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The Web Site of Spiritual Teacher, codependence counselor, grief therapist, author, Robert Burney
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Robert is the author of the Joyously inspirational book
The Dance of Wounded Souls.
The Metaphysics of Emotions - emotional energy is real
That there are so many resources these days that are teaching people that they need to learn to love themselves and stop allowing the past to dictate how they are living life today is a wonderful sign of the new Age of Healing & Joy that has dawned in human consciousness on the planet that I talked about in my book. That is the very good news.
We have now entered a very special time in human history. An Age of Healing and Joy has dawned in human consciousness on this planet. We now have tools, knowledge, and most importantly, clearer access to healing energy and Spiritual guidance than has ever before been available in recorded human history on this planet.
The not so good news is that far too many of those teachers and organizations are teaching a lot of Truth mixed with some misinterpretations and false beliefs.
The teachings of all the Master Teachers, of all the world's religions, contain some Truth along with a lot of distortions and lies. Discerning Truth is often like recovering treasure from shipwrecks that have been sitting on the ocean floor for hundreds of years - the grains of Truth, the nuggets of gold, have become encrusted with garbage over the years."
"There is Truth all around us. We can find messages everywhere once we start picking the baby out of the bathwater - once we begin to be willing and open to feeling and trusting the emotional energy communications of Truth from our Souls. The teachings of all of the Master Teachers, of all religions, philosophies, mythologies, fairy tales, even comic books, have Truth in them.
Too many of the people who are teaching really wonderful concepts and Truths, are in my opinion still reacting out of their own personal codependency.
"Mystical messengers and Master Teachers are Spiritual Beings in human body who were/are open to accessing Higher Truth in relationship to some part of this puzzle of life. We are all Spiritual Beings in human body who have the capacity to tune into Mystical Truth, into intuitive guidance - to whatever degree is necessary for our Karmic mission in this lifetime. None of us are, none of them were, perfect humans - we are all perfect in our Spiritual Essence.In the article I referred to in the first paragraph that I am writing this article as a companion to - The Law of Attraction - Misunderstood & Misinterpreted - I talk about some of the reasons I believe these mystical messengers / spiritual teachers are giving out messages that are affected by codependency. Those include black and white thinking and shame about being human, but the discounting of emotions is the one that this article is addressing.
They have served Divine purpose by passing on some nuggets of Truth, some deeper understanding of different pieces of the puzzle. People as diverse as William Shakespeare and Albert Einstein: Carl Jung and Martin Luther King; Carlos Castanado and Joseph Campbell; Thomas Jefferson and Margaret Mead; were mystical messengers, way showers, who contributed to changing the planetary conditions in some way, enlarging the paradigm in relationship to some aspect of consciousness. . . .
. . . . . There are many mystical messengers among us today. They include people like: Richard Bach and Bob Dylan; John Bradshaw and Melody Beattie; Oprah Winfrey and Marianne Williamson; Neale Donald Walsch and James Redfield; etc. This does not mean that these people are totally clear channels for Truth - or that on a personal level they are in recovery. One of the most important paradigm enlarging books of the 1970 and 80s was written by a person who was, and is (last I heard), a practicing alcoholic.
The thing that all of us old souls have in common, that all mystical messengers have in common, is that we grew up in dysfunctional families in dysfunctional cultures. We are all codependent. Unfortunately, from my perspective, many of the mystical messengers present now have not done their emotional healing to the depth that allows them to change their core subconscious programing - and because of this they are still allowing codependency to twist and distort the messages of Truth they are carrying." - Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in the Light Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life Chapter 12: Codependency in New Age Movement
Emotions are real. Emotions are energy that is manifested into the body in a dimension, on a level, that cannot be seen or measured in any concrete way.
Traditional Western medical science has discounted emotions because it can't be measured or detected as tangible, physical substance.
