I M Perfect lady

Tag: of

  • Living on the Blocks.

    Week 9, The Artist Way…Julia Cameron writes,

    “We’re more comfortable being a victim of artist’s block than risking having to consistently be productive and healthy.

    “An artistic U-Turn arrives on a sudden wave of indifference. We greet our newly minted product or our delightful process with “Aw, what does it matter anyhow?  It’s just a start.  Everybody else is so much further ahead…”

    “Yes, and they will stay that way if we stop working. The point is we have traveled light-years from where we were when we were blocked. We are now on the road, and the road is scary.  We begin to be distracted by roadside attractions or detoured by the bumps.”

    And here are a few sentences from the exercises at the end of the chapter.

    “Your choice to block is a creative U-Turn – we turn back on ourselves.  Like water forced to stand still, we turn stagnant.”   Julia

    These blocks are in Life and in Art. And we use them as an excuse as to why we can’t live a better life or create art. 

    And it is only ourselves that turn us around and heads us back to our old vices and excuses or fears.  We keep turning our backs on our truths, our desires, what we love, what brings us peace, our joy…in the good energy flow. 

    I see my life as a river where others lives are rocks cropping up or interests that are not crucial to my pathway, and instead of floating on by, I stop.  I stop my own flow in life.

    We each have specific rocks that stop us and then there are bends in the river, opportunities that float by, but we are too afraid to slip into the flow…or we are so busy doing things that are not important and they go by unnoticed. 

    It is just so interesting that Artist Blocks or Blocks of Addictions keep us from creativity…and they are all our choices.

    It is up to us to stop clinging to things that don’t serve us, that keeps us from living. 

    One big boulder in my life is ‘Responsibility’ and getting my work done first. 

    I focus on cleaning up my space instead of using that time to create.  I put so many rocks ahead of my flow, that my life seems heavy and hard. 

    I never looked at it this way…even though I lived it more often than not.  In fact slipping into the flow of life and playing in the currents and relaxing and letting the river take me, without saying no…is not very common in my life. 

    Most of my life has been spent on heavy rocks and in other people’s responsibility.  Getting used to flowing in my life will take some effort and will mean turning my back on ‘work’.  Who knew that work is a blockage in your life.

    Today, my one day off, and again I am working on cleaning up our house, the sewing machine sits…however, I did make a date with my husband for later on.

    In time, I will be able to discern how much free flowing time I have had and how much I have spent on the rocks, for I will feel its heaviness and know I got lost again living on the blocks.

    "Saying No can be the ultimate self-care."  Claudia Black

     

     

  • Dark Space of Unknowing.

    Deepak Chopra writes in The Book of Secrets about the caterpillar changing into a butterfly.

    “Outside my window in winter I can usually spy at least one chrysalis dangling from a branch.  Inside it a caterpillar has turned into a pupa that will emerge in the spring as a butterfly. We are all familiar with this metamorphosis, having witnessed it as children (or by reading Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar).  But what goes on invisibly inside the chrysalis remains deeply mysterious. The caterpillar’s organs and tissues dissolve into an amorphous, soup like state, only to reconstitute in to a structure of a butterfly’s body that bears no resemblance to a caterpillar at all.”

    “Science has no idea why metamorphosis evolved.  It is almost impossible to imagine that insects hit on it by chance – the chemical complexity of turning into a butterfly is incredible; thousands of steps are minutely interconnected.  (It’s as if you dropped off a bicycle at the shop to be repaired, and when you came back the parts had become a Gulfstream Jet.)”

    “But we do have some idea about how this delicate chain of events is linked. Two hormones, one called juvenile hormone, and the other ecdysone, regulate the process, which looks to the naked eye like the caterpillar is dissolving into soup.  These two hormones make sure the cells moving from the larva to the butterfly know where they are going and how they are to change. Some cells are told to die; others digest themselves, while others turn into eyes, antennae, and wings. This implies a fragile (and miraculous) rhythm that must remain in precise balance between creation and destruction. That rhythm, it turns out, depends on day length, which in turn depends on the earth’s rotation around the sun. Therefore, a cosmic rhythm has been intimately connected to the birth of butterflies for millions of years.”  Deepak

     

    It came to me today, that blogging the way I do with total transparency is not going to need the same things as those who blog from the cocoon.

