is what I believe Jesus meant by believing like little children; to be in the truth, to walk with the truth, to see the truth, to be authentic.

Read more from Don Miguel on this subject in Carl’s blog,

www.messyguru.typepad.com Titled, "Being Effortless."

What Don Miguel stated, “The result in believing lies creates what you call evil; it creates fanaticism.” Fanaticism is the key component that makes up cults or extreme religions; they are not based on extreme love.

Fanatics are extremists, and from my experience of the FALC they all believe in lies… Lies, which create evil.

The lies I am speaking most generally about is, that they believe they can wash away reality and that it will no longer exist, and that is one major lie.

The mother of all lies that follow.

They have complete faith in something that isn’t real, their faith and trust is placed fear.

And this act alone creates the fanatical responses, the evil energies we feel attacking us. We do not feel the energies of love, but the biting words of fear.

And sometimes after they bite us, they come back with ‘love’ words; they try hiding their fear with kind words, for even their own evil scares them.

What I hadn’t considered or understood was the level or degree of evil and lies they had faith in, and how frightened or terrified they are to have it disclosed and revealed…

However, I recall vividly the moment all my true lies collapsed, when all I had faith in evaporated and the terror it left me standing in…and yet in the exact same moment when my world collapsed a grand new one was born, the world of truth.

And I truly became like a child again. I didn’t hear what people were saying, but I watched their actions. Words became meaningless, actions was the true path I followed.

This world of truth became a spectacular landscape which was very easy to walk in, it was steady and never changing, and there was nothing I had to learn, do or believe in, it was all there in front of me.

I gave up all past beliefs and thoughts, and simply walked in life with eyes of a child.

September 29, 2011

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They speak in Lies.

Don Miguel Ruiz said “There are two kinds of Angels, the angel of lies and the angel of truth.”

Isn’t it odd to look at the two different kinds of angels?

I know that my family does not like to see me as an Angel of Truth; they would love me much better as the Angel of Lies, and the way I used to be.

Oh was I a good angel of lies. I was the best, I would tell you anything you wanted to hear, but never, not ever the truth…for I wouldn’t want to hurt you.

I was a good angel of lies and my self suffered greatly.

For in order to be a wonderful angel of lies, you lose your self. You turn away from your own feelings, and choose not to see others in their true colors.

The Angel of Truth speaks with impeccable words, her actions match and she says what she has to say, no matter how they land upon your world.

I have lived both ways and as the Angel of Lies, I seen the world through glasses that lied to me. I lied and it lied back.

I pretended many things, overlooked much, and didn’t see life as it was in its naked rawness and beauty.

While my journey has been horrific in many places, where the truth is exposed like a monster, I have also seen great beauty, love, peace and joy, that my lying angel refused to see.

When I first began to see without my lying eyes, I saw things that brought me to my knees, okay flat in bed. But those same eyes bathed my body in nature’s beauty.

I seen the sunrise and felt God looking upon me. The night sky was filled with loving angels, the moon another loving presence.

I watched the flow of the river and knew that same energy flowed through me.

My truthful eyes saw God everywhere.

So, while it was hard to get used to my truthful eyes, especially seeing that which prior I covered with lies, it was also the biggest blessing in my world.

I love that I can see now as God sees.

I love that there are angels of lies and angels of truth.

I love that I have been able to be both in this lifetime.

What I know is that many in my family are loving their roles as Angels of Lies, and they are being rewarded by staying close to their mother, their siblings, a family of lying Angels, all resuming life after a bit of truth blew in, they quickly got back to life as it was before.

And it is very different when you begin to see truth; you are set aside from the liars. Our words and actions don’t match; our wings clash.

I flew alone for a while and slowly I am finding Angels of Truth to hang with. We are a rare bunch, seen as mental by some, cold and bitter by others…(hey, isn’t it said that truth is often times a bitter pill to swallow.) We are often depicted as home wreckers, spoil sports, insane, crazy, mad…

What I know to be true for me is that life as an Angel of Truth is magnificent, easy, peaceful, wise, perfect, and it walks hand and hand with God.

