Abundant Spirituality + codependency recovery + inner child healing + Love = Joy2MeULogo of Joy to You & Me Enterprises, publisher of Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls Joy2MeU Home Page
This is the Newsletter of the Joy2MeU web site of codependency therapist, inner child healing pioneer, Spiritual teacher Robert Burney - who is the author of the Joyously inspirational book of Spirituality:
 Codependence
: The Dance of Wounded Souls.
These Update Newsletters are posted online about once a year these days.  A short announcement e-mail is sent out notifying people - who sign up for the Joy2MeU e-mailing list - when a new Update is posted.
Joy to You & Me and Joy2MeU Update
Hello Magnificent Radiantly Beautiful Spiritual Being,

February 4th, 2012 - Today marks 13 years since I launched Joy2MeU.com on February 4, 1999.  I was hoping to have this Update Newsletter ready to post by today - and last weekend it looked like it was going to be easy to do that - but then everyone in the family got sick and both cars broke down - so now I am just getting a chance to work on it today.  Hopefully I will get it finished soon so that I can publish it and send out the announcement e-mails.

This is my first Update in over a year - since the January 2011 one.  That is probably going to be the norm going forward - about once a year for my Update Newsletters.

February 23 to 25th, 2012  So, this Update that I originally had thought I would be able to post on the 4th to mark the 13th anniversary of Joy2MeU.com is actually going to be published closer to the February 28th 14th anniversary of my original website (which is still available though I have added no new material to it since 2003: http://www.silcom.com/~joy2meu/.)   Susan got really sick as did Darien - who missed 6 days of school.  I was the least sick but actually am still kind of sick while Susan has gotten much better.  Darien is still stuffy some of the time and coughing some.

That was part of the delay but another factor was one of those good news bad news things that happen as life unfolds.  The good news was that I had a handful of new phone counseling clients show up within a couple of days right at the end of last month - and that allowed me to be able to put out almost a thousand dollars in car repairs that week. But it also made me much busier so that basically the only time I had to work on this Update - and the update to the Darien page that I have been doing at the same time - ended up being on the weekends.  And last weekend was a Holiday weekend which meant Darien was home from school on both Friday and Monday - and last Sunday I had my Intensive all day.

One of the things that happened in the time since I started working on this Update was that I ran out of the last printing of my book Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls - but was able to get the 6th printing done as a print on demand book through a service offered by Amazon.com.  So, that is great news, that the book is now going to be in print indefinitely.  Hurrah!!!  One of the things that was required in using their print on demand service is that I had to change ISBNs (International Standard Book Number) on the book.  Since I was changing ISBNs I decided to raise the price slightly (from $14.95 to $17.95) to offset the loss in income from my sales through Amazon - since I am now buying the books from them and selling it through them.

So, I had to change all the pages on my site that offer the book for sale in combination with various offers - and this was about 10 days after I had to change all those pages because the USPS raised postal rates again.  Changing all those pages is quite time consuming in itself.

Now instead of announcing that the new printing is about to happen - I am announcing that it already happened.

One of the things that I had shared in my last Update in January of 2011, was that I was going to try to create new products to increase the cash flow so that we could start to emerge from the recession that started for us when I did the last printing of the book in August 2008 - right before the national recession started.  I was successful in creating a number of new products last year - although there was good news bad news associated with most of them as you will see if you read this whole update.New book

The major new product was being able to use that same Amazon service to publish my second book Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light Book 1: Empowerment, Freedom, and Inner Peace through Inner Child Healing (aka A Formula for Spiritual Integration and Emotional Balance.)  Although the sales started out much slower than I expected, they have been picking up gradually through Amazon - with a few being sold through my site.  Getting it published was quite an interesting (and frustrating at times) process - but I am very glad to have it available now.  In the midst of the frustration of the process of getting it published I actually made a mistake where I repeated chapter 12 as both 12 & 13 and left out the chapter 13.  So, for the first couple of dozen I had to print out an insert to put in with the chapter left out - but it is corrected now and I am very happy with the book.

Both books are available as both Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble nook e-books - and the Kindle books are selling quite steadily.

I also was able to make available a new CD set of Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls with the digitally remastered sound quality and a recording of my Intensive Training Day Workshop.  Very good news on both counts.  Unfortunately I need to find a way come up with the financing to get a large number of the CDs produced and packaged before I can start selling those through Amazon and other places because right now I am having to burn and package them my self one at a time.  I share some about the process - the good news and bad news - with both projects below.  But it is great to have both of these available now.

I hope to be able to publish at least two more books this year.  One is Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light  Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life which is now available in the subscription area of my site Dancing in Light.  The other is a book focused on Romantic Relationships which will include the Dysfunctional Relationships Dynamics series and the Healthy Romantic Relationships series and quite a bit more.  Finding the time to get those ready to publish will be the challenge - but I would think I can get the first one at least (not sure which one that is yet) done within the next 3 or 4 months.  And I do hope that I find a way to get the CDs available in larger numbers so that I can get those for sale on Amazon and through my national distributor this year.

And as long as I am planting seeds with the Universe of what I hope and wish - a new computer would be really great.  The iMac that my sister gave me for my birthday in 2008 is quite ancient in computer years now.  It is very fragmented and runs real slow - I have to run the disk utility every couple of days just to keep the delays somewhat tolerable.  So, there were quite a few different factors in how long it has taken me to complete this.

As long as I am wishing, I would also like to be able to get a professional DVD made of my Intensive, get my teeth fixed, get a better car, get us moved into a bigger place where Darien can have his own room, get in better shape and lose 15 or so pounds, and make a few trips to Cambria this year (last year we were only able to go up the one time when we got married.)

Susan and I did get married a couple of days after I posted my last Update - and have now passed our first anniversary.  We are very glad we got married. Pictures from the wedding (along with the script for the ceremony) are on my updated Darien page - along with pictures and stories about Darien over the last year. (I just today added a couple of short films Darien made at the gym - don't know how to imbed them in my site but will put the links to the videos on Facebook here:  Darien 1 and Darien 2.

In the right hand column is a chronological list of announcements and additions - including the great news of a Dutch translation of Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls is now available - and a Korean publishing company is in the process of coming out with a Koran translation.

When I announced the publication of my new book a few days before my birthday in July I posted a new page commemorating the publication of my book and my birthday and offering some special prices for the book and other products and services.  That page is still available right now (by clicking on the book cover), but won't be indefinitely - so I have added what I had to share on that page, along with updates that I posted on that page - to this page below.

In commemoration of my 28th Sobriety Birthday I shared some thoughts on one of the articles in my Higher Power of my own understanding series of articles.  I decided that I didn't want to leave those thoughts on the top of that article since it might distract from the purpose of that article - so I am moving those thoughts here to the Newsletter portion of this Update.   I also added some birthday thoughts about my recovery to my Working the Third Step page - and likewise I am moving those here also for the same reason.

So, below are first the two sections with thoughts on my sobriety birthday and recovery - followed by the birthday sharing from last July.  Below that is a chronological unfolding of what has been happening since the last Update - told in messages to my Yahoo mailing list with inserts from what I have shared on Facebook - and some comments from me now.  For anyone who wants to skip to the summary of the last year at the end of the page, you can click here.

Additions to the web site & news since the January 2011 Update include:

We did get married on January 14th 2011 and there are pictures on my page dedicated to our ring bearer Darien.

I am posting quotes & news regularly on my Facebook page

A Dutch Translation of of my book Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls is now available.

In May I signed a contract with a Korean Publishing Company to publish a Korean Language version of Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls.

June 3rd
Announcing a new CD set of Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls with the digitally remastered sound quality and for the first time a recording of my Intensive Training Day Workshop is available as an mp3 download along with a 42 page pdf Companion Guide.

July 15th
Now available in e-book form (Amazon Kindle): Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light Book 1: Empowerment, Freedom, and Inner Peace through Inner Child Healing (aka A Formula for Spiritual Integration and Emotional Balance)  Amazon Kindle Book also Amazon UK and Amazon Germany & as Barnes & Noble Nook e-book.

July 23rd (my birthday)
Announcing the publication of Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light Book 1: Empowerment, Freedom, and Inner Peace through Inner Child Healing (aka A Formula for Spiritual Integration and Emotional Balance)

In December I did an interview on Sedona Talk  Radio on Dispelling the Myths with Kaleah - someone who I had done an interview with several years ago.

January 3, 2012
In commemoration of my 28th Sobriety Birthday I shared some thoughts on one of the articles in my Higher Power of my own understanding series of articles.  I moved those thoughts here to the Newsletter portion of this Update, as well some thoughts about my recovery that I had shared on my Working the Third Step page.

February 4 2012 (my websites birthday)
I have done the 6th reprinting of Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls through CreateSpace - the same Amazon.com subsidiary that I published my new book in July - as a print on demand title.

In addition:

Announced that Intensive Training Days are scheduled for San Diego on April 7th, May 27th, & July 15th - and added testimonials to the Intensive Testimonials page for all the workshops in 2011.

Two new batches of wonderful Testimonials for the book, tapes, and web site.

 Some new testimonials added to the Telephone counseling testimonial page

Graphic of two hearts with an arrow through them - signifying both Love and heartbreak.
Links to past Update Newsletters for the Joy2MeU site (launched February 4, 1999) can be found on the Information index page.  - and also at the bottom of the site index page.  Links to the Newsletters of my original Joy to You & Me web site (launched February 28, 1998) can be found on the Joy to You & Me page which list pages from that site not moved to Joy2MeU.

Newsletter
The first three sections of this Newsletter are things I shared on other pages originally that I have now moved to this page.  The first two are thoughts and feelings that I was having about my 28th sobriety birthday.  The third one is one that I posted just before my belly button birthday when announcing the publication of my latest book.  For the news of the year as it unfolded, there are excerpts from messages to my Yahoo Mailing list and Facebook that are posted below these birthday messages.

My Sobriety Birthday ~ January 3, 2012 ~ 28 years Clean & Sober

(Originally posted on A Higher Power of my own understanding 2 - the beginning of empowerment)

12/24/11 ~ As my 28th sobriety birthday approaches in 10 days or so, I have been reflecting back on what an incredible miracle my life has been since January 3rd, 1984.  This page was originally just an article in a series of articles on "A Higher Power of my own understanding" - an article in which I talk about how the 12 step program of Alcoholics Anonymous saved my life.  Two years ago, on my 26th sobriety birthday I added some quotes below the article from some of my writing in which I talk about my drinking and early sobriety.  This year it was very appropriate for reasons that shall be obvious, that I share something I have shared in AA meetings on many occasions - including I am sure in many of my birthday meetings - but I don't think I have ever written about.  (It possible I have, since I have written so much - but oh well.)

When I first got sober in a 30 day treatment program in Lincoln Nebraska, I got very afraid as it came time to leave treatment.  I felt like I had been in a safe haven for almost 30 days, and I wasn't sure how I would fare back out in the world again.  (This was when I learned a very important lesson about working the third step when I went to see my counselor right before I was to get out.)

I couldn't conceive of staying clean and sober for a year.  I couldn't remember the last time I had gone for more than 3 days without something - drugs or alcohol - to take the edge off.  The one exception to that was one time about 2 years before I got sober when I quit drinking for 30 days to see if I wanted to die as much when I wasn't drinking as when I was.  It wasn't much of a test however, as I was still smoking some dope occasionally - plus I was starring in a play and having an affair with a married woman who was in the play with me, so had plenty of distractions to help me in my dry period.  At the cast party for the play I had a beer and just kind of forgot about ever thinking that drinking was a problem.  I was back to drinking alone to black out within a couple of weeks after that.

Anyway, I couldn't imagine a year sober - and at the same time, I saw people who made it to a year and then drank again.  I was afraid of making it a goal to get to a year - because it was such a long time away, and also because I didn't want to set myself up to feel like if I got there I had it made.  So, I decided to make my goal to reach 100 days - which was an impossibly long period for me at that point.  And then once I got to 100 days, I made my next goal 1000 days.  I would mention when I took my birthday cake after I reached 1000 days that my next goal was 10,000 days.  It seemed like an unfathomably distant goal.  Well, some time this year - in May I think - I passed 10,000 days clean and sober.  Mind boggling!  Talk about a miracle!!

As you can see from the comments I added two years ago after the article - I am Truly a miracle.  Among those comments below is a quote from an article in my Joy2MeU Journal entitled: The Awakening Begins.  I decided to add an excerpt from the next article in that series - entitled: The Emotional Awakening Begins - to this page to commemorate my 28th sobriety anniversary and to be reminded of how far I have come since 1984.
Hearts with arrow through them symbolizing both love and heartbreak.
"When I first came to recovery I knew a lot about emotions and had almost no permission to feel them personally.  I had no permission to feel them personally because my emotional programming from the role modeling of my parents in childhood taught me that men have only one emotion - anger - and that it wasn't OK to be angry at women - since my mother's definition of love included the belief that you can't be angry at someone you love, meaning it was not OK for me to be angry at her.  My emotional palette, in terms of my personal unconscious relationship with my emotions, consisted of one color - anger - that was only truly acceptable to feel towards men.  Consciously, in my personal view of my self, I believed I was a very emotional person with a full palette.

I also knew quite a lot about emotions because I had spent many years in Hollywood pursuing an acting career.  I understood the human emotional process enough to see clearly that all humans had the same basic emotions - no matter how different their outside circumstances, or the details of their stories may have been.  When I had the right role I could play an audience like a emotional musical instrument.

In retrospect, I believe that my acting was one of the reasons I was still alive.  I got much needed emotional release through the characters I played.  It was the type of emotional release that did not do anything for me personally in terms of healing (it is very important to own our feelings, crying for someone else is emotionally dishonest - the reason someone else's pain affects us is because it triggers our own) - it just allowed me to vent some emotional energy, which kept me from exploding or imploding.  (The other major reason that I was still alive is that I had alcohol and drugs to help me keep the pain at bay.  Without alcohol I do think I would have killed myself before I was 21 because I was so emotionally isolated and had so much pain and rage stuffed inside - in fact I made a bet with a friend my freshman year in college that I wouldn't live to graduate, the bet was a case of beer.)

Whenever I started working on a new character, the first thing I would try to decide was what the characters 'gut level fears' were.  I would pontificate to other actors about how people were driven by their gut level fears - and feel very proud of my ability to create real living breathing character studies based on my methods.  (I specialized in very intense characters who were very wounded - alcoholics, addicts, loners, crazy people, etc. - like "duh" I wonder why.  I even once for an on camera personalization exercise did Hamlet's soliloquy 'To be or not to be' where he is contemplating suicide, using a drink instead of a dagger as the prop.  My acting teacher was convinced I was suicidal - I thought it just showed how brilliant I was that I was able to 'act' suicidal.  Denial is an amazing thing!)

So, my focus as an actor was on what fears drove my characters - but I personally had no fear.  When I first went into the Chemical Dependence Treatment Center where I got sober I heard people at meetings or in lectures mention being afraid.  I have a very clear memory of sitting in one of my first AA meetings where someone talked about being afraid and thinking "Who are these people!  So afraid.  I've never been afraid - they stuck guns in my face and I wasn't afraid.  These people are wimps!"

I had no permission in my subconscious programming, in the definition of what I learned men feel from my male role model, to have fear.  I was incapable of consciously acknowledging fear in my personal process because it was unacceptable.

My self image on a conscious level was of being Mr. Nice Guy.  I would do anything for you, and I was always pleasant and entertaining.  My self image on an emotional level - my protective armor that I wore unconsciously - was of the 'man in black.' The strong quiet type that you didn't want to mess with because you could see in my eyes that messing with me would be very unpleasant.  (This was a defense I developed when I was being a revolutionary and carrying a gun - I was in some pretty hairy situations and the defense served to keep me alive.)  I had a force field that I put up around myself to protect myself.  I knew how to put off vibes that said very clearly 'stay away.'

One of the important breakthroughs I had during my 30 days in treatment came in my third week there.  My counselor was not sure how to handle me because of my intensity and the fact - which, since it was where I derived much of my ego strength, I made very clear - that I was a 'Hollywood Actor.' (The treatment center was in Nebraska - a long way from Hollywood.)  So, in consultation with the other counselors they decided to keep me off balance by switching me between therapy groups - and giving each of the male counselors a shot at me.

