Joy2MeU Home Page To all the Magnificent Spiritual Beings on my e-mailing list,Hi everybody. It seems like it has been forever since my last Update. This one is several weeks overdue because I just returned from a 3 week trip out of state with my 11 1/2 year old son. What an expensive adventure that was!
It is not just the time involved that makes it seem like it has been forever since my May Update however. It has been an intense period of growth for me. One of those times that I both love and hate. The growth, insight, and increased clarity is wonderful - but getting to that growth is painful and scary, and usually involves me getting angry at my Higher Power that this human experience has to be so hard some of the time. There is still a part of me that really wishes there was a happily-ever-after destination to reach. Oh well.
Recovery is such an incredible gift though - and I am so very grateful for it. Going on a trip like I just did, out into the "normal" world - brings me so much gratitude that I am not still trying to live life by the dysfunctional rules I learned in childhood. I had a dream about that a while back actually. I woke up from the dream just incredibly grateful that I have been led to understand the meaning and purpose of life, and that my relationship with life is no longer dictated by lies, false beliefs, and insane expectations - as the lives of most people out there are.
I will give you a couple of quick snapshots of that before getting into the new and news of this Update.
Standing in an Amtrak station in Lincoln Nebraska at about 2 AM, watching a woman rage and curse because the train was late. I don't know how many of you have ridded on Amtrak, but the train is always late. In fact, if they are within an hour of their scheduled time they consider themselves on time.
So much of my life, prior to recovery and some years into recovery, was spent in emotional trauma dramas because life and/or other people were not meeting my expectations. What insanity that is - and so many people out there empowering the drama. We were trained to be emotionally dishonest and to set ourselves up to feel like victims because of the dysfunctional belief systems that we learned to allow to determine our perspectives and expectations. It was such a gift of 12 step recovery to learn to get honest with myself and start being able to take responsibility for my feelings instead of always being the victim of them - and of other people for "making" me feel those traumatic emotions.
As I talk about in my article Serenity and Expectations, I had to learn to get honest with myself about how I was setting myself up for those trauma dramas. If someone (or something, like the train) is always late, and I am giving them the power to cause me emotional turmoil if they don't meet my expectation of arriving on time - whose problem is that? It is insane of me to expect people to act in ways contrary to their patterns. Just as it was insane for me to expect other drivers to drive the way I wanted them to. To think of the amount of time and energy I wasted allowing myself to be in emotional trauma dramas over things which I had no power over, is mind boggling.
I am reminded here of one of the first things I remember being told in early January 1984 when I went into treatment for my alcoholism. "One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again - and expecting different results." A simple, elementary statement of cause and effect. So much of my recovery has been a process of learning to accept that cause and effect is the governing principle of life. So wonderful to start learning how to accept the things I cannot change, and change the things that I can.
"I spent most of my life doing the Serenity prayer backwards, that is, trying to change the external things over which I had no control - other people and life events mostly - and taking no responsibility (except shaming and blaming myself) for my own internal process - over which I can have some degree of control. Having some control is not a bad thing; trying to control something or somebody over which I have no control is what is dysfunctional."
(Quotes in this color are from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls) The other snapshot is on the next to last day of my trip. My son and I had traveled by Amtrak from California back to Nebraska to visit Grandpa and Grandma on the farm that I grew up on. So hot and humid back there. Really miserable. Memories of stacking hay in 100 degree heat and near 100 % humidity. Of cutting cockle burrs in the corn field. Walking down the rows of corn whose leaves would cut fine little cuts in any exposed skin - like paper cuts only full of pollen. Sweat running into them. The summers were pretty horrible, but not as bad as the winters with the freezing wind blowing and snow piled up to the crossbars on the telephone polls. The last time I was in Nebraska in the winter time was at Christmas of 1983, when my family did an intervention on me and I ended up in treatment. Christmas Eve that year the wind child was 90 degrees below zero. When I entered treatment on January 3, 1984, I was coming in out of the freezing cold on multiple levels.
I do so Love living where I do. It never gets too hot or too cold. I was really happy to be able to put on a jacket to take my walk by the ocean after that insufferable heat and humidity.
Anyway, we had stopped in Truckee for a day to visit a friend - and then had gone into Denver for a few days to see a couple of baseball games. (Poor Rockies.) And then on to the Cornhusker state. On the return trip we took the train back to Denver and I rented a car to take my son home to Albuquerque where he lives. I did that because he had asked me not to have him fly home alone, because he didn't like being sad in front of all those people.
