I M Perfect lady

Tag: lies

  • Our Own Worst Enemy

    I heard Self Confidence described in a way I hadn't thought of it before…I believe we have an overall meaning, but not how it is derived.  What I didn't know is that our sense of self confidence comes from our inner dialogue and promises…the ones we don't keep, are actually lies to our selves.  The more we lie, the less confidence we have in our self.

    Bob Greene and Oprah were talking about starting to make healthy changes in your lifestyle, and how we tell our selves, "Monday, I will start working out…" or "Next month, I will stop eating sweets".  The damage comes when we tell ourselves these lies, for Monday rolls around and we don't do as we said.

    It is in the follow through, or the lack thereof, that our confidence in our self begins to diminish.  The more we say we are going to start and the more often we don't, we see our selves as a liar…and just as friends who fail to follow through, we  lose our ability to trust our self.

    I hadn't considered all the times I toyed with the idea of 'starting' something and didn't that I was setting a precedence inside of me to lie.  Not only lie, but then not get upset about it.  

    It is like I was okay with lying and then even more okay at being lied to…by me.  I would never do to others what I have done over and over to myself.

    And more importantly, no one that I have respect for has ever lied to me as much as I have lied to myself.

    Somehow I discount the lies I tell myself and even have become numb or deaf to the words uttered, the promises, or plans spoken, either out loud or in my head. 

    What I know is that I would never talk that way to others, nor would I tolerate this behavior from others…yet when it is between me and me, there are no boundaries.

    Even doing the Yoga Challenge, it was helpful to have told other people, so that my word wasn't just between me and me.   Like I intuitively knew, that words to just myself were not enough.  

    Now I am debating how to create a healthy food plan, and have been off of sweets now for three days.  Yet, I haven't declared this out loud or even to myself.  There is a fear there in stating something I may not be able to suceed in.  Perhaps there is a part of me that is tired of lying inside of me.

    Just as I want to do a yoga challenge, but feel that I am not ready to commit for 60 days, and yet without a challenge, I do very little yoga.

    I am at a place of not wanting false promises, but not able to commit…perhaps in this space I can't fail, for I don't even try…but I don't lie.

    I just found this so interesting…I want to nurture a friendship with myself that is free of lies and false promises, one that I can respect and honor.

    I just didn't know my friendship with myself wasn't one that I would allow from others.  And this one lives inside and directs my life…stops starting to begin a new change that will have so many rewards.  

    Even in that alone is interesting.  How I stop myself from changing out of bad habits.  We certainly are our own worst enemy.

     

     

     

  • Lies Control You.

    "Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty – that is all you know on earth, and all you need to know."  John Keats

    And Mark Nepo writes, "This is "all you need to know."  Beauty, wherever we find it, is the salve that keeps us vital and fresh.  But Truth, in its uncompromised and naked story, no matter how harsh, has a Beauty all its own that is cleansing."

    "This is why we must remember the Holocaust and other atrocities exactly as they were. This is why it is essential to bear honest witness to our own naked stories."

    "Still, as wise as the message he came upon is, there is an equal lesson in how young Keats came upon it.  For only by voicing our tender pains can we find our way to the deeper Beauties and Truths that like ropes and wheels can carry us."  Mark Nepo

    Truth, in its uncompromised and naked story, no matter how harsh, has a Beauty all its own that is cleansing."

    What I love the most about the truth, is that it is uncompromising and in that alone, it cleanses me…it is the most beautiful part of the truth, is that it is unrelenting.  And it is the Truth, and it doesn't need anyone to believe it to make it so.  It just is.

    Don Miguel Ruiz and Janet Mills write about Common Sense, in their book, "The Voice of Knowledge".

    "Common Sense exists in all of us, but we cannot see it with our attention focused on the lies we believe."

    "Lies make everything complicated, when the truth is very simple.  I think now is the time to return to the truth, to common sense, to the simplicity of life itself.  Now we know that the lies are so powerful that they blind us. Well, the truth is so powerful that when we finally return to the truth, our entire reality changes. Truth brings us back to paradise, where we experience a strong communication of love with God, with life, with all of creation."

    "When you release your faith from all the lies, the result is that you free your will.  And when your will is free, you can finally make a choice. The voice in your head gives you the illusion that you can make a choice, that you have free will.  Well, do you really believe that it's your conscious choice to hurt yourself, to make yourself suffer, to reject and abuse yourself?  How can you say that you have free will when you choose to hurt the people you love, when you judge your partner or make them miserable with your judgement?"