There were three primary groups for men and usually a person was in one group the whole time they were in treatment.  In my third week, I showed up for group and was told that I had to go to a different group.  They refused to tell me why this was happening.  In about the middle of the week, I was in a group where for the first time I got to experience a full-on mirroring of myself.  The previous week in my primary group I had been confronted about putting up a barrier to scare people away - and I had responded by denying it and tearfully saying how I loved people and would never try to scare them away.  Well, in that other group I got to sit and watch another man get confronted about the same thing and deny it just as I had done - and I saw myself in him so clearly that I had to immediately point out that I could see he was not being honest because watching him I realized that I had not been honest.

At the end of this week of switching back and forth between the three groups, I was in a group with a grizzled old counselor who had been around for many years.  He asked me if I had learned anything from all the switching around and then sat and listened patiently while I expounded on all that I had learned.

    When I was done, he asked quietly and quizzically "And you didn't know why we were doing that, did you?"

    "No," I said "I had no idea."

    Then he sweetly smiled and drove home the point, "Well, maybe it is not important for you to know why something is happening then."

    Shot the heck out of some of my control issues right there.

This treatment center worked with what was called the 'Minnesota model' in dealing with emotional issues.  What that meant was that they identified 6 primary feelings and forced us patients to identify our feelings only using those words.   The 6 were mad, sad, glad, hurt, afraid, ashamed.  That drove me crazy.  One of the defenses that I used to distance myself from my feelings was not naming them.  They forced me to start naming my feelings.  I couldn't say "I was confused," or "irritated" or "apprehensive" or "annoyed" etc.  I had to name a feeling.  It really drove me crazy since I did not know on a personal level what feelings really were, let alone what I was feeling.

I was forced to start trying to figure out what I was feeling - and to stop being in my head all of the time.  One of my primary defenses against feeling my feelings was to be in my head.  In my early recovery I had to start paying attention to what was happening in my body from the neck down - because that is where emotions manifest.

Since I was so out of touch with my feelings, I had to come up with clues for myself.  Things that I could notice that would be a clue to me that feelings were going on.

By the time I got done with the 30 day program I was really in touch with my fear.  I realized that rather than never having been afraid - the truth was that I had been afraid of everybody and everything since I was a kid.  I was absolutely terrified of leaving the treatment center because I was so scared that I would drink again.  I could see clearly what a hell my life had been and I did not ever want to go back to living the way I had been.  I swore to myself that I would kill myself before I took another drink.

So wanting a drink became my most important early clue to tell me that I had some feelings going on that I needed to deal with.  When I caught myself, while watching TV, really watching the beer commercials, I would have to stop and say, "whoa, that beer really looks good - I must be feeling something."  Or when I was driving down the street and noticing every cocktail sign and liquor billboard -  that would be a clue that I needed to do a little emotional inventory.

One of the classic moments came because of a friend who was a musician.  He was having trouble staying sober while he was playing - so a few of us would go to an AA meeting on Friday or Saturday night and then go to whatever Lounge he was playing at.  It was a very good opportunity for me to be around drinking with a bunch of safe people and get used to not drinking in a social setting.  But there was one night when I realized that I had some feelings going on that made it unsafe for me to be in a bar.  My clue came when I started tearing up while my friend played what to me was a very sad ballad.  It was real progress for me to recognize that I was emotionally vulnerable and needed to get out of there.  Pretty funny in retrospect.  The sad ballad was "Jose Cuervo, he was a good friend of mine.""  - The Path of one Recovering Codependent ~ the dance of one wounded soul The Emotional Awakening Begins in the Joy2MeU Journal
A very valuable lesson - I don't have to know why something is happening in order to accept that it is part of the Divine Plan somehow.  Things often haven't gone the way I wanted them in the last 28 years - and over and over again I have been grateful when I looked back and saw the perfection of my Higher Power's plan for me. (Something I talked about in the comments I added to my working the third step page (next excerpt) in commemoration of this birthday.)  Onward and upward for the next 10,000 days.  Happy Birthday to me!!!!!!!! - Originally posted on A Higher Power of my own understanding 2 - the beginning of empowerment
My 28th Sobriety Birthday
(Originally posted on Working the Third Step page.)

January 3, 2012 is going to mark my 28th Sobriety Birthday.  I had posted an announcement on this page in July a few days before my belly button birthday (for those of you not in 12 step recovery, the belly button birthday refers to actual birthday while sobriety birthday is anniversary of sobriety date) - and that announcement is lower down on this Update page.  I added an excerpt from a message I sent to my Yahoo mailing list on July 21st - sharing about what I felt while posting the announcement (great Joy) and also what I felt on the next day (pain and sadness and despair) as part of my ongoing assignment (not one I remember volunteering for) to role model what it is like to be an imperfect wounded human being on a Spiritual Path.

On December 23rd when I had already started the process of updating my web pages to commemorate my Sobriety birthday and to add a special Holiday Offers page to try to bring in some financial abundance here at the end of the year, I had a phone counseling session with a client in Norway.  In the course of trying to explain to her how important it was for me to learn to be willing to accept that there was a Loving Divine Plan unfolding in my life no matter how awful and painful the outside circumstances were, I shared some of my story with her.  I told her that I was sure when I published my book Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls at the end of 1995 that it would become a best seller right away because there were so many people seeking answers - and the information in my book is the missing piece that people were looking for to achieve some spiritual integration and emotional balance, to understand this human experience so that they can forgive themselves and others and start finding some Joy in their lives.  And what happened instead was that by 1999 I was homeless - which was a perfect part of The Plan and a wonderful opportunity for growth.
"The above quote from the personal journal I share in my Joy2MeU Journal is something I wrote in 1999 while I was homeless - something I talked about in the Newsletter portion of my January 2002 Update.
"I spent 6 months in 1999 being homeless.  Not on the street homeless - I had an office for my computer - but crashing on someone's couch kind of homeless.  The lessons in acceptance and patience and letting go that I learned during that time were sacred gifts.  The level of faith that it forced me to access and practice, the depth to which I was forced to integrate my Spiritual belief system into my relationship with life, was a manifestation of Love from my Higher Power that I am now - and have been - reaping great benefits from." - January 2002 Update Newsletter: Part 1
Being homeless for that period of time - something that happened because I invested in starting this web site - was a perfect part of my lesson plan.  It was an incredible opportunity to practice what I teach.  To keep affirming that my path was unfolding perfectly even as the human part of me felt abandoned and betrayed.  It was an invaluable opportunity - a sacred gift - to work on not buying into the polarized perspective of my ego programming that was trying to tell me I was being punished for doing something wrong because of the external conditions in my life.

The fact that other people were giving me the message that I was doing something wrong - were saying things like, "what did you do to cause this?" or "how are you blocking abundance in your life?" - was additional practice in saying, "I am not doing anything wrong, I didn't cause this, I am perfectly where I am supposed to be on my Spiritual path."

It was a very important part of my recovery to stand up for myself in response to people who were conveying those types of judgmental statements.  That doesn't mean that I did not have some responsibility in creating whatever external condition those people were judging me for - or that I didn't have a lot of issues around abundance that I have been working through for years.  We have been creating cause all of our lives - and what is manifesting in our life right now may be a result of the unconscious behavior of many years ago.  In other words, someone who has been on a spiritual path for 10 years gets some kind of physical illness - that doesn't mean that their part in causing it happened since they started their spiritual awakening.  It may be that many years of unconscious behavior have contributed to that condition - behaviors that we were powerless over in the years prior to recovery.  So, when someone has a cold and you say, "well what are you doing to cause that?" - stop and think about the kind of message that conveys.  It conveys a message that the other person is doing something wrong - that they are being punished.  That is not a Loving message to convey.  Why do it?" - Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in the Light Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life Chapter 13: Changing the Music: Love instead of fear and shame (which is only available in subscription Dancing in Light section of site - which is available for a $20 donation on either my Working the Third Step or Spiritual Tithes pages) quoted in The Law of Attraction - Misunderstood & Misinterpreted
I shared with her basically what I shared in this excerpt from my online book, how I told people that what was happening was a perfect part of my path - even though it was incredibly painful and felt terribly unfair and I didn't know why it was happening.  And she asked me, if I could choose to do it all over and do it differently, would I.  I got all choked up when I answered and told her "No" that I would not change any of it.  That if my book had become a best seller right away, I would never have learned the lessons I have learned since then.  I told her that my experience is that my Higher Power's plan for my life is always better than I could have even imagined - even though the details of how it is unfolding feels at times like I have screwed up and am being punished, feels like my Higher Power had abandoned and betrayed me.  I told her that in early sobriety when I had hardly any money (working as a psych tech in the State Mental Hospital for $4.99 an hour - getting spit on and bit by patients and having to hold the legs of alcoholics in seizure because they were being given electro shock treatment) that it was a blessing - because I might not have stayed sober if I had had a lot of money.

It was a perfect discussion to have right at this time, to remind me of the perfect unfolding of the Divine Plan.  So, even though I have had to keep asking for help to keep my book in print (as I did for the sixth printing that is almost finished as I announce below) and to keep my website going over the years - it has served the Cosmic Plan some how.   And as I state in the message from July 21st that I posted below - even though it is very painful for me to have to ask for help, I know that the lesson I share about working the third step was an invaluable one on my path.  And that it has been a gift to many people to see that I am willing to ask for help - because so many of us codependents think we have to do it all our self. We are never alone on this journey, but it sure feels like we are alone at times.

A thought occurred to me as I was finishing this on Christmas Day.  I mention on the page that I am posting today commemorating my 28th Birthday - along with this page and the Holiday Offers page - that in the past year I passed 100,000 days clean and sober.  The thought I had, was that I am sure that many more than 100,000 people have been asking for help, praying and begging for some guidance, when they put some search words into Goggle and discovered my website.  So, I guess that is part of the balance in the Divine Plan - I ask for help and I also provide the answers when so many other people ask for help.  I am very grateful for my 28 years in recovery - for this life adventure that I have been gifted with - even though I still need all the help I can get just to pay the rent.  The Universe works in mysterious ways it's wonders to perform.  I don't have to know why things are unfolding as they do - I just need to remind myself to have faith that there is a Loving Divine Plan unfolding, and Goddess Knows I have had ample evidence over the years to know that this is The Truth for me. ~ Robert, Christmas Day 2011 - originally posted on Working the Third Step page.
A few days before my birthday I added the following announcement to my Working the Third Step page - and sent it out as e-mail announcement to my mailing list as well as posting it on Facebook.  I then added updates to it in both September and December.
Dancing in The Light
7/20/2011 - In Celebration of my 39th birthday* and the publication of my new book I am offering special prices for the new book:
 
Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light  
Book 1 Empowerment, Freedom, and Inner Peace through Inner Child Healing
(aka A Formula for Spiritual Integration and Emotional Balance)

including offering it with super low phone counseling prices & a special deal on next Intensive Training Day. (For those special offers click on book cover)
And I am putting out a message to the Universe - trumpeting and broadcasting** - that I am open to receiving financial gifts for my birthday. 

* My 39th birthday was actually in 1987 - and proved a turning point in my recovery.

"It wasn't until I set myself up to feel abandoned and betrayed on my birthday (one of my old regular patterns for special days) that I became willing to do the emotional healing - and started actively pursuing emotional healing." - The Story of Joy to You & Me

That birthday not only put me in enough pain that I was willing to actively dive into the emotional healing but also brought the intervention of a Psychic messenger (part of the Story of Joy to You & Me) who planted the seeds of Joy to You & Me, Joy2MeU, and the image of my inner child as my wounded soul - and was the first person to tell me that I was a Spiritual Being having a Human Experience

"The first time a messenger came to me carrying the message, the reminder, that I was a Spiritual Being having a human experience, I got really angry.  My first reaction was anger.  My first thought was, "That means that I've got to be out among them."

I never wanted to be out among you-all.  I always wanted to go up on a mountain and meditate my way to God.  What I have learned in this healing process is that I find God through "being out among them," through my human relationships.  We are here to learn to relate to each other.  We are here to learn to Love ourselves and each other." - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

So, you can see that was a pretty important birthday to me.

** As I was writing the above, "putting out a message" wasn't nearly strong enough to describe what I was feeling.  The word that came to mind was bellow - which reminded me of Moose Medicine and led me to this quote from my November 2002 Update Newsletter.
"So, I once again reaffirm my commitment to being an ally with the Spirit where Love lives instead of with the disease where fear rules.  I Joyously, with tears running down my cheeks and sobs of Joy bubbling up my throat, proclaim and declare to you;  to the Universe;  to my Higher Power;  to The God-Force, Goddess Energy, Great Spirit, Holy Mother Source Energy;  to all that is blessed and holy;  Fuck the fear I say - full speed ahead in the direction of Love.

I trumpet and broadcast proudly out into the Universe:  my commitment to my recovery journey;  to my Karmic mission;  to speaking my Truth;  and say: "Bring it on Bubba baby!"  Because it is so worth it!  Every second of suffering and pain, terror and loneliness, is worth being able to access the Truth of Unconditional Love.  Amen.  So be it.  So it is.  Blessed be.

Should be interesting to see what happens now, don't you think. ;-)
hearts
PSS.  This is so perfect, I just couldn't help including it.  When I reread what I had just written above, and saw the word trumpet, it brought to mind the Moose totem in the Medicine Cards.  I looked up from my computer at my calendar - and guess what the picture for November is:  Moose.  The theme of Moose medicine is self esteem - of course

Here is a quote from the Medicine Card book about the significance of Moose:
"The bellow of the male Moose can be viewed as a positive force, since it represents his willingness to "tell the world" about his feelings.
 
This "tell the world" trait contains a joyfulness which only comes from a sense of accomplishment.  There is no greater joy than a job well done.  This trait is therefore not a seeking of approval, but rather an enjoyment of sharing because of the spontaneous explosion of joy that comes from the deepest part of one's being."
This process is soooooo awesome!!!” - Joy2MeU Update Newsletter November 2002  (Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to quote in Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls from: Medicine Cards by Jamie Sams and David Carson, copyright 1988, Bear & Co.  Reprinted by permission Bear & Co., P.O. Box 2860, Santa Fe, NM 87504.)
I actually sent out - bellowed out - the message to the Universe "Bring it on!" - that is bring on whatever lessons I need to learn to open up to Love, 4 times in Update Newsletters between December 1998 and December 2004.  I got my heart broken 3 times - and then in 2005 I found my sweetie who I have now been with 6 years and who I got married to last January.  Recovery is a precious gift that I am soooooo grateful for.  Being willing to take the action to face my fears and go through the black hole of my grief has brought me great rewards - and I am very proud and grateful for the accomplishments that resulted from my Spirit leading me to honor my Spiritual Path and go where I was guided.
So with a "joyfulness which only comes from a sense of accomplishment" Happy Birthday to me in a "spontaneous explosion of joy that comes from the deepest part of one's being."!!!!!!! ~ Robert 7/20/11
 hearts

Here is an excerpt of a "Happy Birthday to Me" message I sent to my Yahoo Mailing list the next day 7/21/11
"This Yahoo mailing list is the place that I most often get to write about what is happening in my life and process now - since I only have time to do Update Newsletters once or twice a year.  So, I am now going to go into a lot more detail about what is going on, and what I feeling about it all.

When I was writing that yesterday - and as I am writing about it today - I feel so much Joy & gratitude for my recovery process, and for how focusing on my healing and sharing it through my writing has touched the lives of so many people.  It is such a miracle.
And just that little bit of writing I did yesterday got me in touch with the feeling of how awesome the process can be for me at times.  I had the thought about saying that I was celebrating my 39th birthday just because that is one people like to say they stopped at - but then I realized which birthday was my 39th and how important it was.  And when I wrote the next part about saying I was open to receiving financial gifts - and was reminded of the Moose Medicine - it was a magical moment for me. The kinds of moments I used to have in my writing all the time.

