Honoring My Courage
I am going to be doing a lot of sobbing and crying while writing this portion
of this Update. I am in a time of intensely and passionately experiencing
life, as I mentioned in the Update. And as I mentioned some place
else in my writing, one of the puzzles of this human experience we are having
is that we react the same way to both intense pain and intense Joy - by sobbing
and crying.
I am passionately embracing my human feelings in a very intense way
in recent weeks and months - because I have gotten in touch with both searing
pain and transcendent Joy and Bliss. I have made the most incredible
breakthrough in my codependency recovery process - a magnificent, towering,
monumental breakthrough of epic proportions on a personal level.
I have triumphed in my personal battle to break through the seemingly
impregnable and invincible defense system that my ego had constructed around
my heart to protect me from Love. I have for the first time in my
life, Truly opened up to Loving another being from a gut level, with all
my heart and soul.
The level of pain and ecstasy set off by writing that last sentence,
brought up grief to a depth that compels me to get up and move around the
room as animal like moans of tormented pain escape my lips. The almost
unearthly lament of my wounded soul as it breaks free from it's codependent
shackles (the bondage of ego self) and begins to soar on the wings of Joy
and Love and Bliss. It is ecstasy to access that Love - and that very
ecstasy brings up the searing pain of having been deprived of it for so long.
I have slain the monster!!! The ferociously, monstrous beast that
was my terror of intimacy. What a gift!!! What a miracle!!!
"This heroic chronicle has many chapters
which will be related at another place and time. The story told here
is only one short chapter - but one of the most vital passages of this Sacred
Journey. This is the Initiation into an inner sanctuary of the Greatest
Treasure Ever Known which can only be accomplished by confronting and
defeating that ferociously monstrous beast known as The Terror of Intimacy.
And of course, you have already guessed that
the Greatest Treasure Ever Known is Love.
This is a chapter in the story of the Sacred
Journey of this Prince in his quest to go Home to Love - and
to be reunited with his Twin Soul." - An Adventure in Romance - Loving
and Losing Successfully
I have had the courage and the faith to keep plunging back into the fray
(although sometimes taking a few years off in between plunges;-) each time
I was battered and bloodied and crushed by this mutated, malformed, hideous
manifestation of my codependency - my terror of intimacy. Fear of
intimacy is a magnified version of codependent fear.
Fear of the unknown is a normal human reaction that is part of our survival
programing - it is not the monster. The monster is codependent fear.
"This fear is not a normal human fear of the unknown.
It is codependent fear: a distorted, magnified, virulent, mutated
species of fear caused by the poisonous combination of a false belief that
being human is shameful with a polarized (black and white, right and wrong)
perspective of life. This self perpetuating, self destructive type
of obsessive thinking feeds not only on fear, but on shaming ourselves for
feeling the fear." - Obsession
/ Obsessive Thinking Part 1
Our fear of intimacy has a strength in direct proportion to the amount
of pain and shame we felt in early childhood - because that is what caused
our ego to build up a fortress around our hearts. The first people
we opened our hearts to - opened them completely and unconditionally to -
were our parents, or whatever adults were in our lives. Because those
adults were wounded, our hearts were crushed.
"Our parents were our first loves - and
we were wounded in our relationships with them because they were wounded.
We internalized and incorporated the conditioning from those initial experiences
of opening our hearts to emotional intimacy into our relationship with self.
It is not our relationship with our parents that
we need to heal in order to open to Love, it is our relationship with our
self - the self image we formed because of our relationships with them.
The healing we need to do is internal, in our relationship with self.
Our ego adapted defenses to protect us in the environment we grew up in.
In order to change our relationship with self we need to change our childhood
ego programming." - Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in the
Light Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life Chapter 5: Codependency = conditioned
reactive programming
I have been intermittently, actively working on healing my fear of intimacy
issues through writing ever since receiving a strong message about my need
to focus my attention on those issues while writing my Update of October
2000. I plunged into those issue with a vengeance in my Update of May
2001 - and followed that up by doing many pages of processing in my personal
journal in the Joy2MeU Journal in June of 2001 and then in July and November
of 2002.
It takes great courage and faith to face our emotional wounds.
Being willing to heal our wounded hearts is a courageous journey through
treacherous territory. Of course, those of us that are in codependency
recovery did not get into recovery because we wanted a new hobby or something.