    Writing from a cocoon hides what is going on and this is not something I am familiar with.  So I can’t be the one to say what is best for anonymous bloggers.

    But I can speak from transparency. 

    When I began writing I did so with full disclosure, it wasn’t to hide stuff, it was to shed light and to enlighten me, to find answers to who I was, as well as to leave a path for anyone who wanted to know about me.

    I wrote about the dark corners within me that I didn’t know. 

    I asked questions of the white paper and it seemed answers came if I wrote long enough.

    I never felt I had the right to have a voice and writing opened up a space for me to let it out.

    Once I got the knack of it, it seemed that the only way for me to know me was to write it out. 

    The more I wrote the more I knew and the more I knew the more I wanted to know. And slowly I began to really really know me and what I began to learn about me, I didn’t want to cover up nor did I feel the need. 

    Whether it be my mixed up mind, my flipped around thoughts and beliefs or the multiple things I did incorrectly with my backwards mind, all of it became extremely exhilarating for it all was growing a new me.  I wasn’t ashamed of who I was nor who I was becoming to be.

    It was like I was the caterpillar and I was changing and I would grieve the caterpillar parts that were dying and had to grow comfortable with the new butterfly pieces that came in their place. 

    I left my old caterpillar ways…and had to learn how to maneuver life as a butterfly. 

    What I know for sure, for me, is that I need to see me in my past, see me in my present, see what inside of me needs transformation and what needs to totally die. 

    I couldn't hide and build a butterfly me.  I had to see. 

    I would have liked there to be an etiquette book on how to navigate the rough waters of exiting a dysfunctional family and knowing how it feels and what would happen as you go from the inside of a family to the outskirts.

    How to leave abuse, is how to leave a family…

    It isn’t comfortable and there is no cocoon.  You are in the open and vulnerable for pot shots that many aim at you trying to shut you up and protect the family’s dark legacy. 

    And even more importantly, I wanted proof or evidence of my sanity.  I wanted there to be a blueprint of undoing the affects of being abused.  With so many turning away or not agreeing with me, it was a place for me to have my say.  I didn’t keep parts hidden away; I shared all of me, for there wasn’t a part of me that was too dirty or shameful for me not to see.

    It is my humble belief, if you can’t bear to see your self, you will want to remain hidden from others. But, if you have the courage to really really look at yourself and all the cracks and crevices you will find a very interesting and intriguing life. 

    You will see how you took that path or formed that opinion or learned to believe this or that.  You will discover a life that you will never ever want to cover up again and go back to live in a small dark space of unknowing. 

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Reasons to Spin

    While dialoguing in the comment section on the Post, “Where Your Best Interest Lies” a few posts back, I am feeling like I am a reporter trying to get my story out and they are working like crazy Spin Doctors or the Public Relations Department of the FALC to prevent that from happening. 

    They are trying so hard to convince me it wasn’t their ‘faith’ or the church or its members or any of that religious stuff, and that my abuse stands alone, like a rogue virus.

    I feel people are working so hard to spin my story off into this lonely little section called abuse where religion never touched it, blessed it or had ANY thing to do with my abuse. 

    There is abuse, AND there is religion and never shall the two touch each other.

    It is sounding like a political debate where they want there to be two sides. 

    And I am here to tell you in my experience, Religion had a huge part in keeping abuse in my family home.  It did not stay there on its own and without the knowledge of the church.

    There is no way I can speak of my abuse without including the church. 

    In fact, if I had good faith in the forgiveness of sins, I could have had a normal dad.

    If I had good faith in the power of the forgiveness of sins, the sins would be washed away never to be heard from again…

    Maybe you all want to blame my weak faith on the fact that my father kept abusing little girls.  For damn it IF only I could have believed more deeply he could be washed whiter than snow and not hurt one more little girl.

    Do any of you know what it is like to call your childhood friends, now 40 years later and say, “I wish you would not have been my friend, for honey it cost you way too much.”

    Have you?

    Do you know that I recall one bright memory of me being on a huge white pole swing in our yard on a bright sunny summer day, and my dad came to me crying asking ME for a blessing.  Why?  What did he do to this young young little girl whose feet couldn’t even touch the ground.  What???  I don't know if I did it properly…I was way too little. 

    Did I not bless him properly?  Did I not believe it, IS that why he continued on molesting, raping and fondling little girls?  Was my faith to weak in strength to erase it correctly?

