“Take off the mask!” That’s what one of my clients said a few weeks ago, and I have been thinking about it ever since. I keep wondering about how I would do that and what it would feel like. What I have noticed is that, without really, or consciously, trying to, I’m giving up pretending everything is alright, when it’s not. It feels funny to do that. I’m sure that I’ve always thought that I should keep bad stuff to myself, sure that nobody wants to hear about my problems or feelings.
I learned that lesson early on. But, perhaps, I got the wrong message. Nobody wants to listen to someone always complaining about life, the universe and everything. I’m sure that I wasn’t the happiest person to be around in my early years, I was quite depressed and I’m sure I was a real downer. So I took that to mean that I should keep my mouth shut and pretend everything was fine, which had the side effect of me not having anything to say. I’m pretty sure that that really didn’t fool anyone, a depressed person is a depressed person, whether they talk about it directly or not. Which probably explains why I have always had few friends, and no close friends, for most of my life.
Things seem to have changed. Maybe it’s because I absolutely have to, or it’s the result of all the personal exploration I’ve been doing, but I am starting to accumulate friends. People who I can relate to and we have significant things in common. We can talk about stuff that matters to me and to them, and, this is really important, it’s not about complaining about stuff. I can tell you, it’s so refreshing to have conversations not based on mutual dislikes, or on superficial things that really don’t matter.
I can’t say for sure, but does seem like I’m acting differently, more honestly. It’s so hard to judge my own behavior because I am my own yardstick. I mean that if my values change, then my perception shifts as well as my behavior. It’s like having a ruler that continually changes size: It seems like all the stuff in the world keeps changing size, when in reality it’s your ruler that’s changing. I don’t think that is really all that important, other than to be aware that it happens. Otherwise you can get pretty confused when people start acting strange: Maybe they’ve changed, or maybe you’ve changed.
I also notice that I’m handling my clients differently. I’m more direct, less likely to be tentative about what I really think, more willing to ask personal questions and dig deeper. It feels to me like I’m able to focus more on the client, when I’m less concerned about myself.
Wow! A perfect case in point: I just had a conversation with our mail-person who needed me to sign for a package. I met her for the first time just a couple days ago, when she came to our garage sale. But now she wanted to talk about how we’d never met before, even though I’ve lived here for 20 years. Next thing I know we’re talking about sewing and she’s offering me and my family “free stitching!” In that vein, I offered her my services and gave her a few cards. That was something I would not have done one year ago. Perhaps I am learning what it means to “take off the mask” and be who I really am!
Monday, September 28, 2015
The End of September
Now it is the end of September, the days are shorter and weather has been odd. Alternately hot, then muggy, with some spectacular sunrises and sunsets. I’m finding the reality of my situation is coming over me. Being alone didn’t bother me so much, but it seems like the grayness and general bla-ness of the weather is washing all the joy out of my outlook. My persistent lack of work and it’s attending lack of purpose is leaving me with nothing to get out of bed for in the morning. I want to stay optimistic, but there is so little color left and not a lot to look forward to.
Yesterday, a fellow practitioner sent me this note: ”Jealousy is fear. Release it today!” Sounded right to me. I sent back what I felt was a thoughtful answer, but later I realized that it was dismissive. Being honest is a never-ending challenge! I wonder if I will ever get to the point where I can trust myself to not dismiss and deflect the truth when it stares me in the face? I will soon find out if she calls me on it or not. Jealousy is a persistent issue for me whenever I read or hear about other people who have these great spiritual experiences. It makes me feel like a failure. It didn’t take much thinking to find myself back as a 6 year old, being so afraid of being left out, to the point of being excluded by the neighborhood kids because I was so whiney about it.
At any rate, the more I looked into it, the deeper the rabbit hole went. I went as far back in my memories as I could and I saw myself as a small, scared, child. I tried to imagine comforting him, but I couldn’t. I tried the technique of getting my mother to seem better by working with her as a child, but I couldn’t do that either. I couldn’t ever picture my mother as happy and feeling safe. And I recognized that I have always been afraid, and I didn’t know what it felt like to not be afraid. Ever. It’s always there. It doesn’t matter what else is on top of it, or what I’m doing, there is always that undercurrent of what’s going to happen when it’s over. Whatever “it” is: The party, the job, the friendship, the marriage. I have tried, and still try, to hold my life in a death grip of control. I am sure that I will have security by keeping everything exactly as I want it. But even I can see how that doesn’t work. That line from Star Wars “The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems slip through your fingers,” sums it up nicely. The tighter you hang on, the less you have.