"Our ego desperately fights to hang onto
denial and rationalization - because to the ego it feels like a fight for
survival, literally a life and death struggle. No one wakes up one
morning and says, "Hey maybe I will do some emotional healing today - that
sounds like fun." We start doing this healing work because we are in
so much emotional pain. We start doing it because we have hit an emotional
bottom where rationalizations and denial no longer work. We start doing
it because we have reached a point where emotional dishonesty is killing us
- literally." - Chapter
5: Codependency = conditioned reactive programming
Most people have a misunderstanding about courage. They think that
courage is something that feels strong and powerful and confident.
That is not true at all. Courage is when we are scared to death and
we move forward anyway. A example I have used over the years to help
people understand this is: that a person who charges a machine gun
nest and does not feel fear is not courageous - they are insane.
What courage feels like in actual experience is: "Oh crap, I have to
do this." Courage is a soul compulsion. It is when our soul,
our Spirit, is telling us that we need to do something no matter how scared
we are - no matter how terrifying it appears to be.
Courage isn't necessarily about doing something we want to do, it
is definitely about doing something we need to do. We become willing
to move through our fear of the unknown because our intuition guides us, our
soul compels us, to move forward - to take the plunge.
I did not want to get sober. I did not want to start doing codependency
recovery. I did not want to open up to feeling the feelings and doing
the deep grief work. I did those things to save my life. I did
them because my intuition told me I had to do them to be True to my Self.
I did them despite incredible resistance and fierce guerilla warfare waged
by my ego attempting to sabotage my recovery. The number one tool of
the ego is the magnified mutant codependent fear of making a mistake.
It bombards us with messages that we can't trust ourselves and presents the
"evidence" from the past that I mentioned in the first paragraph of this Update.
We do not have to trust our self. This is not self help.
This is a Spiritual process and we will be guided - we can trust our Spiritual
guidance, our Higher Power. There are no mistakes or failures - just
things that feel that way because our codependent programming is defining
our experience of life from a black and white shame based perspective.
Developing a detached, objective observer perspective - a recovery control
center, as I describe in explaining my approach to inner child healing -
allows us to learn to define our experience of life from a perspective aligned
with the Spiritual Truth of Unconditional Love instead of fear and shame.
We need to start taking the risk of having faith in the process.
We need to start taking action based upon faith instead of fear. I
learned to "act as if" I had faith in a Loving Higher Power in order to access
the courage to start moving though my fears. I started to "fake it til
you make it" - that is, to take leaps of faith in order to allow the Universe
the opportunity to demonstrate to me that there was Truly good reason to
have faith.
I am talking about FAITH here.
The more we remember that everything is unfolding
perfectly, the more we can have faith that there is a very good reason for
even what appears to be the greatest tragedy, the most profound injustice.
We need to accept and honor - that is, not shame
and judge ourselves for - not only our feelings and our past behaviors,
our human needs and desires, but also our longings, our resistance, and our
fears.
We have those longings for a reason.
We have those fears and that resistance for a
reason.
The more we start remembering that "the Force
is with us," the easier it becomes to accept and Love ourselves.
(This color of text is used for quotes from
Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls)
A pet peeve of mine is when I hear someone say that fear is the absence
of faith.
"Fear is an innate, genetically ingrained, emotional impulse
in human beings. It is a programmed response to survival instincts.
Fear is an emotion that can serve us. It is a necessary tool for survival
in a hostile environment.
I get really angry when I hear some old timer in an AA meeting say,
"Fear is the absence of faith." That is bull. If we did not
have fear, we would not need faith. Faith is what gives us the courage
to walk through our fears." - The Recovery Process for inner child healing
- through the fear
It is because we feel fear that we need faith. It is when we are
being emotional honest enough to own our fear that we need to have courage.
When I was drinking and using I had no permission from my codependent programming
to feel fear - to consciously own that I was ever afraid.
"I remember very distinctly the thoughts I had in one of my
first AA meetings when several people at a podium spoke of being afraid.
My thought was, "Who are these people - talking so much about being afraid.
I was never afraid. They stuck guns in my face and it didn't scare
me."
I did not have permission from my self to acknowledge that I felt fear,
because I had learned growing up that real men do not feel fear. I
was emotionally crippled because I did not have permission to own my fear
- or my pain or sadness. I had no permission to be emotionally vulnerable
- "weak." So, like the manly man I was trained to be, instead of owning
that I was afraid or hurt, I got angry.
The Truth, as I soon came to understand it, is that I had really been
scared of everyone and everything. I was scared because I knew I was
not perfect, and I was sure that other people would discover what a shameful
loser I was. Scared that I would fail the life test - that I would never
reach "happily ever after." Afraid that I would never find someone to
Love me. The little boy inside of me was scared that god would punish
me for being unworthy - scared of being condemned to burn in hell forever."