    Am I going to hell for being a bad blesser???

    When you question my story, you are saying to me, that I am wrong. Tell me where I am wrong?  Tell me, please and USE your name.

    I believed in a father.

    I believed in a mother.

    I believed in the power of the forgiveness of sins.

    I believed in order to be good, I had to bless bad people.

    I believed wrong…

    And did my ‘faith’ in the forgiveness of HIS sins spare one little girl?  Did it?  Can you put the blame on me?  Did I bless him wrong???

    Oh yeah my faith is weak now, it is actually nonexistent in the power of forgiving and blessing away the sins of the fathers.

    Yes it is.  I believe 100% that it does not work. 

    I am living breathing proof. 

    Where do you all believe these piles of sins are?  Look behind you they walk with you everywhere.  It is only in your mind, that you think they are gone.

    Each and every action you have made is written down in the book of reality seen by God…nothing gets erased ever.

    The only thing you can do is do better when you know better. 

    In the past, I was a good Christian and spoke of it not, not my feelings of terror towards my father, nor my deep down resentment towards my mother, I sucked in and asked to be blessed for being such a bad child to feel unloving toward her parents. 

    I kept trying to be a better child, never even stopping to see if I had parents I should be loving toward. 

    When my father’s name was spoken as being the one to molest my niece, I became a very bad child.  I stood with the little girl and somehow I knew I was standing with me. 

    I stood in reality and refused to bless it away, like I even could.

    This little girl isn’t going to be ‘unabused’ if I utter the magic phrase.

    I am bad, a bad ass, and a bitter, cold, vengeful woman some say.  I will be alone and lonely for saying what I say.  I will be ridiculed and not believed…all the same things I felt as a child.

    As a child I believed them, now as woman who is speaking her truth I do not.

    I have faith in God and me.

    I have faith in truth.

    I have faith is using my real name.

    I have faith in others who can reveal themselves to me.

    The rest, I have no faith in.

    For if you can’t say your name, you are not standing with me, you hiding like my father behind the front of being normal.  Good people don't hide.

    Only those in truth will say their name.  This is my belief and this is my blog.  If you feel differently you can blog yourself and have a great conversation and sharing anonymously.

    Oh and one more thing.

    Someone mentioned I lost the faith in God.

    No honey, God has been with me all along.

    He was the one who erased my memory of the event.

    He kept me being a little girl with out such a horrific thing to remember.  And did however keep my truth in my body, to keep me from going near the man who did such awful things to such a sweet innocent BELIEVING girl.

    Your church doesn’t own God; he is not applauding your spinning my story to make it kind.  He was there and he knew I would not have survived life living in that house with a visual memory, sadly I would have went insane.  Only a child who didn’t know could support that family. 

    I didn’t know… and I put my faith in the folks who were spinning my life to be normal.

    Now I am no longer fooled by the spins, I only see what is behind. 

    Only anonymous have reasons to spin.

     

     

  • Out of Control Controlled Person

    While discussing the attributes of suicide, two different people suggested that the body is out of control…and neither felt it was ‘them’ that did it, but a whole other person, a self that they did not know.

     

    I am very intrigued by how they see the person who almost died as someone different than them…and yet when they are well, or back on solid ground, that depressed person does not resemble the person who now has some control.

     

    This led me to ponder that you can be out of control as a rock, who is incapable of moving…or out of control moving… incapable of stopping.

     

    And it matters not whether you are moving or not moving, what matters is the lack of control.

     

    This lack of control means something or somebody else has control over you.

     

    You have lost owning your self.

     

    This lost self and the found self are totally different.

     

    A self that is under the control of a cult like religion and who has grown up in a dysfunctional family does not have control of her self at all.

     

    We give up the rights to our own lives, choices, beliefs…we lose control of self movement.

     

    No one says that a brainwashed person is out of control…we use that term only for moving things…yet it works the same for unmoving.

     

    The staunch faithful will not make a move that goes against the teachings of the church…while being controlled by others, they themselves have no control.   

     

    They only control themselves to remain faithful to the other that is controlling them.

     

    There is no self to control; they lost contact with the self.

     

    They see themselves through the controller’s eyes.

     

    Who would ever think that a person who is completely under the control of cult etc, is out of control?  It seems like an oxymoron.

     

    A very out of control controlled person.

