"Everything within the Illusion exists in relationship to the rest of the Illusion. This means that communicating Truth about any facet of the Illusion can be done in relationship to a variety of factors. This involves perspective through multiple levels. It can make a great deal of difference rather a facet of Truth is being described individually, or in relationship to (i.e. God, objective reality, human emotional process, etc.), or if the relationship itself is being described. . . .

Paradoxically, the statement which contains the most Truth may not be the statement which best communicates Truth."

The Dance of the Wounded Souls Trilogy Book 1 History V

"To empower polarity, by making black and white statements is to me, a sign that someone is not looking at the human experience from a large enough paradigm. As wonderful a person as I am sure Marianne Williamson is - and she is a wonderful teacher who has brought enlightenment and a new perspective on Love to many, many people - I deduce from statements like the one above, that she still has some black and white judgments going on in her relationship with herself. That is not bad or wrong - just human.

Statements such as hers above, give the message that fear and anger are negative and shameful. I very much disagree. The dysfunction in our relationships with ourselves have resulted in fear and anger being manifested in some really awful ways - but that does not impart negative value to the emotions themselves. Our planet was stuck in a negative paradigm, one that was reversed to the Truth of Love, for thousands of years. The whole human race was the victim of planetary conditions that caused humans to react to this human experience from a place of fear and survival, from a paradigm that empowered belief in lack, scarcity, and negativity. It was the human condition - not something that any individual human being should judge them self for."

News Addendum to Update Announcement 7-20-00

"Almost any statement can be shown to be false on some levels and True on other levels, so it is important to realize that the use of discernment is vital to start perceiving the boundaries between different levels.

In the next section, Part Five, when I discuss the Cosmic Perspective and the Cosmic Perfection of this life experience, I will be discussing the paradox, and confusion to human beings, that has been the result of these multiple levels of reality - but I have devoted Part Two and Part Four to discussing the Spiritual growth process and our perspective on that process because the Cosmic Perfection does not mean crap unless we can start integrating it into our day to day life experience.

In order to start changing life into an easier, more enjoyable experience by attaining some integration and balance in our relationships it is necessary to focus on, and clear up, our relationship with this Spiritual Evolutionary process that we are involved in."

Quote from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

Quote from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

"Working on the positive affirmations page was also a perfect part of my process as usual. While I was doing it I got a perfect example of how wonderful and powerful positive affirmations are - and how dramatically they have changed the quality of my life.

My car broke down.

It was a wonderful opportunity to be reminded of how much work I have done over the years in integrating my Spiritual belief system into my emotional responses to life - when some seeming tragedy occurs like my car breaking down, my very first reaction is gratitude that it happened when and where it did instead of when and where it could have. I used to react to life events (like car break downs) and other people's behavior out of my childhood programming that told me that if something "bad" happened it was because I was bad. I had gotten the message in childhood (in a variety of ways) that there was something wrong with me, that I was unworthy and unlovable, and that God was going to punish me for it. So life events felt like punishment.

Due to all the work that I have done in changing my subconscious programming (including at several different times making recordings of positive affirmations and messages of Love in my own voice to myself that I would play as I was going to sleep at night) my first reaction to life events now, and for the last 4 or 5 years, has been acceptance followed by gratitude because whatever it was could have happened at a worse time and place than it did.

It is amazing to me to see my capacity to let go of things that used to drive me crazy with worry and feel like punishment. The key for me has definitely been integrating the belief that everything is unfolding perfectly into my emotional process - it makes life so much easier.

Of course, that does not mean to ignore the feelings. Unfortunately, a lot of people use tools like affirmations, meditation, gratitude lists, etc. as another way of denying the feelings. These tools are meant to be used to balance the feelings not negate them. After my initial reaction of gratitude, then I let my adult take charge in terms of doing the footwork - finding a mechanic, calling a friend, calling a tow truck. As the car was being towed and I was following with my friend then I relaxed into the feelings and let myself cry with the pain of how hard life can feel sometimes. And when I say cry I mean cry - with heaving sobs. I can access those feelings and release them because of the energy/breath techniques that I have learned on the way (I describe these on the Grief Process page).

Just using the affirmations to keep from feeling my feelings would be out of balance, just staying in the adult to keep from feeling my feelings would be out of balance, just feeling the feelings and letting myself feel like a victim is also out of balance - we need to be able to use all of the tools and own all of the parts of ourselves.

