Bioenergetics – Bodymind Pioneer, Alexander Lowen

Lowen, Alexander. Bioenegetics: The Revolutionary Therapy that Uses the Language of the Body to Heal the Problems of the Mind. New York: Penguin Books, 1975.

This book amazed me from beginning to end.  There is just so much richness in what Alexander Lowen leaves as a legacy for our continued work in the field of holistic health.  Born in 1910, and living a very productive life almost until his death at age 97, Dr. Lowen followed in the footsteps of the famed Wilhelm Reich, who influenced many in his day and whose work continues to represent the foundations of the mind-body connection in the realm of psychology.

I will highlight some of the most compelling parts of Bioenergetics below, and include some quotes to help illustrate the areas of thought that most intrigued me as I prepare to launch my book: Being In My Body: What You Might Not Have Known About Trauma, Dissociation and The Brain.  I also include a collection of exercises that employ the body’s involuntary aspect that I adapted from Bioenergetics that you may want to experiment with here: Bioenergetics Exercises

Like Wilhelm Reich, Alexander Lowen saw the first step in any therapeutic procedure as 1) getting the patient to breathe easily and deeply and 2) to mobilize whatever emotional expression was most evident in the patient’s face or manner.

It is intuitively known that the body tells us so much about the person inhabiting it, but the writers who have been able to capture this relationship rarely do so in such a thorough, elegant and informed way.


Freedom is the absence of inner restraint to the flow of feeling, grace is the expression of this flow in movement, while beauty is a manifestation of the inner harmony such a flow engenders.  They denote a healthy body and also, therefore, a healthy mind. (pg 44)


Below I include a few more excerpts regarding the ways we communicate with others without even knowing it.  I appreciate the wisdom and the knowledge that come from Lowen’s medical background. “Our first impressions of people are body responses which we tend eventually to ignore as we focus on their words and deeds.  Words and actions are to a large extent subject to voluntary control,” he says.  “They can be used to convey impressions that contradict the expression of the body.”  We might get an impression when we first meet someone, for instance, that they are fearful or anxious.  Over time, we pay more attention to their words, and don’t pay as much attention to the way their body expresses its story of anxiety and fear.


The other person may not feel afraid despite his expression of fear.  If he doesn’t, it means he is out of touch with the expression of his body.  That generally happens when an attitude is of long standing and has become structured in the body.  Chronic holding or tension patterns lose their effective or energetic charge and are removed from consciousness.  They are not perceived or experienced.  The body attitude becomes “second nature” to the person, at which point we say that it is part of his character.


Over the lifetime of the individual, the importance of being aware of the body and its wisdom cannot be underestimated, Lowen says.  “A person must also keep in touch, and that means a commitment to the life of the body.”


The self cannot be divorced from the body, and self-awareness cannot be separated from body awareness.  For me, at least, the way of growth is by being in touch with my body and understanding its language. (pg 117)


Lowen, like Reich, had a lot to say about pleasure, and the importance and impact of pleasure on the human organism.  So much negative energy still lurks in our subconscious from our culture’s roots in Calvinism, harking back to messages from our churches about the evils of hedonism so that it is almost taboo to bring it up in scholarly or “respectable” circles.  Finding such a comprehensive work like this from back in 1975, an informed person might wonder why the concept of pleasure is not more integrated into our modern healing modalities.  I have lots of ideas about this, but that may have to wait for another blog post.  In the meantime, we might just say, using Lowen’s words: “People come to therapy with various complaints: depression, anxiety, a feeling of inadequacy, a sense of failure, etc.  But behind each complaint is a lack of joy and satisfaction in living.”

Alexander Lowen believed that the restrictions in our bodies keep us from moving the way we were designed to move and that this lack of movement keeps us from experiencing anywhere near the full extent of pleasure that we are capable of experiencing–not in the sense of having ultimate experiences or in owning more symbols of material wealth, but simply in the everyday sensory experience we can potentially have of being alive and interacting with those around us.

I love that Lowen includes self-expression as an important source of satisfaction and pleasure.  Maybe that is why the arts have always been so important.  But self-expression is so much more than the arts.  Lowen says that it is connected to our mental and physical health.  “No living organism is a machine,” he says,


Its basic activities are not performed mechanically but are expressions of its being.  A person expresses himself in his actions and movements, and when his self-expression is free and appropriate to the reality of the situation, he experiences a sense of satisfaction and pleasure from the discharge of his energy.  This pleasure and satisfaction in turn stimulate the organism to increased metabolic activity, which is immediately reflected in deeper and fuller breathing.  With pleasure the rhythmic and involuntary activities of life function at an optimal level.


Our experience of pleasure also shapes our interpersonal relationships.  “Every muscular tension blocks the individual’s reaching out directly to the world for pleasure,” Lowen says.  “Faced with such restrictions, the ego will manipulate the environment in furtherance of the body’s need for contact and pleasure.” (pg 145)

When we are parenting our children, it is important to remember the importance of self-expression.  Not that children should be allowed to always have their way, or to be disrespectful, but that they need avenues, permission and often support to help them learn how to express themselves.  This has implications in the proper passage through the normal stages of child development.  Lowen says, “Pleasure and satisfaction are, as I have said, the immediate experience of self-expressive activities.  Limit a person’s right to express himself, and you limit his opportunities for pleasure and creative living.”