On the plus side, I can see that. I can see how letting go and dancing in the flow can bring joy. But then there is always the uncertainty. I’ve never been big on trust, of people, or circumstances. In the back of my mind there’s that knowing that I just need to let things be and continue to put out into the universe what I want to come back. And what I put out can not be out of control or neediness or desperation, because, if I do, that’s what I’ll get back. I has to be honesty, trust, friendship, acceptance, and, someday when I can manage it, love. And it has to be the real deal: Unselfish, non-judgmental, and accepting. Otherwise it’s just more of the same “make me feel better,” or “what’s in it for me,” crap I’ve been dealing with all my life. When I’m objective, I can see that I’m have made a lot of progress, I have a few genuine friends now, which is something I never allowed myself before. But on gray days like this, when the future looks bleak, it just doesn’t seem enough.
When I look at things objectively, there is no reason to think that I won’t be OK, at least for the next few years. But, somehow, a lack of purpose eats away at me. A job would give me a temporary respite from all of this, keeping me busy, allowing me to meet new people, giving me some cash and providing me a piece of stability over the next year, while I rebuild my life after the divorce. Funny how you never think it’s going to happen to you, until it does. What you have may not be great, but at least you have your future planned out and you know what’s going to happen. Then one day, the rug comes out and everything is up for grabs again.
People don’t talk about this stuff, and it’s too bad. Maybe we should have divorce parties and divorce magazines, “How to play the ultimate divorce!” And showers, or a combination garage sale and shower: The two new singles need stuff and they, usually, have a lot of stuff to get rid of. What if it was like a gift exchange? Friends bring in stuff needed to set up a single household, and take away stuff that the former couple no longer need or want. I suppose I should contact a divorce support group. I keep thinking about it, but I haven’t done anything yet.
As usual, writing this out has lifted the grey for now. When all is said and done, it really doesn’t matter if anyone reads this stuff or not, just writing it is an end in itself. It would be nice if this might be some comfort to someone else, or perhaps someone would like to send me a note of support. I’ll just see how that goes.
Yesterday, a fellow practitioner sent me this note: ”Jealousy is fear. Release it today!” Sounded right to me. I sent back what I felt was a thoughtful answer, but later I realized that it was dismissive. Being honest is a never-ending challenge! I wonder if I will ever get to the point where I can trust myself to not dismiss and deflect the truth when it stares me in the face? I will soon find out if she calls me on it or not. Jealousy is a persistent issue for me whenever I read or hear about other people who have these great spiritual experiences. It makes me feel like a failure. It didn’t take much thinking to find myself back as a 6 year old, being so afraid of being left out, to the point of being excluded by the neighborhood kids because I was so whiney about it.
At any rate, the more I looked into it, the deeper the rabbit hole went. I went as far back in my memories as I could and I saw myself as a small, scared, child. I tried to imagine comforting him, but I couldn’t. I tried the technique of getting my mother to seem better by working with her as a child, but I couldn’t do that either. I couldn’t ever picture my mother as happy and feeling safe. And I recognized that I have always been afraid, and I didn’t know what it felt like to not be afraid. Ever. It’s always there. It doesn’t matter what else is on top of it, or what I’m doing, there is always that undercurrent of what’s going to happen when it’s over. Whatever “it” is: The party, the job, the friendship, the marriage. I have tried, and still try, to hold my life in a death grip of control. I am sure that I will have security by keeping everything exactly as I want it. But even I can see how that doesn’t work. That line from Star Wars “The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems slip through your fingers,” sums it up nicely. The tighter you hang on, the less you have.
On the plus side, I can see that. I can see how letting go and dancing in the flow can bring joy. But then there is always the uncertainty. I’ve never been big on trust, of people, or circumstances. In the back of my mind there’s that knowing that I just need to let things be and continue to put out into the universe what I want to come back. And what I put out can not be out of control or neediness or desperation, because, if I do, that’s what I’ll get back. I has to be honesty, trust, friendship, acceptance, and, someday when I can manage it, love. And it has to be the real deal: Unselfish, non-judgmental, and accepting. Otherwise it’s just more of the same “make me feel better,” or “what’s in it for me,” crap I’ve been dealing with all my life. When I’m objective, I can see that I’m have made a lot of progress, I have a few genuine friends now, which is something I never allowed myself before. But on gray days like this, when the future looks bleak, it just doesn’t seem enough.
When I look at things objectively, there is no reason to think that I won’t be OK, at least for the next few years. But, somehow, a lack of purpose eats away at me. A job would give me a temporary respite from all of this, keeping me busy, allowing me to meet new people, giving me some cash and providing me a piece of stability over the next year, while I rebuild my life after the divorce. Funny how you never think it’s going to happen to you, until it does. What you have may not be great, but at least you have your future planned out and you know what’s going to happen. Then one day, the rug comes out and everything is up for grabs again.