What we are working toward is to find balance. That means using tools like the positive affirmations to integrate a supportive Spiritual belief system into our inner process, as well as using them to balance the feelings that come up. It does not matter what happens in my life - I start immediately to tell my self and my inner children that it is all perfect somehow, that everything is going to work out in the long run - that way I can keep from buying into the shame and doom messages that are coming from the disease so that I can maintain some emotional balance."

"About frustration, since I mentioned it several times. 10 years ago when I was in a 30 day treatment program for codependence (clinically called: depression) one of the counselors gave a definition of frustration that made me angry then, and still riles me when I am getting frustrated and I remember his words.

Frustration (he said) is what you feel when you are in a power struggle and you are losing.

Which means, for me, that there is something I need to let go of - some part of my plan, my picture of how I think things should be that I need to surrender - so I can see and accept reality as it is and then make the best of it.

A small example: I go to the post office, or the bank, and the line is longer than I want it to be (now that is kind of an oxymoron - I mean really, when has a line ever been "shorter" than I wanted it to be.) I am standing in line and I realize that I am "revving up" (getting wound up tight inside, feeling turmoil, conflict inside) because these people are in front of me (and the nerve of them - some of them have a bunch of packages (never mind how many I have)) holding me up. That is when it is time to stop, take a deep breath and talk to myself. "Now really, this is only going to take 5 or 10 minutes and we've got a half hour to get to the next place. So chill our, lighten up, relax and look around - maybe there is someone or something here you are supposed to see."

And then I can relax and go with the flow of life. My programming is to want to rush, hurry, force things along - so it is very important that I catch it when I am starting to create anxiety for myself - because those feelings are my responsibility, they are not the fault of the people in line or the post office for not having enough people at the windows (It is always so easy to blame bureaucrats - and it is also insane of me to expect reality to be different than it is.)

Every day in my life there are plans, expectations that I need to let go of. I realized at some point in my recovery that the days I was calling bad days were actually the days that things weren't going the way I wanted/expected them to go - and those were the days that I was actually learning the most - so I had to stop calling them "bad" days. (I started calling them adventures instead. What we name things has power - the more we call something hard or bad, the harder it is - attitude adjustment.) That brings to mind one of my columns - here is a quote from it:

"There is an old joke about the difference between a neurotic and a psychotic. The psychotic truly believes that 2 + 2 = 5. The neurotic knows that it is 4 but can't stand it. That was the way I lived most of my life - I could see how life was but I couldn't stand it. I was always feeling like a victim because people and life were not acting in the way I believed they "should" act.

I expected life to be different than it is. I thought if I was good and did it "right" then I would reach 'happily ever after.' I believed that if I was nice to people they would be nice to me. Because I grew up in a society where people were taught that other people could control their feelings, and vise versa, I had spent most of my life trying to control the feelings of others and blaming them for my feelings." - Serenity & Expectations

"Recovery is a process of learning to accept reality. Empowerment is about accepting reality as it is and making the best of it. In order to accept reality, it is necessary for me to be honest enough with myself to realize that I am not in charge of this process. I cannot make life do what I want it to - so I need to continuously surrender to the plan of The Great Spirit rather than try to force my plan on the Universe (and feel sorry for myself, or blame others, when that doesn't work.) It is not bad or shameful for me to try to make things happen the way I want - it is just human, dysfunctional, and painful. The sooner I catch myself not accepting reality as it is, the sooner I can let go of my picture of how I think things need to be, the more serenity I have in my life.

Melody Beattie says "Learn the art of acceptance - it is a lot of grief." She is right. Many times the reason I am not accepting reality is because I do not want to own the feelings involved. The grief and anger over a loved one self-destructing. The grief over having to let go of something or someone that means a lot to me. The grief over accepting that life - from my perspective - is not fair or just. One of the reasons that I try to control life is to protect myself from having to see someone I Love in pain. I cannot protect others from the reality of life, or from themselves, - and if I think that I am trying to control someone else just for their sake I am lying to myself.

The principle behind the first step, and the foundation of the twelve step, or any Spiritual program, is self-honesty. If we are not being honest with ourselves, then we are not capable of being honest with anyone. It is vital to start stripping away the layers of denial, self-delusion, disassociation, magical thinking, victim thinking, blame, resentment, and dishonesty that we learned to protect ourselves with in childhood. Again, it is not shameful or bad that we have used these behavioral and emotional defenses to protect ourselves - it is because we were wounded in a variety of ways in childhood."

"We can go out of balance with anything. I can use acceptance as an excuse for not taking action or responsibility. I can use forgiveness as an excuse for not standing up for myself - to avoid confrontations. I can say I am taking care of myself when I am really isolating and indulging in instant gratification.