"Traditional Western medical science has ignored and discounted the spiritual and emotional components of being. The traditional medical perspective in relationship to any physically or psychologically manifested dis-ease is limited by a left brain (concrete, rational) intellectual paradigm which is entirely focused on that which can be seen, measured, quantified. Therefore, any spiritual, emotional, and mental dis-ease is seen as resulting from biochemical, physiological, physical conditions. Doctors (which includes psychiatrists of course) - and other traditional medical and mental health professionals - were trained to identify mental and emotional problems as biological and to see the solution as chemical.In the quote above I use the word empirical - a word that I mention in my article on the Law of Attraction that led me to the word metempirical - beyond experience, beyond evidence and observation. It is actually very easy to observe when someone is having feelings - but there isn't any measurable, discernible substance to those emotions, thus they have been discounted in Western Civilization. In the quote from my book within the following quote, I mention that this is a swing to the other extreme from earlier periods of Civilized history.
There are certainly neurobiological aspects to any behavioral manifestation, but it is not possible for a scientific perspective which requires empirical proof to truly ascertain the cause of any condition - because emotional and spiritual components of a human's being can not be quantified. In other words, brain chemistry is definitely out of balance in relationship to any physical disorder or mental condition - including OCD, Bi-Polar Disorder, Depression, etc. That imbalance in brain chemistry definitely has an impact on emotions - but it is not possible to say absolutely which is the cause and which is the effect. The chicken and egg conundrum. In other words, did the emotional trauma and the fear and shame based relationship to life cause the chemical imbalance in the brain - or did the chemical imbalance come first. Traditional Western medicine is not holistic - it does not treat the whole being, it treats symptoms. Medication is necessary for some people. It is an invaluable temporary help for others. It is not the whole answer. The great majority of doctors are limited by their training, the intellectual paradigm which determines their perspective, to believing that they do know the answers." - Obsession / Obsessive Thinking Part 1
In that quote from my book - as I also mentioned in my Law of Attraction article - I used the word supernatural. If I were writing that paragraph today I would use the word metaphysical."The internal human dynamic is immensely complicated and complex. In order to start understanding it with more clarity, it is vital to break out of the limited belief systems imposed upon us by humanities inability to discern between different levels of reality.
This inability to discern between different levels of realty is part (along with the planetary conditions which will be addressed shortly) of the reason that many religious teachings are twisted, distorted, grotesquely warped misinterpretations of what were originally symbolic, metaphoric, allegorical attempts to explain the unexplainable.
Western Civilization (in reaction to earlier ages when it was out of balance to the other extreme of allowing superstition to rule) does not acknowledge that multiple levels of reality exist and as a result, has been way out of balance towards the left brain way of thinking - rational, logical, concrete, what you see is all there is. Since what is seen is a three dimensional illusion, anything that does not fit neatly into that three dimensional world has been labeled as not being real. Logically then, according to Western thought, the supernatural does not exist - it is only imagination and superstition - therefore anyone who believes in the supernatural is crazy.
. . . . . Anyone who gives you a message that carries with it shame about being human, about feeling afraid or angry or whatever, needs to awaken to a larger perspective - needs to expand their intellectual paradigm and raise their consciousness to a higher level that is more aligned with Love. It doesn't matter how famous they are. It is possible that their work has had a huge impact on your growth. Be grateful for that, but give yourself permission to have the discernment to recognize when something they are saying doesn't resonate with Love." - Attack on America: A Spiritual Healing Perspective & Call for Higher Consciousness Chapter 6: ego strength and self worth
Because emotional energy could not be seen or measured or weighed, and was not sanctioned by the AMA, emotions were discounted and devalued.
The emotional component of the internal human dynamic has been ignored - or seen as an extension of the mental. It is vital to start separating, and discerning a boundary between, the emotional and the mental levels of our being in order to heal our emotional wounds.