People don’t talk about this stuff, and it’s too bad. Maybe we should have divorce parties and divorce magazines, “How to play the ultimate divorce!” And showers, or a combination garage sale and shower: The two new singles need stuff and they, usually, have a lot of stuff to get rid of. What if it was like a gift exchange? Friends bring in stuff needed to set up a single household, and take away stuff that the former couple no longer need or want. I suppose I should contact a divorce support group. I keep thinking about it, but I haven’t done anything yet.
As usual, writing this out has lifted the grey for now. When all is said and done, it really doesn’t matter if anyone reads this stuff or not, just writing it is an end in itself. It would be nice if this might be some comfort to someone else, or perhaps someone would like to send me a note of support. I’ll just see how that goes.
Monday, September 14, 2015
The Darkness Inside
When I traded sessions, a while back, I got acquainted with my fears. Before that, I thought I knew what fear was, and what it felt like, but I have been learning a lot since then. I have discovered the many ways fear masquerades as something else: Often anger. It starts out as reluctance, “I don’t want to,” then escalates into annoyance, then into full blown “pissed off,” if, whatever it is, doesn’t back off. So many of my preferences are really fear, it makes me wonder who I really am. I’ve been processing all of that, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m missing something important.
One piece of advice I got from the other session was, “Look inside,” and I’ve been doing that. A lot. I don’t like what I see, for I see darkness. I also see that I’ve never let anyone in, ever. Not a super surprise that, but still. I wouldn’t have characterized myself as quite so cut off, but there you are. I can see that I’ve spent most of my life holding people at arm’s length, at best. Over the past some years, I have been letting some people closer and closer, to the point of letting them in a little ways, but no one gets all the way inside.
I don’t even know if that is a good idea. You really don’t want to let everyone inside, do you? At least, I don’t think so. I wouldn’t think that everyone wants to see everything that’s going on inside me. It seems that there should be some people who, what, want to help? Huh, I’ve had enough of “helpers” thank you. They just want to listen, a bit, then offer cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all advice. Then get pissed off if you don’t take it. Or not. I know because I’ve played that role. Not much of a relationship there if all you do is listen to offer advice. That role was comfortable and safe, but I eventually figured out that there wasn’t anything there. I was always the “strong,” Mister Advice Giver, who couldn’t show any problems, because, that would mean that I didn’t know what I was talking about after all. That’s a pretty lonely life.
So, in my problem solving mode, I realize that I need a new set of friends. I find that there are a few people that I have been able open up to, under the right circumstances. There’re not many, because I have tended to surround myself with people like myself, but I have been slowly moving in the direction of hanging with a different kind of person. Another problem I have is I don’t know how to Be with these people. I don’t have any experience with sharing without some kind of goal in mind. Part of my mind still has a problem with that. Everybody wants something, right? Anyone I talk to will either want something, or expect that I want something from them. I don’t know if that’s true, it’s just been an unspoken assumption all of my life. So unspoken that I just realized that it was there.
Can I honestly be sure that I don’t want something, that I’m not working some kind of angle? Here is where things get weird. I find myself trying to carefully convince them that I have no agenda, while never 100% sure that it’s true. I don’t even want to think about how that must come off on the outside, I must seem pretty odd, at times. Hey, I blame it on my upbringing: I have no idea how people are supposed to behave in these kinds of situations.
There was no affection, of any kind, my family. Well, that’s not quite true, I remember a one time when I felt close to my mom when I was pretty small, but that’s pretty much it. Nobody “talked” in my family. They yelled, complained, gave orders. But talk? Nah. My number one priority was to survive, and saying anything that might come back around to haunt me, was something I worked very hard to avoid. I was schooled from an early age to say as little as possible, because, no matter what I said, the older kids would find a way to turn it against me. And then I always blamed myself for being stupid enough to let something slip out.
It took me at least a decade, after I left home, to learn to have a conversation. Even a trivial “Hi, how are you,” was a strain. In my head was the ever present calculation about how much did I have to say to get them to go away, without revealing anything that they could use against me later. Work was always like that. Sitting in the lunchroom, hiding in a book, listening to other people’s conversations, wishing I wasn’t quite so alone, but knowing that I just “didn’t have anything to say.” Over time I built up a supply of harmless conversational items I could pull out, when necessary. Sort of like conversational flash cards where I could whip out a canned comment or response. What I said didn’t always fit in with the rest of the conversation, but it was better than nothing.
Over time, I gradually realized that “saying nothing” really wasn’t working all that well. After a point, the conversational nothings become so meaningless that you want to slash your own throat, just to get it to end. I was pretty clear that I had surrounded myself with people who worked on that superficial level, and I was growing to hate it. I am still learning, but I’ve picked up a few things that seem to help.