    "Just imagine if you really have free will, which is the power to make your own choices. Do you really choose to sabotage your own happiness or your own love?  Do you choose to judge yourself, to blame yourself, to live your life in shame and in guilt?  Do you choose to believe that you are bad, that you are not beautiful, that you don't deserve to be happy or healthy or prosperous because you are not worth it? Do you choose to constantly fight with the people you love the most?  If you have free will, you choose the opposite. I think it is obvious that our will is not free."

    "When you put your faith in truth instead of in lies, your choices change. When your will is free, your choices come from your integrity, not from the program, that liar in your head.  Now you believe whatever you want to believe, and when you have the power to believe whatever you want, something very interesting happens. What you want is to love. You don't want anything else but love because you know that what is not love is not the truth!"

    "When your will is free, you choose happiness and love and peace and harmony.  You choose to play; you choose to enjoy life. You no longer choose drama.  If in the present moment you are choosing drama, it's because you have no choice; it's a habit. It's because you were programmed to be that way, and you don't even know that you have the power to make a different choice. Something else in your head is making the choice, and it's the voice of the liar. Just like the man in the movie A Beautiful Mind, whose visions made the choices for him, your voice is making the choices for you."

    "Why would we consciously decide to have a fight with our parents or our children or our beloved?  It's not that we want to fight. You know, when we are children and we gather with other children, it's because we want to have fun and enjoy life.  When we grow up and decide to get into a relationship – mainly a romantic relationship – is it because we want to create emotional pain and drama?  No, common sense tells us that we want to play together; we want to have fun exploring life together.  But the Prince of Lies who controls the voice of knowledge represses our common sense."

    "Common Sense is wisdom, and wisdom is different from knowledge.  You are wise when you no longer act against yourself. You are wise when you live in harmony with yourself, with your own kind, with all of creation."

    "Right now you have a choice.  What are you going to do with this information?  What happens if you don't believe in lies?  Take a moment to put your attention on your feelings, to feel all of the possibilities for your life if your faith is no longer blind.  If you recover your faith from lies, your suffering is over, your judgments are over. You no longer live with guilt, with shame and anger, with jealousy.  You no longer have the need to be good enough for anybody, including yourself. You accept what you are, whatever you are, even if you don't know what you are.  And you don't care to know anymore. It's not important to know, and that is wisdom."

    "Just imagine that because you don't believe in lies, your whole life changes.  You live your life without trying to control everybody around you,  and your integrity doesn't allow anybody to control you. You no longer jduge other people or need to complain aobut whatever they do because you know you can't control what people do.  Just imagine that you choose to forgive whoever hurt you in your life because you no longer want to carry all that emotional poison in your heart. And just by forgiving everybody, even yourself, you heal your mind, you heal your heart, and you no longer have emotional pain."

    "Just imagine that you recover the power to make your own choices because you no longer believe the storyteller. You enjoy life with plentitude, with inner peace, with love.  Imagine how you treat your partner, how you treat your children, what you teach the new generation, if you no longer believe in lies.  Just imagine the change in the whole of humanity out of something so simple; not believing in lies."  Don Miguel, Janet Mills.

    I have lived completely blind with my faith tucked securely behind the lies; believing in that which wasn't true and it hurt and many suffered because of my blindness.  And for some reason, I was granted awareness to see the lies.  Unless you can spot a lie, you will not be able to see the truth. And when you can't see the truth, the lies control you.

     

  • 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.  

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  • Gaining a friend

    When I began writing, it was all about finding the truth.  I was so lost in knowing what was the truth and what was not…I wrote to find my way. 

    The reasons for this is that speaking the truth is not something that we all do.  Living the truth is for certain what we are not used to.  In fact I feel a flush of shame in speaking the truth.  Isn't that odd???

    You would think that telling lies would have me feeling the heat of getting caught, of being in trouble, and of losing friends…but for telling the truth???

    Even my new young friends have turned away…not because I lie, but because I say what is true for me.

    I don't get this…and yet I do.

    I wasn't taught to tell my truth, feel my truth and certainly not point out or act upon someone else's truth.  In fact telling the truth got me in trouble and was cause for a cold shoulder, annihilation.  And it still remains that way from folks who know, but don't want me to say.

    No one it seemed wanted to wave their truths around.  My father hid his and my mother helped him…and so did I.  It was a given within the family, NoT to talk about it.  To go on and present normal.

