Heal Your Inner Child

Creating The Space to Manifest Love

I spent most of my life doing the Serenity prayer backwards, that is, trying to change the external things over which I had no control - other people and life events mostly - and taking no responsibility (except shaming and blaming myself) for my own internal process - over which I can have some degree of control. Having some control is not a bad thing; trying to control something or somebody over which I have no control is what is dysfunctional.

Quote from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

What is so valuable, what I believe is unique, about the approach to inner child healing that I have been guided to develop and refine, is that it provides a formula for integrating Spiritual Truth and intellectual knowledge of healthy behavior into one's emotional relationship with life.

It does not matter how much Spiritual Truth, how many mystical experiences of oneness, how in tune with Love, you can feel in certain moments - if you cannot integrate it into your life in a way which changes your emotional experience of life on a moment to moment, day to day basis. You can go to therapy for many years, read all the Spiritual and self help books, go to workshops and seminars and lectures - compile encyclopedic intellectual knowledge of what healthy behavior is - and still be reacting to old wounds in the relationships that mean the most to you.

The missing ingredient for so many people who have been seeking for many years, is how to integrate what you know into how you feel about your experience life. That is what I teach people - because it is what I have spent many years learning. It is what I am still learning.

The telephone counseling that I have been doing for the last year and nine months has led me to refine and fine tune my understanding of the dynamics of the healing process work. I resisted suggestions to do telephone counseling for quite awhile because I was concerned about how effective it would be. When working with someone in person, I can observe body language and look into their eyes. It is much easier to help a person get into their feelings, do their grief work, when working in person.

The very fact that I wasn't in the presence of the person has turned out to be perfect - it actually forced me into a deeper and more sophisticated understanding of the process. Working with people on the telephone led me to focus on how to help the person change their relationship with themselves and life in the quickest, most effective way.

I realized that I did not need to know a lot of details about the persons story. I will get just enough information from them to be able to identify the primary themes and issues in their lives - and the dynamics in childhood that spawned these issues. That allows me to explain the dynamics to them in a way they can understand and relate to from their personal experience.

The dynamics of codependence are universal and predictable - because all human beings share the same emotions and emotional process. The internal dynamics of the interrelationship between the mental and emotional levels of our beings is something I understand intimately. Each of us is unique and different in the details of our lives, in the flavor of codependency we adapted - but we all have the same basic internal dynamic.

I wrote the final draft of my book, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls, in 1995. Everything I say about the disease and the recovery process in that book is perfectly aligned with what I know today. It is a Truly amazing book that I am very grateful to have been guided to write.

"The terrorist attack on September 11th, was a blatant and straightforward manifestation of the dynamics of codependence that I explained in Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls. The subtitle of that book is A Cosmic Perspective of Codependence and the Human Condition. That book is a work of mystical Spirituality. I believe it is a Divinely inspired message to remind all wounded souls of the Truth of Love and ONENESS. As I mentioned in my last Update, I am just now starting to live at the level of consciousness that I was guided to access while writing The Dance of Wounded Souls.

"One of the things that I am realizing in the processing that was set off by this latest breakthrough in my process, is that I seem to just now be reaching - on a personal level - the level of consciousness that my book was written out of. It has been over 10 years now, since I wrote the core of what was to become Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls - over a period of 48 frenzied hours of writing, to be able to give a talk that I had scheduled months before.

The book of course evolved from that first time when I gave my talk - here in Cambria - reading from scribbles on yellow legal paper. The core of the book however poured out of me during those two days from a level of consciousness that was much higher than the one I was experiencing in my day to day life at that time."

Joy to You & Me and Joy2MeU Update - August -2001

The official publication date of The Dance of Wounded Souls was January 1996, but I actually received the books from the printer on November 30, 1995. The book is perfect. There are maybe two or three places in the book that I might change a word or phrase, but other than that, it is perfect - which is not something I could have done by myself. I was guided to write that book. I was led to access the information. I was able to be open to remembering Truth and being used as an instrument to share the message."

Attack on America - A Call for Higher Consciousness Chapter 6

Just reading my book will help most people to change their relationship with life for the better because it will cause a paradigm shift in consciousness. I understood the disease and the recovery process then - the telephone counseling has led me to refine and fine tune my ability to communicate the dynamics of the process to others.

In my own recovery process I was led intuitively, and through working the twelve steps, to develop the detachment that allowed me to learn how to start practicing discernment and to develop internal boundaries to facilitate my healing and growth. I wasn't consciously aware of how important the concept of detachment specifically had been in my healing at the time I wrote the book - and don't even mention the word in my book. I do describe the process and the importance of developing the observer perspective.

"We need to start observing ourselves and stop judging ourselves. Any time we judge and shame ourselves, we are feeding back into the disease, we are jumping back into the squirrel cage."

Quote from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

What I see clearly now, is that detachment was the first step in my recovery - and is the key to consciousness raising. As long as we are reacting out of a polarized belief system to the feeling of toxic shame in our core relationship with ourselves, we are powerless to be co-creators of our lives in anything but a negative way. It is only by detaching from our inner process enough to start seeing reality from a new healthier perspective, that we can start to gain some freedom from our old wounds and old tapes.

Observing ourselves without shame and judgment allows us to see reality with more clarity. It creates the space that allows us to own our power to make choices. It creates the space for us to start to understand our own internal conflict so that we can choose to start paying attention to the "small quiet voice" of our Spirit, of our intuition, instead of giving power to the loud abusive messages coming from our wounded ego programming. It is the key to starting to stop the war within and create some inner peace.

Developing a level of consciousness in which we are self aware, and turning that space into a proactive force in changing our relationship with self and life, is the key to learning to relax and enJoy life in the moment some of the time. The percentage of the time we are be-ing and enjoying life will increase gradually as we transform our relationship with self and life.

Probably even more important than the ability to relax and enjoy life, is developing the observer consciousness that helps us to start developing some compassion for ourselves when we are not enjoying life. It helps us to allow - and align with - the emotional healing so that we can release the repressed grief energy we are carrying. It helps us to stop judging and shaming ourselves when we feel "bad." That in turn means we spend less time in negative feeling emotional spaces - and move back into positive feeling emotional spaces sooner. It allows us to open up to receive so that we don't sabotage feeling good.

Detachment allows us to start taking some Loving control of our own internal process. It allows us to start taking control over, and responsibility for, our thoughts and our feelings to the extent that is possible. It allows us to create a space in our lives to start learning how to be Loving to ourselves instead of feeling like a victim of self and life.

Detachment - learning to observe our selves so that we can become more conscious - is an act of Love.

"Our job is to pay attention to the best of our ability, to be conscious enough to pick up on the messages the Universe is sending our way, and to take action in the direction we feel is necessary. We need to suit up and show up for life today, and do what is in front of us - at the same time a part of us is observing how intricately and perfectly the process is unfolding.

God I Love this process!! It is so incredibly elaborate. A fascinating unfolding of an intricate mosaic. I can be an actor in the play - and at the same time, be the audience watching the story unfold. The audience part of my consciousness used to be booing and hissing, throwing tomatoes and yelling what a stupid loser I was. Now my audience is compassionate, understanding, and supportive - and even gives me a standing ovation once in a while."

Newsletter Part 2 May 23, 2001 Update