First, find different people. You can’t always pick your co-workers or family, but you can pick your friends. So find a community where you can say what you want without it being turned against you. I’m not saying that’s easy, stepping outside of my comfort zone to talk to a different class of people is, well, uncomfortable. You don’t know what you’re going to get. You have to use some judgment. Get out of your “lost puppy,” “Will you please be my friend,” mode and value yourself a bit. You don’t have to accept everyone who does you the honor of bestowing their presence on you. Take some time get to know if you really fit before jumping all in and making commitments.
The next thing is like the first: Learn to shrug off hurtful or unkind comments. Then, keep at a distance from people who continue to make them. Again, this comes back to valuing yourself, because you truly don’t need anyone who makes you feel bad about yourself. Even if it’s only part of the time. I’ve had trouble with this, as do many other people. But I’ve pretty much gotten to the point where I don’t want or need someone who won’t hold up their end of the relationship.
Now, for the last thing on my list, learning to accept and meet people where they’re at. This is a far as I’ve gotten, so I have no idea what it’s like to fully achieve this or what might lie beyond it. At this point, I should be able to tell what’s appropriate for each person and situation and share at that level, respecting the boundaries of the other person. I am still learning how this works, how to be intimate on some levels without jumping in whole-hog. I’m really getting that relationships do take time, no matter what stories or movies you may have seen or heard, and the vast majority of relationships only go so far, and that’s the way it should be. A relationship isn’t a failure because it doesn’t meet your initial expectations. They are what they are, not what you think they should be.
I believe I’ve come a long way, but there is a ways more to go. When you stop holding people back and keeping them out, the question then becomes, how far is far enough? And, far enough for what? Now with my divorce, I’m staring at the possibility of having other relationships at some point. What will they look like? How will I know that I’ve actually found something I want to stick with? At the moment it feels like I have this really big emptiness inside that I’ve never really looked at, or allowed anyone else to see either. At the moment, it appear really dark. But I sense the possibility of something wonderful there. All I need to do is learn how to see it.
When letting people in, the first hard lesson I learned is that you can’t force people to be what their not. If they can’t/won’t be what you need, you need to move on, no matter how hard that is. You don’t have to burn bridges and slash-and-burn your way out: You can let them go with love and be friends. But you do need to let them go. The same thing goes for new people: Accept them at the level where you both are comfortable. You don’t want to be a bully or a doormat. It can be really hard, sometimes, to not lay too many expectations on any relationship, we are all human. I’m still learning all this, so I really have no idea what’s going to happen next. I’ve already moved way past anything I ever imagined before, and these are just friends, so who knows what might actually be possible? I assume that I’ll never know it all, but I’m sure there’s a whole lot more to explore.
One piece of advice I got from the other session was, “Look inside,” and I’ve been doing that. A lot. I don’t like what I see, for I see darkness. I also see that I’ve never let anyone in, ever. Not a super surprise that, but still. I wouldn’t have characterized myself as quite so cut off, but there you are. I can see that I’ve spent most of my life holding people at arm’s length, at best. Over the past some years, I have been letting some people closer and closer, to the point of letting them in a little ways, but no one gets all the way inside.
I don’t even know if that is a good idea. You really don’t want to let everyone inside, do you? At least, I don’t think so. I wouldn’t think that everyone wants to see everything that’s going on inside me. It seems that there should be some people who, what, want to help? Huh, I’ve had enough of “helpers” thank you. They just want to listen, a bit, then offer cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all advice. Then get pissed off if you don’t take it. Or not. I know because I’ve played that role. Not much of a relationship there if all you do is listen to offer advice. That role was comfortable and safe, but I eventually figured out that there wasn’t anything there. I was always the “strong,” Mister Advice Giver, who couldn’t show any problems, because, that would mean that I didn’t know what I was talking about after all. That’s a pretty lonely life.
So, in my problem solving mode, I realize that I need a new set of friends. I find that there are a few people that I have been able open up to, under the right circumstances. There’re not many, because I have tended to surround myself with people like myself, but I have been slowly moving in the direction of hanging with a different kind of person. Another problem I have is I don’t know how to Be with these people. I don’t have any experience with sharing without some kind of goal in mind. Part of my mind still has a problem with that. Everybody wants something, right? Anyone I talk to will either want something, or expect that I want something from them. I don’t know if that’s true, it’s just been an unspoken assumption all of my life. So unspoken that I just realized that it was there.