Supporting a child in learning to express him or herself also facilitates the development of healthy narcissism, without which the individual can grow up to be very manipulative and indirect about getting his or her needs met.  In fact, this lack of support and often a concomitant discouragement of the child’s expression of emotion is an important part of what compels a child to learn to dissociate and disconnect from his or her felt sense.  Lowen says, “There is an inadequate sense of self because of a lack of identification with the body.  The person doesn’t feel connected or integrated.” (pg 154)  Here are some more snippets from Bioenergetics of what Lowen had to say about dissociated feelings from childhood, and coping strategies individuals use when they experience early relational trauma.


Given this history, the child had no choice but to dissociate himself from reality (intense fantasy life) and from his body (abstract intelligence) in order to survive.  Since the dominant feelings were terror and murderous fury, the child walled off all feeling in self defense.

an inner feeling of needing to be held, supported and taken care of.

  …these traits are masked by consciously adopted compensatory attitudes.

an exaggerated independence which, however, fails to hold up under stess.

The denial of feeling is basically a denial of need.  The psychopathic maneuver is to make others need him so that he doesn’t have to express his need.  Thus he is always one up on the world. (pg 161)


My training in CranioSacral Therapy (CST) first introduced me to the idea of opening up the avenues of expression (in the throat and jaw), which suggests to me that John Upledger, DO was likely influenced by the work of Wilhelm Reich.  For those of you trained in or familiar with CST, here is a quote you will likely appreciate: “The avenues of self-expression through movement, the voice and the eyes must be opened up, so a greater energy discharge can occur.”  CST is one effective therapy for treating early relational trauma resulting from the denial of self-expression in childhood.

Here is how Alexander Lowen describes successful therapy.  Notice the importance he places on connecting present-day experiences with life history, and how he describes the energy effects of successful treatment.  With its emphasis on breathing, feeling and movement, it is closely related to today’s idea of mindfulness:


…the emphasis is always on breathing, feeling and movement, coupled with the attempt to relate the present-day energetic functioning of the individual to his life historyThis combined approach slowly uncovers the inner forces (conflicts) that prevent a person from functioning at his full energetic potential.  Each time one of these inner conflicts is resolved, the person’s  energy level increases.  This means he takes in more energy and discharges more in creative activities that are pleasurable and satisfying.


In the process of writing Being In My Body, I became much more aware of my infant rage and my 14-year-old rancor and disdain.  It’s almost as if the creative process of writing this book gave me a forum in which to voice these feelings, and explore the reasons for them, and the process itself allowed me to bring them to consciousness.  As with any creative endeavor, it is an example of self-expression.  The process has compelled me to reconnect with my babyhood, and hopefully open myself to the experience of greater and more satisfying interpersonal closeness.  Also from this vantage point I am beginning to see the ways I protected myself from such closeness in the past.  The message in this passage spoke to me.


The desire for an intimate closeness underlies all feelings of love.  The individual who is in touch with the baby he was which is still part of him, knows the feeling of love.  He is also in touch with his heart.  To the degree that one is cut off from his heart or his babyhood he is blocked from experiencing the fullness of love.


In the following quote, Lowen explains the reasons we must work with the entire person, including the parts that may have become fragmented in response to various early relational traumas.  He says that a healthy adult “is a person who is aware of the consequences of his behavior and assumes responsibility for them.”  However, he says,


if he loses touch with the feelings of love and closeness he knew as a baby, with the creative imagination of the child, with the playfulness and joy of his boyhood and with the spirit of adventure and sense of romance that marked his youth, he will be a sterile, hidebound and rigid person.  A healthy adult is a baby, a child, a boy or girl and a youth.  His sense of reality and responsibility includes the need and desire for closeness and love, the ability to be creative, the freedom to be joyful, and the spirit to be adventurous.  He is an integrated and fully conscious human being. (pg 60)


I am still very much processing what Lowen has to say about repressed emotions, and the pleasure of connected love.


“Knowledge becomes understanding when it is coupled with feeling.”

If a person is not mindful of his body, it is because he is afraid to perceive or sense his feelings.  When feelings have a threatening quality, they are generally suppressed.  This is done by developing chronic muscular tensions that do not allow any flow of excitation or spontaneous movement to develop in the relevant areas.  People often suppress their fear because it has a paralyzing effect, their rage because it is too dangerous, and their despair because it is too discouraging.  They will also suppress their awareness of pain, such as the pain of an unfulfilled longing, because they cannot support that pain.  The suppression of feeling diminishes the state of excitation in the body and decreases the ability of the mind to focus.  It is the prime cause for the loss of mind power.  Mostly our minds are preoccupied with the need to be in control at the expense of being and feeling more alive.

I have defined love as the anticipation of pleasurePsychologically, it involves a surrender of the ego to the loved object, who becomes more important to the self than the ego.  But the surrender of the ego involves a descent of feeling in the body, a downward flow of excitation into the deep abdomen and pelvis. This downward flow produces delicious steaming and melting sensations.  One literally melts with love.  The same lovely sensations occur when one’s sexual excitement is very strong and not limited to the genital area.  They precede every full orgastic release. (pg 223)


The result of successful body-mind therapy leaves a client feeling more integrated.  That is, parts that were cut off from one another have reconnected.  Obviously, I include EMDR  and CranioSacral Therapy among effective body-mind, re-integrating therapies.  Here is how Lowen describes such integration.


Releasing [blocks] by using both a physical and a psychological approach makes people begin to feel “connected.”  That is their word.  Head, heart and genitals, or thinking, feeling and sex are no longer separate parts or separate functions.  Sex becomes more and more an expression of love with a correspondingly greater pleasure. (pg 88)


I particularly like what Lowen says about clients and touch.  Though he had very strict boundaries about professionalism and sexual relations between therapist and client, he felt that touch was a very important part of therapy. “It is incumbent on a therapist, therefore, to show he is not afraid to touch or be in touch with his patient.”