I do recognize that when I speak as the Angel of Truth, I will get feedback that isn’t kind or supportive or loving from the Angels of Lies. They are first to spread lies about me, that is their role. They are only doing what Angels of Lies do…they speak in lies.

Don Miguel says there is only one conflict in the human experience; the conflict between truth and lies.

September 23, 2011

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Alice Miller, again. I love her fearlessness.

Chapter 4 in Banished Knowledge by Alice Miller titled “Why I Reject Psychoanalysis Also as a Therapy Method.”

“Following my interview for the April 1987 issue of the German Journal Psychologie heute (Psychology Today), in which I declared my break with psychoanalysis, I was asked several times whether I didn’t owe psychoanalysis the means that enabled me to query it. Today I can answer this question with a clear No. As recently as in my preface to the first German edition of “Thou Shalt Not Be Aware”, I succumbed to the error myself. Yet later developments showed me unmistakably that psychoanalysis is a maze from which it is very difficult to find a way out. Without the illusionary help of psychoanalysis, which further the resistance to knowledge about past events, there is no doubt that I would have found my way to the truth sooner.”

“I owe my first awakening to the spontaneous pictures that I began to paint in 1973. Nevertheless, even years later, 1981, I still closed my eyes to the fact that psychoanalysis was the very thing that kept me away from feelings blocked since my childhood and thus from the truth. I didn’t discover this until, thanks to J. Konrad Stettbacher’s method, I could approach my childhood step by step.”

“What I find most convincing about this method is its openness to creativity, its precision, its effectiveness, its verifiability, and its respect for the uniqueness and special quality of each individual life and history. Since it makes the path to reality possible and is not afraid of reality, it is free of lies, of being enmeshed in any way with them, free of clichés, pedagogy, moralizing norms, spiritual mystifications, and any and all associated ideological trimmings.”

“On the other hand, there is proof that these elements are present in psychoanalysis, and I have supplied such proofs in my earlier books. Today I realize: It was an illusion to believe that the remains of pedagogy could be removed from psychoanalysis, leaving it still suitable for the liberation of those seeking help. It is no coincidence that psychoanalysis has not yet undertaken any revision of it immanent pedagogy; it cannot do this, for as soon as the pedagogic scaffolding is removed the whole structure will collapse like a house of cards. Since in the past psychoanalysis has served only to disguise childhood traumas, how can it be expected to help abused children? This inability is revealed not only in its theory but also in every detail of its technique – which is useless for getting at the truth.”

“Even if some analysts do wish not to manipulate their patients according to theories and pedagogic morality, but wish instead to accompany them in the discovery of their history, they are bound to fail as long as they work with the method of free association. This method, also known as a basic rule, reinforces intellectual resistance to feelings and reality; for as long as feelings can be talked about they cannot really be felt. And as long as feelings are not felt, the self-damaging blockages remain.”

“Both basic rules – the psychoanalytic setting as well as the method of free association – assume that on the one side there is a superior, informed interpreter, the analyst, and on the other the uninformed patient to whom the analyst explains his situation, his unconscious desires, thoughts and impulses. For the analyst to be able to do this, the patient must as it were uncover, betray, and expose his unconscious with the aid of free association. Thus the authoritarian structure of childhood is preserved unthinkingly in both basic rules. Parents, too, told the child from their perspective how he felt, or how he was supposed to feel, and the child believed that they knew better than he did.”