- Chapter 3: Emotional
honesty
I had to start owning and feeling my feelings in recovery. Sometimes
when I was in a very emotionally uncomfortable place I would remind myself
that this was a gift of recovery - because it sure didn't feel like a gift.
But it is vital that we own our feelings in order to discover our True Self
and to reconnect with Love.
I still resist feeling the feelings. My ego still hates to feel
out of control and throws up rationalizations and justifications for me
to resist and procrastinate and try to avoid feeling the feelings and doing
the work. I get through the resistance relatively quickly these days
- in part because I have learned in recovery to keep remembering to not judge
and shame myself for being a wounded human who resists and procrastinates.
I was guided years ago to make recovery the number one priority in my
life. I was guided there out of both Spiritual intention and human
motivation. The human motivation was because I don't like suffering
- and I realized that in trying to avoid pain I was causing myself great
suffering.
"I learned to focus on my recovery as my number 1 priority
because it worked to make my life easier and less painful in the long run.
It took me years in recovery to really understand all of this - and to give
recovery the priority focus - but eventually I came to understand that I could
make a conscious choice to be a positive co-creator in my life instead of
a negative one. That I could start creating cause that would have better
effect.
I focus on recovery because it works. By paying attention, being
conscious and willing, I get to follow the messages instead of forcing the
Universe to use the stick on me. Choosing to make recovery the number
one priority in my life makes life easier and less painful. Bottom line."
- Joy2MeU Update Newsletter -
January 2002 Newsletter Part 1
The messages I got kept leading me deeper in the labyrinth of the fear
of intimacy defenses that my ego had adapted to protect my heart.
I was working through the layers of my wounding - grieving my wounds, pealing
the layers to uncover any remnants of black and white victim beliefs, owning
the part my defenses had in setting me up at the same time I was working
the first step to be able to Truly see my powerlessness so I could forgive
myself - in my personal journal in the Joy2MeU Journal.
One of the saddest and most painful things I discovered in the processing
of 2002 was that I after I got sober I started withholding in relationships
in ways that I had not while still drinking - because I started actually
feeling my fear that I had denied even having because of my subconscious
programming.
I continued to process in that journal to try to overcome the fear of
intimacy that caused me to effectively have a relationship phobia most of
my life. I got past those defenses enough last year to have a brief,
long distance relationship after 4 years of not having anything close to a
romantic relationship (since the Adventure
in Love.) In the processing frenzy I started in October I realized
that my romantic adventure in 2003 was much more fantasy than reality. I
also realized that though opening up to experiencing a relationship was vital
to my growth - that I gotten into a relationship with someone who substantially
fit my old patterns in that she was not only emotionally unavailable but
also mostly incapable of being nurturing and Loving in a relationship because
of her wounds.
One of the things that I committed to in that processing last fall was
my desire to do whatever was necessary to break my patterns to the extent
that I could get involved with someone who was kind hearted and Loving and
nurturing. I promised myself that for the first time in my life I would
have a relationship in which the woman treated me in a way that felt Loving.
And then just when I was least expecting it - even before I was done
with that processing frenzy - my patterns took a quantum leap in progress.
In December of last year such a woman came into my life - and we connected
in a very powerful way. The first time I met her, I had a very strong
feeling that this was someone I had been waiting to meet for a very long
time. I ended 2003 beginning a relationship and started 2004 in a sweet,
wonderful way with my new friend. But even as I was experiencing feeling
Loved by this magnificent woman, my defenses were causing me to keep pulling
away - in part at least because I was afraid that I was buying into fantasy
thinking again. Being treated in a Loving and nurturing way felt wonderful
- but also scared me. My programming had not caught up with the quantum
leap my Spiritual growth process had made.
The terror of intimacy monster had a couple of really powerful tools
that it used to keep me from really opening up to Love - beliefs I was invested
in that kept me from being totally present for the relationship. In
the first week in February we spent a very enjoyable 24 hours together - and
the next day problems came to the surface. She brought up some issues
that were bothering her, she was trying to deal with her feelings about me
not being totally present - and during the course of the day I got a real
clear set of intuitive messages that something wasn't working - something
needed to change. I reacted to this intuitive insight out of my codependent
black and white thinking - and decided she was asking too much of me and I
needed to end the relationship. The week before Valentine's Day I broke
off the relationship. (Talk about jerk city!)
And that is what was the catalyst for the biggest breakthrough of my
life. I realized that it was me that needed to change - not her.