Then I had to drive back to Denver to catch a flight the next morning. The timing of the drive was such that I hit rush hour traffic in both Colorado Springs and Denver. Another opportunity to be grateful for the patience and serenity that working a program has brought me. I lived in Los Angeles for many years being a struggling actor - and during some of that time even drove a cab (standard suffering artist drama - perfect for both my codependence and my alcoholism/drug addiction.) I certainly didn't have patience and serenity dealing with traffic in LA all those years.
And when I talk about how much serenity I have in my life now, I certainly don't want to give you all the impression that I am some enlightened being who serenely watches life go by and is not affected by it. I mean, I am pretty enlightened - but I am also very human. I am self centered and self involved. I get upset at the way the tourists (the swarming invading hordes who have the gall to invade the beautiful place I have chosen to live) drive and get in my way when I am going to the post office. The point is that I catch myself when I find myself reacting to those old tapes - to the expectations that are based on the false belief that I am the only important person in the world and everyone else should get out of my way. I have the awareness and tools to not allow the "king baby" within me - who wants instant gratification and thinks he is the center of the Universe - to determine my relationship with life and dictate my emotional reactions. I have developed a recovery control center within that allows me to observe my internal process and intervene when I start to give power to the old tapes or react to the old emotional wounds. I can remind myself that choosing to live in a beautiful place and then not wanting anyone else to visit it, is insane and unrealistic - so that I can let go and accept reality as it is. What a gift!
Sitting in rush hour traffic on the trip back into Denver, was another chance to be grateful that I no longer have to be the victim of reality. That I no longer have to live someplace I hate because I think I "have" to. That I don't have to spend many hours a week stuck in rush hour traffic.
It is such a gift to have the tools and understanding to know that it is possible for me to see life clearly and accept it. It is really a gift to know how to take responsibility for my thoughts and feelings - to own that I am the one who determines my relationship with life. It is also a royal pain in the derriere at times - like when I wrote the last Update in May.
Big Breakthrough
As I say, in numerous place on this site, I really believe in sharing my experience, strength, and hope. In sharing my process with you all out there in cyberspace. One part of my mission is to role model that it is OK to be a wounded human being in the process of recovery. That it is not only possible, but is in fact the reality of this human experience we are all having, that we are imperfect human beings stumbling along trying to find a way to do life that works better than the dysfunctional ways we learned growing up. Part of my message is that being imperfect human beings is perfect. That we are Unconditionally Loved no matter what - and our mission is to learn to Love ourselves instead of judging and shaming ourselves for things that we do not have the power to change. The way we are going to manifest Love into the world is by learning to be Loving to our selves."We are transcendent Spiritual Beings who are part of the ONENESS that is the God-Force. We always have been and always will be. We are perfect in our Spiritual Essence. We are perfectly where we are supposed to be on our Spiritual Path. And from a human perspective we will never be able to do "human" perfectly - which is perfect.
We have been trying to do human perfect according to a false belief system in order to get Spiritual. It does not work. It's dysfunctional."
I think that it is helpful to you all for me share my humanity with you. But that is not the primary reason I do it. As I talk about in several pages on this site, when I started my codependence recovery and was working as a therapist, I had to learn how to not be codependent in my work. I had to get real clear that I am powerless over rather anyone else can hear me - but I do have the choice to listen to myself. And by listening to myself, I find out what is going on within me.
The only person I have the power to change is me. My focus needs to be on me. Everything that happens in my life is part of my process of healing me. Every person that crosses my path is a teacher that helps me to unravel my relationship with myself. Anytime that I am doing counseling / teaching, I need to pay attention because there is something in what I am saying that I need to hear. Something that relates to my process today.
The beauty of the 12 step process is that by focusing on my recovery and doing what I need to do for me - it helps other people. Helping other people is not the reason I do the work I do. I do what I do because it is what I need to do to heal me.
In my May Update, I pulled my own covers in the first few paragraphs I wrote. I saw myself writing about how much I had been enjoying life - and knew that I had just uncovered another layer of my fear of intimacy issues.