     

     

     

     

  • Reconstruction on the Outside.

    I was surprised at how at ease I felt writing and even how peaceful I was inside, how comfortable I wrote my thoughts as they drifted by, as I looked upon this day, as I just seemed to write effortlessly.
    Six years later the me that is doing The Artist’s Way is completely different inside than the last time…I have a hard time recollecting the old me.
    She was a compilation of her parents, built upon their patterns and beliefs, structured to fulfill their needs, a woman with very little sense of self.
    Now my insides are bursting with me, my knowing and fully comprehending who I am, where I came from, how I made the choices I made etc. A woman with her History pretty much figured out, but a woman with an open slate and a big world to explore.
    The other thing missing inside is the fear of changing, the dread of trying something new and even appearing silly or a beginner…all my sense of pride is gone, with nothing left to lose, I can only gain.
    It is astonishing to me how different I am, the years slipped by and tiny layers of confidence grew on me, so that I am in a much better spot to now add accessories to the new me.
    Just as a woman adds to her outfit, I will add to the strong core of who I am, colorful and exciting things, my bling.
    I have never been a person to wear wild clothes or trends, to dress with flair and be fancy, but I can feel that I am standing here, in need of a bit of that.
    Perhaps The Artist’s Way will change my outward appearance to match my insides…or at least begin the reconstruction on the outside.
    IMG_6214
    The journal cover I made for myself yesterday!

  • With a body or without!

    Spiritual Education
    “Fortunate is the seeker who has not been led away from the straight and narrow path by diversions and popularized attractions. People spend lifetimes searching for authentic teachings and become sidetracked by the seduction of attractive, glamorized aberrations from truth. These turn out to be fictional or romanticized fantasies that attract the naïve person’s inner child. Spiritual fairy tales abound and impress the credulous for whom anything labeled ‘spiritual’ is imbued with a magical glamour. To go through that stage is routine during initial, uncritical enthusiasm and exploration.”

    “ The primary problem initially is the lack of awareness of the difference between the truly spiritual reality and the astral, paranormal, or supernatural domains. To the naïve, these latter alternatives seem amazing and impressive. This is due to the discovery that there are surprisingly more areas of human experience that the strictly physical, emotional, and mental ones. Consequently, a ‘right-on’ psychic reading is indeed impressive to an erstwhile, naïve seeker or novitiate. It is also easy to become sidetracked by the seemingly astonishing wonder of a whole new dimension of possible realities.”

    “The majority of popular best-selling, supposedly spiritual books is actually fictional, and their average level of truth is a calibrated level 190, as are slick appearing ‘spiritual’ magazines that glamorize fallacious fantasies of ‘other dimensions’, and so on. The paradox is that the appeal is to the naïve seeker who has not yet mastered this dimension, much less other fanciful ones.”

    “There are, of course, other dimensions and ultimate realities that are well represented by adepts, trance readers, channelers, psychics, clairvoyants, shamans, magicians, ‘masters’, deceased celebrities, erstwhile astrologers, throwers of Rune stones, and more. To add to the glamour, many of these diversions have large collections of faithful followers and enthusiasts who are impressed and thereby influenced, as well as seduced, by the magical notion of the unseen paranormal. Also popular are ‘ancient secret mysteries’, UFO religions, primitive rites, magic symbols, crystals, incantations, energy manipulation, and spirits from other realms.”

    “Classical spiritual traditions and integrous scripture do not refute the supernatural/paranormal, but warn “not to go there”. The same advice is also prescribed by all true spiritual masters and enlightened teachers. By conscious calibration research, all such ‘entities’ on the ‘other side’ can be calibrated, as well as ‘fallen gurus’ from other eras who succumbed to the illusory gain of power over others by spiritual seduction. (See Lewis, 2001; Partridge, 2003)”

    “The so-called ‘astral circus’ was at its most influential in ancient Mesopotamia. The expertise of the adepts, many of who are still the same as they were in that era, have perfected their skills over long periods of earthly time. Like an experienced expert salesman, they intuitively pick up on a vulnerability or a weakness, especially proneness to glamorization. If such entities were indeed what they claim to be, they would have long ago evolved on to the celestial realms.”