I don't have time to write these days.  As I explained in the Author's Foreword to my new book.
"My personal inner child healing has been so successful that I have gone from living in isolation with a relationship phobia and a terror of intimacy to celebrating the 6th anniversary (June 15th 2011) of living with someone in an intimate relationship (that became a marriage in January 2011) that has included the precious gift of being the primary caregiver in raising an amazing little boy for the past 5 plus years (my wife's grandson who is now 6 1/2.) As a result I don't have time to write much these days - and haven't for the last 4 to 5 years."
So, it is really great to get a chance to write - even if it is only a little.  And writing helps me to get emotionally honest with myself.  Writing that yesterday really got me back in touch with the Joy and gratitude that I feel for my spiritual path - and with how far I have come and how hard it has been.  And writing about this today has taken me into some grief about how hard it still is in many ways.
Part of what felt so Joyful to me yesterday was proclaiming (bellowing and trumpeting) it out to the Universe that I am open to receive because I believe I deserve to receive.  It felt so much better than asking for help.  But the Truth is that I desperately need help.  I was trying to get this publishing process done and running into lots of challenges and stress because I was trying to do it in a hurry because I need help.  I was telling myself that I could sell 100 copies of my book in the next week and make the money I need for rent and bills and to continue with my various projects - because I need at least $3000 to manifest soon. . . . .
. . . . . Right now I am feeling pretty scared and overwhelmed.  It hurts that it is still such a struggle financially.  It hurts to have to keep asking for help.  I am going to be 63 on Saturday.  I sure never expected to get this old.  And I just wish it wasn't so hard to pay the bills.

But these are just feelings of the moment.  The aren't my total reality or my Higher Truth.  Everything will work out some how, some way.  It is important to own these feelings.  My glass is much more full than it is empty - but it is vital not to deny or judge and shame myself for the part that is empty.  Writing this has let me release some of the pain and fear.  Hopefully sales and gifts will come flowing in in abundance.  Maybe I will win the lottery. ;-)" - "Happy Birthday to Me!" Message to Yahoo Mailing list Thu Jul 21, 2011 7:04 pm

On September 5, 2011 I added this to my Metaphysical Law: Giving and Receiving page.
 
September 2011

I was able to keep my book in print in 2003 and in the years since then through miracles and donations to Joy2MeU.  In 2008 I had to reprint my book again - and was able to, right before the economy crashed.

"I posted that article (the one I mention just above about "Leap of Faith ~ Publishing The Dance") as part of sending out a request for donations to help keep my book in print one more time.  The combination of not getting nearly as many donations as I had hoped, and the printing company printing a large print run without getting my final approval, put us in a real hard financial place that September.  Then the bottom fell out of the economy shortly after that." - Joy2MeU Update Newsletter May 2010
Since the recession hit, things have been very difficult.  Anyone who is interested in finding out the details can check out Asking for Help 2010 or my messages to my Yahoo Mailing list (for the most recent developments.)  This year I have made a concerted effort to create more cash flow by making more products available.  Each of these new products I thought was going to bring a significant increase in income (just as I thought all those years ago that Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls would become a best seller.)  The results have been very disappointing.  I now have a recording of my Intensive Training Day available - something people have been asking for for years - and I have only sold a few of them.  I have produced CDs of the digitally remastered version of Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls An Audio Spiritual Experience - and now I can't afford to burn more copies to sell.  I was finally able to publish Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light  Book 1 Empowerment, Freedom, and Inner Peace through Inner Child Healing - and have sold less than 2 dozen copies.  I will be needing to reprint The Dance of Wounded Souls again before the year is over - but don't have the money I need to do that either.

So maybe it is this year - 2011 - that the book goes out of print and I can't keep my website going any longer.  I hope not - but as I said above, I can accept whatever the plan is as it is revealed.  The economy seems to be getting worse, so more will be revealed about what is going to happen.

Love offerings and Spiritual tithes are always welcome and very much appreciated.  I appreciate that you have even read this page - and if your Spirit moves you to send some money energy this way, I will be very grateful. ~  Robert 9/5/11


On December 24, 2011 I added this to my Metaphysical Law: Giving and Receiving page.
December 2011

My book is being reprinted as a print on demand book through Amazon.com's CreateSpage service - the same way I was able to print my second book this past summer.  This is a real blessing that was made possible by my friend Ken T. of North Carolina who put up the money to get the process started.  It will ultimately mean somewhat of a decrease in my monthly income of the books I sell through Amazon, because now I will be buying the book from CreateSpace to sell through Amazon but is so much better than the alternative which was to raise thousands of dollars to reprint the book myself.  Today, on Christmas Eve, I got notice from CreateSpace that I will get a proof copy of the new printing of the book in about a week - so I should have it available in early January.  Once again the Universe has manifested a way to keep my book in print - and this time it is in print indefinitely.  I am very grateful and blessed. ~  Robert 12/24/11

January 31st 2012

Below are some excerpts from messages to my Yahoo mailing list and things I shared on Facebook over the course of the year.
My Yahoo mailing list is something that I started in September 2007 for people who were interested in more frequent updates than my periodic Update Newsletters.  In them I share the latest news about my web sites, work, and life.  It was working out that I have sent out at least one every month since I started this group - but since I have started posting information on Facebook regularly there have actually been a few months that I missed.   Below are excerpts from some of the messages that I sent out since my last Update Newsletter in January 2011.  And interspersed with the excerpts from messages to my Yahoo mailing list is news, information, and events that I posted on Facebook - those will have a pure white background (In these boxes I will use this color when I am describing what happened or making comments now.)  You can Click here to join Joy_2_Me_U that Yahoo mailing list.  Here is my Facebook page.
Thu Feb 24, 2011 11:40 pm  An excerpt from Off on our Honeymoon Cruise on Saturday Message to Yahoo Mailing list

"Hello Magnificent Spiritual Being,
We are leaving on the cruise early Saturday morning.  One friend who has traveled from Arizona to my Intensive 4 times traded in his time share for the year for our plane tickets.  Another friend who was on the last cruise with us paid for most of our cabin.  So, another miracle and we get to go on our honeymoon cruise.

We did get married on January 14th and it has made a difference.  There is a deeper sense of connection, of intimacy, of Love - and a kind of serene contentment that is really cool.  It was nice to buy a Valentine's Day card for my wife. ;-)

I think we got a good filming of my last Intensive last Sunday.  Hopeful we will get both a DVD and a CD set out of it.  I also have a new CD set of the digitally remastered audio of my book in production - and it hopefully will be available before too long.

I am taking a Landmark Education Money Seminar right now.  The first session I found my self sitting next to one of the few people I knew in a group of over 250.  The person is actually a sponsee of Susan's.  In talking to her, I heard myself say that I had lots of resources (my writing - the millions of words of writing on my web site) but didn't have the money to turn those resources into cash flow.  I recognized that as a part of, what they call in Landmark, my money trap.  Being trapped in poverty consciousness.  So that first day I made an "unreasonable" (another Landmark term) commitment to have 10 new products by the end of the seminar in mid April.   Not sure if I will even come close to that, but I am definitely going to pursue some more CD projects and possibly some e-books after getting these first 3 products manifested.  (That is the DVD & CD set of my Intensive and the new CD set of my book.) . . . ."

February 5th - We did get a recording of the workshop that is available now as an MP3 download - unfortunately the first part of the DVD was damaged so no video yet.
  From Facebook
Where oh where can my baby be
by Robert Burney on Wednesday, March 23, 2011 at 8:41pm ·

I had one of my deepest wounds triggered today.  Susan and Darien didn't get home from school when I thought they would - and I could not get Susan on her cell phone.  After 2 hours I felt this panic rise up in me.  It is raining here and the roads are slick - and suddenly this overwhelming fear came up that something had happened to them. (They were at his cousins house.)  It triggered the wound that is at the deepest level of my terror of intimacy issues.  It is something I wasn't fully aware of until I wrote about it in my Update Newsletter in October 2000 - the one where I talk about how it is easier to be a channel for love to flow through than a vessel for Love to flow into (which I quoted here not too long ago.)  Anyway, I obviously need to look at this again or it wouldn't have come up today.  So, I am going to share some excerpts from part two of that Update Newsletter here.  I haven't used these notes (notes are a way of sharing on Facebook) before, but am having trouble with the comments part of my status - so thought I would try this.
"It takes a lot of courage to open up to receiving Love.   What we want the most is also what terrifies us the most - because of the toxic shame we are carrying, the core wounded place where we feel unworthy and unlovable.   We are afraid that we will get that which is most important to us - and then have it taken away because of our unworthiness.

In the Joy2MeU Journal, I have a series of articles called "The Path of one Recovering Codependent ~ the dance of one wounded soul."  This started out as a recovery autobiography of sorts.  A relating of my Spiritual Path, of my healing process over the years since I got into recovery on January 3, 1984.  It evolved into not just a history of the past 16 + years, but into a journal of my process for the past year and a half since I started that Journal.  (The personal journal was a place I worked through a lot of my fear of intimacy issues between 1999 and 2004)  Here is an excerpt from the first of 3 articles in that series that relate how I ended up in a 30 day treatment program for codependence in 1988 that saved my life.
"One day in particular I remember driving home from work in a very agitated emotional state that I couldn't quite identify or get a handle on.  The Universe in it's great power and perfectly unfolding wisdom caused one of those miracles of coincidence to occur.   As I was nearing my home, a song came on the radio.  It was the first song that I learned in childhood by listening to the radio.  When I was about 8 or 9 this song had touched me deeply enough that I made the effort to learn all of the words.  It was really a pretty stupid song - but the message in it matched my programming perfectly.  It pushed the buttons of my core wounding that was a combination of my parents not being capable of Loving me in a healthy way coupled with the wounding that resulted from the Spiritual abuse I had suffered at the hands of the shaming religion I was raised in.

The song was about a boy out on a date with his girlfriend when they are in a traffic accident that kills the girl.  The chorus goes something like this:

            "Where oh where can my baby be,
            The Lord took her away from me,
            She's gone to heaven so I've got to be good,
            So I can see my baby when I leave this world."

As that song ended that day, and I got to my apartment, I felt ripped apart by the grief that surfaced.  I was in my apartment crying and sobbing - with wounded animal-like moans of pain escaping from me.  I was compelled to keep moving from corner to corner in my apartment, crouching in the corner wailing and crying and moaning and then moving to another corner to do it again.

I got in touch with that place inside of me where I know that I am so unlovable and unworthy, such a shameful monster, that anyone who ever loved me would be taken away.  God could see what a sinful, shameful creature I was and would punish anyone who could possibly think I was Lovable.  If I ever deluded myself enough to allow myself to open up to Love from someone who could Truly Love me, I would be punished by having that person taken away.

I discuss in the Journal article The Unfolding Process about the importance to me of the song entitled The Rose, whose chorus goes like this:

            It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance,
            It's the dream afraid of waking that never takes a chance.
            It's the one who won't be taken who that cannot seem to give,
            It's the soul afraid of dying that never learns to live.

I couldn't for the longest time relate to the last line, no matter how much I related to the first three lines - because I wanted to die.

What I figured out eventually was that I was afraid to live not because I might die but because whoever I Loved would die.  That I was such a shameful monster that God would take away anyone who I allowed to Love me.

And I resonated with that when I was 9 years old!

That poor little boy.  That poor man who based his life on such feelings of shame and unworthiness.  Such pain.  To, on some level, choose isolation over the risk of being Loved and having that Love taken away." - 30 Days in the Desert - Falling Apart and Breaking Through Part I
My particular flavor of toxic shame took on this tone - if I allow myself to open up to Love and be Loved, the person I open up to will be taken away from me.

"It is the Heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance."

This was on a very deep subconscious level.   Something that I uncovered and discovered as my recovery evolved.

All of my issues around abundance - of money, of success, of friendship, of health, of whatever - always come back to my fear of intimacy, my terror of being available for a Loving relationship.  The bottom line is always that toxic shame at the core of my being that says that I am not lovable, that I am defective somehow. . . . .

. . . . . . In writing this Newsletter, I have gotten a brand new insight.  I have just become conscious of a truly monstrous terror that lurks under the ones that I had identified previously.  What I mean, is that though one of the earliest awareness that I had in my inner child healing was about the song I spoke of above - I have never looked at that insight's relationship to my fear of intimacy issues in quite the way I am right now.  I am looking at it with a new perspective from a much higher level of consciousness.  I have just uncovered the monster that was hiding under the monsters that I had previously become aware of in my recovery.

I had a terror of abandonment and rejection which I had realized was the lesser of two evils for me.  I had discovered and been working on healing this.
"Through revisiting the eight year old who I was I get to understand on a new level why I have always been attracted to unavailable people - because the pain of feeling abandoned and betrayed is the lesser of two evils.  The worst possible thing, to my shame-based inner children, is to have revealed how unworthy and unlovable I am . . . . It is no wonder that at my core I am terrified of loving someone who is capable of loving me back." - Grief, Love, & Fear of Intimacy
My fear of intimacy is only about abandonment and betrayal, about being revealed as unworthy and unlovable, on the surface.  Those are symptoms, which I had been seeing as the core.  The core is that I am terrified of fully embracing life and Love - of finding someone who I Love and who Loves me back - and then having her taken away by God.” - Joy to You & Me and Joy2MeU Newsletter 10-20-00 Part 2 
February 11th -  Now 11 1/2 years after writing that update, I have been married for over a year and over 6 1/2 years living with Susan.  Truly an incredible miracle with where I came from. :-)  As I say in the Birthday announcement above, I threw out a challenge to the Universe 4 different times telling it to bring on whatever lessons I need to learn to help me open up to having a loving relationship - very cool that it worked.

Grateful by Robert Burney on Friday, May 13, 2011 at 7:54pm ·

1. Feeling grateful on freeway this morning for car that has run well for year since someone practically gave it to us when we were desperate.

2. Grateful that when the tire went completely flat I had already dropped my grandson off at school.

3. Grateful that when I found out the lug wrench didn't fit the lug nuts I could call roadside assistance.

4. grateful I had the money to buy new tire.

5. very grateful I have learned to not buy into victim perspective of life events.

February 11th - This was a great example of how far I have come in my recovery.  Not that many years ago, I would have assumed that being grateful for the car running so well for so long would have been the cause of the tire going flat.  The magical thinking that caused me to spend most of my life trying to not show I valued or enjoyed anything would have caused me to think that the punishing god I was taught about as a kid noticed I valued the car and punished me because of my unworthiness.

This is a nice little discussion of recovery that I like - that I shared on Facebook.
Frustration ~ Acceptance ~ Surrender ~ being human
by Robert Burney on Saturday, March 26, 2011 at 10:42am ·

"There are - as I emphasize so often in my writing - multiple levels to everything.  There are other levels to my motivations also.  These levels of motivation are not linear.  They are often simultaneous and always intimately interrelated.  I may get conscious of them in a linear manner - first, second, third, etc. - but that is a function of the limitations of human consciousness, not an actual linear process.

The basic, human ego, avoidance of pain, level of motivation led me to start getting more conscious of Spiritual levels of motivation.  And it was Spiritual levels of motivation that led me to awakening to the cause and effect dynamic of life.  It was following my intuitive guidance (making choices that felt like moments of clarity and inspiration at the time) that led to the seemingly disastrous results which forced me to start waking up to what a mess my life was - and then to realizing that I could do some things to change that reality.  What felt to me like tragedy, was in fact the gift of a new beginning - the start of a new life.  (That disastrous relationship / job loss / health problem / drunk driving arrest / etc., had/has a silver lining - and the choices you made that got you to that point were a perfect part of your awakening process.)

On the Spiritual level of motivation it is the emotional energy of Truth that provides my intuitive guidance.  Truth - with a capital T - is a form of communication from my Soul to my being.  It is something that I feel within - that resonates vibrationally in my consciousness.  My consciousness exists throughout my body, and intuitive Truth resonates most often in my heart and / or my gut.  It is kind of like one of those silent pagers that vibrates.  That feeling in our gut, or our chest, is a page from the Universe letting us know that a message has just been delivered.  The "aha", light bulb going on, moments of insight and clarity, are accompanied by a vibrational page in our physical / emotional being.

If we are conscious enough to pay attention, we can feel our pager go off and know the Universe is sending us a message.  If we are indulging in our human propensity to go unconscious - which is exacerbated by the denial and emotional disassociation of the codependent defense system we were forced to adapt in childhood - then the Universe needs to use the stick, to get loud and intrusive, to get our attention.  Neither way is shameful - but paying attention is a lot easier.

"It is not human needs and desires that cause suffering, it is looking to get those needs fulfilled in someplace where they cannot be fulfilled that causes suffering.  It has been trying to quench our thirst from an empty well that is dysfunctional.

Humans have been trying to fill the hole within ourselves by looking outside of ourselves.  We were taught to look outside, to external manifestations to meet our needs, to find out who we are and why we are here.

The answers do not exist outside - the answers lie within.

The reason that humans have not been able to "get it together" is that we have been looking outside for "it."  "It" exists only within.  We need to look in-to-it.  As in intuition:  in-tu-it.