What Lowen says about our energetic connection with the earth, through our feet, is the same message one gets when studying the Chinese healing arts and martial arts.


…the legs, which are our mobile roots.  Just like the roots of a tree, our legs and feet interact energetically with the ground.

the more a person can feel his contact with the ground, the more he can hold his ground, the more charge he can tolerate and the more feeling he can handle.  This makes grounding a prime objective in bioenergetics work.  It implies that the major thrust of the work is downward – that is, to get the person into his legs and feet. (pg 196)

Whatever its origin, every holding pattern represents in the present the unconscious use of the will against the natural forces of life. (pg 204)

The remark that “a person has both feet on the ground” can be taken literally only in the sense that there is a feeling contact between the feet and the ground.  Such contact occurs when excitation or energy flows into the feet, creating a condition of vibrant tension similar to that described for the hands when one focuses his attention or directs his energy to them.  One is, then, aware of the feet and able to balance himself properly on them. (pg 97)


I absolutely loved the following image, as it was one I had come close to on my own.  Mine included the human body as a metaphor for the earth, which I logically connected with “mother,” but not with the joy and pleasure that Lowen creates in his imagery in the paragraphs below.


A mother is an infant’s first ground, or to put it differently, an infant is grounded through its mother’s body.  Earth and ground are symbolically identified with the mother, who is a representative of ground and home.  (pg 97)

My patients failed to develop a sense of being grounded or rooted because of a lack of sufficient pleasurable contact with their mothers’ bodies.

A mother who is herself uprooted cannot provide the sense of security and grounding a baby needs.


Here is what Lowen has to say about empathy.  I like that he makes the distinction that one person cannot feel another’s feelings.  I happen to believe that we can mirror another person’s unconscious feelings if we, ourselves, are desiring at some level to bring our own unconscious feelings to consciousness.


Sensing another person is an empathic process.  Empathy is a function of identification – that is, by identifying with a person’s bodily expression, one can sense its meaning.  One can also sense what it feels like to be that other person, though one cannot feel what another feels.  Each person’s feelings are private, subjective.  He feels what is going on in his body; you feel what is going on in yours.  However, since all human bodies are alike in their basic functions, bodies can resonate to each other when they are on the same wavelength.  When this happens, the feelings in one body are similar to those in the other. (pg 101)


In this book, Lowen describes various character structures which use words like masochistic, psychotic, and narcissistic.  In this context these words are descriptive, not diagnostic, and I found many of the ideas to strike close to home.


There is also a masochistic element in the psychopathic personality, resulting from the submission to the seductive parent.  The child could not rebel or walk away from the situation; its only defense was internal.  The submission is only on the surface; nevertheless, to the degree that the child submits openly, he gains some measure of closeness with the parent. (pg 162)

..submissive attitude in his outward behavior, he is just the opposite inside.  On the deeper emotional level, he has strong feelings of spite, negativity, hostility and superiority….He counters the fear of exploding by a muscular pattern of holding in.  Thick, powerful muscles restrain any direct assertion and allow only the whine or complaint to come through. (pg 163)

On a conscious level the masochist is identified with trying to please; on the unconscious level, however, this attitude is denied by spite, negativity and hostility.  These suppressed feelings must be released before the masochistic individual can respond freely to life situations. (pg 165)

The psychopathic character had something his parent wanted; otherwise he would not have been an object of seduction and manipulation.  As a child he must have been aware of this and got from it his first taste of power.  True, he was really helpless, and so his power was only in his mind, but he learned a fact of life he used later: Whenever anybody needs something from you, you have power over them. (pg 182)

Neurotic anxiety stems from an internal conflict between an energetic movement in the body and an unconscious control or block set up to limit or stop that movement.  These blocks are the chronic muscular tensions mostly in the striated or voluntary musculature which is normally under ego control.  Conscious ego control is lost when the tension in a set of muscles becomes chronic.  This does not mean that control is surrendered but that the control itself has become unconscious. (pg 219)


Lowen believed that the life of the body resides in its involuntary aspect.  Many of his exercises involved experiencing these involuntary functions of the body.  I am including a collection of exercises adapted from Bioenergetics for you to play with here: Bioenergetics Exercises.

For a really nice interview with Alexander Lowen in his later years, you can go here.  I encourage you to read this book for yourself if you are a body worker or if you would like more information about Bioenergetics, the body-mind therapy created by Alexander Lowen, MD.  Though Dr. Lowen is no longer with us, we can access his works and legacy here.

My book, Being In My Body, is about reintegrating body function after trauma.  You can check it out here.

Author Endorsement – Stan Tatkin

Just received my second author endorsement from Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT.  Dr. Tatkin is a clinician and teacher; he developed A Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy® (PACT), which integrates attachment theory, developmental neuroscience, and arousal regulation, and founded the PACT Institute.

Being In My Body, by Toni Rahman

Toni presents a unique and well-thought-out perspective on healing from trauma and attachment disorders. As a couple therapist whose business it is to put the dyad first, I nonetheless respect the importance she gives to individual healing. Toni offers a comprehensive primer on some of the key concepts for healing that are derived from neuroscience, attachment theory, and somatization/embodiment. And she brilliantly puts them together in a way that creates more than the sum of the whole.” — Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT

Thank you Stan!

 

Ask and It Is Given – Book Review

Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires, by Esther and Jerry Hicks (The Teachings of Abraham). Carlsbad: Hay House, Inc. 2004.  Has 1,402 reviews and a 4.5 on a 5 point scale on Amazon.com

For many years I had been hearing about Abraham, and I had seen YouTube videos of Esther channeling Abraham, and until I read this book, that energy was just a bookmark; a place I knew I needed to return to.  This book is power itself; abundant, generous, practical, accessible and compelling.  This particular copy came into my possession because a German friend moved back home and was forced to part with many of her books, and I offered to “babysit” some of them for her.  This one was among those I chose to babysit.