Just as the inability to discern between levels of reality caused humans to become enmeshed in their view of the macrocosm - and create a concept of god with human qualities - so too has this lack of discernment caused humans to discount the emotional component of the human experience. Psychology is a term that discounts emotions. It is not only traditional science that discounts emotions, but many New Age healers and practitioners also tend to discount emotional energy or to label certain emotions as negative. . . .
"Metaphysical means beyond the physical - that is beyond the concrete three-dimensional reality that we experience, that can be seen and measured. One of the reasons that emotions have been so discounted in Western Civilization has been because it is not possible to take an x-ray and see that we have unresolved grief from the past that is knocking our system out of balance and causing us to be depressed. Emotions have also been discounted in Eastern Civilization although the Eastern approach to medicine and science is much more Holistic in general and does acknowledges the existence of energies of a metaphysical nature." - Energetic Attraction - emotional familiarity or Karmic connection?I mention in this last quote that Western Civilization is not holistic in it's approach to mental health - it discounts the emotional and spiritual components as I mentioned in the earlier quote.
Our mental health system not only does not promote healing - it actually blocks the process. The mental health system in this country is designed to get your behavior and emotions under control so that you can fit back into the dysfunctional system.
Drugs that are designed to disconnect you from your feelings block the healing process. Mental health professionals who need to have you see them regularly in order to be financially supported, need to have you be dependent upon them, need to keep you a patient in order to survive.
Any counselor, therapist, psychologist - and especially psychiatrist - that is adhering to training that takes the traditional perspective of emotions will most likely not have done their own emotional healing, and because of that will not be comfortable with any "patient" being very emotional.What is so sad to me - and sometimes makes me angry so that I rant and rave - is that it is not just traditional mental health professionals that discount emotions, but also New Age and alternative healers and spiritual teachers. New Age is in many ways a synthesis of Western and Eastern beliefs and practices. What too many of the people involved in New Age don't understand is this: the reality that both traditions discount emotions is a symptom of a larger dysfunction caused by the planetary conditions that dictated the course of human evolution on this planet."It is also a vital part of the process to learn discernment. To learn to ask for help and guidance from people who are trustworthy, that means people who will not betray, abandon, shame, and abuse you. That means friends who will not abuse and betray you. That means counselors and therapists who will not judge and shame you and project their issues onto you.
(I believe that the cases of "false memories" that are getting a lot of publicity these days are in reality cases of emotional incest - which is rampant in our society and can be devastating to a person's relationship with his/her own sexuality - that are being misunderstood and misdiagnosed as sexual abuse by therapists who have not done their own emotional healing and project their own issues of emotional incest and/or sexual abuse onto their patients).
Someone who has not done her/his own emotionally healing grief work cannot guide you through yours. Or as John Bradshaw put it in his excellent PBS series on reclaiming the inner child, "No one can lead you somewhere that they haven't been.""
(Quotations in this color are from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls) In his PBS series on healing the inner child, John Bradshaw talked about how important it is to choose counselors and therapists who have done their own emotional healing. He stated that he had been in recovery for 10 years and counseling for that period of time before he started doing the emotional healing. Prior to starting that process if someone he was working with started to get emotional, he would immediately take steps to pull them out of the emotions back onto an intellectual level.
One of the most important things to check out when you are interviewing a new counselor/therapist - is whether they have done any emotional healing. If they have not done any grief and anger work - actual emotional release work involving the deep grieving of sobs and snot running out the nose, and anger work, beating on cushions while they shout out their rage - then they will not want you to get emotional. Doing the deep emotional work can be terrifying - and unless the person who is facilitating your work has been through it themselves, they will be scared by your emotions. They will try to get you back into an intellectual framework - and many of them will tell you that you need to go on medication." - Choosing a therapist or counselor with discernment
Eastern beliefs though more holistic in general and accepting of the metaphysical energies that are the focus of acupuncture (to name one example, Feng Shui, Chi, etc. ), have also discounted emotions - as something that one should rise above. In order to become "enlightened" it was thought that one must rise above being human and feeling messy human emotions.