I went through a transformation that brought me to critical mass in relationship
to the issue of Loving and being Loved - and a paradigm shift manifested
that changed my core ego programming.
This is a major transformational milestone in my recovery process that
has changed my relationship with life and Love forever.
In the weeks since then I have seen the effects of this paradigm shift
filter through my whole being - like ripples flowing out through a pond
after you drop a rock in it. I have felt the transition ripple through
my consciousness in ways that brought me the awareness that I have reached
a place for the first time in my life where I am Truly available for a Love
relationship.
I was always attracted to unavailable women because I was unavailable.
'The reason that we get involved with people who are unavailable,
is because we are unavailable." - Letting Go of Unavailable People
I have been so unavailable because of my wounds, that I often questioned
if I was even capable of Loving another person on a personal level - actually,
really Loving them.
I have understood relationship dynamics theoretically for many years.
I have been working on getting past my fear of intimacy for many years -
painstakingly peeling away layers of black and white / victim thinking to
uncover pockets of grief that needed to be released. I have had brief
periods of experiencing relationships that helped me to get a little more
available - and gain more knowledge - but as long as my core ego programming
was so powerful I was not truly available.
I did question rather I was inherently incapable of Loving anyone.
I have questioned in the past rather I really Loved my son - or if it was
something I felt because I thought I "should" feel it. I have told
people I Loved them, have thought I Loved them - and in Truth I have Loved
them to the capacity I was capable of, which was not much past a surface
level.
But now for the first time in my life I am capable of Loving - Truly
Loving another human being on a personal level. It is such a triumph!
Such a miraculous victory! Such a magnificent milestone in my journey.
I have always Known intuitively that I was a very Loving person - and
capable of Loving. But now, for the very first time I know what it
feels like to Truly be open on a heart level to Loving another person.
I can feel Love and know I am capable of Truly Loving. In my gut I
feel it - and I rejoice. It is such an incredible gift to finally be
capable of being Truly Loving in a real way with a real live woman.
And of course, this has happened because I have opened my heart to myself
in a whole new way. The breakthrough that I had was about forgiving
myself on a deeper level - about dissolving a knot of grief energy at the
core of my relationship with myself where I was still carrying shame about
being me.
When I say that you cannot Truly Love others unless
you Love yourself - that does not mean that you have to completely Love
yourself first before you can start to Love others. The way the process
works is that every time we learn to Love and accept ourselves a little tiny
bit more, we also gain the capacity to Love and accept others a little tiny
bit more.
I have opened up to Loving myself - and treating myself with more Love
than ever before in my life. I have accessed a level of compassion
for myself that is blessed and wonderful - that helps me to access Grace
more fully than ever before.
In 1988 I started writing about what I was experiencing in my recovery.
The first thing I started writing was a work called The Dance
of the Wounded Souls Trilogy Book 1 - "In The Beginning . . ."
I wrote it as A Magical, Mystical, Spiritual Fable. In it my higher
power appears to me as a unicorn who takes me on a magical, mystical instructional
journey. Anyone reading that Trilogy today who is familiar with my
writing, will see where many pieces of both Codependence:
The Dance of Wounded Souls and my other writing originated.
I have known since I started processing about my fear of intimacy issues
- since the October 2000 Update - that I would eventually need to get back
to finishing writing that Trilogy in order to unlock my fear of intimacy
issues.
I think I may have misunderstood why I needed to get back to that Trilogy
however. I am now in the process of writing the next Chapter of that
Trilogy. It is the first Chapter of the Trilogy that I have written
that wasn't based upon writing I wrote in 1988 and 89. In the very
beginning of this Chapter, the man I was at the beginning of the adventure
back in January 1989 meets the man I am today, in March of 2004. What
I saw appear in my writing is that the man who I am today immediately says
to my past self: "You are my hero." (I start sobbing with Joy each
time I read this line - it touches me deeply and profoundly.)
That is the level of compassion I have accessed for me. To look
back and see where I came from - and to have incredible compassion and respect
for me, to want to honor me, is such a breakthrough for me. To own on
a gut level how difficult and arduous and painful my path has been - and Truly
feel compassion and respect for myself. To feel the grief and pain
of how solitary my path has been - how alone I have been - without any shame
or judgment. These are steps of huge progress. This is Truly
accessing Love for myself in a way, to a depth, I have never experienced for
myself.
"Fifteen years ago this month - in August
1988 - some incredible, unbelievable, indescribable events occurred in my
life that I believe revealed to me my Karmic mission and purpose in this lifetime.