"The reality of my life circumstances right now, is that I am at a stage in my journey where I am pretty isolated and insulated. I am doing a lot of writing and a lot of phone counseling - so that my life in many ways is like being in a 12 step meeting almost all of the time. It makes it real easy to maintain a conscious contact Spiritually. Having relatively little contact with other human beings, beyond the superficial, makes it much easier to stay in serenity. I don't know if you've noticed, but interacting with other people gets messy. ;-)"Writing that Update threw me into an intense period of processing that is still unfolding. The Newsletter part of that Update ended up being 3 long web pages. I then processed the issues for 3 more web pages in my Joy2MeU Journal. One of the reasons I am pushing to get this Update finished and posted is so that I can get back to that processing in my Journal.It was of course perfect that my processing around my fear of intimacy issues was interrupted by a trip with my son to visit my family of origin. One of those perfect parts of the journey that I find really irritating at a time like this when I am going through a lot of feelings. The trip revealed more facets and layers to the issues that I need to look at. Goddess only knows how many more page I am going to have to write to get through this particular growth spurt.
In that processing, I uncovered a deeper level of grief from early childhood - which allowed me to attain a new level of acceptance, forgiveness, and compassion for myself. Getting to that new level involved uncovering some levels on which I was being emotionally dishonest with myself. It is always irritating to me to uncover some more denial - even though I know very well that the healing process involves continuously peeling layers of the onion. My ego does not like to have my imperfection brought to it's attention.
Uncovering ever more subtle levels of denial and emotional dishonesty - and doing the grief work that needs to be done to heal those levels - is a part of the process that I avoid whenever it is possible. ;-) That is my human tendency. But as I share in those Newsletters, I don't avoid as long as I used to. I accept and let go of resistance - and follow where my Spirit guides me. Grudgingly still, but with hard earned knowledge that it does not serve me to try to dictate to my Higher Power how my life will unfold. It works much better to surrender and be willing to do the work, than to force my Higher Power to prove to me once again who is in charge of this experience.
So, if you are interested in my processing about my fear of intimacy issues - which includes looking at the powerful impact my emotional incest issues had on my relationships - you can check out those Newsletters.
New and news
It is because I have been doing so much writing about my process - and was gone for 3 weeks on my trip - that there have been no completely new articles added to the web site since Discernment in relationship to emotional honesty and responsibility 2, the latest (and I think second to last) article in the Emotional Honesty and Emotional Responsibility series.I did however move 11 articles from my suite101 page to this site. I really have no idea how many of you folks that read this web site also read the articles on the page that I edit for the Suite101 Directory. There are 40 some articles there now - some of which are on this site, some have been moved to this site, some are expansions of portions of pages here, some are original to that site. The ones I moved are some pretty interesting ones I think.
The nine part series on Healthy Romantic Relationships is a follow up the series on Codependent Relationship Dynamics which I moved to this site some time ago. I also moved the first two articles in the inner child healing series that I have evolving now. Both of these articles Inner Child Healing - How to begin and Inner Child Healing - Why do it? were original to that site.
I am putting links to those articles in this text, but it may be easiest to access them from the New page - to which I will place a link at the end of this Update.
As I explain in the processing pages, I tend to fluctuate between being in a writing frenzy - when I feel like I can't write fast enough to capture all the information pouring out - and periods where I can't write at all. In the periods where I can't write, I play around with redesigning pages and making changes and additions that don't involve being in a creative energy space. Since there was a period of over two weeks in early July when I couldn't write - and it has taken me 4 or 5 days to get back into a rhythm since I returned from the trip - I have done a lot of that type of thing since my last update.
The new technical type pages (as opposed to content) include a translation page that has links to two web sites that provide machine translations (admittedly poor but I decided better than nothing); a page that provides a site monitoring service that will notify you by email any time the New page changes; and in redesigning the New page, I created a separate page for the list of Book stores who have stocked the book recently and countries from which the site has had visitors - and added a new page with some recovery handouts I feel are helpful.
I have added new links, testimonials, awards, and a new feature on the Joy2MeU Bookstore page. I redesigned the book ordering page (slightly raising international prices for the book and providing some special offers via Priority mail both overseas and in North America), the Information index page, and the referral page (to which a I added a new introduction and several new counselors.)
I have also done some redesign and rewriting on the Home page - and added an interesting feature to both the Home page and the siteindex page. It is a feature that only works in Internet Explorer versions of 5.0 or later - but hopefully also will work soon in advanced versions of other browsers. If you maneuver your mouse to hold the arrow over any link on the home page or siteindex page, a little balloon will pop up containing a short phrase which is descriptive of the page or a condensed version of a quote from that page. I hope it is helpful for people to decide what pages to read next.