Can I honestly be sure that I don’t want something, that I’m not working some kind of angle? Here is where things get weird. I find myself trying to carefully convince them that I have no agenda, while never 100% sure that it’s true. I don’t even want to think about how that must come off on the outside, I must seem pretty odd, at times. Hey, I blame it on my upbringing: I have no idea how people are supposed to behave in these kinds of situations.
There was no affection, of any kind, my family. Well, that’s not quite true, I remember a one time when I felt close to my mom when I was pretty small, but that’s pretty much it. Nobody “talked” in my family. They yelled, complained, gave orders. But talk? Nah. My number one priority was to survive, and saying anything that might come back around to haunt me, was something I worked very hard to avoid. I was schooled from an early age to say as little as possible, because, no matter what I said, the older kids would find a way to turn it against me. And then I always blamed myself for being stupid enough to let something slip out.
It took me at least a decade, after I left home, to learn to have a conversation. Even a trivial “Hi, how are you,” was a strain. In my head was the ever present calculation about how much did I have to say to get them to go away, without revealing anything that they could use against me later. Work was always like that. Sitting in the lunchroom, hiding in a book, listening to other people’s conversations, wishing I wasn’t quite so alone, but knowing that I just “didn’t have anything to say.” Over time I built up a supply of harmless conversational items I could pull out, when necessary. Sort of like conversational flash cards where I could whip out a canned comment or response. What I said didn’t always fit in with the rest of the conversation, but it was better than nothing.
Over time, I gradually realized that “saying nothing” really wasn’t working all that well. After a point, the conversational nothings become so meaningless that you want to slash your own throat, just to get it to end. I was pretty clear that I had surrounded myself with people who worked on that superficial level, and I was growing to hate it. I am still learning, but I’ve picked up a few things that seem to help.
First, find different people. You can’t always pick your co-workers or family, but you can pick your friends. So find a community where you can say what you want without it being turned against you. I’m not saying that’s easy, stepping outside of my comfort zone to talk to a different class of people is, well, uncomfortable. You don’t know what you’re going to get. You have to use some judgment. Get out of your “lost puppy,” “Will you please be my friend,” mode and value yourself a bit. You don’t have to accept everyone who does you the honor of bestowing their presence on you. Take some time get to know if you really fit before jumping all in and making commitments.
The next thing is like the first: Learn to shrug off hurtful or unkind comments. Then, keep at a distance from people who continue to make them. Again, this comes back to valuing yourself, because you truly don’t need anyone who makes you feel bad about yourself. Even if it’s only part of the time. I’ve had trouble with this, as do many other people. But I’ve pretty much gotten to the point where I don’t want or need someone who won’t hold up their end of the relationship.
Now, for the last thing on my list, learning to accept and meet people where they’re at. This is a far as I’ve gotten, so I have no idea what it’s like to fully achieve this or what might lie beyond it. At this point, I should be able to tell what’s appropriate for each person and situation and share at that level, respecting the boundaries of the other person. I am still learning how this works, how to be intimate on some levels without jumping in whole-hog. I’m really getting that relationships do take time, no matter what stories or movies you may have seen or heard, and the vast majority of relationships only go so far, and that’s the way it should be. A relationship isn’t a failure because it doesn’t meet your initial expectations. They are what they are, not what you think they should be.
I believe I’ve come a long way, but there is a ways more to go. When you stop holding people back and keeping them out, the question then becomes, how far is far enough? And, far enough for what? Now with my divorce, I’m staring at the possibility of having other relationships at some point. What will they look like? How will I know that I’ve actually found something I want to stick with? At the moment it feels like I have this really big emptiness inside that I’ve never really looked at, or allowed anyone else to see either. At the moment, it appear really dark. But I sense the possibility of something wonderful there. All I need to do is learn how to see it.
When letting people in, the first hard lesson I learned is that you can’t force people to be what their not. If they can’t/won’t be what you need, you need to move on, no matter how hard that is. You don’t have to burn bridges and slash-and-burn your way out: You can let them go with love and be friends. But you do need to let them go. The same thing goes for new people: Accept them at the level where you both are comfortable. You don’t want to be a bully or a doormat. It can be really hard, sometimes, to not lay too many expectations on any relationship, we are all human. I’m still learning all this, so I really have no idea what’s going to happen next. I’ve already moved way past anything I ever imagined before, and these are just friends, so who knows what might actually be possible? I assume that I’ll never know it all, but I’m sure there’s a whole lot more to explore.
Monday, September 7, 2015
My Colors of Fear
I thought I knew what fear was, I didn’t know jack. Earlier this week I had a session with another practitioner and discovered fear comes in many flavors and shapes, and I had managed to hide myself from most of them.