Ask and It Is Given has been such a joy to read, and so aligned with my recent discovery of Joy and Pleasure in Just the Right Measure as a tool for dealing with trauma and connecting with oneself.  It is also strangely aligned with another book I just read by Alexander Lowen, the student of Wilhelm Reich, for both of whom pleasure and body-mind connection has been a lifelong passion.  I share gleanings from that book here.

For me, Ask and It Is Given helped clarify how the Universal Laws work.  For me, fine tuning had been in order for a while, and such fine tuning requires focus, time and attention.

I love how this book approaches the time we’ve spent, so far, immersed in lives that have felt to us like struggle, scarcity and chaos, or just don’t feel like they express who we really are.   None of this time has been wasted, they say.


Go forth and attract life experience to help you decide what you want.  And once you have decided, give thought to only that.  Most of your time will be spent collecting data that will help you decide what it is you want, but your real work is to decide what you want and then focus upon it, for it is through focusing upon what you want that you will attract it.  That is the process of creating.

In order for you to know that you want something, you have to pretty well have chewed on details or events that have helped you know what you do not want. (pg 162)


I get goosebumps when I read this next passage.  It affirms what John Upledger teaches through the CranioSacral approach.  And it speaks to the repressed emotions that we all hold tightly hidden from ourselves, and how we cannot see how they shape our lives until we bring them to conscious awareness.  It has only been in the process of writing Being In My Body that have I realized the connection between my body’s information about my infant rage and terror, and my teenage resentment and disdain and how they were generating elements of my reality that I desired (for my growth and learning), but no longer need or desire.  For this I am simply awestricken.  I am calmed and comforted and my faith in something bigger on which I can always rely is affirmed.


Every cell in your body has a direct relationship with Creative Life Force, and each cell is independently responding.  When you feel joy, all the circuits are open, so the Life Force can be fully received.  When you feel guilt, blame, fear, or anger, the circuits are hindered and Life Force cannot flow as effectively.  Physical experience is about monitoring those circuits and keeping them as open as possible.  Your cells know what to do: they are summoning the Energy. (pg 286)


Where I am personally still challenged is in the area of physical pain, stiffness and staying connected to my body’s signals.  Abraham offers very clear information that I am trying to apply, but am still chewing and digesting:


Anytime you have physical discomfort of any kind, whether you call it emotional or physical pain within your body, it always, always means the same thing.  “I have a desire that is summoning Energy, but I have a belief that is not allowing, so I’ve created resistance in my body.  The solution, every single time, to the releasing of discomfort or pain is the relaxation and the reaching for the feeling of relief. (pg 287)


Esther and Jerry are real people, and they have dedicated their lives to sharing the wisdom of Abraham.  I find this phenomenon fascinating from the embodiment realm because Esther channels Abraham, a group of non-embodied beings who are working to advance the evolution of humankind.  When she does this channeling, she allows the wisdom of Abraham to come into her awareness, and she finds the words that can adequately convey their ideas to us through words.

Here is an example of this book’s practical approach.  It uses realistic examples that help to clarify how we get stuck in our creative processes and end up creating things we don’t want.  You may feel stuck in a job that you hate.  You know it’s time to leave, but you can’t seem to motivate yourself to leave.  You are scared and doubt yourself.  “I want another job” is what you believe you are thinking, Abraham explains.  But we create what we focus on.  You can shift up the energy by identifying the other thoughts that you are putting a lot of energy into.  Here are some possibilities:

  • I’m angry because my employer doesn’t see my value.
  • I feel bored.
  • I feel unhappy with my current salary.
  • I’m frustrated that I can’t make them understand.
  • I’m overwhelmed with too much to do.

If you can take advantage of this unique opportunity to recognize these feelings and thoughts and understand how they relate to your earlier life, while simultaneously developing specs for your new, desired job (using what you don’t like about this job as a launching pad), your desired new job will find you before you know it!  The job you are about to leave behind is a rich source of information and knowledge about yourself.  Use it and shift your reality!

What follows are a couple lists of things I gleaned from Ask and It Is Given that I plan to review until they take up permanent residence in my body/mind:

Affirmation:

  • I, Toni Rahman, see and draw to me, through divine love, those Beings who seek enlightenment through my process. The sharing will elevate us both now.

Universal Laws (How it works):