“On the basis of the pedagogic model, indissolubly coupled as it is with Freudian constructs, the student analysands learn to discuss the patient’s emotions and “to be in the know,” but never to feel anything themselves. No wonder they in turn cannot enable anyone else to feel anything. The patient senses that inability and as a rule will not dare to admit any feelings. If he does, perhaps because he has read books that for the first time opened up some access to his pain, he will quickly learn in psychoanalytic practice to bring order into his suffering, to define it with abstract words, and to manipulate it so as to ‘feel better’ again. He will sense that the interpreters of his soul feel threatened by emotions, because in their constructs they have learned only how to fend them off, and he will do anything to avoid exposing his substitute parents to this threat. He will adapt to their method of free association and talk to them about his feelings without realizing that he is letting himself in for years and years of wandering about in a maze, while in the meantime he is missing his chance of living. For his benumbed life cannot awaken until the child’s confrontation with the authors of his suffering begins; until the patient ceases to philosophize and wonder why his parents did this or that to him and instead begins, with the aid of numerous transferences, to uncover what exactly they did do; until in therapy he can finally confront his internalized parents with his suffering; until with each new pain reminding him of the old one he tries to tell himself what he is feeling and then tests the situation. Just as Daniel did. That which the unharmed child can externalize with his reference persons in reality, the once harmed adult has to try out and learn within the protective setting of therapy. How this works in each case has been made clear in Stettbacher’s description of his method.”

“ It is not possible for someone really to clarify his situation and dissolve his fears until he can feel them rather than discuss them. Only then is the veil lifted and he realizes his true need: not a tutor, not an interpreter, not a confuser; he needs space for his own growth and the company of an enlightened witness on the long journey on which he has set out.”

“Someone who has himself never learned to feel will not know that he makes it impossible for the other person, the patient to feel. It is enough, for instance, to explain to the patient the distress of his parents or of other people for all the patient’s latent reproaches to be instantly silenced. He hasn’t any, he isn’t aware of any, all he feels is pity for the authors of his distress. For it is impossible to feel the pain and at the same time understand why it was inflicted. Once simply does not feel it.”

“It took me years to get away from this “understanding” attitude. The habit, originating in psychoanalysis, of working with free associations proved to be a great obstacle in my own therapy. Time after time, free association enabled me to establish ingenious, intellectual links and thus obtain what I imagined was an overview. This helped me to evade the painful confrontation with my parents and in turn blocked all the avenues through which I might have gained some insight into the reality of my childhood. As long as I could put a name to my feelings, I retained the mastery over the child in me, and making it impossible for her to find her language, the language of hitherto unnamed sensations and feelings. The technique of the four steps helped me become aware of this blockage because I found that, significantly I tended to skip the first two steps. Finally, after a long time, I could allow the child in me to express her sensations and feelings and to take her time doing so. But she could feel only when the adult, educated part of me allowed this to happen and without interference of explanations and associations.”

“This experience helped me to discover that Freud, with his method, created a system of self-deception that functioned reliably to promote repression. Anyone who does not want to know the truth of his life will find psychoanalysis helpful. In any case he will be helped to reinforce the old resistance to the injuries suffered in childhood and never find out the truth about what happened.”

“Philosophers and other intellectuals have fashioned numerous ways of keeping pain at a distance with the aid of thoughts and of disregarding the realities of life with the aid of an ostensibly defining language. In fact, Martin Heidegger made this is goal of his philosophy. He touched on his former painful and denied experiences only with abstract thoughts that excluded any feelings of the child since the child would have recognized the self-deception. For him there was no duality of passion and thought but only passionate thought, which did not advance toward truth as a result of the thinking process but was itself the goal. It is said that, to make this clear, he once told his students, on introducing Aristotle: “Aristotle was born, worked, and died.” In other words: It is the philosopher’s work that counts not his life.”

“Until a few years ago I might have thought that Heidegger’s error could be regarded has harmless and unimportant as long as his philosophy was not used to confuse the masses. But today I am no longer sure, for recently I have received some proofs to the contrary – among other things, letters from several woman philosophers writing to tell me that, through my books, they had for the first time grasped to what extent philosophy had kept them away from the truth. Its complicated thought processes had helped them not to see that they had been abused children. In spite of the suffering that now erupted, they were glad not to have completely missed the chance to live their lives, for they were still young enough to make use of it.”