We traded sessions. It’s a practice among us practitioners to help the newbies gain experience. I use it to help keep myself grounded. With over a 100 clinical hours under my belt, I’m no longer a beginner, but I’m hardly the seasoned professional either. I need to ‘check in’ from time to time to ensure that I’m not drifting off course. I’ve done a couple of these trades over the past few weeks, but they didn’t work out as I had hoped. The sessions were I was the client went poorly, because I am still significantly blocked from getting access to my subconscious. I was hoping things would have gotten a lot better, but I was disappointed. This time, access was a lot easier, but it was still far from easy and wasn’t of any real value. The past lives were interesting, though odd, but no real information came through, as I can remember. (The other practitioner had trouble operating my recorder and so my session wasn’t recorded.)
My first life was as a dark-haired young man, in what looked like renaissance Italy. He was wearing expensive clothes and a puffy hat. I don’t remember anything else about him. The next life was as a young girl, about 10, with long gold hair and a red velvet dress. It seemed like England, sometime in the middle ages. In the first scene she’s sitting on some grass, smiling and listening to someone sitting on a stool. I don’t know if it was a teacher or a storyteller. The next scene was a party in a large hall, but now she seemed only about 2 or 3 years old, holding hands with some really big person. In the last scene, she was old, with long grey hair, sitting up in a bed in a clean, brightly lit room in, what felt like, a small cottage. She seemed content and not afraid to die. i remember that there was a purpose to the life, but I can’t remember what it was. Then things got strange.
I jumped to a scene from depression-era America, the great plains. I saw the same girl, this time barefoot, in a plain dress, standing outdoors. Everything was dusty and cloudy around her, like there was a dust storm. Behind her I could make out the shadows of a small farmhouse and a windmill. She was just standing there, hand straight down at her sides and staring straight ahead, right at me. She seemed frozen as the wind blew around her. She seemed very unhappy, in stark contrast to the first time I saw her. Her eyes were hopeless.
After a while where nothing changed, I finally got the idea that she was stuck and I was supposed to help her ascend. I tried, and achieve partial success, as part of her seemed to go. But part of her remained. I tried showing her the light and showing her love, but it was a struggle. I should go back there and have another try. I think that what I’m seeing there is part of me that is stuck, somewhere.
The subconscious portion of this session was a bust, as I remember, I was so busy fighting the process that not much came out. I remember almost nothing.
But things finally got interesting when we switched and I ran the session for the other practitioner. Things went well, and at the end of the session, I sometimes the client’s subconscious if there is any message or advice for me. Usually I get some some simple advice, “Keep doing what you’re doing…” etc., but this time I got a whole conversation. A whole conversation about fear. Yeah. I know I’m blocked, but this conversation really showed me that the blocks were fear, in stark terms. I don’t mean that I was told about it, I mean that as the conversion went on, I was remembering and feeling the different kinds of fear that were there.
I remembered when I was working with someone on my LinkIn profile, and how reluctant I was to accept what she was saying. At the time I was thinking “I don’t know how,” though now it’s clear that I was afraid. I’m not sure of what, exactly, but we I was feeling was fear. I never realized that before. I also noticed arrogance. This is hard to explain, but I saw myself in recent situations and realized that what I thought was helpfulness was actually arrogance, and the need to force my opinion on the other person. It isn’t like this is the first time I’ve done that, but it’s the first time I recognized it for what it is. It seems that everywhere I look in my life, I see fear. I am hemmed in by fears on every side. Here I though I was so enlightened and so in control of my life, when I’ve been actually navigating a torturous path among the rocks of my fears, while pretending I was sightseeing.
That’s what the past week has been like. I’ve been doing it so much I’m getting weary of the whole thing, but truth is truth, and hiding from it just makes me feel worse. I’m beginning to question the authenticity of my words and actions in almost every interaction. I’ve started short posts, retyped them several times, taking over an hour, then ended up deleting them entirely because I couldn’t convince myself that I had anything worth saying. I’ve been serially doubting myself. But then, this morning, I read something that moved me and wrote a reply, and it just felt right. What I said isn’t important, but it was honest and genuine and authentic, and that’s what matters. I find myself reading certain things that provoke me to think and remember when I’ve been less than honest, and deal with confronting what was behind those actions and feelings. (I also seem to be expressing myself differently, or at least it seems that way to me.)
That seems to be my job, for the time being, confront what I’ve kept hidden. To pull penetrate the facades, remove the masks and peer through the disguises on all the things that I have been pretending were something nice, or at least acceptable. I’m done with pretending, so what if everybody else does it, I don’t want to do it any more!