Whew! I have done quite a bit haven't I? Some of these changes are really time consuming. Hopefully, they improve the web site. I may have missed a few things here - but you will find all the changes enumerated on the New page.
Phone Counseling rates going up
This brings me to another one of the reasons I have been feeling some urgency to get this Update finished. I wanted to give at least a few weeks notice that I was raising the phone counseling prices on September 3rd. I decided on the train going through the Rocky Mountains that it was time to raise the rates I charge for the phone counseling. (This was before we reached the stage of the journey that the Amtrak personnel call the "Moon over the Rockies." It seems there is a tradition for rafters on the Colorado River to moon the Amtrak as it passes. People of all ages participate. Weird.)Anyway, when I started offering the phone counseling in March of 2000, I wasn't at all sure how effective the phone sessions were going to be. I set what I thought were some very reasonable introductory rates. Now almost a year and a half later the phone counseling has proven very successful, and I need to move past the introductory part of the rates because I need to honor and respect myself - and have boundaries in relationship to how I spend my time. I am only going to raise the basic rate $5 - from $25 an hour to $30 an hour. Which, when you add in the price of the phone call (with so many rates now $ .05 a minute and less - usually involves less than $5 for a session) is still a very reasonable rate. The reality was that I was doing it for much less in actuality. Because of the special offers on multiple sessions, anyone who paid for 4 sessions and took advantage of the full hour and a half available for each session was getting the counseling for less than $17 an hour, plus the cost of the call. And that option will be raised only to a little over $20. So, we are still talking the bargain of the century here.
One of the things I have been realizing is that I need to be a little more assertive in owning the importance of my work. Here is a part of the new introduction that I wrote for the referral page.
The reality is that inner child healing and codependency recovery are still pretty new - and many very well meaning professionals out there do not know a lot about this work. My approach to the work is unique and pioneering, and no one out there is doing exactly what I do and describe. You will find very few counselors and therapist who define codependence in as large a context as I do; many who do not see it as a Spiritual disease; many who have not done their own emotional work.I do not know of anyone who combines developing internal boundaries with doing the grief work as part of building an ongoing relationship with different ages of the child within - the framework that I developed for integrating knowledge of healthy behavior and Spiritual Truth into one's emotional relationship with life. That is the most powerfully life changing and transformational aspect of my approach to the work. Your chances of finding someone who does exactly that kind of work are almost nil.
. . . . . . . As I say in the quote just above, no one out there is doing exactly the work I do, because there are not yet any therapists or counselors who have studied my method so that they can help others to learn it. My approach to the work is unique, powerful, and very effective - and has been accurately described as "taking inner child healing to a new level." One of the reasons that Co-Dependents Anonymous has declined greatly during the last 7 or 8 years is because people did not know how to take the healing to the next level. (I will include a brief excerpt from the Joy2MeU Journal at the bottom of this page in which I talk about this decline.) The inner child healing paradigm that I have developed is that next level of recovery from codependency that so many people have been seeking. Hopefully, one of these days I will be able to offer training to other healers so that they can learn it for themselves - and be able to teach it to others.Referral Page - to Local Therapists/Counselors/HealersThe phone counseling has proven very effective for the people who are at a place in their process where they are willing to apply the tools and techniques that I share with them. Of the people who have been open to changing their perspectives, and willing to do at least a little of the work, most have changed their relationship with self and life profoundly within a matter of 6 to 8 weeks. My goal in working with people is to empower them to be in-dependent. To teach people how to have internal boundaries so that they can separate the messages coming from the old tapes and old wounds from the messages of intuitive Truth from their Spirit - so that they can start learning how to relax and trust their Spirit to guide them."By learning to set a boundary with and between our emotional truth, what we feel, and our mental perspective, what we believe - in alignment with the Spiritual Truth we have integrated into the process - we can honor and release the feelings without buying into the false beliefs.
The more we can learn intellectual discernment within, so that we are not giving power to false beliefs, the clearer we can become in seeing and accepting our own personal path. The more honest and balanced we become in our emotional process, the clearer we can become in following our own personal Truth."
A normal kind of pattern is for someone to do a session weekly for 4 to 6 weeks - then go to once every two or three week for a few months. Eventually, maybe once every couple of months - or perhaps some more weekly sessions during a time of growth and challenge. There is not right and wrong way to do recovery as I say in many different places, and everyone's path is different, but generally people have been experiencing a significant shift within a fairly short period of time.