    “There is no lack of integrous, reliable spiritual truth accessible by ordinary means. Thus, the seeking of the extraordinary is a trap for the unwary. An ego that is ‘out of body’ is actually just the same as an ego in a body, except that it now has the mystification of being physically elusive. Exploration of other dimensions can be facilitated and learned by induced and altered states of consciousness. The primary temptation is one of child-like curiosity. On the other hand, there are some entities on the ‘other side’ that calibrate over 200 but they do not have any information that is not available by ordinary means (e.g., be kind to your neighbor).”

    “Supranormal qualities arise as an experiential reality when consciousness levels reach the high 500s as a consequence of the rising kundalini spiritual energy field. These phenomena, classically termed siddhis, are the normal expression of consciousness levels that are beyond linear. The student is advised to be aware that they are not personal and to merely witness the phenomena. By so doing, it will be evident that the phenomena are qualities specific to the spiritual energy itself; they are not personal because they are not controllable by the person. The phenomena, on the other hand, can be impressive as one witnesses the seemingly miraculous events unfold effortlessly. The reason they appear to be miraculous is because of their being witnessed by the linear mind with is limited perception of cause and effect. The unfolding of the seeming miraculous is merely ‘normal’ from a higher perspective.”

    “These paranormal spiritual phenomena are described by mystics and saints of various religious denominations and have been reported throughout the ages. By calibration, ‘sainthood’ represents level 570 and above. The siddhis are indeed somewhat wondrous to behold, and the spiritual energy field may, of its own, transmit to other people so that healings take place in accord with karmic propensities. The ‘miraculous’ is thus not volitional or controllable, nor is it the consequence of any person; thus, there is no ‘person’ who performs miracles. It is instead the consequence of the healing power of the Self.”

    “The siddhis arise of their own and bring about the capacity for psychomentry, clairvoyance, clairaudience, distant vision, and other telepathic types of faculties. They are also unpredictable and evanescent. Some come and go over variable periods of time that may last from weeks to months to a number of years. With forewarning, the student who witnesses and experiences these phenomena can easily dismiss the temptation of ownership and its implied specialness. Integrity and humility preclude claiming ownership of the phenomena and thus being trapped by an illusion. The siddhis are discussed at some length in “Transcending the Levels of Consciousness.”

    David Hawkins – Discovery of the Presence of God

    What I found so disheartening, is that the naïve seeker can fall for the same foolery from the ‘other side’ as well as they can from this side.

    Now, I have no experience of ‘fallen gurus’ from the other side, but I have witnessed the fallen gurus on this side, preying upon the weak and confused, making them more weak and confused.
    I love the line from the Buddha, who says, “If you see a guru along the way, kill him.” Meaning follow no one but your own inner knowing, your own emotional feelings, to set your own compass, to question all things, to seek to be curious, to ask the questions, to look above and below, to be like a child and accept nothing without a question of Why!!!!

    Isn’t it chilling that there are fallen gurus on the other side looking for egos in bodies to gain power over??? Again, whether this is the ultimate truth, I can’t say from experience, but somehow it feels correct.

    Any guru worth his salt will let you keep your own truth, be he with a body or without!

  • Highest Good of All.

    The Will
    “The Spiritual Will is not like the ego’s understanding of will as ‘will power’, which means emotional force with clenched teeth of exertion and increased emotionality. The ego-driven will takes energy and is taxing. It could actually be understood as a form of aggression. In contrast, invoking the Spiritual Will is like opening floodgates and then standing back. The ego/will contextualizes events in terms of cause and effect in which the personal self-will claims credit or blame because it sees itself as a causal agent. In contrast, the Spiritual Will is not personal but is a quality of consciousness that changes context by surrender to an invitation to the power of the Self. The Spiritual Will calibrates at 850, and the personal will calibrates at only the person’s current level of consciousness.”

    “The Spiritual Will, invited by complete surrender is thus capable of performing the seeming ‘miraculous’, whereas the personal will, paradoxically, often automatically triggers resistances, as anyone knows who has tried personal ‘will power’ to overcome even minor habits.”

    “Surrender of the personal will to the Will (Wisdom of God (or Providence, Higher Power) signifies relinquishment of control. One can expect the ego to resist doing so, and it invents excuses, counterarguments, and multiple fears in order to maintain illusory control. The ego’s positions are reinforced by pride as well as desire for specific results. Thus, to the ego, to step back and invite the intervention of Divinity seems like a loss whereas, to the Spirit, it is definitely a win.”

