Transcendent Spiritual Beings having a human experience - an index of web pages

We are not sinful, shameful human creatures who have to somehow earn Spirituality.  We are Spiritual Beings having a human experience.

"My own personal Spiritual belief system is one form of spirituality.  It is certainly not the only one.  Mine works for me very well in helping me to have a relationship with life that allows me to be happier today.  It is not necessary for you to accept my belief system in order for you to use the tools, techniques, and perspectives that I have developed for emotional healing / codependence recovery / inner child integration."

The dramatic success and expansion of AA facilitated the spread of a radically revolutionary idea which has traditionally, in Western Civilization, been considered heresy. This was not a new idea but rather a reintroduction and clarification of an old idea, coupled with a formula for practical application of the concept into day-to-day human life experience.

This revolutionary idea was that an unconditionally Loving Higher Power exists with whom the individual being can personally communicate. A Higher Power that is so powerful that it has no need to judge the humans it created because this Universal Force is powerful enough to ensure that everything unfolds perfectly from a Cosmic Perspective.

This reintroduction of the revolutionary concept of an accessible Loving God has been clarified to specifically include the concept that the individual being can define this Universal Force according to his/her own understanding, and can develop a personal, intimate relationship with this Higher Power.

In other words, no one is needed as an intermediary between you and your creator. No outside agency has the right to impose upon you its definition of God.

The spread of Alcoholics Anonymous, and the other Anonymous programs which sprang out of AA, is the widest and most effective dissemination of this radical revolutionary concept that has ever occurred in Western Civilization.

Mystics, gnostics, and certain "primitive" peoples have, throughout recorded human history, understood the Truth in this concept - but the "organized religions" of urban-based civilizations have persecuted, tortured, and crucified any messengers or groups of people who believed in a Loving, personal God or Goddess - because it threatened the power of those organized religions' control over the masses and therefore their very existence.

(Text in this color is used for quotes from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls by Robert Burney)

My personal belief is that we are Spiritual Beings having a human experience that is unfolding perfectly from a Cosmic perspective - with no accidents, coincidences, or mistakes.  I consider Spirituality to be a word that describes one's relationship with life - and anyone, regardless of religious belief or lack of it (who is not completely closed minded), can apply the approach I share on this web site and in my book, to help them transform their experience of life into an easier, more Loving and enjoyable journey. - Robert Burney

Welcome to a page of Joy2MeU The Web Site of Spiritual Teacher, codependence counselor, grief therapist, author, Robert Burney and Joy to You & Me Enterprises Go to Home Page    Site index page Robert is the author of the Joyously inspirational book Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls For ordering info click here