We traded sessions. It’s a practice among us practitioners to help the newbies gain experience. I use it to help keep myself grounded. With over a 100 clinical hours under my belt, I’m no longer a beginner, but I’m hardly the seasoned professional either. I need to ‘check in’ from time to time to ensure that I’m not drifting off course. I’ve done a couple of these trades over the past few weeks, but they didn’t work out as I had hoped. The sessions were I was the client went poorly, because I am still significantly blocked from getting access to my subconscious. I was hoping things would have gotten a lot better, but I was disappointed. This time, access was a lot easier, but it was still far from easy and wasn’t of any real value. The past lives were interesting, though odd, but no real information came through, as I can remember. (The other practitioner had trouble operating my recorder and so my session wasn’t recorded.)
My first life was as a dark-haired young man, in what looked like renaissance Italy. He was wearing expensive clothes and a puffy hat. I don’t remember anything else about him. The next life was as a young girl, about 10, with long gold hair and a red velvet dress. It seemed like England, sometime in the middle ages. In the first scene she’s sitting on some grass, smiling and listening to someone sitting on a stool. I don’t know if it was a teacher or a storyteller. The next scene was a party in a large hall, but now she seemed only about 2 or 3 years old, holding hands with some really big person. In the last scene, she was old, with long grey hair, sitting up in a bed in a clean, brightly lit room in, what felt like, a small cottage. She seemed content and not afraid to die. i remember that there was a purpose to the life, but I can’t remember what it was. Then things got strange.
I jumped to a scene from depression-era America, the great plains. I saw the same girl, this time barefoot, in a plain dress, standing outdoors. Everything was dusty and cloudy around her, like there was a dust storm. Behind her I could make out the shadows of a small farmhouse and a windmill. She was just standing there, hand straight down at her sides and staring straight ahead, right at me. She seemed frozen as the wind blew around her. She seemed very unhappy, in stark contrast to the first time I saw her. Her eyes were hopeless.
After a while where nothing changed, I finally got the idea that she was stuck and I was supposed to help her ascend. I tried, and achieve partial success, as part of her seemed to go. But part of her remained. I tried showing her the light and showing her love, but it was a struggle. I should go back there and have another try. I think that what I’m seeing there is part of me that is stuck, somewhere.
The subconscious portion of this session was a bust, as I remember, I was so busy fighting the process that not much came out. I remember almost nothing.
But things finally got interesting when we switched and I ran the session for the other practitioner. Things went well, and at the end of the session, I sometimes the client’s subconscious if there is any message or advice for me. Usually I get some some simple advice, “Keep doing what you’re doing…” etc., but this time I got a whole conversation. A whole conversation about fear. Yeah. I know I’m blocked, but this conversation really showed me that the blocks were fear, in stark terms. I don’t mean that I was told about it, I mean that as the conversion went on, I was remembering and feeling the different kinds of fear that were there.
I remembered when I was working with someone on my LinkIn profile, and how reluctant I was to accept what she was saying. At the time I was thinking “I don’t know how,” though now it’s clear that I was afraid. I’m not sure of what, exactly, but we I was feeling was fear. I never realized that before. I also noticed arrogance. This is hard to explain, but I saw myself in recent situations and realized that what I thought was helpfulness was actually arrogance, and the need to force my opinion on the other person. It isn’t like this is the first time I’ve done that, but it’s the first time I recognized it for what it is. It seems that everywhere I look in my life, I see fear. I am hemmed in by fears on every side. Here I though I was so enlightened and so in control of my life, when I’ve been actually navigating a torturous path among the rocks of my fears, while pretending I was sightseeing.
That’s what the past week has been like. I’ve been doing it so much I’m getting weary of the whole thing, but truth is truth, and hiding from it just makes me feel worse. I’m beginning to question the authenticity of my words and actions in almost every interaction. I’ve started short posts, retyped them several times, taking over an hour, then ended up deleting them entirely because I couldn’t convince myself that I had anything worth saying. I’ve been serially doubting myself. But then, this morning, I read something that moved me and wrote a reply, and it just felt right. What I said isn’t important, but it was honest and genuine and authentic, and that’s what matters. I find myself reading certain things that provoke me to think and remember when I’ve been less than honest, and deal with confronting what was behind those actions and feelings. (I also seem to be expressing myself differently, or at least it seems that way to me.)
That seems to be my job, for the time being, confront what I’ve kept hidden. To pull penetrate the facades, remove the masks and peer through the disguises on all the things that I have been pretending were something nice, or at least acceptable. I’m done with pretending, so what if everybody else does it, I don’t want to do it any more!
What's the "Truth" about Ghosts?
Someone posted a question on a web site asking about the "Truth about Ghosts." I wrote this reply.