  • I will always feel the power and value of my own personal perspective for the ‘Non-Physical Energy’ that creates worlds will flow through my decisions, my intentions and my every thought, for the creation of that which I set into motion from my perspective.
  • I am here to experience outrageous joy.
  • Your feelings of increased tension, anger, frustration, and so on, have been your indicators that you have been adding to your resistance. You have been holding yourself in a vibrational holding pattern that does not match the vibration of your desire.
  • Everything you have ever desired, whether spoken or unspoken, has been transmitted by you vibrationally…now you are going to feel your way into allowing yourself to receive it, one feeling at a time.
  • You just have to feel it in your being: I desire this. I adore this.  I appreciate this, and so on.  That desire is the beginning of all attraction.
  • To stand on the brink of what is coming, feeling eager, optimistic anticipation – with no feeling of impatience, doubt, or unworthiness hindering the receiving of it – that is the science of Deliberate Creation at its best.
  • Feeling good equals allowing the connection; feeling bad equals not allowing the connection…to your source.
  • When you stop thought, your vibration automatically rises. And in every moment that you are in your state of non-resistance, the Law of Attraction will be responding to you in a positive way.
  • Your role is to utilize Energy. That is why you exist.
  • The standard of success in life is not the money or the stuff – the standard of success is absolutely the amount of joy you feel.
  • Your action has nothing to do with your abundance! Your abundance is a response to your vibration…release the word earn from your vocabulary and your understanding altogether, and we would like you to replace it with the word allow…decide what you would like to experience and then allow it in order to receive it.
  • All the resources you will ever want or need are at your fingertips. All you have to do is identify what you want to do with it and then practice the feeling-place of what it will be like when that happens.
  • You have a manager who works continually on your behalf called The Law of Attraction, and you have only to ask in order for this Universal Manager to jump to your request. 1) Make requests with an expectation of receiving. Identify the object of your desire. 2) Allow the Universe to yield it to you.  Setting goals is like delegating to the Universal Manager.
  • Treating the body really is about treating the mind. It is all psychosomatic – every bit of it.  No exceptions.  It takes the determination that you are going to put your thoughts upon something that feels good…any malady in your physical body was a lot longer in coming than it takes to release it.
  • Physical pain is just an extension of emotion. Good feeling: You are connected to your Energy Stream.  Bad feeling: You are not allowing your Energy Stream.
  • Illness or pain is just an extension of negative emotion, and when you are no longer feeling any resistance to it, it is a non-issue.
  • You can live comfortably, joyfully, resiliently, and healthfully as long as you have desire that summons life through you.
  • Look around less. Imagine more. Until your imagery is the most familiar vibration that you have.
  • Once you practice the thought that makes you consistently feel more secure – the money must follow.

Spiritual Reassurance:

  • Since we know who you are, we will easily help you remember who you are.
  • Since we are where you came from, we will easily remind you of where you came from. …easily guide you to help yourself to that which you desire.
  • Do you understand how much orchestration of circumstances and events on your behalf is available to you? Do you understand how adored you are?  Do you understand how the creation of this planet, the creation of this universe, fits together for the perfection of your experience?
  • We want to assist you in consciously allowing your connection, more of the time, to Source. …enthusiasm, passion, and triumph.  That is your destiny.
  • We want you to relax and not be so hard on yourself when you find yourself in a place of negative emotion. Negative emotion is a good thing in that it is letting you know that some tweaking is required in order for you to be in harmony with who you are.
  • You are an Energy-flowing Being – a focuser, a perceiver. You are a creator, and there is nothing worse in all of the Universe than to come forth into the environment of great contrast, where desire is easily born, and not allow Energy to flow to your desire.  That is a true squandering of life.  Be the Spiritual You, and create like a physical fiend.
  • You cannot get poor enough to help the impoverished people thrive. It is only in your thriving that you have anything to offer anyone.  If you want to be of help to others, be as tapped in, tuned in, and turned on as you can possibly be.

Here is a super interesting tool I plan to experiment with: The Emotional Guidance Scale.  Ask and It Is Given explains how this scale moves from low vibration emotions to higher ones, and that by generating thoughts that help you move incrementally up the scale, you can align yourself with flow and decrease your resistance to having exactly what your heart desires.  The goal is not to reach the top, but to notice the relief as you move from lower vibrational feelings to higher ones, one baby step at a time, if necessary.  Staying attuned to yourself is necessary here, as you are the one watching and discerning whether or not you feel a little better (whether you have experienced some relief).  I love it because it points out that jealousy, hatred and revenge, etc., are actually of higher vibration than are powerlessness, depression and despair.  This scale offers a map, of sorts, to help you identify where you are and find your way to higher emotional vibrations.  It helps you identify not just negative thoughts, but thoughts that give you feelings of relief.  “If you will make the improved feeling or emotion be your real destination,” they say, “then anything and everything that you want will quickly follow.”

Here is the scale.

  • Joy/Knowledge/Empowerment/Freedom/Love/Appreciation
  • Passion
  • Enthusiasm/Eagerness/Happiness
  • Positive Expectation/Belief
  • Optimism
  • Hopefulness
  • Contentment
  • Boredom
  • Pessimism
  • Frustration/Irritation/Impatience
  • “Overwhelment”
  • Disappointment
  • Doubt
  • Worry
  • Blame
  • Discouragement
  • Anger
  • Revenge
  • Hatred/Rage
  • Jealousy
  • Insecurity/Guilt/Unworthiness
  • Fear/Grief/Depression/Despair/Powerlessness

Included in this volume are accessible explanations and practical exercises that beg to be tested and applied.  If there is anything at all you want to change about your life, or if you have questions about why you struggle to get what you want, I encourage you to get your copy and begin these exercises immediately.  There is really no reason to wait.

Golden Cosmos

Golden Cosmos

Tracy took me out to meet a friend of hers – the Golden Tree. This is the fall season, and it is said in these parts that the gold fire-colored flowers are a warning for us to prepare for fire prevention, will be necessary in the season to come. For now, we are enjoying the flowers.

Daring to Trust

I am absolutely loving having time to read.  The two books I was reading together: A Course In Love and Daring to Trust: Opening Ourselves to Real Love & Intimacy, by David Richo were perfect companions.  What I’m still processing from them is such important material.  It is helping me to fill in the missing pieces of my Boundaries 101 class.  Problem is, the class is still just 5 weeks.  Ah well, we’ll just have to use our time well.  Really well.