During the last seven or eight years, I have had the experience on maybe a dozen of occasions, of running into a former client who I hadn't seen for years - and having them thank me for how profoundly doing this work changed their lives for the better. That is really cool. Those experiences are what I refer to in my October 2000 Update as Goddess strokes. They are not what define me or give me worth. Any more than the people who aren't ready to do the work diminish my self worth. I am powerless over others. What I do is share what has worked for me. Years ago someone compared me to Johnny Appleseed - except the seeds that I scatter about are seeds of codependence recovery. By doing what I need to do to heal me - so that I can learn to Love myself - I end up scattering seeds about with other people. Rather - or when - those seeds take root is not in my power. My job is to just keep following my path - stumbling along being an imperfect human in recovery.
I talked about my philosophy for working with people in the very first Newsletter for my original web site.
There were two interrelated things that I had to get clear about when I started working as a therapist: One is that I am powerless over other people - over the pace of their progress, over whether they hear what I am saying to them, over where their path leads. I watched a good friend die of Alcoholism (which is in the column Death of an Alcoholic) and saw how clearly he helped other alcoholics stay sober because he couldn't - he did more to keep more people sober than many of the sober people I know. I can't know what someone elses' path is - therefore I can't tell them what is right and wrong - what I do is help them see themselves clearer (especially as to understanding how their childhood experiences have dictated their lives), see their choices and the possible consequences clearer, and know that we are Spiritual Beings going to boarding school, not taking a test. The lesson we are learning is how to Love - and we can't fail because we are Unconditionally Loved by/part of the Great Spirit/God/Goddess no matter what - so it is OK to forgive ourselves for being human and treat ourselves in more Loving ways."Of course, one of the reasons that I have the honor and privilege of carrying this Joyous message in this lifetime is because of my Karmic debts from other lifetimes.Which brings me to the second thing, which I believe is a Spiritual Truth - I teach best what I need most to learn. I teach people how to Love themselves because I am trying to learn how to Love myself. I learned to always listen to what I was saying because, though I have no control whether anyone else hears me, I do have the power to choose to hear myself - and there is always something in what I am saying that applies to me and my process in that moment. 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. All of the old souls who are doing this healing - in my belief - were born at a heart chakra level of consciousness and then had to shut down our hearts. That is why it hurts so much - we were expecting something kinder and gentler than what we were born into. I have always felt like I was in the wrong place - like someone screwed up in the Transporter room and beamed me to the wrong planet.
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).
Joy to You & Me Newsletter I - July 1, 1998Possibly one of the reasons that you are reading this is because I, personally, owe you a Karmic debt. Maybe I gouged out your eyes when I was a Roman legionnaire or a Viking or something, and now I am repaying that debt by helping you to see more clearly in this lifetime."
Obviously I have a lot of Karmic debt to settle. That is why I was assigned (volunteered for ???) for the mission which has been my path in this lifetime.
I do what I do because it is what I need to do to heal me. I follow my path in my quest to reconnect with my Source because it is what my soul longs for. I stand up in public - or write in the book or on the internet - because standing up in public and taking responsibility for owning and speaking my Truth is what I need to do to heal my wounds and settle my Karma.In my "Imo" mission for this lifetime, I was given so much shame and pain in early childhood that I had to go to great lengths to devise a recovery strategy that could make it possible to get past feeling defective - like I was some kind of horribly shameful monster. I developed my approach to inner child healing so that I could start to overcome the toxic shame I was carrying - and learn to be more Loving and kind to myself. That it also works for other people is a wonderful bonus and gift.I believe that this is a New Age. That an Age of Healing & Joy has dawned in human consciousness on this planet. I believe that ultimately the Absolute Truth is that we are all ONE - that we are all connected in LOVE. On my web page entitled The New Age - An Age of Healing & Joy I share quotes from my book about my beliefs - about the understanding of Truth which I have been given.
"Any single soul's evolution, its awakening, affects all souls because we are all connected. We can, like Imo the genius monkey, create a space, create a new level - a new aspect - of consciousness that other humans then have access to. It is not any accident that most great inventions, most great breakthroughs, were formulated in more than one location in the same time period. Once one breaks through and creates the space, others may follow."