Ah, what is "truth?" First of all, "spirits" of all kinds seem to exist in the stories of every culture, as far back as we can tell. And in every culture they take on their own, unique, characteristics, which generally reflect those of their culture. People have been having Spiritual experiences, well, forever, as far as anyone can tell.
Today, in the U.S. alone, surveys show that millions of people admit to having spiritual, paranormal or unexplained experiences, many of them on a daily basis. Yet the culture as a whole insists that these are all just stories, that there is no evidence that any of these phenomena exist. Well, that is true, if you ignore the testimonies of millions of people, and all the research over the past 100 years.
Consider this: Scientists have been looking for Dark Matter for about 100 years. They say that it makes up 96% of the universe. That includes you and me. So far, they've found exactly nothing. Zero, nada, zippity-do-da, nothing. Yet it's perfectly acceptable in scientific circles to talk as though it exists and spend millions to dollars looking for it. Yet those same people will go out of their way to ignore and discredit anything that might show evidence of something psychic, on the basis that there is no evidence.
It's understandable, I suppose. On one side, you have the materialists who blindly insist "there aint no such thing," and on the other, you have a gazillion religious and spiritual groups who all put their own particular spin on spirituality and the paranormal. Often these groups are at odds with each other, each insisting that their interpretation is the only correct one. So, even though most of the people in the world pretty much agree that there is Something Going On Here, in regard to spirits and the paranormal, the is no concusses on even the basic characteristics of what that Something might be. The poor researchers in this field have to take fire from every quarter: Not only from the materialists, but also from the religious/spiritual types who are afraid that the researchers will find something that contradicts their beliefs or might take some of the "mystery" out of their faith.
To be purely objective, there is plenty of empirical evidence that "ghosts" (or paranormal phenomena) exist, but we all know that almost nobody is completely objective around this subject. Do your own research: There is plenty to read about Near Death Experiences and all the phenomena around them, which, together with the reincarnation research of Ian Stevenson, strongly suggest that there is more the afterlife than "Science" currently wants to admit. Remember, science, by it's own admission, can only explain 4% of the universe, what's going on in the other 96% is completely unknown.
--------
And now for something completely different: I am going through some extremely difficult times right now, emotionally and financially. I don't know where I will be six months from now, in a lot of different ways. If anyone would like to meet, talk, visit, share a cup of coffee, that would be really nice as I really need to get out of my head. Thanks.
Ah, what is "truth?" First of all, "spirits" of all kinds seem to exist in the stories of every culture, as far back as we can tell. And in every culture they take on their own, unique, characteristics, which generally reflect those of their culture. People have been having Spiritual experiences, well, forever, as far as anyone can tell.
Today, in the U.S. alone, surveys show that millions of people admit to having spiritual, paranormal or unexplained experiences, many of them on a daily basis. Yet the culture as a whole insists that these are all just stories, that there is no evidence that any of these phenomena exist. Well, that is true, if you ignore the testimonies of millions of people, and all the research over the past 100 years.
Consider this: Scientists have been looking for Dark Matter for about 100 years. They say that it makes up 96% of the universe. That includes you and me. So far, they've found exactly nothing. Zero, nada, zippity-do-da, nothing. Yet it's perfectly acceptable in scientific circles to talk as though it exists and spend millions to dollars looking for it. Yet those same people will go out of their way to ignore and discredit anything that might show evidence of something psychic, on the basis that there is no evidence.
It's understandable, I suppose. On one side, you have the materialists who blindly insist "there aint no such thing," and on the other, you have a gazillion religious and spiritual groups who all put their own particular spin on spirituality and the paranormal. Often these groups are at odds with each other, each insisting that their interpretation is the only correct one. So, even though most of the people in the world pretty much agree that there is Something Going On Here, in regard to spirits and the paranormal, the is no concusses on even the basic characteristics of what that Something might be. The poor researchers in this field have to take fire from every quarter: Not only from the materialists, but also from the religious/spiritual types who are afraid that the researchers will find something that contradicts their beliefs or might take some of the "mystery" out of their faith.
To be purely objective, there is plenty of empirical evidence that "ghosts" (or paranormal phenomena) exist, but we all know that almost nobody is completely objective around this subject. Do your own research: There is plenty to read about Near Death Experiences and all the phenomena around them, which, together with the reincarnation research of Ian Stevenson, strongly suggest that there is more the afterlife than "Science" currently wants to admit. Remember, science, by it's own admission, can only explain 4% of the universe, what's going on in the other 96% is completely unknown.
--------
And now for something completely different: I am going through some extremely difficult times right now, emotionally and financially. I don't know where I will be six months from now, in a lot of different ways. If anyone would like to meet, talk, visit, share a cup of coffee, that would be really nice as I really need to get out of my head. Thanks.
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