Daring To Trust is such a practical and comprehensive book.  Offered from a Buddhist perspective, it covers everything from describing what healthy trust is, to explaining why trust has been a problem for many of us in the past, and always with compassion for ourselves and others.  Here is another sample:

… building inner resources so that our safety and security lie stably within ourselves.  Such inner resources help us look at others with a desire for connection rather than with neediness…. utterly thorough and conditional yes to the given of human caprice, something we notice now not with horror and blame but with understanding and even amusement.

pg 28: …we can practice a style that helps us know ourselves more deeply.  We can first follow our need to see what it reveals about us and only after that seek fulfillment of the need, now understood more accurately.  A need is then like the White Rabbit that leads Alice down the rabbit hole into Wonderland, the unconscious part of herself where she discovers qualities in herself previously unknown to her.  A need can do that for us if instead of immediately running to someone for fulfillment, we take time to explore it.  Perhaps our need for wholehearted unconditional love shows us what we missed in childhood.

Now we are reading our needs and using them as resources for self-knowledge.  We are finding out that what we want tells us something meaningful about ourselves.

pg 29: We know ourselves deeply when we trust that we have an enlightened nature always underlying our choices and behavior, no matter how unenlightened they may seem. Read more David Richo here.

Two Epiphanies

I have a couple recent epiphanies I want to write about before I forget them.  One I had back in Missouri in August.  I identified a subconscious belief that men/boys only want one thing.  A belief that was conveyed to me by my mother, and corroborated by my father – probably about the time I began to reach puberty.  For me it was true, then.  I took this information into my split being and went two ways with it.  Part of me was angry and disgusted with men for only wanting one thing.   The other half – that identified with all things male and for all intents and purposes would have far rather been a boy, felt ashamed.  Nonetheless, I took this idea to heart and I only wanted one thing — from men.  Add to that, the fact that I had no boundaries or social skills or sense of self.  What I had learned from my parents by watching them with my opinionated sisters, who were considered bad, and were punished, was that it was not safe to have boundaries, and that it was okay to have an opinion, as long as it was aligned with theirs.  If I felt differently, it would need to be kept underground, at least for now.  Realistically, I had no idea what to talk to a boy about.  Sex and making out was the one thing I knew I was capable of.  My body just seemed to know what to do, and it wanted tender caresses, the warmth of another human body, attention.  Besides, I was going for marriage – and the sooner the better.  I couldn’t make it on my own.  I was not complete without a partner.  Two more beliefs that came down to me from my well-intentioned parents.  And because I believed that men only wanted one thing, I drew to me men who, at least from me, only wanted one thing.  All we had in common was one thing.  And when we got bored with that, there were no bonds to hold us together.

The second epiphany.  I didn’t know what to do with boys.  Didn’t know what to say – I was like the mute mermaid – all I had to do, by the power of my will – was to get him to kiss me before sundown and my problems would be solved.  Or so I thought.

Over time, however, I began to age.  My child-bearing years passed, and I began to get less attention than I had when I was young – at least that kind.  I studied my failed relationships, and I never gave up on love.  I began to develop a healthier relationship with myself.  I got myself some boundaries, and identified my opinions, my preferences, and my needs.  I interacted with men of great substance, in an arena where sex was not permitted – where part of being a professional meant being as sexually neutral as possible.  It was a role that was easy for me.  And until my personal boundaries were healthy and strong, my professional ethics served as a set of guidelines that allowed me to see life from a different lens.  I got to see that men wanted lots of things, that men were deep and lovely and creative and honorable.  I got to see all this from my therapist chair, wearing my therapist hat.

In this second incarnation, I have identified and released the old idea that boys only want one thing.  Now I can explore the world of men and see how that changes or doesn’t change everything.  Something that Judith Hemming (Systematic Constellator) said, that has been rolling around in my mind since Acapulco is that women in healthy monogamous relationships, if they want to stay in healthy relationships, need to go out and play with the boys once in a while, so they can reconnect with their femininity.  That when a couple only hangs out with one another, they become alike.  The man becomes more feminine and the woman becomes more masculine, and they kind of meet in the middle.  That seemed so odd to me.  So I kept thinking about it.  I had spent half my life believing that I couldn’t hang out with boys unless I was f***ing them.  And that didn’t make me feel very feminine or connect with my feminine nature.  Not for very long anyway.  And it sure didn’t result in bonded or satisfying relationships.  No wonder I’ve never felt like a very girly girl.  I surround myself with women, and hold the male space in the groups of women I’m with.

This half of my life, I get to see what kinds of relationships I have with men and women, that are based on the newfound information I have about boundaries, about using emotions in a healthy way, and about power and control.  I will use my experience, time, and my senses to decide what I think about people.  I will bring consciousness and myself to interactions with others, and I will stay connected with the guidance that is always available to me from within, when I listen.

I will also remember that the source of what I need is never another person, and that I will always, always be my best and most trusted friend.  Thank you, Spirit for all of it.  Amen.

Daring to Trust

I’m sharing a quick preview tonight about a book I just finished.  As its name suggests, it’s about trust.  I love love love this one, and can’t wait to share all my gleanings.  I’m also sure I’ll be integrating these ideas into my Boundaries 101 class in December.  For now, here is an excerpt from page 37 of David Richo’s Daring to Trust:

 

pg 37: An original secure attachment is the basis of trust.  Feeling that we are lovingly held with the five A’s (attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, allowing), that holes in trust  can be darned, that safety and security are reliably present — all these build our confidence in others.  Our trust is also in ourselves as people who are now capable both of showing trusting love and of being willing to work on repairing ruptures in fidelity.

