To all the Magnificent Spiritual Beings on my e-mailing list,

Also, I realized (as I was sitting on the porch with my roommates love bird chattering in my ear) that I have never explained why I refer to you all as Magnificent Spiritual Beings - other than the obvious fact that you are of course. I am coming up on my 16th anniversary of recovery (since January 3, 1984 I have been clean and sober).  At the time of my 4th birthday I changed the way I identified from stating my name first and my disease second - to stating my disease first and my name second, because I realized that unless I remembered what I was (an alcoholic) I was not ever going to find out who I am.  So when I started CoDA (first I was in ACA because there was no CoDA when I started my recovery from codependency), I would say "I am a codependent and my name is Robert."  At the point where I got serious about doing Positive Affirmations and realized that the most powerful affirmations began with I AM because that is another name for the God-Force - I changed to "I am a recovering codependent."  Than at some point later it evolved into "I am a Magnificent Spiritual Being recovering from being raised in an emotionally repressive, Spiritually hostile environment."  Then someone pointed out to me that I was still affirming that it was a hostile environment - so my intro evolved into "I am a Magnificent Spiritual Being having a Joyous and exciting human adventure."

So my salutation to this update is an affirmation that you are also Magnificent Spiritual Beings having a Joyous and exciting human adventure.  That is of course when it doesn't feel like crap.  The point is to progress to where it is a joyous and exciting adventure more of the time than not.  And to have enough freedom from being reactive to have the capacity to be happy and Joyous in the moment no matter what is going on with outside circumstances and other people.  Because of my willingness to do the work, I am very grateful to be able to say that for the last 8 or 9 years of my recovery the happy and exciting adventure has been my reality the large majority of the moments of almost every day. It has been very helpful for me to remember (as I say in my book, but paraphrase here slightly) that when it feels like crap that means I am being fertilized to help me grow.  That way I remember that in the moments that feel bad on the unhappy days, I am not being punished for being defective somehow - but rather am being given an opportunity for growth.  Remembering that helps me not to judge and shame myself - which is the core of recovery and where I most need to manifest Love for myself.  This journey we are on, is all about remembering that we are Loved and Lovable so that we can start relating to our self in more Loving ways.

On to the news.

I have added quite a few pages this time and have redesigned the home page of the Joy2MeU site.  This redesign is a temporary thing until I can somehow find the time to learn a new web page creation program and redesign the whole site (probably at least 100 hours work).  The program I have been using is pretty primitive by internet standards and is, I believe, the reason that I have not yet been able to get listed in Yahoo.  Since Yahoo has 3 times as much traffic as the second most used portal, it is important - and will be the next leap in web traffic for the site - to do what it takes to get listed.

Designing for the web can be a frustrating experience since a page looks different in different browsers.  My new home page looks fine in Netscape and pretty good in Explorer (except for some hanging lines in my testimonials section that I can't figure out how to fix) but I still don't know how it will look on AOL or WebTV or any other browsers.  Anyone who can give me feedback about whether it looks real strange or something, please let me know.  [(Also check out the new surprise at the very bottom of the page ;-) - The surprise has been transferred to the bottom of this page now.]

The brand new page that is being published for the first time is entitled My Spiritual Belief System and the New Millennium and is a response that I wrote to a query from an assistant editor of a New Age magazine in India.  She asked me for my views about what I saw happening in the world today and what I thought the New Millennium would bring.  Since there was no way to answer her questions without explaining my belief system, I did that.

Although I am not shy about stating my beliefs in different places on my web pages and in my book, and I certainly share my Mystical and Metaphysical understanding of the History of the Universe and the Divine Plan in the first book of my Trilogy which is being published in the Joy2MeU Journal - I have never written quite this direct and complete an explanation of my Spiritual belief system from a focused perspective previously.  I hope you find some value in it.

I have added five other pages that were previously published on the Suite101 page that I edit.  My agreement with them is that the majority of the articles that I publish there (usually 2 a month) will be original and exclusive to their site for 90 days.  So, I have taken some articles that are past that 90 day point, and that I believe will be helpful, and added them to my sites because I don't think that too many of you have found your way to the Suite101 page yet.  Bits and pieces of these articles can be found (and may sound familiar) on various pages of my sites, but the focus of these articles - and the simple, straight forward approach necessitated by a 1000 word limit - makes them different and more specifically focused.

The first page is called simply What is Codependency / Codependence ? and is a quick look at the condition from 5 slightly different perspectives.

The next 4 are a series of articles on Codependent Relationship Dynamics.  These articles, along with a series on Healthy Relationship Behavior, are focused on romantic relationships - and will be the focus of a College course I am teaching here locally starting in January.  (The Healthy Relationship Behavior series will run at least 7 articles and not be completed until February - so are exclusive to Suite101 until late spring or early summer.)