“It is possible for a child to protect himself all through life from the tragic, unbearable truth by “passionate thinking” about “the nature of truth” and, as long as his symptoms do not sound the alarm, there the matter rests. However, psychoanalysis is a system that offers the very people who have symptoms to escape from their plight. That is why such people must be told that they can expect no solution from psychoanalysis. The most they can expect is a maze of well-intended paths but with no exit into freedom. It is a prison built with theories of a man who a century ago found himself in the same quandary as most patients do today. To escape insight into martyrdom of his childhood, he fled into the garden of thought constructs, and for a while his symptoms disappeared. But they came back despite increasing efforts to keep the artificial structure from collapsing.”

“Galileo went blind after being forced by the Church to repudiate the truth against his better knowledge. Sigmund Freud forbade himself to voice the truth he had discovered about child abuse and its effects on the psyche of the adult. He betrayed his own discovery after his father’s death. When I read that he later suffered from cancer of the jaw and that after many operations he finally died of it, I have to ask myself whether his jaw was not rebelling on behalf of the truth on which he chose to turn his back. Although my question is to be regarded as a hypothesis which, in the absence of the person involved, I cannot put to the test, I have noticed that, among the innumerable analysts who are so fond of handing out interpretations to their dependent patients, not one of them, as far as I know, has yet published an interpretation of Freud’s illness. Are the disciples not permitted even to wonder why a venerated father figure contracted cancer of the jaw? May interpretations be given only to dependent persons – children and patients? Doesn’t this amount to admitting that interpretations are weapons used against the helpless but not against authority held in awe? Patients are fed all kinds of constructs by the old man and believed that this is genuine nourishment. They believe everything because they need someone who will at last listen to them. And they do not see through the abuse because someone who in childhood experienced nothing but abuse is unable later in life to see through it.”

“The man who was no longer allowed to utter the truth instead wrote volume after volume whose style was universally admired and whose contents led humanity into utter confusion. So “passionate thinking” is by no means as harmless as it appears. In my opinion, everything that suppresses the truth is destructive, even if the consequences cannot be fully realized until much later.”

“In my view, Stettbacher succeeded in finding a way to the injured child in the adult, letting that child express himself with the aid of feelings, and in conceptualizing this way of experiencing the past. This is not to say that there can be no other methods that, based on the same insight into early injuries, enable the same goal to be achieved. The efficacy of various methods will become apparent as soon as publications on the subject become available.”

“Yet one thing remains certain: Since the injured child in us can express himself only by means of physical sensations and feelings related to his traumas, it is essential that therapy secure access to these sensations and feelings and enable the person to articulate them. However, this access remains completely blocked whenever we are satisfied with intellectual speculations, as is the case in psychoanalysis. No matter how impressive and fashionable these speculations may be, they never go beyond the state of self-deception.”

“The invoking of great names such as Freud, Jung, Adler, and others as well as the application of their theories – theories that resist emotions and conceal the truth- cannot possibly help a therapist to rid a patient permanently of his neurosis. They will only produce new, emotion-resistant and ignorant “therapists” who cannot but remain ignorant as long as they cling to fictions, do not query what they once learned, are afraid of the truth, and wish to exert power.”

“The goal of therapy is to allow the once silenced child in us to speak and feel. Gradually the banishment of our knowledge is revoked, and in the course of this process, as the erstwhile torments and the still-existent prisons become evident, we also discover our history, ourself, and our buried capacity for love. A therapy of this kind can be carried out only by a therapist, female or male, who no longer keeps the child in himself and that child’s knowledge in a state of banishment or who at least is moving in that direction – because he wants at all costs to find the truth about himself.” Alice Miller.