As long as we look outside of Self - with a capital S - to find out who we are, to define ourselves and give us self-worth, we are setting ourselves up to be victims." - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

In terms of my Spiritual level of motivation, I feel compelled in a certain direction.  I do not need to know why I feel compelled - although the human part of me certainly wants to know.  I may have a few ideas of some the levels of why - but I never know them all.  The Universe gives me whatever level of motives will work to get me to do what I am supposed to do for my Spiritual, healing path - and it is only in retrospect that I get to have some levels of understanding of the reasons for the action I felt compelled to take.

Because I have paid attention and learned how the process works, I do what I am led to do without very much questioning these days - grumbling yes, but very little questioning.  I often don't like the directions I get and get crabby with my Higher Power - but I have gotten quite good at letting go of the questions (why, how, when, where, what for, etc.) my ego comes up with in it's attempt to have some illusion of control.  It is much easier to let go.

I am not in control - am not the one writing the script for my life.  I have many years in recovery now, and my experience has taught me that my Higher Power's plan always works out for the best in the long run.  It is pretty silly for me to put much energy into my ego's attempts to control so that it doesn't have to face the fear of the unknown.  The known was killing me.  The only way out was into the unknown. . . . .

. . . . . The irony of the whole thing ticks me off sometimes.  I am trying to explain the process and then have to apply the process to get clear in my attempt to explain how it works.  This is perfect of course, but irritating to my human ego nevertheless.  My Higher Power has this cute sense of humor that I definitely find irritating sometimes.  (That is huge progress - I used to think it was sadistic.)

I was definitely getting frustrated in my attempts to make this Newsletter behave according to what I wanted it to do and be.  A quote from the second Newsletter I wrote for my original web site is one of the perfect examples of how I teach best what I need most to learn.
"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." - Joy to You & Me Newsletter II - August 15, 1998
In writing about levels of motivation, and how important it is to surrender to my Higher Power's plan instead of trying to make things work the way I think they should - I was getting frustrated because things weren't working the way I thought they should.  I was aware that I was getting frustrated and what that meant, but being human I tried to hold onto "my way" a little longer.  Which led to more frustration.  Engaging in a power struggle with God is a set up to feel frustrated.

See what I mean about it being silly to put much energy into my ego's attempts to control.  I was getting frustrated and knew I needed to surrender - but I was being willful and not accepting that I needed to surrender to being willing to surrender.  Pretty amusing really. ;-)

My writing about levels of motive had led into attempting to communicate a message about how important it is to accept our humanness.  And I get to demonstrate my humanness in my attempts to write about accepting it.  Perfectly ironic - ironically perfect.

It is so valuable to stop shaming ourselves and instead to start being amused at our human self.  To stop calling ourselves stupid and to start seeing the humor in how silly it is to try to control this life business.  In an updated simile about my recovery journey, I would describe the transformation of my relationship with life something like this:

    that my life used to be a very seriously dramatic, Classically Greek Tragedy (the hero of course, being fatally flawed - shamefully human - leading to tragic consequences);

    that in recovery I was first able to transform it into a melodramatic soap opera that I didn't take quite as seriously;

    then into a sitcom that was not really that funny;

    and eventually into a really amusing and entertaining sitcom.

That is a major paradigm shift that is made possible by doing the inner child healing / codependency recovery work.  It is really only a relatively small twist of the dial to go from tragedy to sitcom.  Changing my beliefs, learning to stop relating to life as a test I could fail, changed my perspective and expectations.  That changed my relationship with life and my emotional reactions to life.  My life today is a very amusing sitcom - although, like even the highest quality TV sitcoms, it can feel irritatingly inane at times. 

"It is kind of a cosmic joke, see.  We have been taught that we are human and that it is bad and shameful, and that we have to somehow earn the right to be Spiritual.  The Truth is that we already are Spiritual and there is nothing bad or shameful about "being human.""Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

It really helps to remember who we Truly are, so that we can start enjoying the joke some of the time.  Being human does not have to feel like sadistic torture - it can be an exciting, enjoyable adventure.  It can be irritatingly ironic and paradoxical - can feel like a stupid game - some of the time, but playing this game of human life by the rules that actually work is certainly a much nicer experience than the dance of suffering and shame my life was prior to recovery." - Joy2MeU Update January 2002 Newsletter 1 of 2 

Another excerpt from some of my writing that I like and shared on Facebook.
the nuclear family as a dysfunctional concept
by Robert Burney on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 12:12pm ·

Something came up in a phone counseling session today that led me to look for the following quote - and I decided to share it in this note.

Dysfunctional Concept of Family

"It is vital to start seeing that normal is codependent.  It is vital to start seeing clearly the dysfunction and emotional dishonesty in the families we grew up in, so that we can let go of our myth of family.  Our dysfunctional families were an effect of the dysfunctional, emotionally dishonest, Spiritual hostile (belief in separation), cultural environments in which they existed.  It is not personal.  It does not have anything to do with us.  Just as the way our parents treated us in childhood wasn't personal.  They were incapable of seeing who they really were, so they couldn't see us with any clarity.  They were looking at us through the filters of their fear and pain, they projected their shame and lack of self worth onto us.  They tried to control our behavior with fear, guilt, and shame to protect their egos.  They were dancing with their own wounds to the music of shame and fear - which made them incapable of meeting our needs, of demonstrating love for us in a healthy way.  It was not their fault.  It was not our fault.  It was an effect of the families and culture they grew up in.

I believe that the concept of the nuclear family as a separate, isolated entity is dysfunctional in it's essence.  I don't believe it is healthy to raise children in an environment separate from a sense of close knit community / clan / tribal identity.  I don't believe that two parents as a cultural entity separate from community can possibly provide healthy, balanced parenting.  Certainly one cannot.  But children are wounded and traumatized by parents inability to separate their self worth from their emotional reactions to external forces rather there is one parent or two.  Parents who were taught to take their ego strength from external comparison cannot avoid having an unhealthy emotional investment in children whom they - and society - see as an extension, a possession, that reflects their worth as individuals.

I have no idea what Hillary Clinton's book is about, but the concept that it "takes a village" to raise a child contains some fundamental Truth in my opinion.  I do not believe that children are meant to be raised by two adults separate from community - and certainly not by a mother alone most of the time.  The American Dream, a nuclear family living in isolation in the suburbs - with the father gone most of the day - is a dysfunctional ideal in my belief.  Our normal societal model for what constitutes an ideal family is dysfunctional in its impact on the emotional, mental, and spiritual health of children raised in those families.

Here is an excerpt from a page in my Joy2MeU Journal - bracketed by a quote from my book to put it in context with my views.

"I want to make a couple of points of clarification at this time.

 One is that I am referring to civilizations around the world, but most of the examples or specifics I am mentioning have to do with Western Civilization and specifically American society.  That is just for my convenience and your identification.  (I am using the word "civilization" here in the Western sense of the term - that is, urban-based and believed to be superior to "less advanced" peoples.)

All civilizations are dysfunctional to varying degrees, as are subcultures within those civilizations.  They just have different flavors of dysfunction, of imbalance.

As an example:  In much of Asia the individual is discounted for the good of the whole - whether that be family or corporation or country.  The individual takes his or her self-definition from the larger system.  That is just as out of balance and dysfunctional as the Western Civilization manifestation of glorifying the individual to the detriment of the whole.  It is just a different variety of dysfunction.

The goal of this dance of Recovery is integration and balance.  That means celebrating being a tree while also glorying in being a part of the forest.   Recovery is a process of becoming conscious of our individual wholeness and our ONENESS with all.

The other point I want to make is that I am saying "civilized" society for a reason.  It is in urban-based industrialized civilization that the optimum dysfunction has been manifested in this world.

Many so-called primitive or aboriginal tribal cultures, such as the Native Americans, had far more integrated and balanced cultures for their place and time than any "civilization."  They were not totally integrated and balanced by any means.  They were, however, closer to the rhythms of nature and had respect for nature and natural laws, so were more aligned with universal laws than urban-based civilizations.

In fact, many of the primitive societies were far more functional in terms of the Spiritual, emotional, and mental health of the individual members of the society, and had far more respect for the individual members, than any so-called "civilized" society on this planet." - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

The Baby Otter: A Mother's Day Story (an excerpt from the Joy2MeU Journal)

"I often look to aboriginal cultures who were more in touch with nature to see examples of more balance behavior.  (The Native American culture that I am most familiar with, is that of the Plains Indians.  There can be some big differences between different regions, but when I cite Native American culture it is the Plains Indians I am talking about.)  The cultural norms that came to mind while writing this were two specific ones. One was that, it was not the father who taught the son to be a man - it was an uncle.  The tribes knew better than to have the father's ego involved with the son's training.  The other has to do with mothers and sons.  When a boy was around 5 or 6 there came a point where he and his mother could no longer speak directly to each other - they would communicate through a third person - and they could not look into each others eyes.  The effect of this tribal wisdom was to prevent emotional incest. When the boy became a man, they could once again communicate directly.  (There were also restrictions in terms of the relationships between father and daughter.)

Reminds me of Robert Bly's book Iron John. . . He talks about how, ever since the industrial revolution pulled fathers out of the home a great deal of the time, boys have been primarily learning how to be men from women.

I believe that the concept of the nuclear family as an isolated entity is inherently dysfunctional and traumatic.  I am going to include here a passage I wrote some time ago, and never found anyplace to use in my writing.

"Of course, we have almost completely lost the real sense and idea of community - of a group of people who are interconnected and interrelated for their collective welfare and mutual benefit.  In Western Civilization, and especially in the United States, the individual is glorified to the detriment of the whole (this is the opposite extreme of imbalance for much of Eastern Civilization which glorifies the whole to the detriment of the individual.)  So separation is the rule rather than connection.

Some can have millions while others are starving and homeless - and this is looked upon as normal and natural.  Society teaches us to believe that we are separate - that another persons suffering is that persons own fault.  That the individual is separate from, and in competition with, others.

This applies on multiple levels.  It is also true in the dysfunctional myth of the individual nuclear family.  The concept of the nuclear family with it's sense of possession (my children) and comparison with other families carries with it inherent emotional trauma in my view.  I believe that the healthiest parenting came in societies where the whole tribe or clan had a sense of community and connection.  Where everyone knew they were individuals but also knew they were important parts of the whole.  Where people lived so close together that there were no family secrets and social mores dictated that physical, verbal, emotional, and sexual abuse were not acceptable.

Now, I am not saying that aboriginal societies were completely healthy or balanced cultures.  But they did have a healthier balance than modern societies because they had to in order to survive.  The had more respect for nature and natural cycles because it was necessary to live.   They had a sense of community because without it they would perish."

"I believe that historically there has been a direct correlation between the level of advancement - of "progress" - and the level of dysfunction in terms of the individual being's level of fulfillment and happiness.  In other words, the more "advanced" the society became (that is, the farther it removed itself from respect for, and alignment with, natural laws and cycles), the more dysfunctional it became in terms of the individual being's feelings of self-respect and fulfillment. . . . 

. . . Another reason that some of these so-called "primitive" cultures were more functional is that they also had a much more benevolent idea about a Higher Power.  They actually believed that the God-Force had a Loving purpose for putting us here instead of it being some kind of punishment which was shameful.  

So the more advanced, the more civilized, a society became, the more dysfunctional it became in terms of serving the emotional, mental, and Spiritual needs of the individual members of the society.   Sounds kind of backwards doesn't it?" - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in the Light Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life Chapter 10: Normal Families are Dysfunctional    This excerpt is from a chapter of an online book that is available in a subscription area of my web site: Dancing in Light
In the following message that I sent to my Yahoo Mailing List, I include the message I sent out to everyone on my e-mailing list - and intersperse comments in which I go into more detail and do some processing about the things I share in the message to my whole mailing list.  I will indent the message that was sent out to my whole mailing list for clarity - and also put that message in italics to be really clear.

Tue Jun 7, 2011 2:06 pm
 message Special Announcement about Exciting Projects to Yahoo Mailing List
To the Radiantly Beautiful Spiritual Being on my Yahoo mailing list.
Wow!  I can't believe it has been since February that I sent out a message here.  Sorry about that.   Lots to bring you up to date on.   First I want to follow up on things I mentioned in the last one.  The cruise was good - we had a good time.  But we were reminded of what we felt at the end of the last cruise we went on - that a week was a long time to spend on a ship.   Maybe a shorter cruise next time.  And there were some other complications which made us decide we won't go with that particular tour company again.

The only really valuable thing I got out of the Landmark money seminar was the insight that I shared in the last communication - that I had lots of resources that I needed to turn into cash flow.  I am still working on turning those resources into cash flow as you will see with what I share below.  The seminar itself was way too large (250 people) and missing the two weeks I did going on the cruise had an adverse affect.  Landmark has some valuable things in it - but their approach really doesn't work for me, even though it has been great for Susan.  People who have done years of Landmark often come to me because they can't get in Landmark what I teach people. 

Both the retreat we were planning and the wedding reception had to be canceled because of an injury to the woman whose ranch it was.  I actually had to cancel the April Intensive completely because I only had one person signed up - and we just couldn't afford to do the reception elsewhere.

I just sent out a Special Announcement to my e-mailing lists - and posted it on Facebook.  I assume that anyone on this Yahoo list is also on my mailing list - but I don't know for sure.  In any case, I wanted to go into more depth about what is happening here than I did in the Special Announcement.  So, I am going to share what I wrote in it - with comments and additional information interspersed.
Hello Magnificent Spiritual Being!

Today is a recovery birthday for me! (Actually yesterday - but didn't get all the announcements mailed out yesterday)  The 25th anniversary of the day I count as the start of my conscious codependency recovery.  A quarter of a century!  OMG!
"I date my codependence recovery as starting on June 3 1986. As with any milestone, there was recovery that occurred before that - I had been clean and sober for exactly 2 years and 5 months at the point (the story of my early recovery is for another issue) - but this particular day marked a breakthrough in consciousness to a whole new level that changed the direction and focus of my life. . . . . .

. . . . . I said to myself - this is no way to live life, I need to change this.  So that night I started to focus on changing the subconscious programming from my childhood.  I didn't know how I was going to do it - but I was determined to find out.  (That was an act of Love for myself that at the time I wouldn't have known to call Love.)" - The Story  of "Joy to You & Me"
 
It is really amazing to consider that it has been 25 years since that night when I really awakened to how my childhood programming was running my life.  I am so grateful for the commitment I made that night - and for the guidance that led me to learning what I needed to learn and going where I needed to go to find some freedom from that old programming.  It has been a heck of a ride this last 25 years.

I just went to look for a specific quote and discovered something that I wrote to this e-mail list almost 3 years ago.  Looking back at that brought up a lot of feelings for me.  In that message to this list I told the story of walking on Taos Mountain one day in the fall of 1988 wondering when I would ever get to have a relationship.  After telling the story, I wrapped it up with these two paragraphs.
"When I think back to that time 20 years ago, it is mind boggling to see how my path unfolded - and how many peoples lives I have touched because I was willing to follow where I was led.  If I had been told back in 1988 (actually said 98 in the message but was supposed to be 88) that I would be able to have a relationship in 3 years that would last 2 years and break my heart - and then wasn't going to have another relationship that lasted until 2005, I would have said something like, "What!!!! How can that be???  That is what I want - a Loving relationship.  Why does it have to take so long?!?   What will I do in the meantime???"

Well, what I did in the meantime was to have (as I say on Metaphysical Law: Giving and Receiving) ". . . an awesome, terribly solitary, gloriously amazing adventure for me.  An incredibly painful, transcendently Joyous, intermittently terrifying, unbelievably fulfilling journey."  And during that journey I wrote and published an incredible book along with several million words in articles for my website. This was not a plan I made or could even have imagined.  That I would now, just after my 60th birthday, be in a relationship and raising an amazing little being named Darien - and still being given the opportunity to practice the humility to ask for help - was not part of any picture I had of the future.  I am so grateful for Susan and the opportunity to be involved in the incredibly Joyous experience of raising this incredible little boy with her.  I am not so grateful that I am still in a position of having to ask for help.  But the gifts I have received over the years from being willing to follow where I am led and let go of the outcome help me to accept what is, be grateful for all that I have and have been given, and just keep following where I am led.  I am leading a very Blessed life." - "I am so blessed 2 - better format I hope" Yahoo Mailing list Thu Aug 21, 2008 11:12 am
Looking at this brought up a bunch of feelings and issues for me.