I updated the index.htm page (now Testimonials page) on Joy2MeU with some of the latest of the really wonderful and touching testimonials that have come in recently.  (Thanks for the feedback - I really appreciate it.  And also a huge thank you to those of you who wrote Oprah or added a review of my book to Amazon.com.)  I changed site search engines to one that is very superior to the previous one.  It will tell you which pages of the site any keyword or phrase can be found on.

On the links page of both sites I have added 4 new links.

One that I just discovered today in response to several queries I have had lately - is the Codependency Chat Home Page - which has lots of information about online chat, e-mail lists, and online meetings for Codependency.

The New Thought Network which includes Metaphysical churches such as Unity and Religious Science.

A web site called Geri's Recovery Music where a very talented lady sings the songs that she wrote as a way of helping her process through her issues.

And one to Castle Mountain Cards - a site that has some really beautiful cards that you can send for free.

The next column in the True Nature of Love series will be part of the next update which is planned for January 1, 2000 (Delayed a month due to site redesign.) - if the power is on.  And, at that time, I will also post the referral page to local therapists and counselors.  Unfortunately, there have not been enough referrals passed on to me yet to make the page viable - but I will post the ones I have at that time.  I would really like to get more referrals from you folks out there, to therapists and counselors that you have personal experience with.

The place I am living now (the place I was trying to get back to for most of the year) is called Morro Bay.  It is a bay, with a huge rock guarding the entrance to it.  And I mean huge - Morro Rock has peregrine falcons nesting on top of it.  The past 10 days or so, there has been a whale in the harbor.  A juvenile gray whale that obviously got off course on the annual migration to the gulf of Baja.  When I get this sent out I am going to go down to the bay and see if he is still there.  (I refer to this whale as a male - not because I have the slightest idea of how to tell gender in whales, or because of some sexist bias - but rather because it obviously has issues about asking for directions. ;-)  I hope he is still there, but rather he is or not, I plan on sitting for a few moments in meditation and prayer.  I am going to ask the Holy Mother Source Energy for a little more kindness and Love to be manifested in a tangible way that we can feel, in all of our lives - here as the Millennium comes to a close - and for some easily discernible, concrete manifestations of Love, Joy, and Prosperity as the new Millennium dawns. 

We are pioneers in this healing movement that is happening.  Even if you just arrived at some consciousness of the path, you are still a pioneer [to use a Western American analogy (because it is useful, even though it brings up some feelings for me because I was a Cheyenne back then, who had to deal those precursors of the dysfunction that is Western Civilization) - if I am a Mountain Man who followed the fur trappers, than you are in the first wagon trains.]  And it can often be lonely and scary and painful being a pioneer.  Life does not often feel Loving. It does not normally, tangibly feel like there really is a Loving Higher Power.  As we do the work, and change our intellectual paradigm to one based on Love instead of fear so that our emotional responses to life change, we can change our relationship with life into one that is more Loving - but it still doesn't feel Loving a lot of the time.  So, it is important to remember what a gift we have been given.  In healing our relationships with our self, we are becoming vehicles / channels / vessels of Love.  By learning to Love our self we are manifesting Love into the world.  This is the dawning of the Second Coming of the message of Love, and we are all messengers/messiahs who have the privilege of carrying the message of Truth and Love by being in recovery and doing our healing to the best of our ability in the moment.

What I am going to ask for in my prayer and meditation, after expressing my gratitude for the gift, is for all of us to have the experience of life feeling more Loving, in more moments, now.  (I started to say in the immediate future - but my idea of immediate and my Higher Power’s seem to differ radically at times, so better just to go for right now.)

The Holidays are approaching of course, and they can be a hard time of the year because whatever we are feeling is magnified due to our emotional expectations.  I talk abut how I changed my relationship with the holiday season on my web page Gratitude + Happy Holidays, Sad Holidays which has two columns on it that you might find helpful this holiday season (this is now two pages since the site redesign.)  I am going to steal the last paragraph from the Holiday article to pass along my wishes to you this year.

"So, have a happy, merry, sad, Joyous, painful, peaceful, scary, cheerful in the moment Holiday season experiencing what it feels like to be alive in human body.  Whatever your celebration: Christmas, Hanukkah, Winter Solstice, Kwanzaa, New Years, etc. - let it be about the new beginning; the rededication to: the recommitment to: the rebirth of;  life.  But most of all, let it be about Love by first of all Loving yourself enough to tell the critical parent voice in your head to shut up with all the comparisons and shame and judgment." 

Until the New Millennium - Namaste 
Robert 

I have also added another page with the previous update, which went out November 9th.