This particular quote from my book refers to the Hundredth Monkey Principle, which I explain in the excerpt from my book that I share on that page. Imo is the name of the monkey who created the new aspect of consciousness for the rest of the monkeys of her species. My mission in this lifetime has been to be one of the "Imo"s in the Transformational Healing Process that has begun on planet Earth. The reason that I was chosen for, and chose, this particular mission was because of the Karma I needed to settle. (As I talk about briefly in my Update Newsletter 3-17-01.) It is not because I am better than, or farther along than, anyone else. Each of us is perfectly where we are supposed to be, doing perfectly what we are supposed to be doing. Even if your path only involves healing your relationship with your self in private without ever sharing it with others (not really possible since we all share with the people whose lives we touch rather we know it or not) - you are still contributing to the healing of the planet. Anyone's healing affects us all, everyone's healing impacts the whole - because we are all connected.
I had no idea I was going to go into all of that. Oh well.
The bottom line here, is that the approach to codependence recovery that I discovered for myself - is a breakthrough for all recovering people. Stage 3 recovery if you will.
Anyone out there who has been on a recovery path for awhile, recognizes that to some extent. What I needed to become more conscious of, was that anyone fairly new to this work, has no way of knowing that what I share on this web site and in my book, is innovative and revolutionary. There isn't anyone out there who does exactly what I do, because I pioneered this method out of desperation to heal myself.
What I have developed is a framework, a blueprint, for achieving Spiritual integration and emotional balance. And it works. It is somewhat complicated - and takes some effort and action - but it does work to change a person's relationship with self and life.
"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."
new level of consciousness
One of the things that I am realizing in the processing that was set off by this latest breakthrough in my process, is that I seem to just now be reaching - on a personal level - the level of consciousness that my book was written out of. It has been over 10 years now, since I wrote the core of what was to become Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls - over a period of 48 frenzied hours of writing, to be able to give a talk that I had scheduled months before.The book of course evolved from that first time when I gave my talk - here in Cambria - reading from scribbles on yellow legal paper. The core of the book however poured out of me during those two days from a level of consciousness that was much higher than the one I was experiencing in my day to day life at that time.
My approach to the inner child healing work has, of course, evolved over the years also. It seems that it is just now reaching the point where I am going to be able to put it into book form and get it published. That book - the process level book about how to do this healing work - is the one I have been calling Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light, and that I started publishing in draft form in the Joy2MeU Journal.
I ran into a snag however, in that draft version, because the organization of the material wasn't working. I didn't have the right framework for presenting my approach in a simple, understandable manner. The work is complicated and multi-leveled - and is hard to write about simply. I thought that I should have been able to get the book published some years ago. Obviously, my Higher Power had a different plan.
Once again, I can see how perfectly my path has been unfolding. I can see now that I needed to go through all of the experiences that I have over the last 6 years since Dance was published - in order to get to the place where it was time for this book. As much as it irritates me to admit it, it was even perfect that I was homeless for 6 months in 1999 - while I was evolving as I wrote material for this web site . (Homeless as in no place of my own - I still had an office.)
I can see that it was necessary to write the series on emotional honesty and responsibility before diving into writing that process book. All of it has been perfect - including the phone counseling.
(Perfect on a higher level, not from my perspective at the time. I have actually been in Spiritual graduate school getting some advanced degrees in surrender, acceptance, willingness, faith, etc. Initiation as it were. I have gotten to demonstrate that it is possible to have inner peace and moments of Joy and happiness on a daily basis - no matter what was happening externally in my life. I am very grateful for the lessons learned. I have not been real thrilled about the details of how this perfect plan has unfolded, or the difficulty of the lessons.)
It now seems to me, like doing the phone counseling has shown me how to organize the book. That is what I am going to find out fairly soon. Once I get this Update out, I am going back into my processing to get more awareness of this new level of consciousness I broke through to in the last Newsletters. After that I am going to plunge into that book - I think. More will be revealed about what the Universe's plan is as this unfolds.
I have set up a workshop in Santa Barbara for the 30th of September, as a way of giving myself a deadline to work against. Like the talk I first gave in June of 1991, setting the date for that talk forced me to write the book in those two frenzied days prior to it. Hopefully I will be able to get into one of my writing frenzies now - and get the next book together enough to send to some publishers, while also preparing a new workshop.
So, all I meant to do here was give you all notice that I was going to raise phone counseling prices - I didn't know this was going to be a some kind of a coming out party. Kind of scary. Oh well.
To see all of the changes and additions (including a link to the workshop info) you can go to the New page.
Now that I have this finished, I can finally finish unpacking from my trip. ;-)
With Love ~ Robert
Go to Joy to You & Me and Joy2MeU Update - 10-17-2001
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