    “Another limitation to the personal will is that it has no knowledge of karmic propensities or propitious timing, nor does it have the wisdom (omnipotence) to comprehend beneficial sequence. The Self orchestrates with an inner knowingness of capacity. For instance, to try to face a certain conflict prematurely may be unsuccessful, whereas, it would have been more successful after a few layers of the conflict had been resolved.”

    David Hawkins – Discovery of the Presence of God

    Playing God in someone else life is very tricky, especially if you don’t have all the plans and the karmic understanding and the souls purpose.

    What I found, after I exhausted myself, is that there was no way my self was able to change people, convince them against their will. But the will I was trying to bend, was perhaps God’s Will.

    I can’t know why they do what they do or go where they go, but it seems that they are preprogrammed, predestined to head in that direction and have an unshakeable resolve and focus on going there.

    Just as within me something would not allow me to be with my old family, nor stay asleep in the old dysfunction, I was being led forward from the inside out.

    A me inside woke up to a new direction, a new awareness, a new pathway, and I simply could not go against it.

    This experience within me, reminds me when it seems like I am tangling with a bull, that their journey isn’t open to what I am saying.

    It isn’t me, it truly isn’t time for them to know more, be different etc, in fact it is the right time for them to do exactly as they did.

    I am also reminded that I needed folks to be the perfect examples of my old mindset in order for me to see the dark blindness I had been. They stood waving flags of dysfunction to show me that wasn’t the way.

    So, if you know and believe and trust that within you is the blueprint and the plan, that your course is set and all you have to do is follow it by how you feel, you literally can’t do anything wrong.

    My life unfolded according to plan, and there isn’t one thing that happened before its time, nor one thing that could be removed, it is all perfect.

    The folks I met that seemed indifferent, should have been, that was the job they signed up to play in my life, they they did so perfectly.

    I can take each person I met and see a reason and a lesson I learned from them, how they showed me how to be a more self aware me, how to bring all my love, peace and joy and feel it inside, be a complete package of one.

    Perhaps what we call chaos and evil, are just people with roles to play in order for us to become aware of the Self inside of us, the one that dances to the cosmic plan of the Universe.

    By seeing who they are and how they believe, how their minds work and how disconnected they seems from Spirit, allows me to find my way. I hold no grudges or resentments; I have faith in the Universal plan, that it is all choreographed for the highest good of all.

  • Life with no words?

    I listened to Deepak Chopra talk to John Francis who wrote a book called “The Ragged Edge of Silence”. He didn’t speak for 17 years. Yes, 17 years, but he did journal and he also gave up riding in gas vehicles. But what he said about silence is that when you are silent it is impossible to lie or argue.

    Isn’t that interesting?

    He also said that once he stopped talking he felt his authentic self arise and his ‘social’ self disappear.

    Imagine your day or week minus all the chatter?

    How much of your self is only known through what you say and not what you do, how you act or where you go.

    Would you be afraid to live in silence?

    I wondered if he talked to himself at all?

    Perhaps I will have to read this book and see what other insights come when you are silent with all people.

    And you know, I wonder how many people would be comfortable with you being silent, for many are uncomfortable in silences, awkward pauses would be frequent!

    It is interesting to know how you use language is it to share your insights, to reprimand, to command, to demand, to cheer, to delight, to ignite…imagine a life with no words?

  • Elders of the Church

    There are no coincidences in life and the fact that I am learning about more and more sexual abuse in my old church while I am reading Alice Miller is profound.

    She is literally writing about the hows and the whys that seemingly intelligent functioning adults are unable to stop this behavior…or it seems “Knows” and does nothing.

    What I am getting a view of is my family but displayed in a much bigger group, widespread from state to state.

    That there is an underlying very pervasive evil preying upon the children, while half the adults sleep and the other are the perpetrators, and all presenting a mask to society of high morals and values, where TV, Music, drinking and drugs, etc are forbidden, where truth and honesty is the way of life….

    The grand scale and its history from generation to generation of criminal sexual behavior under the auspices of a religion of high morals and value is mind blowing.

    My mother was not an anomaly she was a typical church mother.

    And what is so extremely shocking to me is that I didn’t know of it when I was in it. Yet, here is the deal on that…I didn’t leave the church until I had seen the truth of who my father was. So, I guess, their families were like my family we all matched…so we were not outstanding in the fact that the children in the family were abused.