First of all, it is incredible that my journey is not solitary any more.  On June 15th Susan and I will be celebrating having lived together for 6 years.  An amazing record for both of us.  And we will have been married for 5 months then also.  I am very glad that she is now my wife.  Darien is just an amazing little man - and we are both so blessed to have the privilege and honor of having raised him for the past 5 years plus. . . This kid is a natural model.  Going to be a star some day.

Secondly, I wrote that in August 2008 when I was trying to raise the money to keep my book in print.  In that message to this list I talk about all the problems that came up in sending out e-mails because of losing a bunch of data when changing to a new computer my sister had given me for my birthday that year - and how those problems affected my ability to raise the money needed to do the latest reprint of my book.  It was in a page I posted almost 2 years later that I talked about what happened and how it impacted us.
"Then in September 2008 the printer who was printing the latest printing of Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls messed up and printed a larger print run that I could really afford at the time. . . . . Rediscovering that article also reminded me of how the financial situation we are in got to be such a mess.  I posted that article as part of sending out a request for donations to help keep my book in print one more time.  The combination of not getting nearly as many donations as I had hoped, and the printing company printing a large print run without getting my final approval, put us in a real hard financial place that September.  Then the bottom fell out of the economy shortly after that.  I was thinking it was just the recession . . . . that was impacting us without remembering how the printing of the book had started our own personal recession earlier." - Asking for help page posted August 2010
Looking at that page again brought me to sobbing and crying.  Last August - as I shared on that page - we were agonizing about having to send Darien to public school.  We did start him in public school and then pulled him out and were able get him into a Montessori school.  The end of that school year is this week and I am sobbing and crying from Joy, and because I am so grateful that Darien got to go there.  It has been wonderful for him - and I am soooooo grateful for it.

Another thing that it brought up is that I will need to reprint the book again before the end of this year.  I think I have found the answer for that however - and will include it below.  And the recession has affected my Intensives - especially in the last year as cost of Airline Fares increased so much with gas prices.  I am considering that I may not be able to keep my Intensives going beyond the ones I have scheduled because there have not been enough people coming.  Thank God we have at least a recording of it now - as I will also talk about below.

And, of course, I have a lot of feelings about the fact that I am still in a position of having to ask for help.  Another opportunity to set boundaries with the critical parent voice.
I am celebrating my birthday with some very exciting announcements.

First of all, The new CDs of Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls with the digitally remastered sound quality (and track marks and all that good stuff) are in the final stages of production.  I should have them in a week to ten days - but to celebrate my birthday I am going to start preselling them today.  Listening to my book is a quite different experience from reading it - and many people like to experience both.  Here is the info page:  CD page

It will be great to finally have the higher sound quality CDs available.  The whole process of getting the CDs available is a good example of why I have been thinking for years that I have a lot of resources but have not had the money to turn them into salable products.  The recording I made of the book in 1995 was originally on cassette tapes which of course are ancient history by now - and which I stopped selling in 2007.  By that time, I had a "work in progress" CD set that was produced for me by my friend Jeff.  He had come to my first Intensive in April 2006 and loved my work so much that he produced the "work in progress" CD set - which was actually a copy of the copy of the cassettes he had bought.  The length of the recording was longer than could be put on 3 CDs - so what he had done is actually speed up and compress the first CD to be able to get it on 3 CDs.  The sound quality wasn't good - but was good enough that people could get the message.  But the CDs were not professionally packaged, didn't have track marks, and didn't include the introduction I had recorded.  When we stopped selling the cassettes in 2007 I was able to get the original master recording from the recording studio in Taos - and Jeff digitally remastered it and made an mp3 audio download of the recording that we started selling on the new websites that he created for me.  He created RobertBurneyLive.com and 7 other websites out of the material on my site because he believes in my work - and he has never been paid a dime for all that work, nor does he get any of the income from the download or before that from the work in progress CDs.  His work has been a great gift to me.  (His help has Truly been a God Send this past few years.)  One of the reasons he was able to create the websites however, was because he had moved from Las Vegas to the Philippines (for a relationship) - and thus was able to hire a staff for much cheaper rates.  He was still producing the work in progress CD for me - but the cost of shipping it back to me was very high.  He also felt that to make CDs with the digitally remastered recording was not a good idea unless we made it a 6 CD set - which meant having to record a bunch of new material.  Great idea, but I haven't had the expertise or time to do that - and he didn't really want to anyway since he believes that CDs are a thing of the past.  He has run into numerous problems in the Philippines - including power outages for days at time that are both scheduled and unscheduled - and been under enormous pressure in recent years to keep afloat financially.  So, here was this guy who had done all this work for me for free and was under lots of pressure - so any time I need something from him (like to send out my e-mail announcements to the 3000 or so e-mail addresses that he has but I lost in converting to my new computer - or to get him to send out links for downloads that people buy) it puts more pressure on him and makes me very reluctant to ask.

So, we have had the digitally remastered version of the recording for some years now - and had I had the money I could have gotten CDs professionally produced at any time.  What made it possible to make them now, is a phone counseling client who is a photographer and makes wedding movies and such.  He offered to see what he could do with the download - and was able to produce a 4 CD set of them.  I am now trading him phone counseling for the work he is doing - although his costs are going to be more than that, and I will be paying him more when it is possible.  After starting this project several months ago, he got inundated with work and is now under a lot of pressure and stress in his life.  So, his work on the project has been slow because of not having the time.  And he will be making the master and the first 50 CD sets for me - but after that I need to find a way to get them produced out here because it doesn't make any sense for him to be burning them one at a time which greatly increases the costs per CD.  Once I have the master I will be able to get a quantity of CDs reproduced at very cheap rates - if I have the money to pay up front for them (can get 1000 CDs made for $990.) (It turned out that trying to make track marks didn't work and then he didn't have time to do the 50 sets.  He made some sets and sent me the packaging for the rest of the first 50 sets - and now I have to burn the CDs and package them.  I have enough packaging for another dozen or so sets and more will be revealed about what I do then.)

So, I am going to have some sets of the CD within a week or so.  It won't really start producing much extra income however until I can start selling them through Amazon.com and my national distributor to book stores - which means I will need more than 50 copies.  And the print on demand type of sites I have found only do 1 CD music videos - not 4 CD audio books.  Not sure how I am going to be able to get them produced in quantity, but at least we got the first major step taken care of and will have it available. (It would be great if I could get a quantity of them produced - a definite income boost would be possible with having a supply sufficient to sell them through various outlets.)  Hurrah!  More Will Be Revealed about the next step.
Secondly, we are making the recording of my Intensive Training Day Workshop that we made in February available as an audio download mp3.  It is a raw live recording (so you can hear me ask Susan if we are still recording and such things in the course of it) but the sound quality is good and I finally have a recorded version of it.  Eventually we are going to add a voice over introduction and voice overs announcing the end of each of the 4 hour long segments and such - but for the rest of June (actually turned out to be indefinitely) we are selling it as is (for the lowest price it will ever be available for.)  There is also a downloadable 42 page pdf Companion Guide that is not a workbook - but it does contain assignments and suggestions, examples and descriptions, designed to help people to learn to apply my pioneering formula for spiritual integration and emotional balance into their lives.  Here is the page to check out the recording of Robert Burney's Spiritual Integration Workshop (aka Robert Burney Raw;-)
So, we have a recording of the Intensive now.  Great news!!!  I have actually had the thought that it would be really sad and tragic if something happened to me and there would be no record of what I share with people in my Intensives.  The approach, my formula, for the inner healing work that I share in the Intensive is something I have written extensively about on my website - but the way my Intensive presentation has evolved is different in many ways from the articles on my site.  This is what I say about it in the pdf companion guide to the recording - referring to the book I mention later on in the Special Announcement which I hope to have published soon.
"That book is called: Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light Book 1: Empowerment, Freedom, and Inner Peace through Inner Child Healing (aka A Formula for Spiritual Integration and Emotional Balance) - and I hope to have it published within a month through a print on demand service.  It is a compilation of writings from my website that I published up through 2006.  Presenting the information in my Intensive Training Day workshops and to clients in phone counseling has brought about an evolution of the way in which I communicate about this formula - such that, though it is all the same process and dynamics, there are ways I am saying things in my workshop that I have never said in quite the same way in my writing.

Since my personal inner child healing has been so successful that I went from living in isolation with a relationship phobia to approaching the 6th anniversary (June 15th) of living with someone in an intimate relationship (that became a marriage in January 2011) that has included the precious gift of being the primary caregiver in raising an amazing little boy for the past 5 plus years (my wife's grandson who is now 6 1/2) - I don't have time to write much these days.  I have wanted to share the information from my Intensive Training Day with people but have not had the financial resources to get a professional video or audio recording of it up to now." - Companion Guide to Robert Burney Raw
And the reality is we still don't have a really professional video or audio recording - but we do have this "raw" recording.  We did film the same workshop we recorded in February.  Unfortunately we were filming on a camera that took hour long tapes.  While trying to convert that film to digital format, Susan accidentally erased the first tape.  So, we still have film of the remainder of the workshop which hopefully we will be able to get some youtube videos out of eventually - but we don't have the whole thing filmed.
 
Because we were dealing with hour long tapes, I had to restructure the workshop somewhat.  Normally I take questions during the course of the presentation - and those questions often send me off on tangents in which I tell stories from my recovery to explain how I learned certain information or examples of how the process worked or works in my life.  Since we were dealing with hour long segments, I asked people to wait until the end of the hour to ask questions so that I could really focus on getting all the basic information about the formula included and not miss anything - because sometimes the tangents take me far afield or into advanced areas that would make it harder for someone listening to a recording to get the basic formula (or so I was thinking.)  I normally actually appoint someone in the group to keep track of where I was at when I go off on a tangent.  The effect that asking people to hold questions in this Intensive however, was that no one asked any questions.  Thus there are 4 hours of recording instead of between 5 and 5 1/2 hours that the Intensive normally entails.  But it is still a recording that has all of the basic information that I share about my formula for inner child / inner healing / spiritual integration - so I am sure it will have great value to people who aren't in a position to travel to my Intensive.

I am really hoping that sometime in the not too distant future we will have the resources to do a professional filming of it so that we can have a DVD of the Intensive available.  More Will Be Revealed about that also.
. . . . The other thing I wanted to announce is that I am in the final stages of getting ready to publish my next book through a print on demand service that Amazon.com offers.  The publication of Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light  Book 1: Empowerment, Freedom, and Inner Peace through Inner Child Healing (aka A Formula for Spiritual Integration and Emotional Balance) in both paperback and e-book format will hopefully happen before the end of this month.  This will be the first of at least 3 books that I want to publish this year if all goes as planned.

The thing I realized on the night of June 3rd 1986, was how the subconscious intellectual programming from my childhood was running my life.   That when things were going “bad” and I was feeling “bad” I was beating myself up unmercifully at the same time I was desperately rationalizing that someone else or some thing (the system, whatever) was to blame - and that any time anything good was happening in my life, I was holding my breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop.  I realized that my childhood programming was causing me to sabotage good things because I couldn't stand the suspense of waiting for them to be taken away because of my unworthiness.  That horrifying insight is why I made a conscious commitment that night to find out how to stop allowing that childhood programming to run my life.

The formula that I discovered for inner child healing / codependency recovery / spiritual integration allowed me to make a 180% shift in how I lived my life.  What I learned to do is recognize that when things aren't feeling "good" or looking "good" in my life was the time I most needed to be kind and nurturing, compassionate and patient, with my self - and that when things were feeling good I needed to enjoy the heck out of it because "this too shall pass."  Life is constantly changing and getting different - and I needed to stop taking it so personally and seriously.

By learning how to stop allowing the old tapes / childhood programming and emotional wounds to define and dictate, translate and interpret, my experience of life, I have gained the capacity to be present for my life journey with the ability to be happy, Joyous, and free in the moment.  I have had the capacity to be open to experience so much Joy and Love in the moment over these last 25 years it is just mind boggling.

That I was guided to find a way to change my experience of life is an awesome, incredible gift.  That I was also given the ability to communicate what I have learned to other people in a way that allows them to change their experience with life - and relationship with self - into one more aligned with Love is truly a blessing.  I am soooo grateful for recovery.

With wishes of Happy Birthday to me - and Joy & Love 2 all of us,
Robert

Part of the empowerment that comes from learning to stop giving power to the critical parent voice is that we own the power to choose where to focus our mind.  Our default ego programming is to focus on the part of the glass that is empty - because our ego learned to relate to life from fear and shame.  Some people react to that default programming by going to the other extreme - pretending the glass is completely full and nothing is empty.  That is not the Truth either.  The Truth is that the glass is always part full and part empty. 

By learning to have internal boundaries we can own that we have the power to choose to focus on the part of the glass that is full (gifts in our life, things we are grateful for, progress we have made, miracles along the way) but we also do not deny, or judge and shame ourselves for the part that is empty (things in our life that we want and don't have, things we don't like about our self and our life, uncomfortable feelings of grief or anger that come from being conscious and willing to look at our issues and see life with more clarity.)  We can choose to align intellectually with Truth & Love & Joy - at the same time we don't deny that there is pain and fear and grief and anger about how screwed up this human life experience is sometimes.  We can accept that we are not perfect - and are never going to do human perfect - at the same time we know that we are Unconditionally Loved in this moment, always have been, always will be.  And that we are perfectly where we are supposed to be on our spiritual path - and are being guided home.  We are works in progress and we are not the Artist.

With wishes of Joy & Love 2 all of us Magnificent Spiritual Beings who are presently in human form as works in progress here in this boarding school of life,
Robert
Very Scary Incident tonight
by Robert Burney on Sunday, June 12, 2011 at 11:59pm ·

I was walking the dog tonight when it was attacked by two wild dogs.  I couldn't believe how fast the dog attacking our dog moved - he exploded at us, knocking us both over.  There I am on the ground trying to get the dog off of our dog (with the other dog a few feet behind me) - thinking this is really dumb, I could get hurt real bad here.  I ended up with a few cuts on my hands and some really scrapped up knees. I am really grateful that it didn't happen when Susan was walking him - and grateful I didn't get bit.

But our dog had a gnarly gash in it's side, so we had to take it to emergency Vet Clinic on Sunday night.  You know how much that is going to cost.  We were already hurting for money to pay the bills right now - and then this. 
Robert Burney June 17
Forgot to mention that the 15th marked the 6th anniversary of Susan Hinesley and I living together. My record by 4 years and hers by 3. ;-)

Robert Burney
Just today realized there was another anniversary this week. The 16th was the 20th anniversary of the first time I gave the talk that became my book Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls June 16th 1991 in Cambria California at the Pewter Plough Playhouse.

A Gift
July 1st, 2011 12:53 pm PST
I just finished an initial phone counseling session with someone - and I was struck once again, as I have been many times in the past, about how amazing it is that I have learned what I have learned - and am able to explain it to people in a way they can understand.  Sometimes (like this morning during the call) I will hear myself say something - and just marvel that I was able to figure that out.  I hear myself explaining things to people that no one has really understood before - let alone been able to explain - and am reminded of what a gift I have been given.  I was guided all the way.  It is Truly Amazing to me.

The guy whose e-mail to me I posted yesterday said how awful my site was designed and what a Loser I am  and how ridiculous my spiritual beliefs are to him - but he also said he has never seen so much wisdom in one place and that I had changed his life.  Pretty Cool.

I have been given a tremendous gift of wisdom and knowledge - and a gift of being able to communicate what I have learned.  If you want to give your self a gift, take advantage of one of the opportunities to hear what I have to share - you will be glad you did. 

Temporary Special Offers for Day Long Intensive Training

Information on telephone counseling is here Phone Counseling - and there are some special combination offers on this page: Special Offers Phone

There is now a recording available of my Life Changing Workshop Life Changing workshop http://Joy2MeU.com/Robert_Burney_Program.html
July 1, 2011 at 12:56pm
by Robert Burney on Friday, July 1, 2011 at 12:56pm ·

When we stop viewing life from the emotional perspective of a wounded child, from the perspective of the dysfunctional programming our ego adapted to help us survive - then we can get more clearly in touch with our Spiritual Self.  And what I teach people is a practical, powerful, effective formula for opening up to remembering, and accessing, intuitive Truth.

"Truth, in my understanding, is not an intellectual concept.  I believe that Truth is an emotional-energy, vibrational communication to my consciousness, to my soul/spirit - my being, from my Soul.  Truth is an emotion, something that I feel within.