Since that time I have devoted my life to carrying out that mission because
it is what I needed to do for me and my Spiritual Path / Recovery. . . .
.
The last 15 years have been an awesome, terribly
solitary, gloriously amazing adventure for me. An incredibly painful,
transcendently Joyous, intermittently terrifying, unbelievably fulfilling
journey. The message that I got in August of 88, the Karmic settlement
that I commitment my life to, involved taking responsibility. It specifically
involved being willing to stand up in public and state my Truth even if everyone
in the world said I was crazy. That commitment led me to give a talk
in June of 1991 that evolved into my book Codependence:
The Dance of Wounded Souls." - Metaphysical
Law: Giving and Receiving ~ Donations / Love Offerings page
There are certain behaviors that I have hung onto through the years of
my solitary journey - that I was judging and shaming myself for without realizing
it. I needed to reach this new level of compassion for myself to forgive
myself and let go of those behaviors - by honoring that they had served me
and helped me accomplish my mission up to this point.
Things are changing in a major way now. The transformation that
started in my processing back in October reached the hundredth monkey point
of critical mass in late February - a major fundamental shift has taken
place in my internal process and great change is manifesting in my relationship
with my self and with life.
This is a time of great and wonderful Joy for me. A special, wonderful,
fascinating time in my adventure. I believe the magnificent woman
who came into my life is my Twin Soul. I am so grateful to her for
being the catalyst in this magnificent breakthrough for me.
However the way things unfolded - with me having to break up with her
before I could break my ego bondage and make the shift in my relationship
with myself - it now appears that we may not be together in this lifetime.
It is now time for me to work on the acceptance and willingness to let go
of her.
Letting go of Her
When I suddenly broke off the relationship it was devastating to her.
It, of course, triggered some of her deepest wounds. She is scared
to let me back in for fear the pattern of me running away will repeat.
I accept that it took a major blast to my system to break through the
final barriers - and that me breaking off the relationship must have been
part of what was necessary. I am very sorry that it hurt her so deeply
- that my process needed to unfold that way. I can certainly understand
her fear of trusting me again.
I do believe that she is my Twin Soul and we met at the perfect time
so that she could help me make this breakthrough. But even if she
is my Twin Soul, that does not necessarily mean we are meant to be together
in this lifetime.
"Karmic settlement can take place from an encounter that lasts
minutes or hours as well as a relationship that continues over years.
Because you feel a strong energetic connection with someone is not reason
to abandon your self. Even if you are sure someone is your Twin Soul,
you still need to be willing to let go of them. Perhaps you need to
let go of them in this lifetime in order to reunite with them in the next."
- The True Nature of Love - Twin Souls,
Souls Mates, and Kindred Spirits
I have gotten a clear message from my higher self / the Universe that I
need to be willing to let her go of her - that I need to be willing to do
it with kindness and gentleness and Love. Once again it is time to
surrender to the Divine Plan - to let go of anything and everything.
"We need to be willing to let go of everything.
In my particular case: I need to let go of ever having very much money
in my life; of ever having much success for the book; of ever publishing
more books; of ever having another romantic relationships; of ever having
the kind of nurturing, comfortable space I would like to live in; of everything
that I want.
I need to let go of trying to write the script so that the Universe
can give me what I need.
It may, and often does in my experience, turn out that once I have
let go of something - let go of trying to dictate to the Universe my idea
of what I need in my life to be OK - then the Universe says "OK, now that
you have surrendered, you can have what you wanted."
Because when I let go, I also open up to receive. As long as
I am holding onto something, I am blocking the energy flow of the Universe.
I have to let go and open up in order to allow the flow.
The catch is, that the letting go has to be real. I have to accept
on a gut level that I can be happy and peaceful and fulfilled without: money;
a relationship; whatever. There is no tricking the Universe into thinking
I have let go when I am just pretending to let go so that I can get." - Joy2MeU
Update Newsletter February 2000
I am working on staying in a space of surrendering to the Divine Plan.
I am working on staying out of a victim perspective which would create the
type of artificial anger that we codependents use to try to avoid being present
to feel our grief and pain. My disease wants to take me to a victim
place. The perspective that says things like: "I have been looking
for this woman my whole life, for lifetimes, and now I have to let her go!
Not fair! This is really stupid!! This really hurts!!! How
could I have been so stupid, I totally hate myself for being so screwed up!!
How can you do this to me!?!?? How can she not see that we belong together?!?!?"
etc.