    Knowing that my father abused the neighbors and the neighbor’s parents were in the church and did nothing shows to me, that they too didn’t find this shocking or something that should be presented to the law of the land.

    Again, I felt I lived in this little nest of incest with neighbors that I later found out had their own nests, but that we were the ‘odd’ ones in the church. But 6 years later, I am finding out that we are far from odd, but perhaps just normal parishioners.

    In Alice’s book she speaks of forgiveness in how I seen it work in the church and how it actually is the juice that keeps the evil in the pulpits and on the church boards, literally running the church while raping the children.

    “Can forgiveness for the crimes done to the child be not just ineffective but actively harmful? It certainly can because the body does not understand more precepts. It fights to make our conscious minds admit the truth and transcend our denial of genuine feelings. This is something children cannot afford to do. They have to deceive themselves and turn a blind eye to their parent’s crimes in order to survive. Adults no longer need to repress their feelings. But if they do, the price they pay is high. Either they ruin their own health or make others foot the bill.”

    “A therapist who has forgiven his parents for the cruelty they showed him may feel the urge to suggest this same remedy to his clients. In so doing, he is exploiting their dependence and their trust. If he is not in touch with his own feelings at all, he may indeed be unaware that he is doing to others what was once done to him. In suggesting forgiveness as a solution, the therapist is abusing and confusing others, while rejecting any kind of responsibility for his actions. He is convinced that he is acting for their own good. Are not all religions unanimously in their conviction that forgiveness is the path to Heaven? Was not Job ultimately reward for the fact that he forgave God?”

    “Unlike children, adult patients have a choice. They can leave a therapist once they have seen through his deception and self-deception….”

    “To break through this vicious cycle 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 realization of one’s own past reality, of what really 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 reenact 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 Miller

    What is so vastly incredible is that the one thing a child needs to heal is not offered to him in that church, instead the only thing that is offered is the forgiveness of sins and the fourth commandment…”to love and Honor thy parents”.

    It is no wonder to me, as a person who has lived in the system, who was abused and left untreated there, and has witnessed the responses of my siblings, that this vein of power is still in play, whether you leave the church or not, it will take Herculean power to stop the mind set of forgiving sexual crimes and not passively accept love hurts.

    As long as forgiveness is preached, children will suffer abuse from the elders of the church.

  • Survivor Self.

    The Drama of the Gifted Child – The search of the true self, by Alice Miller.

    Here is what she writes on the back cover of the book.

    “Far too many of us had to learn as children to hide our own feelings, needs and memories skillfully in order to meet our parent’s expectations and win their “Love.” Alice Miller writes, “When I use the word “gifted” in the title, I had in mind neither children who receive high grades in school nor children talented in a special way. I simply meant all of us who have survived an abusive childhood thanks to an ability to adapt even to unspeakable cruelty by becoming numb…Without this ‘gift’ offered us by nature, we would not have survived.”

    These few paragraphs explain my great power to know what others need, but really have no idea my own needs.

    “In my work with people in the helping professions, I have often been confronted with a childhood history that seems significant to me.

    · There was a mother who at the core was emotionally insecure and who depended for her equilibrium on her child’s behaving in a particular way. This mother was able to hide her insecurities from her child and from everyone else behind a hard authoritarian, even totalitarian façade.
    · This child had an amazing ability to perceive and respond intuitively, that is, unconsciously, to this need of the mother or both parents, for him to take on the role that had unconsciously been assigned to him.
    · This role secured “love” for the child – that is, his parents’ exploitation. He could sense that he was needed, and this need guaranteed him a measure of existential security.

    This ability is then extended and perfected. Later, these children not only become mothers (confidantes, comforters, advisors, supporters) of their own mothers but also take over at least part of the responsibility for their siblings and eventually develop a special sensitivity to unconscious signals manifesting the needs of others. No wonder they often choose to become psychotherapists later on. Who else, without this previous history, would muster sufficient interest to spend the whole day trying to discover what is happening in other people’s unconscious? But the development and perfecting of this sensitivity – which once assisted the child in surviving and now enables the adult to pursue his strange profession – also contains the roots of his emotional disturbance: As long as the therapist is not aware of his repression, it can compel him to use his patients, who depend on him, to meet his unmet needs with substitutes.” Alice Miller

    I lived as a great servant for my mother’s needs for at least 40 years and never fully developed my own. This is an odd substitute for being ‘needed’ for our own self, but rather what we can offer to them.