    Think about it.  Lies and lies of omission are seen as commonplace. And the truth a shocking attack.  How???

    This is a huge part of the ongoing abuse…what happens to those who speak up…and who point out the discrepancies between what is presented and what happens behind the scenes.  Doors begin to shut…distance opens up, we get pushed away…for telling the truth.

    Only those unhealed in abuse fear the truth.  

    Those who are seeking to be healed, need the truth. The truth is our way out. Untruths will keep you locked in the awkward dance of two lives.

    One where on surface it is a beautiful picture…but the feelings and emotions don't match.

    I used to live there.  I know what it is like to have a life and have feelings that are a complete juxtaposition.  I too used to lie to be normal.  I understand.

    My lies of normal did not make a father…but hid a pedophile.

    My lies supported abuse.

    I no longer can lie.

    I will lose 'friends' but friends don't lie to each other.

    I am sorry…for the potential seems so alive and electric…our similarities so great…and then.

    Then there were big gaps where truth needed to be…and actions taken.  A hole…a space, an opening, a chance, an opportunity to be forthcoming and instead silence screamed out.  Omitting the truth.

    Perhaps my flush of being caught in the truth, is a knowing.  A line in the sand, that separates and divides.

    It isn't so much me and you…but my truth and you from your truth.

    I just keep feeling flung back at the oddness of being caught with the truth and how that feels like I will get in trouble for it.  Striking to say the least.

    It is like I have been taught that telling the truth is as bad as what normal people feel about telling a lie.  Can you see the flip in how I was punished for telling the truth and rewarded and accepted for telling lies.

    It used to be more important to get along and be liked, to not toss rocks of truth into the waters and blink away red flags…but I no longer want to build a life of lies…

    My body doesn't do well knowing one thing, but saying another.  I am no longer capable of remaining silent.  I cannot omit that which I feel.

    And I will lose friends or fail to make some…but a me who lies to be liked will not be liked by me.  My integrity means more than gaining a friend…

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    A lady who knows her truth…imperfectly.

  • Your children are sure to follow.

    "The Body Never Lies," by Alice Miller.

    ‎"Children cannot escape their own parents, so they cannot afford to see through them either. Blindness makes it possible to survive. This is the way the abuse of children has functioned since time immemorial. BLINDNESS AND FORGIVENESS ARE ESSENTIAL TO SURVIVAL. But at the same time they lead to repletion and they perpetuate cycles of cruelty."

    "To break through this vicious circle we need to understand that so-called love cannot survive abuse, deception, and exploitation without seeking new victims. And if it requires new victims, it is no longer love but at best the longing for love. Only UNFLINCHING REALIZATIONS OF ONE'S OWN PAST REALITY, OF WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED CAN BREAK THROUGH THE CHAIN OF ABUSE. IF I KNOW AND CAN FEEL WHAT MY PARENTS DID TO ME WHEN I WAS TOTALLY DEFENSELESS, I NO LONGER NEED VICTIMS TO BEFOG MY AWARENESS. I no longer need to re-enact what happened to me and take it out on innocent people because now I know what happened. And if I want to live my life consciously, without exploiting others, then I must actively accept that knowledge." Alice

    What seems so clear, yet is so hard to wrap your brain around, is that a defenseless child is left without escape and in order to survive turns itself blind to what the parent is doing.  You mind will not allow you to SEE your parents.  Not 'remembering' what happened, allows you to live in a fanatasy. And in this so called, 'loving home' you then begin to grow and develop awkwardly.

    You set into place the opposite screen to what is.

    Love is abusive.

    Caring is neglectful.

    Your 'truth' is backwards…you become authentically dysfunctional and can't even see it.

    It is my belief, that we then hurt our children in order to keep 'love' alive.  Love means there must be a victim and a perpetrator.

    The fog of not seeing who my parents were, also swirled and darkened my access to emotions that were what they truly were.

    Meaning, I didn't have access to moving away from fear, and even more tragically, I didn't have emotions of warmth and kindness that moved me towards goodness.

    Not having access to warmth and kindness, kept me pushed back on the inside, not feeling drawn to children inside.

    My insides were all wrong.  

    My arms could wrap around them…but not my heart.

    My heart was used for clinging to abuse….so oddly it is, if you could see your children as hurtful, unkind, etc, then they could be loved.

    Not sure if you all can follow this, but it makes bitter sense to me.

    What gratitude I have for the fog lifting 7 years ago…and to see in harsh reality my parents and what they did to defenseless children unable to escape; I then was able to walk right-side up.