That place is a victim place. To allow myself to stay in that
perspective when I inevitably and periodically - in my imperfect humanness
- slip into it, would lead to self pity and resentment. Victims blame.
If I allowed myself to buy into that perspective, I would end up blaming
her or me or my Higher Power. It is vital for me not to buy into a
victim perspective - even now, when I am having to let go of the person I
believe is my Twin Soul.
"I already knew then, that any belief that was causing me to
feel like a victim was one that I needed to let go of - that I had to be
willing to surrender to the Universe's Plan and let go of anything and everything
that was making me feel trapped, including feeling like someone was my twin
soul or soul mate." - Joy2MeU Journal series: Miracles: Leap of Faith
~ Publishing The Dance part 2
It is so painful to think of not having this woman in my life now.
To have searched for so long and then to lose her just when I have become
capable of Truly Loving her, is just inconceivable to the human part of
me.
The pain of losing her feels like losing a part of myself - which this
time I believe it actually is. I have felt an echo of this pain because
in past relationships my inner child wounded places have felt like they
were going to die - that they were losing an essential part of self.
What I am experiencing now is much more than inner child wounds from this
lifetime.
There are of course, levels of inner child reaction involved in what
I am experiencing now - just as there are levels that are reactions from
the adult who has suffered stark deprivation on so many levels; from
my wounded masculine energy which has sought balance and union with the feminine
for lifetimes; from the romantic and dreamer in me whose heart had been
crushed and broken in ways that caused my ego to erect the terror of intimacy
defenses to try to protect me from opening my heart completely so that this
very thing would not happen; and of course, from my wounded soul that
has been seeking reunion with my other half in order to reconnect with The
Source.
As I mention in the quote from my journal at the end of the Update,
the Karmic issues we need to settle are reflected in our childhood wounds.
Those types of inner child reactions are in fact an echo, a reflection,
(as above so below, as within so without) of the deeper ancient wound of
being ripped in two by the manifestation of polarity into human consciousness.
(Polarity = The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil / black and white thinking)
And on a much deeper level I came to understand
that I am - and have been, ever since polarization - looking for my twin
soul.
This is a monumental pain - a triggering of my personal original wound
of being torn asunder, separated from my feminine half. And my original
wound is reflection of the original wound of humankind - the illusion of
separation from God.
The original wound, the genesis of all the pain
in the human experience, the original cause from which Codependence emerged,
is the illusion that we are separate from God, from our Creator.
We are not. We never have been. But
due to planetary conditions it felt like we were. It felt like being
human was a punishment.
The incredible pain of feeling separate from the
Creative Source is the greatest pain there is.
We are talking profound, ancient, deeply reverberating archetypal wound
here. Big hurt! Huge grief!
And facing that ancient grief, feeling that abyss of pain within, is
not something I want to spend the coming months doing. I do not want
to lose the woman I have been searching for through multiple lifetimes.
The thought of it has had me sobbing and crying as I have gone for my walk
by the ocean - has had me struggling to keep from sobbing and crying walking
down the street to the post office. There are times when I am checking
e-mail and my heart is in my throat in anticipation of the joy I will feel
if I hear from her, the fear I may feel when I do not.
I will face it however, if it is what is necessary in the Cosmic scheme
of things. As I have said, I need to be willing to let go of anything
and everything - and any one, even the woman that I believe is my Twin Soul.
I need to - am willing to - surrender to my Higher Power's plan no matter
what it entails, no matter how much I hate the plot twists of the unfolding
script.
It is possible that I have one of my soul mates that I still need to
settle Karma with before it is okay to reunite with my Twin Soul - perhaps
she does also. In the time between me breaking off the relationship
and then going through the shift in my ego-programming, she met and stated
dating a man that may be a soul mate. Rather her business with him
will last for weeks or months or years is not something I get to know right
now. There is great terror in the anticipation of having to live through
the coming weeks and months that it may take for her to get some clarity
on what is right for her on her path - for her to settle the Karma she needs
to settle so we can be reunited, if that is to be.
As I said in my article on Twin Souls and soul mates: "Perhaps you need
to let go of them in this lifetime in order to reunite with them in the
next." I wasn't actually thinking that I was going to have to do that
when I wrote that line in 1999 - but I do teach best what I need most to
learn.
If she is compelled to ultimately say no to me - that she cannot let
me back in, that she feels her path goes another direction - it will be
a perfect part of the Cosmic Plan, a perfect part of our paths in this lifetime.