A Course In Love

I just finished a book I got from my sister, Tami, when I was visiting her in New Mexico.  It’s called a Course In Love.  I love it because it reiterates what I have been getting from so many other sources, that one has to be intimate with one’s self before he/she can bring a self to a relationship.  Here are a few excerpts:

Pg 2:  In my soul I knew relationships were meant to be holy, not hell.  Loving another meant loving him all the time, not just when he was doing what I wanted him to do or saying what I wanted him to say.  Love had to be unconditional or it wasn’t love.  Being together would be easy, not work.  We would be naturally kind and considerate of each other.  To behave otherwise would be unnatural.  We would be comfortable together.  We would have a great deal in common and respect each other’s differences.  Our essences would connect.

Pg 3: What I had known in my soul to be true was now being confirmed in these teachings: it is possible to have love without conflict, to totally forgive the past, to have happiness as the purpose of relationships, to know that relationships were meant to be holy.  I held to these truths and began an incredible journey of transformation.  That journey and what could be yours is presented to you in A Course in Love.

Pg 13: The reaction to this situation is predictable.  When your mate meets your needs, then you think you’re happy and fulfilled.  When your mate falls short of your expectations, you feel betrayed and empty.  The truth of the situation is that after the initial glow begins to dim, your needs and expectations cannot possibly be met and you become miserable.  She becomes the source of your misery.  He’s behaving selfishly.  She’s thoughtless even though you’ve given so much to her.

Pg 14: Your mother and father never taught you either, but only because they did not know.  They were never taught by their parents.  Here it is.  Pay attention and think about it.  No one can fulfill your needs but you.  No one!  We’ll search on and on, never quite finding the right one.  We keep believing that if only we could find the right person, all our problems would cease.

Pg 17: To truly change, to transform an old negative pattern into a new supportive one takes a great deal of willingness, commitment, and work.  It never happens simply because we want it.

Pg 18: Finding who is to blame isn’t helpful.  Finding the underlying soul wounds within the psyche that attracted such a relationship is.

Pg 20: Nearly all the popular psychology of the day espouses some form of sacrifice.  It may be called compromise or negotiation, but it’s still sacrifice.  It doesn’t work.  Whenever you feel you must sacrifice some aspect of yourself or your life, you will end up resentful and angry.  You will feel like the loser and set a course to win next time.  Everyone loses in the game of sacrifice.

Pg 25: From then on I clung to these two truths — only love is real; only perfect love exists — whenever my enraged ego would rail at me that fear was real and that attempting to give it up was crazy….There are always signs to tell us whether we are doing the right thing or making the right decision.  Fear is a signal of the strain that arises when our desires conflict with our actions.  Listening to our personal egos, we often choose actions that conflict with our ultimate good.  We ignore the obvious signs telling us to slow down or to go ahead or to turn right.

Pg 26:  Discomfort helps us become aware of the need for correction.

Pg 27: Look at all the discomforting circumstances and events in your life.  Instead of viewing them as happening to you, begin to see them as happening through you as a means of getting you to perceive how great is the need for correction within you.

Pg 34: A radical shift in how we experience life comes about when we see ourselves and everyone else, as spirit — a shift no less dramatic than the restoration of sight to a blind person.  A way to initiate this shift is to begin gently reminding yourself of your true heritage.  This can be done through the use of an affirmation, powerfully repeated throughout the day.  One such affirmation comes from A Course in Miracles: “I am not a body, I am free, for I am as God created me.”

Pg 41: Finding exactly who to blame is not your reason for being here.  Healing your psyche, your soul wounds, through forgiveness and love is.  Whenever we are tempted to condemn another person, it is because we secretly believe we are only worthy of condemnation.  Each time we judge another it is really ourselves that we judge.

Whatever we see that we don’t like in someone else is a smoke screen attempting to hide what we really loathe in ourselves.  We are terrified to even look at it in ourselves and use our energy to deny it could possibly be in us, when it is so obviously in the other guy.

Pg 42: Take a clean sheet of paper and draw a horizontal line across the top.  From the center of that line, draw a second line straight down the page.  Now, at the very top center, write the name of a person who has been like sandpaper to your soul, someone who really bugs you.  Then put a plus sign on the left and a minus sign on the right.  In the plus column write down everything you like and admire about that person, any good you can see.  In one workshop I conducted, a woman write only one statement on the plus side: “She writes nice sympathy cards.”  Now that’s stretching, but it will do.  Write everything good and when you’ve exhausted that plus side, move to the minus side and begin to write down everything you cannot stand about that person.  It doesn’t matter how little or petty it may seem — if you think of it, write it down.  Had James been writing down what he was saying, it would have looked something like this:

Pg 43:

Tom

+

Writes a good presentation

Is good to his children

Is punctual

Delivers presentations poorly

Flirts with women

Dresses lousy

Looks tacky

Has awful taste

Has no color sense

Wears cheap clothes

 

Here’s the secret.  The list isn’t about Tom; it’s about James.  Your list isn’t about that other person; it’s about you.  Sound outrageous, or did you already figure it out?  Here’s what James did that really helped him get it.  The same technique will assist you as well.  Read down the left column of your list and before each item, add the words:

“I love myself when I…”

Then go to the right column and add the words:

“I don’t love myself when I…”

If you can be brutally honest with yourself, this exercise is a real eye opener.  Now back to James’s list.  It went something like this:  “I love myself when  write a good presentation.  I love myself when I’m good to my children.  I love myself when I’m punctual.  I don’t love myself when I deliver a presentation poorly.  I don’t love myself when I flirt with women.  I don’t love myself when I dress lousy.  I don’t love myself when I look tacky.  I don’t love myself when I have awful taste and no color sense.  I don’t love myself when I wear cheap clothes.

Pg 44: A Course in Miracles states, “Everything you behold without is a judgment of what you beheld within.”