A Higher Power of My Own Understanding The Spiritual belief system detailed on this web site and in my book can be incorporated into any open-minded individual's personal beliefs.  It is a belief system that allows for the possibility that maybe there is an Unconditionally Loving Higher Power - a God-Force, Goddess Energy, Great Spirit, whatever it is called - which is powerful enough to insure that everything is unfolding perfectly from a Cosmic Perspective.  That everything happens for a reason - there are no accidents, no coincidences, no mistakes. It would be possible for someone to use the tools and techniques contained herein - for inner child healing and setting internal boundaries - to change some of their codependent/reactive behavior patterns and work on healing their childhood emotional wounds without a Spiritual belief system underlying the work.  It would be possible, but in my view would be kind of silly.  Spirituality is all about relationships.  One's relationship to self, to others, to the environment, to life in general.  A Spiritual belief system is simply a container for holding all our other relationships.  Why not have one that is large enough to hold it all. In my personal recovery, I found that I needed a Spiritual container large enough to allow for the possibility that I was not a flawed, shameful being.  I searched until I found some logical, rational means to explain life in a way that would allow me to start letting go of the shame I was carrying and start learning how to be Loving to myself. For me it became a simple choice:  either there is a higher purpose to this life experience or there is not.  If there is not, then I don't want to play.  So, I chose to believe that there is a Spiritual purpose and meaning to life.  And choosing to believe in a Loving Higher Power has transformed my life from an ordeal to be endured to an adventure that is exciting and Joyous much of the time. The bottom line for me is that it works for me, it is functional, for me to believe that there is Spiritual purpose and meaning to life.  It works to make my life experience happier today. - Robert Burney 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. "My own personal Spiritual belief system is one form of spirituality.  It is certainly not the only one.  Mine works for me very well in helping me to have a relationship with life that allows me to be happier today.  It is not necessary for you to accept my belief system in order for you to use the tools, techniques, and perspectives that I have developed for emotional healing / codependence recovery / inner child integration. For the purposes of this discussion of spiritual integration, I would now define what I refer to as a Spiritual Awakening in the quote above, as:  being open to a larger perspective - awakening from being trapped in a limiting perspective.  In this regard, spiritual would be a qualifier, an adjective, that describes the quality of one's relationship with life. This adjective, spiritual, would be (in my definition) a word describing an expanded level of consciousness.  A level of consciousness, of awareness, that is expansive and inclusive and facilitates personal growth - as opposed to limited, exclusive, rigid, and inhibiting growth, development, and alternative view points. By this definition, any religion that claims to be the chosen one, that excludes alternative perspectives or certain people, is not spiritual." The Recovery Process for inner child healing - spiritual integration Who we are, 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" perfectly according to a false belief system in order to "get Spiritual."  It does not work.  It's dysfunctional and backwards.  It is not bad or wrong or shameful - it is the best we have known how to do life until now. Announcing:  Joy to You & Me Enterprises is offering a series of Intensive Training Days with Spiritual Teacher, inner child healing pioneer Robert Burney.  Learn his innovative Spiritual Integration Formula for Inner Healing.  For the locations and dates of upcoming appearances go to Day of Intensive Training.

Mystical Metaphysical Spirituality  -  Quotes from Robert's book about Spirituality. "In order to make any progress in learning to Love and trust ourselves we need to have a Spiritual belief system that supports the possibility that we are unconditionally Loved. This is vital in helping us to stop shaming and judging ourselves."

A Kinder, Gentler, Cosmic Spirituality  -  A Spiritual Paradigm that promotes Love - that endorses relaxing and enJoying life.  Some more quotes.  "The God-Force is powerful enough to get us to where we are supposed to be with or without our help!  We do not have the power to screw up the Great Spirits plan."

Truth vs emotional truth  -  Intuitive messages from our Soul can often feel the same as emotional reactions from our wounded inner children.  "What we feel is our "emotional truth" and it does not necessarily have anything to do with either facts or Truth with a capital "T" - especially when we our reacting out of an age of our inner child."

Loving and Nurturing self  -  A column about Loving and Nurturing self - thru stopping the shame and judgment. "Those times when we feel like we are "falling apart," "losing it," going to pieces," are the times when we are growing."

Powerlessness & Empowerment  -  An article about how admitting powerlessness can lead to empowerment - why the 12 steps work.  "It is by recognizing that we are powerless to control our life experiences out of ego-self that we can access the power out of True Self, Spiritual Self. By surrendering the illusion of ego control we can reconnect with our Higher Selves."

The Twelve Steps  -  The 12 Steps provide a formula for integrating the Spiritual into the physical.  Page includes several version of steps.  "What helped me was when someone told me that surrender didn't mean I was a loser, it just meant that I was smart enough to join the winning side."

The Twelve Steps, different interpretations  -  four different versions of the 12 steps from different sources.  My favorite is the Twelve Steps for Kids.  "By using these steps, I've become a new person.  I don't have to feel alone anymore, and I can help others."

Spirituality for Agnostics and Atheists - The first of a series of articles focusing on spirituality from different perspectives.  "You have an absolute right to believe that life has no meaning or purpose - or that the purpose of life is suffering and penance for some mythical sin of mankind - whatever you choose to believe.  But if we reject even looking at any alternative perspectives, then what we are empowering is ignorance."

The Recovery Process for inner child healing - spiritual integration - a unique article in that it is part of two different series of articles.  "So, spiritual integration in this sense, is our relationship with the whole of the horizontal dance of life.  It is very helpful to have a sense of spirituality, a relationship with the dance of life, that helps us to start being able to find some balance in our life."