It is that feeling within when someone says, or writes, or sings, something in just the right words so that I suddenly feel a deeper understanding.  It is that "AHA" feeling.  The feeling of a light bulb going on in my head.  That "Oh, I get it!" feeling.  The intuitive feeling when something just feels right . . . or wrong.  It's that gut feeling, the feeling in my heart.  It is the feeling of something resonating within me.  The feeling of remembering something that I had forgotten - but do not remember ever knowing."
- Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

That is why I get so many people writing to me saying they are amazed that I am saying things that they have been thinking.  We are accessing the same Source.  It has just been my path to painstakingly learn how the internal dynamics of this disease operate, and what works to facilitate recovery from it - because it was necessary for my own recovery.  Someone at an Intensive in LA said something very similar to something I shared in my very first Newsletter for my original web site in 1998.
"I had someone in a workshop say to me one time "Boy, you really know this stuff!  You have really studied this, you are kind of like an Olympic athlete or something in this area."  My immediate reaction - as it so often is - was to react out of my disease: "That's because I was so sick."  But then I caught myself and changed it to wounded." - Joy to You & Me Newsletter I - July 1 1998
The person in LA said something like, "Boy, I am glad you were so f---ed up so that you really had to learn this stuff to be able to teach it to us."” -  A Day Long Intensive Training in Robert Burney's Spiritual Integration Formula for Inner Healing


Thu Jul 21, 2011 7:04 pm  "Happy Birthday to Me!" Message to Yahoo Mailing list
In this long message to the Yahoo Mailing List - which I include a short quote from above along with my Birthday  Announcement - I go into more details about the challenges and twists and turns on the way to getting the new products available.  I didn't think it was necessary to include all of that in here.
Mon Jul 25, 2011 8:41 am  Update I promised Message to Yahoo Mailing list
Happy Monday morning to a Kindred Spirit,
Here is the Update I promised last week.

"I will let you all know what is happening next week.  It will be exciting to get my proof copy of the book tomorrow morning.  I will probably just order 20 or so books instead of the 100 - we shall see.  More will be revealed."

As of 8 am on Monday morning I have sold 8 of my new books - and gotten two donations / birthday gifts totaling $40.  One person took advantage of the cheap phone counseling rates on the special offers page to purchase 3 sessions.  One person bought the audio download of the Intensive recording.  Those are all good things, but obviously I still need all the help I can get.  Please God / Goddess / Great Spirit kick down a little help!  Please!

My proof copy did come in and looks great.  I  first ordered 25 books and when I got to check out and saw how expensive that was going to be, I opted for the cheapest mode of shipping - so those won't be here until August 4th. Then I ordered 10 at the fast rate - and those will be here this coming Wednesday 27th.  Then this morning - since I have already sold 8 - I ordered another 5 at a faster rate that will be here on Friday 29th.

Financial abundance is flowing into my life easily and effortlessly, freely and abundantly.
I now have enough time, money, wisdom, and energy to accomplish all of my desires.
The Light within me is creating miracles in my life here and now.
Abundance is my natural state of being. I accept it now!
I send Love to my fears.  My fears are the places within me that await my Love.
Large, rich, opulent, lavish, sumptuous financial surprises are now manifesting in my life and I am very, very grateful!

We are all miracles - and we deserve miracle in our lives.

Miracles 2 You & Me,
Robert

Thu Jul 28, 2011 10:21 am  Latest Update Message to Yahoo Mailing list
Happy Thursday morning to a member of my Spiritual Tribe,
Updating on unfolding situation.  As I mentioned Monday:

"As of 8 am on Monday morning I have sold 8 of my new books - and gotten two donations / birthday gifts totaling $40.  One person took advantage of the cheap phone counseling rates on the special offers page to purchase 3 sessions.  One person bought the audio download of the Intensive recording."

Now, as of 10 am on Thursday morning, I have sold 4 more books - for a total of 12.  No more gifts or phone counseling or any other sales.

So, not sure where the rent is going to come from - especially if the government shuts down and I don't get my social security check on the 3rd.   For months now, I have been paying the first half of the months rent ($800) right at the end of the month - mostly from my Amazon sales - and the second half of the rent (i.e. the second half of July's rent on August 3rd - thank God for a patient landlord) when my social security comes in.  Part of the challenge right now is that my Amazon sales have been way down for the last few months.  For the 10 months prior to May I was averaging almost $540 a month with a high of $699.92 (in March for February sales - that was 104 books sold at $6.73 per book the 35% that I get for sales through Amazon or book stores.)  The May and June sales were way down - with June, which I just got paid for this - being only 47 books for a total of $316.31.)  I have never really figured out any rhyme or reason with the Amazon sales - that is, I can't see where anything I do affects the sales.

The income from my national distributor which sells to book stores is call New Leaf.  The sales through them (book stores order from them and I never know what book stores or what really drives those sales either.)  It has averaged about $220 a month (also paid at the end of the month after the sales occur) but was only $121.14 this month.

The other factor financially right now is tied into my dysfunctional way of doing business.  Besides making 250 pages of content free on the internet, I also do phone counseling with people in a way that is dysfunctional from a business perspective.  That is, the work I do with people is basically designed to help them to become empowered to follow their own internal guidance and know that they don't need to rely on me or anyone else to find their own Truth and follow their own Path.  Typically the majority of my phone clients are short term because within a month or two they get enough tools and insight into how to integrate the formula I teach them, that they don't feel the need to keep calling on a regular basis.  Some people who are living in stressful situations or have some other reason, will do more long term - but normally there is a lot of turn over in my phone clients.  And lately I haven't been getting new clients while many of the people I was working with have felt empowered enough to discontinue regular sessions.

That combination of factors has put paying the rent this month a precarious proposition.  More Will Be Revealed about where it is going to come from.  I Know there is a perfect plan unfolding and that things will work out somehow, someway.  I also know that I need to keep planting the seeds.  Which brings to mind a story that I heard years ago, but had never written about until working on this new book - and I included the story in it.
"Reading this over as I was editing it for publication brought a story to mind.  It is a story of a guy who wanted a garden. He went out on his piece of land and started praying for a garden. Then he went out again the next day and spent the day praying for a garden. And then the next day. And then the next week, and the next week. After weeks of praying he got very frustrated and one day he cried out, "God, where is my garden?"

A voice from heaven replied, "My son, you have to plant the seeds." We need to take actions in the direction we want to go, towards the things we want to create - but we can't control the outcome. We need to take the actions and keep letting go of buying into thinking we will not be okay without that outcome, without reaching that destination." - Chapter 22  Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light
So, this is me planting seeds.  Hoping that putting it out to the Universe - and some people who value my work and have been supportive in the past - that I need a miracle right now in whatever form, whether it be an eskimo sending a birthday gift or some new phone counseling clients or some other types of sales.  I don't think it is part of the Universal Plan that we get evicted right now - but it is not impossible.  More Will Be Revealed.  I will post another update early in the week.

Still having lots of moments of Joy and a lot of inner peace despite external circumstances - wishing the same for you,
Robert
Robert Burney August 13
We went to Three Dog Night concert last night - chokes me up every time I hear the song that marked a milestone in my path.
"Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea and Joy to you and me. . . . At a time when I had never experienced what I know now is True Joy in my life - I was given the message that my path was about Joy and carrying a message of Joy to you and me. The name of my company was born that day." The Path of one Recovering Codependent -the dance of one wounded soul The Story  of "Joy to You & Me"
Mon Aug 22, 2011 10:46 am  New Update message to Yahoo Mailing List
Hello Kindred Spirit on my Yahoo mailing list,
First the good news.  Darien's Dad is here on a short visit from Afghanistan.  Darien hasn't seen him in two years and was so excited to see him.  He went to Alaska first (where he has been stationed for the last few years - which is why Darien hasn't seen him in 2 years) and got engaged to the woman he was seeing there and brought her down with him.  She seems to be really good for him and has gotten Susan's seal of approval.  He just got here yesterday and has to leave on Wednesday - but it is great for Darien to see him.

Now for the not so good news - to update the unfolding situation.  I added this paragraph to my Working the Third Step page on the 12th.

"I ended up getting a total of $300 in donation / gifts.  I did not sell any more of the new books until day before yesterday.   A couple of people who were going to buy more phone sessions anyway, took advantage of the sale price.  Those were the only direct results of this appeal.  Indirectly - manifestations that came from the Universe in response to my call for help - I had 3 new people sign up for phone counseling - although two of them only bought a single session so far.  And a person who was in town for a conference did an in person session which helped with paying the rent.  Have gotten July's rent paid now.  Still no money for reprinting the book or making new copies of the CDs - although I do have enough of them now to fill all the orders that had come in.  More will be revealed as the month unfolds."

Now it is the morning of the 22nd.  I am in a lot of pain this morning.  It has been days at a time with no sales of any kind.  No more donations have come in.  I sold another copy of Dancing in The Light on Friday - so that brings total to 16 books.  I was so sure that I would sell a bunch of them as soon as it was published.  I finally got enough copies of the CD to fill the orders I already had (although I had to space out mailing them because of not being able to afford to mail them all at once) - and now have a good quality clean copy - as soon as I get the money to burn some more I will start selling them again.  I have gotten no new phone clients since the 3 I mentioned on the 12th.  Someone signed up for my Intensive on the 28th - but now I only have 2 people signed up.  I have to decide today whether I need to cancel it or not.  Three phone counseling clients who were doing regular appointments had to stop because of finances.

This week there are a bunch of bills coming due.  Starting with Electric bill tomorrow.  And when I say coming due, I mean that we are two months behind and tomorrow is the day I have to pay the past due month or they will cut of the electricity.  Someone bought two copies of The Dance this morning, so that money will be in Wednesday - and if I wait long enough in the day tomorrow I can probably pay that and hope that it doesn't go through before the money coming in Wednesday.  Not sure what I am going to do with any of the other bills - or with groceries and such either.

The last few nights I have been waking up regularly and praying every time for the Universe to kick down some money.  I have had special offers posted for over a week for both my workshop and my two books and the recording of the workshop with both books - and no takers so far.  I am in a lot of pain this morning even though I still have faith that things will work out somehow.  I have said for years that I have great Faith in the perfection of my Higher Power's plan but I don't always like the details of it.  Or the timing sometimes, since I often get what I need at what feels to me like the "last fucking minute."  It seems like the last minute right now - so I have to take the action of putting it out to the Universe that I need help.  I so hate having to do this again - but am willing to surrender to what I need to do.  More Will Be Revealed as usual.

This is one of those times where I get to practice my dubious honor of being able to role model that it is okay to be human.  Here is an excerpt from a news addendum to my Update Newsletter in the summer of 2000 when I was presented with the possibility that I was going to be homeless again.
"There are times however, when life events feel emotionally battering.  When the experience of life feels abusive.  When if feels as if my Higher Power is being sadistic and anything but Loving.  The tools still work at times like that - but they work in terms of giving me the patience to know that this too shall pass.  They work to help me be gentle and kind to myself at times when I am very uncomfortable emotionally.  If I try to force myself out of an emotionally uncomfortable place, then I am being judgmental and abusive to myself.  I need to be able to accept wherever I am at - no matter how uncomfortable.

In those times, I need to allow myself to do whatever it takes to make it through the day without abusing and shaming myself. . . . It also brought up grief from the past, for the many other times I have been in a similar position of feeling like my Higher Power was abandoning me.  That fear and pain can be overwhelming at times.

In those times when life feels emotionally battering, it can be very hard to stay out of a victim place.  It very much feels like I am the victim - either of an unavailable and unloving Higher Power, or of my own shameful, defective being. . . .

By allowing myself to go through the process:

    to do some grief and anger work when I could;
    to take positive actions to nurture myself, and plant seeds that could possibly meet my future needs, when that was possible;
    to not try to force myself into a different emotional space just because I was judging that there was something wrong with the one I was in;
    to keep working on being patient with myself and my process while affirming the positive and my faith in the future;

- I emerged from that space into one of being more creatively and positively centered again.  The outside conditions - that is, the unknown factors about the future in terms of finances and lodging - have not changed, but my attitude towards them, and therefore my relationship with what is happening in my life has shifted.  I forced myself to be patient with myself.  I forced myself to do positive affirmations.  I worked on not giving power to judgment about what was happening, and did not try to force my feelings to change - but rather worked on changing my relationship with them.

I was not in that negative emotional space because I was doing something wrong, or because something is defective about who I am.  I went through that experience - am going through this experience - because it was a perfect part of the Universal plan in some way.  I went through it so I could learn and grow.  Probably, part of the reason I went through it was so I could write about it and therefore perhaps give some of you who read this a little more permission to be human - and a little more patience with yourself and this recovery process." - News of the Adventure, June & July 2000
That was a very painful and scary period in my recovery - and it was followed by a miracle in September when someone sent me a donation to the cause that allowed me to get the small garage apartment in Cambria where I did so much of my writing over the next 5 years.  (Something I talk about in the most important - to me - Update Newsletter I ever wrote, the one from October 2000 which there is a link to at the bottom of the page just quoted.)

The situation that I am going through now, is a time when I have sometimes felt emotionally battered by life.  I have this year focused on taking action to provide more cash flow by creating new products out of the resources (my writing) that I already have.   First the CD project turned into a nightmare.  Then I got the recording available - and have sold only a few of them.  Now the Dancing in The Light book that I was so sure would sell lots of copies.  It feels like the harder I try, the worse things have gotten.  That is just a feeling - but it is a strong feeling at times.  And it is very important for me to own the pain that I feel - and acknowledge the fear that is not far from the surface most of the time.  If I don't do that I am denying my feelings.  Just to proclaim my faith and do positive affirmations without owning the feelings is not healthy or honest.  We don't want to put frosting on a shit cake - to borrow a phrase Susan picked up in Landmark.

I don't let the feelings define me because I stand up to the critical parent voice that is telling me that being in this position is my fault, because I am unworthy and defective - but I also don't deny the feelings.  I accept them and move through them by telling myself that it is going to be okay - because deep down I Know it is somehow.  But for some moments of this morning it hasn't felt that way - and I needed to cry and sob.  Now I am taking the action of putting the word out to the Universe (and to some Eskimos and Angels on my e-mail list) that I need help.  The help will come from some place - and I don't need to know today where that will be.  I don't need to know today how I will pay the bills this week or the rent next week.  I am already feeling much better because I am affirming to myself as I own the feelings that everything is going to be okay.  I am planting seeds - and something will grow.  What it will be is in the More Will Be Revealed realm right now.

Love 2 You & Me,
Robert
The next day I posted the following on Facebook.
"There are times when life events feel emotionally battering"
by Robert Burney on Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 9:29am ·
"There are times however, when life events feel emotionally battering.  When the experience of life feels abusive.  When if feels as if my Higher Power is being sadistic and anything but Loving.  The tools still work at times like that - but they work in terms of giving me the patience to know that this too shall pass.  They work to help me be gentle and kind to myself at times when I am very uncomfortable emotionally.  If I try to force myself out of an emotionally uncomfortable place, then I am being judgmental and abusive to myself.  I need to be able to accept wherever I am at - no matter how uncomfortable." - News of the Adventure, June & July 2000
This is part of a quote from an Update Newsletter that I included yesterday in an update I added to my Working the Third Step / ASKing for Help page

Earlier in the Newsletter quoted is this paragraph.
"It has just been so incredibly valuable for me to develop a level of consciousness from which I am observing myself.  This is really the essential technique that allows me to have internal boundaries so that I can own my power to make choices instead of setting myself up to create a very negative emotional space by buying into the belief that I am the victim.  Through having a detached observer within me, I can have a boundary between the emotional and the mental - between my feelings and my thoughts.  There are often going to be times in life when I feel like a victim.  The child within me, who was taught that life was about right and wrong - and if I was wrong I would be punished - reacts to life events not unfolding as I want, by feeling like I am being punished, like I am a bad boy.  The core place within me where I feel unworthy and unlovable, the inner child who was taught that if I did life right I would be rewarded by living happily ever after, reacts to life events and other people's behavior out of the feeling that I am shamefully defective somehow.  It is reaction to the intense pain of feeling shameful and defective that I developed my codependent defense system of either blaming others or blaming myself and trying to kill the pain and shame with substances - it is the fear of that pain and shame that causes me to try to control life and other people." - News of the Adventure, June & July 2000 
Developing internal boundaries between the mental and emotional - so that we don't allow how we feel to define our life for us (at the same time we are shutting up the critical parent voice) - is a vital part of gaining some freedom from letting the old wounds and old tapes define our experience of life.  It is the combination of learning to have internal boundaries along with integrating a Loving Spiritual Belief system into our inner process that makes the approach to inner healing - that I teach people in my workshop and in telephone counseling and in my books - work to greatly improve the quality of our life experience.  As I say in one of my articles:
“Codependency recovery / inner child healing is a way of life. It is a way to live life that works. It works to help . . . gain some freedom from the past. It is a path for living that . . . creates the space . . . to be present in the moment and be happy to be alive - to connect with Joy - some of the time.  It is not something we do and then get on with our lives. It is something we do in order to Truly be alive.” - Recovery from Codependency / Inner Child Healing
So, I ended up saying all that as a prelude to sharing a quote from my book in which I talk about getting battered and bruised on our Spiritual Path - this quote is what came to mind for me this morning when thinking about feeling "battered" by life.  This is an example of the Spiritual Truth that it was invaluable for me to integrate into my relationship with life.
"The prologue to Richard Bach's Illusions contains a story about a colony of creatures clinging to the bottom of a stream.  Here is a paraphrasing of that story.