    In a section called, The Lost World of Feelings, she writes…

    “ On the basis of my experience, I think that the cause of an emotional disturbance is to be found in the infant’s early adaptation. The child’s needs for respect, echoing, understanding, sympathy, and mirroring have had to be repressed, with several serious consequences.

    “One such consequence is that person’s inability to experience consciously certain feelings of his own (such as jealousy, envy, anger, loneliness, helplessness, or anxiety), either in childhood or later in adulthood. This is all the more tragic that we are concerned here with lively people who are often capable of deep feelings. It is the most noticeable when they describe childhood experiences that were free of pain and fear. They could enjoy their encounters with nature, for example, without hurting the mother or making her feel insecure, reducing her power, or endangering her equilibrium. It is remarkable how these attentive, lively sensitive children, who can for example, remember exactly how they discovered sunlight in bright grass at age four, at eight were unable to ‘notice anything’ or show any curiosity about their pregnant mother or were ‘not at all’ jealous at the birth of a sibling. It is also remarkable how, at the age of two, such a child could be left alone and ‘be good’ while soldiers forced their way into the house and searched it, suffering the terrifying intrusion quietly without crying. These people have all developed the art of not experiencing feelings, for a child can experience her feelings only when there is somebody there who accepts her fully, understands her, and supports her. If that person is missing, if the child must risk losing the mother’s love or the love of her substitute in order to feel, then she will repress her emotions. She cannot even experience them secretly, “just for herself”; she will fail to experience them at all. But they will nevertheless stay in her body, in her cells, stored up as information that can be triggered by a later event.”

    “Throughout their later life, these people will have to deal with situations in which these rudimentary feelings may awaken, but without the original connection ever becoming clear. The connection can be deciphered only when intense emotions have been experienced in therapy and successfully linked with their original situation.”

    “Take, for example, the feelings of abandonment – not that of the adult, who feels lonely and therefore turns to alcohol or drugs, goes to the movies, visits friends or makes ‘unnecessary” telephone calls in order to bridge the gap somehow. No, I mean the original feelings in the small infant, who had not of these means to distract and whose communication, verbal or preverbal, did not reach the mother because his mother herself was deprived. For her part, she was dependent on a specific echo from the child that was essential to her, for she herself was a child in search of a person who could be available to her.”

    “However paradoxical this may seem, a child is a the mother’s disposal. The mother can feel herself the center of attention, for her child’s eyes follow her everywhere. A child cannot run away from her as her own mother once did. A child can be brought up so that it becomes what she wants it to be. A child can be made to show respect; she can impose her own feelings on him, see herself mirrored in his love and admiration, and feel strong in his presence. But when he becomes too much, she can abandon that child to a stranger or to solitary confinement in another room.”

    “When a woman has had to repress all these needs in relation to her own mother, they will arise from the depth of her unconscious and seek gratification through her own child, however well-educated she may be. The child feels this clearly and very soon forgoes the expression of his own distress. Later, when these feelings of being deserted begin to emerge in the therapy of the adult, they are accompanied by intense pain and despair. It is clear that these people could not have survived so much pain as children. That would have been possible only in an empathic, attentive environment, which was lacking. Thus all feelings had to be warded off. But to say that they were absent would be a denial of the empirical evidence.”

    “Several mechanisms can be recognized in the defense against early feelings of abandonment. In addition to simple denial, we usually find the exhausting struggle to fulfill the old, repressed, and by now often perverted needs with the help of symbols (cults, sexual perversions, groups of all kinds, alcohol, or drugs). Intellectualization is very commonly encountered as well, since it is a defense mechanism of great power. It can have disastrous results, however, when the mind ignores the vital messages of the body. All these defense mechanisms are accompanied by repression of the original situation and emotions belonging to it.”

    “Accommodation to parental needs often (but not always) leads to the “as-if personality” this person develops in such a way that he reveals only what is expected of him and fuses so completely with what he reveals that one could scarcely guess how much more there is to him behind this false self. He cannot develop and differentiate his true self, because he is unable to live it….” Alice Miller.

    The last few words, ‘because he is unable to live it…is the root reason it never develops, instead the only self we know is the survivor self.