October 2003, I am adding a series of my articles originally published Suite101 that are focused on how to apply the Serenity Prayer in our lives.

Discernment - The Wisdom to Know the Difference in Serenity Prayer - First in a series of articles focused on the Serenity Prayer and having the wisdom and discernment to recognize the things that we have the power to change. "Discernment is about learning to separate truth from lies, illusion from reality, fantasy from facts.  It is about learning the difference between:  emotional truth and Spiritual Truth;  emotional impulse and intuitive guidance;  being victimized and feeling like a victim."

Serenity - Accepting the things we cannot change - This article is focused on practicing the Serenity Prayer by accepting life events instead of creating a lot of artificial stress by freaking out because we are not in control. "By learning to be discerning enough to accept the things I cannot change, I am able to change something that is in my power to change - my attitude towards the things I can not change."

Intellectual Discernment - focused within - This one is focused on the importance of starting to practice intellectual discernment so that we can start changing the attitudes and beliefs that are setting us up to have a dysfunctional perspective of life.  "We have the power to choose a different intellectual paradigm to define our life.  That is what working the twelve steps can do for us - cause a paradigm shift our relationship with life."

Emotional Discernment - taking power away from the fear - This article is focused upon practicing emotional discernment in order to take power away from codependent fear.  "We all have reactive emotional "buttons" - an internal emotional mine field - that cause us to have intense emotional reactions when a button is pushed, when one of the unhealed wounds in our psyche gets activated.  Other people, life events, an old song, etc., can trigger these emotional wounds."

Intellectual Discernment - shutting up the critical voice - This one is focused upon practicing intellectual discernment in order to take power away from the critical parent voice in our minds.  "In order to stop being the victim of our self and our wounding it is vital to start setting boundaries with that critical parent voice - to start learning how to stop the inner child abuse that is part of the disease dynamic."

Emotional Discernment - Watch how you speak -  Words have power.  The ways in which we express ourselves can reinforce feelings of victimization and be disempowering. "When we make statements like:  "I am angry.";   "I'm very hurt";  etc.; we are stating that the feeling is who we are.  The feeling is not who we are."

Intellectual Discernment - "have to" and the Holiday Season -  When we use words like should or "have to" - as in I have to spend the Holidays with my family - we are setting ourselves up to feel like a victim and be resentful.  "So, if you spend time with your family during the Holidays because you "have to," you are not being Loving."

Emotional Discernment - disarming the emotional mine field within - It is vital to start to recognize that we don't have to be powerless over the our emotional wounds - the buttons that get pushed that cause us to react to extremes. "When one of our inner child wounds is activated, it feels like our total being - our total reality.  It feels like the feeling we are experiencing is our total truth.  It is not."

Intellectual Discernment - Choices, not "shoulds" - By learning how to stop empowering dysfunctional "shoulds" and "have tos" in our programming we can learn to stop reacting to life and start taking responsibility - having the ability-to-respond. "We can change our relationship with self and life by starting to own that we have choices, instead of sabotaging ourselves because we are rebelling against the critical parent voice in our head telling us what we "should" do."

There is a series of 10 articles about my Spiritual Beliefs that start with A Higher Power of my own understanding  (In doing an update to this page in November 2012 I am adding links to all of the articles in this series here - but not going to do the description and quote thing as I had done on the ones above.)

A Higher Power of my own understanding

A Higher Power of my own understanding 2 - the beginning of empowerment  (additional material added to this page in 2010 and 2012)

Spirituality - a broader perspective

Inspiration from the Big Book of Alcoholic Anonymous

God the Father, and my father  (additional material added to this page in 2010 and 2012)

Quantum Physics - expanding my Spiritual paradigm 

Vibrational Dance - Universe = Dance of Energy

Love as a vibrational frequency

Balance on the horizontal, Integration of the vertical

Higher Power of my own understanding - final word

For more articles on Twelve Step Spiritual Principles check out the Alcoholism section.  The Metaphysical section contains articles about some of the more Mystical and Metaphysical aspects of the Robert's beliefs.  The pages on Positive Affirmations in the Inner Child Healing section are also very valuable.

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