One day one of those creatures became bored with the life of clinging and decided to see what would happen if he let go and got swept up into the stream.  He wanted to see where the stream would carry him.

All of the other creatures laughed at him and made fun of him. "You can't let go of the rocks, you'll just get battered and bruised!"   "It's insane to let go of the rocks!"

This creature, though, wanted more out of life than just clinging to the rocks. He wanted to find out where the stream went.  So he let go of the rocks - and sure enough he got battered and bruised and had to grab ahold again.

All of the other creatures ridiculed and laughed at him.

But he said, "I am going to try again. I believe that the stream knows where it is going.  I want to see where the stream will take me."  So he let go again - and he got battered and bruised again.   And then he let go again, and again, and again.

Each time he got a little less battered and bruised.  Each time he got a little closer to being swept up in the stream.

Then finally one day he had let go enough times that he did get swept up into the stream.  He was caught in the flow of the stream and swept forward.

He was flying!

As he flew along with his heart full of Joy and excitement he passed over another colony of clinging creatures that was downstream.

They looked up at him and cried, "Behold!  There is a creature like us and he is flying!  It must be the Messiah!"

He looked back at them and shouted as he was heading down stream, "No!  You don't understand. You can fly, too, all you have to do is let go.   You are as much messiahs as I am."

That is what this is all about!  The second coming has begun!  Not of "The Messiah,' but of a whole bunch of messiahs.  The messiah - the liberator - is within us!  A liberating, Healing Transformational Movement has begun.  "The Savior' does not exist outside of us - "The Savior" exists within.

We are the sons and daughters of God.   We, the old souls, who are involved in this Healing Movement, are the second coming of the message of Love.

We have entered what certain Native American prophecies call the Dawning of the Fifth World of Peace.  Through focusing on our own healing the planet will be healed.

We all have available to us - within - a direct channel to the Highest Vibrational Frequency Range within The Illusion.  That highest range involves consciousness of the Glory of ONENESS.  It is called Cosmic Consciousness.  It is called Christ Consciousness.

This is the energy that Jesus was tuned into, and he stated very plainly, 'These things that I do, you can do also." - by atoning, by tuning in.

We have access to the Christ Energy within.  We have begun the Second Coming of the message of Love.

The dawning of the Age of Healing and Joy is the dawning of the Fifth World of Peace when humans will learn to walk in balance and harmony.

Now that is some pretty wonderful news, wouldn't you say?" - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
Letting go of the rocks - living outside the Matrix - can be terrifying and very painful at times.  What is important is to own the feelings without letting them define us.  We are here to do this healing so that we can own who we really are and integrate the Truth into our relationship with self and life.  Here are a couple of more quotes from my book.
"Life is not some kind of test, that if we fail, we will be punished.  We are not human creatures who are being punished by an avenging god.  We are not trapped in some kind of tragic place out of which we have to earn our way by doing the “right” things.

We are Spiritual Beings having a human experience.  We are here to learn.  We are here to go through this process that is life.  We are here to feel these feelings."

"A "state of Grace" is the condition of being Loved unconditionally by our Creator without having to earn that Love.  We are Loved unconditionally by the Great Spirit.  What we need to do is to learn to accept that state of Grace.

The way we do that is to change the attitudes and beliefs within us that tell us that we are not Lovable.  And we cannot do that without going through the black hole.  The black hole that we need to surrender to traveling through is the black hole of our grief.  The journey within - through our feelings - is the journey to knowing that we are Loved, that we are Lovable.

It is through willingness and acceptance, through surrender, trust, and faith, that we can begin to own the state of Grace which is our True condition.

We are all beautiful swans who exist in a state of Grace, in a condition of being unconditionally Loved.  The dance of Recovery is a process of learning to accept and integrate the Truth of Grace into our lives.

The goal in this Age of Healing and Joy is integration and balance.  To integrate the Spiritual Truth into our physical experience so that we can fill the hole inside and find wholeness within.  As we integrate our True Spiritual nature into our relationship with our physical being we can begin to achieve some balance and harmony with and between all of the parts of our being.

This age is a time for growing and learning, a time to become conscious of the True nature of the Source Energy, a time of Spiritual Awakening.  We have been given the wonder-full gift of having the ability and the tools to start integrating the Truth of a Loving Universal Force into our day-to-day experience of life.  We now have the knowledge and guidance that we need to start bringing some balance to our relationships - with ourselves and our God/Goddess, with other people and the planet - so that we can live in a way that allows us to experience some Peace and Love on our life path.

We can heal our wounded souls enough to change the dance of life from a dance of endurance and suffering to a dance that celebrates living.  We now have access to the power to transform the dance of Codependence to a dance of healing and Joy." - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to quote from: Illusions  "The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah" by Richard Bach.  Copyright 1977 by Creature Enterprises, Inc.   Reprinted in Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls by Robert Burney by permission of Bantam Doubleday Dell, New York, NY.

Robert Burney
We are trying to find Susan's daughter - Darien's mother.
Susan Hinesley
I filed a missing persons report on my Daughter Rosaline Hinesley aka Rose Marquez. I have not heard from her since June 18th. She was last seen with _____ If you have seen her please call Encinitas Sheriff's station at 769-966-3500. or contact me. I invite all of your prayers. Thank you September 14, 2011
Robert Burney (something I added to her post on my Facebook wall) She is 23 - and has some warrants for the wreckage of her past. She has basically been hiding for awhile - but had been contacting her mother every few weeks to let her know she was okay. Now we haven't heard from her in a couple of months - which is why we are so concerned.

Robert Burney
Yesterday my beautiful wife took off for Salt Lake City to try to track down her Daughter. As I was on phone helping her find hotel in Vegas, her daughter called on other phone. She is alive and safe and not in Utah. We are relieved and grateful and Susan decided this meant her HP wanted her to spend a few days in Vegas. ;-)
September 23

February 25th - The reason Susan was able to make this trip was she had just gotten a pay day loan - one of those loans with outrageous interest that payments have to be made on pay day.  She got two of those in the last year - so we are making payments on those loans as well as the car loan and the regular bills.  That is something else to add to my wish list - that we can pay off those outrageous loans.

Sat Sep 17, 2011 4:39 pm News from Joy to You & Me message to Yahoo Mailing List
Hello to the folks on my yahoo mailing list,

I posted the following on my Donations page a week or so ago - and this is all the update about finances that I am going to be doing for now.

On September 5, 2011 I added this to my Metaphysical Law: Giving and Receiving page.

September 2011

I was able to keep my book in print in 2003 and in the years since then through miracles and donations to Joy2MeU.  In 2008 I had to reprint my book again - and was able to, right before the economy crashed.

"I posted that article (the one I mention just above about "Leap of Faith ~ Publishing The Dance") as part of sending out a request for donations to help keep my book in print one more time.  The combination of not getting nearly as many donations as I had hoped, and the printing company printing a large print run without getting my final approval, put us in a real hard financial place that September.  Then the bottom fell out of the economy shortly after that." - Joy2MeU Update Newsletter May 2010
Since the recession hit, things have been very difficult.  Anyone who is interested in finding out the details can check out Asking for Help 2010 or my messages to my Yahoo Mailing list (for the most recent developments.)  This year I have made a concerted effort to create more cash flow by making more products available.  Each of these new products I thought was going to bring a significant increase in income (just as I thought all those years ago that Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls would become a best seller.)  The results have been very disappointing.  I now have a recording of my Intensive Training Day available - something people have been asking for for years - and I have only sold a few of them.  I have produced CDs of the digitally remastered version of Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls An Audio Spiritual Experience - and now I can't afford to burn more copies to sell.  I was finally able to publish Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light  Book 1 Empowerment, Freedom, and Inner Peace through Inner Child Healing - and have sold less than 2 dozen copies.  I will be needing to reprint The Dance of Wounded Souls again before the year is over - but don't have the money I need to do that either.

So maybe it is this year - 2011 - that the book goes out of print and I can't keep my website going any longer.  I hope not - but as I said above, I can accept whatever the plan is as it is revealed.  The economy seems to be getting worse, so more will be revealed about what is going to happen.

Love offerings and Spiritual tithes are always welcome and very much appreciated.  I appreciate that you have even read this page - and if your Spirit moves you to send some money energy this way, I will be very grateful. ~  Robert 9/5/11
I am sick of asking for help - and it seems a lot of you are sick of hearing me ask.  I actually had one person say that they thought I was unethical and violating boundaries by asking my e-mailing list for help.  This is someone who has found my work very helpful - and would never had gotten the chance to experience it had I not been asking for help in keeping my book in print and my website going for years.  I have over 200 pages of valuable original writing on my site that is free to anyone who can access the internet.  Having that material available has helped tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of people over the years - a very, very small percentage of which ever bought anything from me or donated to keeping the material available.

I am sorry that person saw what to me is working the third step (I took all the updates off that ASKing for help page by the way) as unethical and a violation of boundaries.  I am powerless over the judgments of other people.  I stated in my very first Newsletter for my first crude website on July 1, 1988 (and quoted in my choosing a therapist page), I don't see a separation between me as a teacher and counselor and the people I work with.
"Traditional therapy/counseling in this society is set up as a one up-one down situation - that is, the therapist is set up as the expert who treats the poor unfortunate patient. . . . I am in process just as my clients are - just as we all are.  There is no hierarchy as far as I am concerned - just one wounded person/Magnificent Spiritual Being sharing what has worked for me with another wounded person/Magnificent Spiritual Being. I am doing what I need to do for myself, to heal myself - it doesn't have to do with anyone else - that it helps other people is just a bonus (and an opportunity to settle Karma)." - Inner Child Healing - Choosing a therapist or counselor with discernment
As I say in this quote - and in the quote just below - I am just doing what I need to do for my recovery.  The Path I am one, is not one that I envisioned or chose on any conscious level - it is where I was led.
"I freely share so much information on my site because - as I say in the article above - I believe it is my Karmic Mission in this lifetime.  I want to share the Joyous message and the precious information that I have discovered - and it is what I need to do for my Recovery and Spiritual Path.  It is not such a great strategy when it comes to finances however.;-)  So Donations to the Cause / Love Offerings / Spiritual Tithes are always appreciated if you feel my sharing has helped you in your Healing / Recovery process and on your Spiritual Path. If my writing has helped you remember Truth that brings you some Joy and inner peace, and your Spirit moves you to send some Love back my way - there are donation links on this page." - Metaphysical Law: Giving and Receiving
Susan has often told me that I make too much information available for free - and that I am one of those artist types who doesn't know anything about marketing.  And those things are probably both true.  If I am in a reactive place when she says those things I take it as criticism and feel hurt by it, react out of the little boy who was always being criticized by his father.  However a month or so ago when I was in a lot of pain about our finances and feeling awful about having to ask for help again, Susan said something to me that pulled me out of my reaction.  She said, "But your life isn't about making money - it has never been about making money.  You life is about being of service."

And I am honored and grateful to get the chance to be of service by doing what I am led to do and going where I am led to go.  Just wish it wasn't so hard paying the bills along the way.

One of the consequences of our situation is that it was never a real option this year to send Darien back to the Montessori School.  For those of you who weren't around last year - or haven't read the messages from last year at this time - we started Darien in kindergarten in public school last year and then were real concerned about the teacher and situation as we saw it the first couple of weeks of school.  When we moved down here to the San Diego area 5 years ago, we put Darien in a Montessori preschool because it was cheaper than daycare - and both Susan and I needed to be able to work during the daytime.   The Montessori preschool he was in didn't have a kindergarten until the last year he was there - and then it was just one period a day and not really a full fledged kindergarten.  When both Susan and I started crying out of our fear for him after the Back to School Night where we heard the teacher talking to the parents, we managed to work out a deal with another Montessori school for him to attend there (something we really couldn't afford, but felt we couldn't afford not to for Darien's sake.)  And I think that school was real good for him. But it started with first grade - and though Darien was the only kid at the first grade level, we got to thinking of him as being in the first grade.  And it was normal for him to expect to go to the second grade this year - something we really didn't even think about.

Well it turned out, that though the Montessori School was good at teaching him math and sciences, he is still at a very beginning first grade level when it comes to reading.  His teacher expressed her concern to Susan in the first week - and said he was really reading at a kindergarten level.  It wasn't until that happened, that we really realized that he had essentially skipped kindergarten.  And when one of the kids in his class had his 8th birthday it really drove home the point that Darien was much younger than most of the class.  In helping him with his reading, I could see that he just wasn't developmentally ready for level they were expecting of him - and we asked that he be moved back to first grade.  We had an evaluation meeting with the teachers and the principle and now Darien will be moving to a first grade class on Monday.

We are really hoping that this is not going to be emotionally traumatizing for him - and he seems to be taking it in stride (explaining to people when it comes up that he skipped kindergarten.)  I think it is really the best thing for him - but so hope none of the kids tease him about it or anything.  We love that little man so much and are really trying to do what is best for him.  His father was home for 3 days on leave from Afghanistan this month - and it is the first time he has seen him in two years - and he won't see him again for another year.  His mother is missing in action - on the run from violating her probation for several drug related felony convictions - and he hasn't seen her in months.  He is actually used to them not being around, since that has been the norm for years now.  But every once in a while he will get into some grief about it.  Usually he starts off crying about being sad because he hasn't seen a friend at the kids club in a long time, or sad about his cat being gone (the cat has been gone for 4 years) - before getting around to owning that he misses his mommy.

A bit earlier today, I was at the gym with Darien. When I picked him up from the kids klub there, the person who had been supervising the kids was just gushing about him.  She said "He is such a leader."  And in talking to her - telling her about him - I was reminded of just how smart the little man is.  I talked in earlier messages to this list, about how when we moved down here in September 2006 he had very little experience of interacting with other kids. Susan and I became his full time guardians in April of 2006 - though his mother and father had been living with us up to that time and we had been taking care of him part of the time.  The montessori school we put him in - and the kids club at the gym - were the places where he really learned how to relate to other kids.  I mentioned - in probably more than one of my past messages here - how when he was little I would take him to the park or the kids club and he would run right up to any kids around (even kids much older) and ask them if they would play with him.  This often set him up to get his feelings hurt - and he would feel really badly when the kid or kids didn't want to play with him (and I would feel really sad for him.)  But at some point, he figured out that if he brought along some toy or something that other kids would be interested in, then they would ask to play with him.

It was probably when he was close to 4 when he started doing that. And he has been doing it ever since.  As I was telling her how he figured out that bringing something helped him find kids to play with - and she was saying how smart he is - the scene when we first got to the gym flashed in my mind.  He is bringing what they call beyblades with him these days (little things that spin like tops and battle in a little arena - very popular with little boys.) As soon as we got there, the boys all descended on his arena and started grabbing at them - at which point he stepped in and started setting boundaries with them.  And I said to her - this being the first time I ever put words to what I was seeing - that bringing something that other kids wanted to play with had forced him to learn how to set boundaries.  This was really what she was talking about when she was saying what a leader he is - that he was setting boundaries and making rules for other kids to follow.

She then gushed about how much personality he has - which reminded me (something I have also mentioned here in past messages) about how I started calling him Mr. Personality before he could even walk and talk.  Darien brings so much Joy to Susan and I - he is such a gift in our lives.  We are blessed with Great Abundance because we have Darien in our lives.  He is such a precious little man.