    Walking and pushing back from abuse and things that hurt me…allowed me to feel warmth toward my children…to feel their innocence and my deranged mind.

    For all the mothers out there who have doubts and glimpses of their childhood terrors, and are unable to see straight through to what their mother did…You will enact her emotional pattern.

    You will love what hurts…and be pushed back and away from kindness, love, peace and joy.  You will shut out the Light side of life, while stoking the fires of hell…and not even know it, for the blindness of surviving your childhood blocks you from seeing.

    Growing up means taking down the survival glasses and facing the reality of your childhood, feeling and seeing the defenselessness of being you in their home.

    The blocking out abuse lenses are also blocking you from seeing your innocence.  

    If you can't see you as an innocent child, your children will never wear that banner…

    It all falls down to pick one.

    You or your parents are innocent or to blame, for the childhood abuse.

    Depending upon what path you take; your children are sure to follow.

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  • The body truly doesn’t lie

    Within my family, there are two ways in which we have dealt with the sexual abuse of our childhoods.  One side believes and is actively in the camp of forgiving and forgetting, while only two of us are in the camp of discovering our own story and giving free expression…as Alice Miller writes in The Body Never Lies.

    " In each and every case I examined, I was able to establish that when people found the kind of therapeutic care and companionship that enabled them to discover their own story and give free expression to their indignation at their parents behavior, they were able to liberate themselves from the maltreated child's destructive attachment. As adults they were able to take their lives into their own hands and DID NOT NEED TO HATE THEIR PARENTS. And the opposite was the case whose therapist enjoined them to forgive and forget, actually believing that such forgiveness could have a salutary, curative effect. They remained trapped in the position of small children who believe they love their parents but in fact allow themselves to be controlled all their lives by the internalized parents and ultimately develop some kind of illness that leads to premature death. Such dependency ACTIVELY FOSTERS THE HATRED that though repressed, remains active, and it drives them to direct their aggression at innocent people. We ONLY HATE AS LONG AS WE FEEL TOTALLY HELPLESS." Alice Miller.

    This is extremely accurate in my experience.  

    I have do not hate my parents.  I understand them.  I completely get who they are and that the only love they can give me is their backwards hurtful love.  

    While I also totally feel the aggression of my siblings towards me, the innocent in the equation of my parents abuse.

    I can also sense this underneath the 'Forgiving' folks, the rage and anger seething while on the surface the speak kind words.  

    In fact, that is a perfect description of my mother in my childhood.  

    Interesting to know, that Forgiveness and Forgetting, actually fosters hate. And here is what I also know to be right on target…."You only hate as long as you feel totally helpless."  

    Empowerment allows you to feel love…and what I feel most from my siblings is this twisted dichotomy….the surface of 'forgiveness' while underneath rages hatred in their physical bodies.

    The body truly doesn't lie…

  • 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.

     

  • 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.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Never Lied.

    In "Power vs Force" by David Hawkins, he writes,

    "In the experiments to be described in this book, the reactions of the human body provide such a signal of change in conditions.  As will be seen, the body can discern, to the finest degree, the difference between that which is supportive of life and that which is not." 

    "This isn't surprising: After all, living things react positively to what is life-supportive and negatively to what is not; this is a fundamental mechanism of survival.  Inherent in all life forms is the capacity to detect change and react collectively – thus, trees become smaller at higher elevations as the oxygen in the atmosphere becomes scarer. Human protoplasm is far more sensitive than that of a tree." DH

    There is so much going on in the Universe that we are not aware of; all the little choices that are made due to a detection of change in conditions.

    I see the home environment as a small universe within the universe. And its occupants with highly sensitive bodies, that detect change of conditions.  

    Children come in with bodies of high intelligence, that far exceeds what their minds know.  And they too learn to grow or not grow depending upon the climate within the home.

    No matter what they are told, they can feel the lay of the land, and adapt in order to survive.  When love turns abusive…their bodies detect the change of conditions…they become alert, wary, anxious, etc…and grow accordingly.

    They will require less if less is given. 

    Or flourish and expand according to the safety and love given.

    You don't have to know the intimate details of a family home, just look at its children.  How are they doing in society?  Are they flourishing or floundering?

    We step forth with the markers of how we were raised.

    You can see those of us who lived in home environments where the child wasn't seen; we have a hard time finding ourselves, our voices, our worth.  We grew low…we adjusted our selves and didn't rise higher than the treatment.