It will be devastatingly emotionally painful. It will be the heartbreak
that brings up all of the pain of all of the heartbreaks. But it will
be a perfect part of the Plan somehow, someway. This is what I need
to keep reminding myself.
It is also perfect that at this time, on an important anniversary in
my recovery - which also happens to be an anniversary in relationship to
my Twin Soul - I was guided to look back and see how much courage and faith
I have shown in being willing to follow my path.
And to remember that those earlier versions of the "me I am becoming"
are heroes.
The "Desperado" whose prison was walking through the world
all alone. Who came down off his fence to let himself get enough of
a taste of Love in Alcoholics Anonymous that he could get sober in January
1984.
The emotionally crippled man who committed himself to doing anything
and everything he had to, in order to learn how to stop letting childhood
programming dictate his relationship with life on June 3,1986.
The reluctant mystic who was willing to keep moving through fear, terror,
and dread in facing forces beyond understanding, circumstances beyond rational
explanation, and intuitive guidance that took him far beyond the realm of
normal human experience. The man who kept following his Truth where
it led him, even when those around him were judging him to be crazy or possessed
by evil in 1988 and 1989.
The teacher and messenger who was willing to stand up in public and
state his Truth without knowing if anyone would ever be able to hear him
- and whose commitment to doing so in 1991 led to the eventual publication
of one of the Truly transformational books of our time.
My heroes - those earlier manifestations of myself - did not have anywhere
near the resources, the knowledge, the faith, or the external support and
validation I have today. If they could do what they did, could live
though those years of stark deprivation wandering alone in the desert, then
I can certainly expect no less heroic and courageous response from the being
of much higher consciousness that I have become in my Spiritual evolutionary
journey.
I am a Spiritual Warrior who has taken on a most difficult task in this
lifetime - and I believe I have already succeeded in that mission.
"Rather my book is ever a best seller or not, rather it ever
even goes into a second printing, does not matter. If I never have
more money than just what I need to pay the rent and keep on living one day
at a time, is not important. I have already been wildly successful
in my mission. My work and my book have been instrumental in creating
a new level of understanding in the Collective Human Consciousness.
I have contributed to a paradigm shift that helps others to see Truth with
more clarity. I have accomplished my mission of reminding others that
they can remember the Truth of Love just as I have been led to do - even
if I die tomorrow." - Future Publications
page
What I believe has been revealed in recent days and weeks is that - though
the mission of spreading the message will continue on some level as long
as I am in my present body - the primary focus of my life in the future has
shifted to Loving and experiencing being Loved in an the intimate union with
my Twin Soul (or soul mate if that is to be - hopefully the Universe has not
helped me open my heart without having someone in the wings waiting for me
to Love.) I believe, I feel very strongly, that I am finally ready for
the life partner I have been seeking forever - and that my days of wandering
in the wilderness in isolation on a personal level are about to end.
It is because I have felt this so strongly, that the thought of losing
this person has been so devastating. It is because I am now experiencing
what it feels like to Truly be available for a Loving emotionally intimate
romantic relationship, that the possibility that the woman who was both
the catalyst of my transformation, and the Twin Soul who I have been seeking
through lifetimes, could potentially be meant to remain unavailable to me
in this lifetime, that there have been moments recently where I have felt
that it would be too painful to continue this journey.
This is an old feeling - a familiar feeling from the first forty some
years of this lifetime - that I haven't felt for quite a few years in my
recovery. And it is natural and normal that when making a transformation
of the magnitude of the one that is happening in my life now, that I would
revisit the feeling that used to be such a normal part of my daily reality.
"The feeling of wanting to die, of not
wanting to be here, is the most overwhelming, most familiar feeling in my
emotional inner landscape. Until I started doing my inner child healing
I believed that who I really was at the deepest, truest part of my being,
was that person who wanted to die. I thought that was the true
'me'. Now I know that is just a small part of me." - Union Within - healing the inner
child
Revisiting this familiar feeling from my past - which has not been part
of my emotional reality at all, for at least 5 years - and touching once
again on the ancient wound to my heart and soul that I am healing in this
lifetime through my Karmic mission, has been a vital component in reaching
the new level of compassion, respect, and Love for my self. Being reminded
of how powerful the feelings of not wanting to be here in human body were
to me for most of my life, helps me to see with more clarity how much courage
it took for the man that I was, to keep following where I was guided on the
solitary path that I felt compelled to follow.
I was following my soul compulsion - I was being True to my Self - despite
being isolated in the wilderness of a path that no one else could Truly
understand, on which for many years I was receiving no external validation
from other people.