With Joy & Love to Susan & Darien & Me & U 2,
Robert
February 25th - I share the second half of this message on my Darien page - and comment on what a great thing it was that we moved him back to the first grade.  It has worked out great.

"The man says to God, “What is a billion years like to you?”"
by Robert Burney on Monday, October 3, 2011 at 11:57am
"The first time a messenger came to me carrying the message, the reminder, that I was a Spiritual Being having a human experience, I got really angry.  My first reaction was anger.  My first thought was, "That means that I've got to be out among them."

I never wanted to be out among you-all.  I always wanted to go up on a mountain and meditate my way to God.  What I have learned in this healing process is that I find God through "being out among them," through my human relationships.  We are here to learn to relate to each other.  We are here to learn to Love ourselves and each other.

One of the ironies of this whole business is something that physicists have learned from quantum physics.  They have learned that the physical world is made up of energy fields that are temporary manifestations of energy interactions.  All of the energy fields of the physical world are temporary.  Some last for fractions of a second, some last for billions of years - but they are all temporary illusions.

This means that the Truest reality in the physical world is in the interaction.  It is in our interactions that we can access Truth and Joy and Love.  In other words it is in our relationships.

The most real thing here, the place where the highest Truth exists, is in the interactions: in our relationships.  Our relationship with ourselves is a reflection of our relationship with our Creator, with the Great Spirit.  And our relationship with ourselves is reflected out into our relationship with everyone and everything in our environment.

Spirituality is about relationships.  God exists in the quality of our relationships.

When I look at a beautiful sunset - I am a temporary illusion and  the sunset is also a temporary illusion - the most real, God-like quality is the energy of Beauty and Joy that I allow myself to access by being open and willing to experience the sunset.  If I am caught up in one of my ego's "trauma dramas," then I will not be conscious of the sunset or open to experiencing the Joy and Beauty of the moment.

A very important part of this healing process is taking time to smell the flowers.  Our job is to be here in the now and to do this healing.

I spent most of my life trying to become - perfect, loved, accepted, respected, etc., etc.  It did not work because I was looking outside for something that can only be found within.

Now I know that I am not in control of this process and that what I am becoming is in the hands of a Loving (although somewhat slow working) Great Spirit.  I do not have to worry anymore about becoming - all I have to do is be.  I just have to suit up and show up for life today and do what is in front of me.  And everything will work out better than I could ever have planned it.

There are no accidents, no coincidences - everything is unfolding perfectly.

It is no accident that two days before I first gave this talk in June of 1991, when I didn't know exactly what I was going to say and how I was going to say it, when I was frustrated and angry with God because things were not working out the way I thought they should, when I was terrified of getting up in front of people and owning my Truth, when I was just in the part of the process that feels like crap - a friend, a messenger from God, told me a joke.

This joke is about a man who is talking to God, trying to understand Gods perspective on things.

The man says to God, "What is a billion years like to you?"

God says, "A second." 

And the man says, "Oh, that's interesting.  Well, what is a billion dollars like to you?"

And God says,  "A penny."

And the man, being human, of course starts calculating to himself,  "Well, if a billion dollars is like a penny to God then a million must really be nothing.  I'll bet I could get God to give me a million."

So the man says to God,  "Can I have a million dollars?"

God says, "Sure . . . in a second."

 God's time is perfect - it just doesn't feel like it to us all of the time.  The more we can align our perspective with Truth the less we will feel like we are being punished.

By the way, the hardest part of unconditional Love is accepting wherever we are at in the moment no matter how uncomfortable.  The hardest part of acceptance is not the difficulty of allowing others their process (although Lord knows that can be very hard); it is allowing ourselves our own process without shame and judgment.

 I can do that now most of the time.  I know now that when it feels like crap it is not punishment, it is not because I am bad or wrong or defective (although there is still a little part of me, that critical parent/disease voice that wants me to buy into that - and probably there always will be).

 What I know now is that when it feels like shit that means that I am being fertilized to help me grow.  I am so very grateful to God for all the wonderful fertilizer that has been poured on me over the years." - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

The Music of Love is not shaming
by Robert Burney on Friday, November 11, 2011 at 7:12pm
"When I was working on these two chapters focused on codependency and the New Age Movement, I got an e-mail from someone who had recently ordered my book that said the following:
"Dance, Dance, wherever you may be.  That's what the Lord of the Dance said He.  Dance, Dance, wherever you may be and I'll be with you in the Dance said He."

The trick is to change the music!  I got it!  The trick is to get free, so you can dance to a different music.  The freer you get the more you hear, or should I say feel or see the music.  You did a great job - Thanks

"The dance of life for humans has been grounded in shame and fear, empowered by belief in separation, lack, and scarcity.  These are lower vibrational emotions and beliefs based on the three dimensional illusion that humans experience as reality.  As long as the dance of humans harmonizes to music - vibrational emanations - that are rooted in shame, fear, and separation the only way to do the dance is destructively."

"It is on the Spiritual Plane that the highest vibrational frequency range naturally available to human experience is generated (by the Souls). This frequency range is the transcendent Emotional energy of Love. This Love frequency range also contains frequencies which are experienced as Truth, Joy, Beauty, and Light as well as sometimes being called; the God within, the Goddess within, the Christ within, The Holy Spirit, etc."
The later two quotes are from my page: The True Nature of Love - part 3, Love as a Vibrational Frequency.  The second one is in italics because it is a quote from my Trilogy that I used on that page.  I believe that the first part of the person's e-mail - up to "I'll be with you in the Dance said He." - is from a song called Lord of the Dance.

What is important about this e-mail I received is that the person did "get it."  We need to change the music we are dancing to - and in order to do that we need to change the subconscious intellectual paradigm that is dictating our emotional reactions.  And we cannot do that without doing the deep emotional healing. . . . . .

. . . . . We have been dancing through life in disharmony and imbalance - in dis-ease.  It is by clearing up our relationship with our own internal process - so that we can change our core relationship with self and life - that we can start to dance with some balance and harmony to the music of the ultimate Truth of Love and Joy."  - The Music of Love is not shaming
Another quote from a chapter in my online book Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light Book 2 A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life  that is available in the Dancing in Light subscription area of my site
On December 24, 2011 I added this to my Metaphysical Law: Giving and Receiving page.
December 2011

My book is being reprinted as a print on demand book through Amazon.com's CreateSpage service - the same way I was able to print my second book this past summer.  This is a real blessing that was made possible by my friend Ken T. of North Carolina who put up the money to get the process started.  It will ultimately mean somewhat of a decrease in my monthly income of the books I sell through Amazon, because now I will be buying the book from CreateSpace to sell through Amazon but is so much better than the alternative which was to raise thousands of dollars to reprint the book myself.  Today, on Christmas Eve, I got notice from CreateSpace that I will get a proof copy of the new printing of the book in about a week - so I should have it available in early January.  Once again the Universe has manifested a way to keep my book in print - and this time it is in print indefinitely.  I am very grateful and blessed. ~  Robert 12/24/11

February 25th - The first proof of the book that they sent me did not include the new copyright page or author's information page that were supposed to be substituted for the old ones.  So, we had to go through the process again and I had to go to Kinkos to get those pages formatted correctly.  And then the next proof after 3 or 4 weeks, had the the information for those two pages on the same page.  So, had to go back and do it again before finally getting a proof in which the new pages were right - thus they just became available this month.
Joy2meu January 27 at 9:25am
I am dealing right now with a car that needs some repair - and is getting worse - and trying to figure out how to do that and pay the rent. It is a reminder of how many great Spiritual lessons I have learned over the years by focusing on my relationship with cars and driving. This is something I talk about in many places in my writing, but the one I was drawn to below is an excerpt from the third Newsletter I sent out for my original website in October 1998. It is quoted on a page on my Joy2MeU site (which I launched in February 1999 - oh, anniversary coming up) The Recovery Process for inner child healing series - this page includes quotes from different writings that are focused on finding emotional balance.
"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." - The Recovery Process for inner child healing - emotional balance
A subject that has been coming up with telephone counseling clients recently is spiritual by-pass - which is when someone uses Spiritual Truth or positive affirmations to deny feelings. This is a very good quote about how to be able to focus on the part of the glass that is full without denying the part that is empty. We can't be balanced emotionally by denying the feelings.

I am posting this as a way of putting out a request to the Universe for support in being able to handle the financial opportunities for growth that are challenging me right now. It is by working the third step that I can let the Universe know that I am open to receiving

February 25th - In the next 3 days after I posted this the Universe kicked down almost $1300 in new phone clients and current ones buying more sessions - only 1 of which I knew was going to happen.  So, I was able to get the cars fixed and pay two installments on the rent by the end of that week.  I am very grateful to the Universe for responding to my requests for help. ;-)  The following week I hit a stretch where I didn't make anything for 2 or 3 days and had some expenses that were not planned - and by the middle of the week I wasn't sure how I was going to buy groceries before the week was over.  I talk some place about how I play a Lottery game that has a daily drawing so that I have some hope of getting a big influx of income every day.  Well that day when I wasn't sure how to cover the expenses for the rest of the week, I won $431 in that game.  All my needs are taken care of even though the Universe keeps making me ask - and sometimes if feels like (as I say someplace in my writing) the last freaking second (or words to that effect.;-)

Joy2meu February 4 at 8:37am
Today marks 13 years since I launched Joy2MeU.com on February 4, 1999. I am getting an Update Newsletter ready that I wanted to have posted by today - but this past week everyone in the family got sick and both cars broke down - so it isn't quite ready yet.

The quote I am posting today is from the Update that was on the one year anniversary of Joy2MeU's birth.
"The Universe has this way of tricking me into going where I need to go by letting me think I am going where I want to go. . . .

As I talk about in the The True Nature of Love - Energetic Clarity part 2 I had to get honest with myself about my selfishness. I had to own that there was no such thing as unselfishness and everything I do has a payoff. That was necessary for me to stop the dishonesty of buying into the belief that I was a victim. In order for me to start owning my power to make choices and take responsibility for being a co-creator in my life, I needed to start being rigorously honest with myself about my motives and expectations. It was a very important and vital step in my growth process.

However, one of the things that I have learned about the growth process is that things keep getting different. After I have focused on certain issues and learned the lessons of one level, there comes a time for a paradigm shift that changes my perspective of things. In this case, the shift involved realizing that - though it will always be important and vital for me to be honest with myself about my motives - that in the larger picture my motives do not really matter.

The Universe, my Higher Power, gives me whatever motives - dangles whatever carrots - it will take to get me moving in the direction it wants me to move in. Then down the road a ways it is like "Oh, well that is not really what this is about." That is an important part of why it is so important to keep practicing letting go. I have to continually let go of my picture of how I think things need to be. I may be a co-creator here, but I am not writing the script.

Recovery is a dance of balance. As I talk about in Energetic Clarity:
"And once again here, I want to make the point that clarity with our self is not an absolute destination. This healing is a gradual process of finding a sense of balance - a sense of what clarity feels like, so that we can look for and recognize when we have it and when we do not. In order to do that it is vital to learn how to be emotionally honest with ourselves so that we can be discerning in our relationship with our own mental and emotional process. Through that honesty we will achieve some energetic clarity as well.

Through that energetic clarity we will be able to access Love from the Source - and we will learn to Love and trust our Self to guide our self through this boarding school that is life as a human."
A sense of balance - not a destination. We are on a Journey - the point is to be present for the journey, not to reach a destination.

It is important to have goals because that gives us a direction - but then we need to let go of reaching that destination, at least in the way we picture it is going to be.

That is part of the paradox of recovery. It is very important to know that it is Ok to have dreams, to affirm and visualize our dreams coming true, to take action and plant seeds to make them possible, to open up to receiving all of the abundance of the Universe - and then we need to let go of believing that we will not be Ok until, or if, those dreams come true. We need to let go of the future and be present today. And know that we are Unconditionally Loved today - and every day, rather we reach our goals or not.” - Joy2MeU Update Newsletter 2-4-2000

Joy2meu February 6 at 9:44am
"There is an acronym in Alcoholics Anonymous, that like so many of the little sayings / acronyms / aphorisms of recovery carry great Truth and can be invaluable tools in helping us to keep from swinging too far out of balance in reaction to life. This acronym is HALT. It stands for: Hungry Angry Lonely Tired. When we have any of these conditions going on - and especially if we have two or more of them happening simultaneously - we are more impatient than normal, more emotionally vulnerable, and are much more vulnerable to our codependency. These kinds of physical and emotional conditions weaken our defenses, magnify and distort our emotional reactions, and make it much harder to keep from slipping into the old ruts of black and white thinking. (Discernment in relationship to emotional honesty and responsibility 1) They sap our energy, cause us to lose focus, and make it much more important to put some energy into maintaining internal boundaries with the critical parent voice and the emotional triggers from our childhood so we don't slip back into a victim perspective. We are more emotionally volatile at these times and much more reactive with the people in our lives.

Just stopping and asking ourselves if there is some reason we are feeling the way we are feeling that may have to do with such conditions can be a very valuable aid in not setting ourselves up to overreact to other people and life events.

I have my own version of this acronym, which includes a few more conditions that I know greatly affect us - and that are important to pay attention to.

My version of this is HALTSHH - Hungry Angry Lonely Tired Sick Hurt Hormonal. These are all times when it is important to be patient and kind and nurturing to ourselves. Times when we need to pay some attention to those conditions and not judge what we are feeling or where we are at - because we are not seeing reality very clearly when we have such things impacting us emotionally." - Joy to You & Me and Joy2MeU Update Newsletter November 2002

February 22-25th 2012  So, it has been quite a year.  Susan and I are closer and more intimate and more in love than ever.  I get quite tired of living on the edge financially but we are getting by one day at a time - and having lots of moments of Joy and Love on the journey.
"Codependency recovery / inner child healing is a way of life. It is a way to live life that works. It works to help an individual gain some freedom from the past. It is a path for living that facilitates developing a centered ground space within where inner peace exists. That creates the space for a person to be present in the moment and be happy to be alive - to connect with Joy - some of the time.

It is not something we do and then get on with our lives. It is something we do in order to Truly be alive.

Life is a process - a journey. By being willing to do the inner child healing we can learn to be present for the journey - and to have the capacity to actually relax and enjoy it at times."  - Recovery from Codependency / Inner Child Healing
The music of my dance of life is more aligned with Joy, Love and peace now than with pain and fear and anger.  Reminds me of the time I raged at God about how I was sick of being just relatively happy - just happy because it is better than it used to be.
"I can remember a time in the spring of 1989 when I raged at God about how sick I was of the recovery process.  I said something to the effect that I was sick of only being relatively happy - the great tool in recovery where we stop and force ourselves to focus on the part of the glass that is full and be grateful, instead of giving power to the disease's focus on the part that is empty and feeling like a victim - and that I wanted to be happy without having to compare where I am now to how bad it used to be.

It was about a year later, that one day I realized that I had crossed a line someplace along my path.  That I had shifted my relationship with life enough that my life was now more aligned with Recovery than with the disease, that my life was more defined by Joy, Love, and peace than by anger, pain, and fear.  That I was having moments where I was just happy to be alive period - without having to force myself to look at the relative improvement.

Forcing ourselves to own the power to change our attitudes from negative to positive, working at learning to align with Love instead of fear, are important parts of the process.  The dysfunctional programming is deeply embedded in our relationship with life.  It can be changed gradually.  It will never be changed completely.  Our wounds never go away - they gradually have less power to dictate how we live today.

We are works in progress - in process.   We are evolving back to an awareness of who we really are." - Joy2MeU Update Newsletter October 2000
And that was years before the little goof ball below came into my life as an almost constant source of Joy - and before Susan came into my life to let me experience Love on levels I had never before known.  This last year has been a great year even with the frustrations and disappointments and goals not quite reached.  I am not sure what my Higher Power has in store for us this year, but I know that it will feel like an exciting adventure much more of the time than it feels like a painful ordeal.  For that I am enormously grateful to the Recovery process.  More will be revealed about what is in store for 2012 as the year unfolds. ~ Robert 2/25/12

February 23, 2018 - For the most recent Updates about me and my life, you can go to the page about Darien for updates through September 2017.

Goofy Man


Abundant Spirituality + codependency recovery + inner child healing + Love = Joy2MeULogo of Joy to You & Me Enterprises, publisher of Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
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Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls by Robert Burney is copyright 1995.  Material on Joy2MeU web site (except where otherwise noted) is copyright 1996 thru 2018  by Robert Burney  PO Box 1028 Cambria CA 93428.