May 26, 2011

abuse, Alice, Banished, childhood, false, Knowledge, methods, Miller, treatments, truth
Production of Evil

I am thinking Alice Miller may be one of my new favorite authors on Childhood and its affects as well as understanding why parents do what they do.

Here is what she writes on the back of her book, “Banished Knowledge”

“The JUngian doctrine of the shadow, and the notion that evil is the reverse of good, are aimed at denying the reality of evil. But evil is real. It is not innate but acquired, and it is never the reverse of good but rather its destroyer…It is not true that evil, destructiveness, and perversion inevitably form part of human existence, no matter how often this is maintained. But it is true that evil is always engaged in producing more evil and, with it, an ocean of suffering for millions that is similarly avoidable. When one day the ignorance arising from childhood repression is eliminated and humanity has awakened, an end can be put to this production of evil.”

May 22, 2011

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Theories as a Protective Shield

“Theories as a Protective Shield” chapter 4, in Banished Knowledge by Alice Miller, she writes…

“The feminist movement will forfeit none of its strength if it finally admits that mothers also abuse their children. Only the truth, even the most uncomfortable, endows a movement with the strength to change society, not the denial of truth. When men abuse their women and the women put up with it, both the violence of the men and the tolerance of the women are consequences of early child abuse. Hence young children, male as well as female, can become victims of adults of either sex. When sensitive nonbrutal women (and men) are incapable of protecting their children from the brutality of their partner, one must contribute this inability to the blinding process and the intimidation experienced in their own childhood. That is the simple truth. Only when these roots of all violence are exposed is it possible to examine the phenomena without retouching or embellishing them.”

“When a female therapist has been taught that men are solely to blame for all the evil of the world, she will, of course, be able to support her female patients when they eventually discover that they have been sexually abused by their fathers, grandfathers, or brothers: Unlike the followers of the drive theory, she will not talk them out of this truth. But as long as the truth about their mother who allowed the abuse to happen, who failed to protect the child and ignored her distress, is kept out of sight, the full reality is not allowed to be either perceived or acknowledged. And as long as the child’s feelings cannot be experienced, the rage against me – a rage she can already experience – remains impotent; it can even remain coupled with the undissolved loyalty and devotion toward the father or other abusive men.”

“When mothers are defended as pathetic victims, the female patient will not discover that with a loving, protective, perceptive, and courageous mother she could never have been abused by her father or brother. A daughter who has learned from her mother that she is worth protecting will find protection among strangers too and will be able to defend herself. When she has learned what love is, she will not succumb to simulated love. But a child who was merely pushed aside and disciplined, who never experienced soothing caresses, is not aware that anything like nonexploitative caresses can exist. She has no choice but to accept any closeness she is offered rather than be destroyed. Under certain circumstances she will even accept sexual abuse for the sake of finding at least some affection rather than freezing up entirely. When, as an adult woman, she comes to realize that she was cheated out of love, she may be ashamed of her former need and hence feel guilty. She will blame herself because she dare not blame her mother, who failed to satisfy the child’s need or perhaps even condemned it.”

“Psychoanalysts protect the father and embroider the sexual abuse of the child with the Oedipus, or Electra, complex, while some feminist therapists idealize the mother, thus hindering access to the child’s first traumatic experiences with the mother. Both approaches can lead to a dead end, since the dissolving of pain and fear is not possible until the full truth of the facts can be seen and accepted.”