Pg 50:  Is it Love or Is It Need:  The secret grievances we hold onto are the very things we are attracted to in a new relationship.  Initially, in our delusional thinking, we call it love.  Here’s how it works.  While in a state of delusional thinking, we are out of touch with these grievances, for they are living in the subconscious.  Since the spiritual principle “like attracts like” is always in operation, that which is held in the subconscious is attracting the same to itself, just as a magnet attracts metal shavings.   When we draw this outer manifestation into our lives, it has a familiarity to it, not because it is of the spirit but because it is of the ego.  We have experienced it before, we have attracted it again, and until we are healed of this negative energy, we will continue to attract similar people and circumstances.  Whatever is going on deep within the psyche, whatever we hold to be true — that is exactly what we attract.  What shows up in our lives in the outer is always a reflection of what is occurring in the more subtle, inner recesses of our minds.

Pg 51: We are attracted to a new person, and we believe we are in love.  But we aren’t “new” or clear or healed, so in very short order this fresh relationship, which is still “special,” becomes stale.  It falls apart, looking very similar to the ones that proceeded it.

At this ego-based stage of a relationship, one person’s unhealed agenda is attracted momentarily to another person’s unhealed agenda.  For example, when a man is very wounded he cannot really see his partner; rather, he projects the image he holds of females onto his current partner, who at this stage is a willing party to his drama.  This type of relationship is doomed before it even begins, because none of the women he brings into his life will fit his image or agenda for very long.  Each will soon demand that he see her for who she is, and this will upset his fragile illusions.  These relationships may or may not be broken off at this point, but eventually they will deteriorate.

Pg 52: Specialness can never be a satisfactory replacement for holiness.  Recognizing that we have repeatedly engaged in such ego-based liaisons is the first stage of our own healing.  In this initial stage the call for faith is strong, for the relationship may seem disturbed, disjunctive, and even quite distressing.

Pg 55: A Course in Miracles teaches that the function of all relationships is “to make happy.”  Now you and I surely know the majority of relationships we observe do not have as their function “to make happy,” any more than most of us understand that the purpose of life is “to be happy.”  Our souls are always drawing us toward our joy.  It’s just that we often aren’t ready for it.  We don’t even know how to recognize or accept it, because we have been so misinformed about the purpose of relationships.  Relationships are not about filling your needs.  A needy person is like a human bloodsucker, seeking nourishment, fulfillment, and completion not in himself or herself, but in you.  It is a draining, damaging, dysfunctional means of interaction, and it goes on constantly.  Linda complained to me that Eric was not fulfilling her needs.  Of course he wasn’t.  That would be impossible for him.  He could not heal her insecurities.  He could not heal the wounds left by her abusive father, nor quell her raging daughters.  Remember, we cannot be happy in a relationship when we are attempting to force someone else to fill needs that only we can fill, to heal wounds that only we can heal.

Pg 57: When we ask the Holy Spirit to enter our special relationships, we can be assured that Love will respond.

Pg 60: Stage three is where there is the willingness to let go of everything that has ever hurt us — attitudes, beliefs, thoughts, emotions, memories.  Kim was not ready to give to the Holy Spirit everything that she held to be valuable or true.  Here she recognized that her old beliefs were neither true nor valuable.  Her healing has been deep and profound.  She is happy, at peace, self assured.

Kim emanates the radiance of one who truly lives out of a consciousness of peace and love.  She is at peace with herself and her past.  She now focuses on living as a manifestation of love itself, rather than n being in love.  Love is in her rather than she in love.

Pg 66: …we can come to recognize when we are operating out of spiritual laws, which will always be some manifestation of love.  We’ll also know when we are operating out of the domain of the ego, which will always be some manifestation of fear.

Pg 69: When you find your thoughts out of harmony with love, release the negativity as quickly as possible and bring yourself back on course.  Listen to your words as you speak.  Are they in accord with love?  Are they kind, caring, loving, clear, compassionate, and supportive of  yourself ad of others?

Pg 126: If you have wondered what you are doing on this planet, now our question has been answered.  You, dear one, are here to forgive.  Whatever has happened in our life has occurred to support you in learning this one lesson.  Each player upon the stage of your life’s drama that has upset you in any way came into the play at your subconscious request, to give you the opportunity to learn the lesson of forgiveness.

Pg 208: I asked them to elaborate on how coaching works for them.  Hank began by stressing that the coaching is reciprocal and that “there’s no right or wrong.  We don’t make the other wrong or have to be right ourselves.  It’s merely sharing: ‘This is what I see, and I’m stepping away from where you are.  So take it and see it as you see fit, but I have no agenda around it.  I have no issue around it.  I have no judgment around it.  It’s just what I see.’  I see her in a struggle, for example, and I want to try and help by sharing myself in that way.”

Pg 209: Hank explains that when the old stuff (history) is showing up for one partner, the other partner will ask: “Is this something out of your history?”  Their process continues with one of them next saying something like, “I’m here for you.  Tell me what you need.  I’m not going to guess.  I’m not going to pretend I know better than you do.”

A Course in Love: Powerful Teachings on Love, Sex, and Personal Fulfillment, by Joan Gattuso, Harper Collins New York, NY. 1996.

Saying Goodbye

Saying Goodbye

Home, meaningful work, family, roots. I leave this place with a deeper sense of all these. I am back at Tracy’s now. Nothing dangerous or uncomfortable happened on the way home. Crazy reminders, all the way home that I am held and loved and cared for.

Through the storm, we had a 4″ foam mattress and all our gear in the back of the second pick-up truck, found Tracy’s car, fully repaired, and were on our way home. Got home well before midnight. Deeply grateful.