It has been a path that forced me to integrate the Truth that I felt
intuitively very deeply into my relationship with myself. I have been
forced in the course of my journey to demonstrate faith when external circumstances
seemed to mock my belief in my path.
If I could make it through those years when I was so very alone, facing
seemingly insurmountable obstacles, then I can certainly make it through
the ordeal that may be in front of me today. Even though this seems
like the cruelest blow possible - to be able to finally taste what Love Truly
feels like in a relationship and then not be given the opportunity to explore
the gift further / to find my Twin Soul only to lose her once more - it must
be a perfect part of my Spiritual awakening, emotional healing, and Karmic
settlement to be given this opportunity for growth. The opportunity
to be willing to accept the path as it unfolds, no matter what happens.
I do not necessarily have to lose her - but I need to be willing to accept
losing her if that should happen.
To Truly surrender to Divine Will on a gut level is in Truth the only
way that I might get what I want in this lifetime. The only way that
I can potentially get what I want, is to accept that I will be okay no matter
what happens. I need to affirm for myself once again that everything
is unfolding perfectly according to the Divine Plan of a loving Universal
Force.
If what I need to do today is to let go of being with my Twin Soul in
this lifetime - I can do that. I can accept that letting go of her
now is serving Divine Purpose and that we will be reunited someplace, sometime
- even if it is in another lifetime.
I will do what I am led to do, accept what I need to accept, and be
willing to go through what I need to go through, because I Know a Loving
Divine Plan is unfolding in my life. I surrender to it unconditionally
because my faith in it is absolute - no matter how painful, terrifying, and
cruel it may feel to me on a human level.
What I want is for this magnificent beautiful woman being to give me
the chance to prove to her how profound this transition I have made is -
and how wonderful we can be together. What I want is to Love and be
Loved in a way I have never experienced. What I want is to have a partner
in this journey who can be my sanctuary - as I am being her sanctuary.
Maybe this is one of those times when the Universe will give me what
I need - and it will also be what I want. That would be very cool.
That would be incredibly wonderful.
God / Goddess / Great Spirit - Thy will not my will be done. (But
I sure wouldn't mind getting what I want for a change also.:-)
Pray for me if you will. Not to get the outcome I want - but rather
to have the strength and courage to accept the things it will be necessary
for me to accept. I will need tons of strength and courage to get
through this broken heart if it is part of my Path. I ask for the clarity
and wisdom to let go of her with Love - with kindness and dignity.
I pray for the strength and maturity to Love her and be there to support
her even if she eventually decides that she is not willing to take the risk
of opening her heart to me again.
(On second thought, go ahead and pray for me to
get what I want if you feel like it. ;-) Pray for her heart to be
open to me and for any codependent fears within her to be dissolved so that
she can make a shift in her consciousness.
Ironically, she now needs to make the shift I
made - opening up her heart to herself enough to believe she deserves to
be Loved. As long as I was emotionally unavailable to her because on
some deep level I still didn't believe I was Lovable, she was committed to
the relationship and very Loving to me, more Loving to me than I have ever
experienced in a relationship. It was because on that deep level I
didn't believe I was good enough that my ego was able to sabotage the relationship.
Now that I am emotionally available and capable of Truly Loving her, her ego
defenses are on full battle stations - sending her fear messages that are
not so much about trusting me as about not trusting that she is good enough,
telling her that she would fail me because of her childhood messages that
she was not Lovable and worthy of being Loved.
So, do please pray that a shift in her consciousness
will occur that will help her open up to Loving her self enough to take
the risk of allowing herself to be Loved - if it is what is right for her
for her path. I have learned it is better for me to not to pray for
specific outcomes for myself without adding "if it is in alignment with Divine
Plan" or "or something better" or some such qualifier, because it is best
for me to surrender to the plan instead of trying to dictate it. So
I am not praying for a specific outcome, but I don't see that it would hurt
if you prayed for us.;-)
Thank you Goddess for allowing me to open my heart to Truly Loving in
a mature healthy way. I certainly hope your plan includes an opportunity
to put this new ability to Love into practice in the arena of romantic relationship
- to experience a Loving relationship in all ways in this lifetime.
It would be great and wonderful gift that I would be eternally, incredibly
grateful for, if this time I could get what I want sooooo much. If this
time I could be allowed to be with this woman who I believe is my Twin Soul.
I will however keep surrendering to the Divine Plan as it is presented
to me. I will keep letting go of my wants and affirming my faith that
my Higher Power is giving me what I need. More will be revealed.
~ Robert - March 18th to 24th, 2004