“But even in the absence of ideological motives, the truth can be disregarded in therapies if the patient is offered no tolls to deal with his feelings and to systematically query and test his hypotheses. Even the harshest reproaches directed at the parents won’t help the patient achieve liberation as long as the truth remains inaccessible. This will be the case if, for example, the child had a father in whose presence he could scarcely utter a word without being interrupted and barked at. This patient may for a very long time find it impossible to achieve an inner confrontation with his father and to articulate his accusations. The liberated feelings are directed first against the mother, who terrorized the child less. The reverse may also happen – that the child feared his father less than he feared his mother and that the patient first accuses his father, quite unconsciously because the earlier experiences are still inaccessible, of things he actually experienced with his mother. Thus, based on self protection and fear, a distorted picture of the past takes shape. In the course of therapy these distortions can be corrected, provided the therapy is aimed at discovering the reality. If it is, the therapists knows that the patient can accuse only the parent in who he still had a modicum of confidence and not the parent in whose presence he had been paralyzed with fear. The therapist will help him discover the truth of his history so that he doesn’t blame the wrong people but blames those who really deserve it and, moreover, only for those deeds that were actually committed. For nobody achieves freedom by blaming people who in reality never harmed him. By directing diffuse, nonspecific, and unsubstantiated accusations at surrogate persons, the patient will achieve no improvement of his condition but will often remain in a state of disastrous confusion. Liberation comes with the ability to defend oneself where it is necessary and appropriate. The more realistic a person becomes and the more he frees himself of ideological and theoretical trimmings the better he will succeed.” Alice Miller

May 22, 2011

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What is true for me.

BE IMPECCABLE WITH YOUR WORD

Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

Here is a bit more from the chapter on applying this agreement.

“Humans are powerful creators. We are born with all the faith of the Universe, and everything we create is based on faith. That faith is really our personal power, but what has happened with our faith? We invest all our faith in our beliefs and agreements, and we are left with little power to change our lives.

Imagine that every agreement is just like a brick. Humans create an entire structure out of bricks, and we glue it together with our faith. We believe without a doubt in all the knowledge inside the structure. Our faith gets trapped inside that structure because we put our faith in each agreement. It’s not important if it is or isn’t true; we believe it, and for us it is true.

All of our power of creation is invested in our belief, and because we believe it, that’s the way it is. If we believe our knowledge, whatever we perceive will be filtered to make it fit into that knowledge. We create a personal dream that justifies the knowledge, and the outside dream proves to us that what we believe is true. The outside dream reflects our personal dream; it will justify every belief.

During all the education we receive, which means all the knowledge that is programmed in our mind, we create the concept of the I am. Everything we believe we are, everything we know about how to be a human is the I am. The Toltec call this the human form. We are not talking about the physical body, but about our own dream. When we say, “I am a man; I am a woman; I am a human, and this is my whole reality,” everything is judged by that knowledge, and of course, the dream becomes hell. That is the drama of humanity.

The dream of our life is so limited because we take all of the power of our creation and put it in a little box and with all of our power we seal the box. And we live inside the box, trapped inside that little box. Well that little box is human form. It is our creation, and all our will is invested in that I am.

Your faith is so strong that when you believe “I am never going to be this,” thy will be done, you are never going to be that. If you believe “I cannot do it,” thy will be done, you cannot do it. Whatever you believe, you put your faith in that belief, and your faith will make it true.

Don Miguel Ruiz

What I found so intriguing in this book and so affirming is, that it isn’t so much your knowledge about life and about life’s situations, but your ‘belief’ about each thing. And your belief becomes your will.

Inside each of us is the power of universe and we all use it to put our faith into certain knowledge, and that is what I life reflects, perfectly. There are no mistakes; you are what you believe your self to be.

Looking upon my last five years, it has been a battle of wills inside of me to correct my long held beliefs about myself, and make them match realities truth.

Even if intellectually I knew better, I had to wrestle with my beliefs about myself; the long established ones that were false and limiting.

Yoga has given me the inner fortitude to break down old agreements that are not true for me and to re-create new ones that bring me happiness, peace and joy in being me.

Bring faith back to me, instead into knowledge that was given to me.

Faith in myself in what I feel, and what is true for me.

September 15, 2010

belief, don miguel ruiz, faith, Knowledge, self, The four agreements

Tag: Knowledge

BE IMPECCABLE WITH YOUR WORD