    Our stunted growth shows.  

    The lack of emotional growth or balanced lives.

    What is so remarkable, is that we forget we are not permanently planted, like a tree. We can transplant ourselves…and Move to a more Life Supporting environment.

    What is hard for folks to imagine is that parents will naturally keep their children at the same level they are.  They can only raise a child as high as they are, no higher.  

    My life clearly showed how I only grew as high as my mother. 

    And it would have been stunted there, had I not gotten out.

    My body had always felt the negative vibes, but I had overrode them.  I believed that my body was working incorrectly, for it was sending signals Against family.  

    I believed that I had to work harder to be/feel more loving toward my parents.  I had feeling issues.

    It was a horrifying relief to know my body was right on.

    Except now I had to reverse all that I knew and follow this highly sensitive brilliant body…and celebrate each feeling.

    For each feeling was a signal to me of the condition and changes around me.  It didn't care what I believed, what dogma I followed, what history I had with people, it was literally moving around beeping and binging messages to me, constantly.

    It is like having the best instrument in all the Universe…and you live in it.  

    Once you are aware that the body talks to you constantly, you can't be unaware.  

    To stand by your feelings is to stand hand in hand with the Ultimate power; God/Universe.

    What I see in abusive homes, is we are taught to worship a lesser god, one that disregards our feelings.  Our parents. 

    When you honor and love your parents in an abusive home, going against the feelings of your body, you are being turned away from your Higher Power.  

    What is so amazing to me is that God created our bodies and yet we don't see the connection or feel the vast Divinity of them…nor trust that God made them to work perfectly. 

    Doubting the body, to me is, doubting God. 

    When someone abuses our bodies, they are actually wrecking the gift that God created.  

    When others treat our bodies violently, we are taught to not feel like the gift we are.

    It takes lots of effort to restore our selves to our natural state.

    My life changed completely when I stopped honoring my parents and began to honor my body…it truly has never lied.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Recognize the Real Me.

    I wonder why it is so hard to look objectively at your self, why it is so hard to see that which you are. Doesn't it seem literally impossible to overlook yourself while you are being yourself?  Why is it that we can't feel or sense our own powerful energy and it is running within our bodies? 

     

    What I believe to be true is that I was taught to not pay attention to my feelings, to disregard the pulsing emotions, to hide or pay no attention the signals of my body.

     

    In fact, the body was so full of sin, just disregard it completely, or pray hard that you can overcome ITS urges.

     

    I was taught to become the enemy of my body and I did such a wonderful job, I created a life separated from my body.

     

    I never spoke of my bodies signals, the fear that raged or the rage and anger and fear or injustices, the overwhelming immobility of choice, I used my body but never truthfully connected to it.  Well not in words or actions.

    I had a life and my body came along for the ride, but we were each other's enemies.

     

    Its needs and mine were at odds.

     

    What I discovered is that the signals of fear that my body put forth matched the reality of my childhood, compared to the actions that I had displayed.  I acted like nothing had happened…that my father's rape hadn't occurred.  My body however, never, not once forgot. Each and every time I was in his presence, I felt uneasy…pushed back, like an invisible wall arose.

     

    Yet, my actions showed none of that happening in reality.  I pretended to pretend to pretend that all was okay.

     

    What strikes me so is how I was able to NOT join with my body, but to live a life once removed.  That my outward display shown none of the signs from within. 

     

    Like a bad dashboard, all my readings were false.

     

    While I understand in order to survive, I had to have a false dashboard, it now seems totally crazy.  People didn't know me, all they really knew was the false readings I was displaying.  But, underneath a whole different story waited to be told.

     

    The story of the body.  Its emotions and feelings are rarely displayed accurately on people's dashboards, instead we say Yes when we mean No.  We feel its unkind to speak what we feel, not realizing we are disowning our own bodies…creating a chasm that we may or may not get back across.

     

    This space between what we feel and what we say widens each time we speak against our feelings or act in opposition to what we feel. 

     

    My life and my truth were an ocean apart.

     

    The life I was living in comparison to what I was feeling were two distinct drawings…and my feeling inside that I ignored carried my truth…and the false dashboard I presented out of 'kindness' crashed to the ground, for there was nothing holding it up but pretend.

    Pretending that I had different emotions than I did.

    Pretending that I was okay, alright, fine, perfect…

    Pretending overshadowed my truth…until I couldn't recognize the real me. 

     

    (As Alice Miller's book states, "The Body Never Lies.)