Both Western and Eastern beliefs are out of balance and codependent in my belief.
All civilizations are dysfunctional to varying degrees, as are subcultures within those civilizations. They just have different flavors of dysfunction, of imbalance.
As an example: In much of Asia the individual is discounted for the good of the whole - whether that be family or corporation or country. The individual takes his or her self-definition from the larger system. That is just as out of balance and dysfunctional as the Western Civilization manifestation of glorifying the individual to the detriment of the whole. It is just a different variety of dysfunction.
The goal of this dance of Recovery is integration and balance. That means celebrating being a tree while also glorying in being a part of the forest. Recovery is a process of becoming conscious of our individual wholeness and our ONENESS with all.
When I am working with people, teaching them my approach to inner healing, I always asked if they have been involved in Eastern meditation practices. The reason that I ask that is to be able to tell them that when I talk about how important the observer perspective is to codependency recovery I am not talking about the passive observer that is taught in meditation practices. The type of observer perspective I teach people is pro-active and intervening - not just passively observing thoughts and feelings but actually taking action to change the internal programming that we do have the power to change."As I pointed out in the online book I wrote explaining my perception of the September 11th terrorist attack as a manifestation of the human condition of codependency, both Western and Eastern Civilization have been out of balance.
"The dysfunction in Western Civilization has evolved to be more focused toward a left brain, masculine type of view of reality - concrete, rational, subdue the planet and multiply. Eastern Civilization has tended toward more feminine, abstract, contemplative - detachment from the concrete, a perspective with more detachment from the Illusion. But Eastern Civilization, though based upon a more intuitive perspective, did not, for the most part, manifest that in the treatment of women." - Attack on America: A Spiritual Healing Perspective & Call for Higher Consciousness Chapter 4Eastern Civilization also did not manifest any balance emotionally. Whereas Western Civilization has tended towards allowing righteous male anger and aggression to drive civilization's evolution, Eastern culture has in general tended more towards denial of all emotions - a stoic role model for appropriate emotional behavior." Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in the Light Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life Chapter 11: Codependent Counselors / Therapists / Healers
"By cultivating this detached perspective - detached from our ego experience of being human - we can observe both the mental and emotional levels of our being from a more discerning perspective. It facilitates changing the intellectual programming and taking some of the terror out of healing the emotional wounds. It allows us to set internal boundaries within, and between, the mental and emotional levels of our being.I teach people to develop an observer / witness perspective that is pro-active and intervening, that actually becomes our Recovery Control Center / our Conscious Recovering Adult Observer perspective - so that we change how we are relating to our own internal process instead of just reacting to old tapes and old wounds.
When I speak of a detached observer perspective, I am not talking about the kind of observation that is taught in some spiritual meditation practices. Many people use that type of observation as a way to avoid feeling the feelings. That type of detachment from emotions is what some people experience on anti-depressants. Some people use chanting and meditation as anti-depressants. Chanting and meditation can be invaluable tools but applied in an imbalanced manner can, like positive affirmations, be used as tools to deny feelings.
Just observing the feelings does not heal them; does not fundamentally change our relationship patterns; does not make our fear of intimacy go away. We need to feel, experience, and release the emotional energy in order to heal the wounds and take power away from them." - Co-Creation: Owning your Power to Manifest Love
When we are reacting out of our childhood emotional wounds, then what we are feeling may have very little to do with the situation we are in or with the people with whom we are dealing in the moment.
In order to start be-ing in the moment in a healthy, age-appropriate way it is necessary to heal our "inner child." The inner child we need to heal is actually our "inner children" who have been running our lives because we have been unconsciously reacting to life out of the emotional wounds and attitudes, the old tapes, of our childhoods. . . .
Until we heal our wounds, until we become honest and clear in our emotional process, we are not able to be discerning. We are not capable of responding to life in the now - we are only able to react out of old grief, out of old tapes.
We need to develop a detached, objective observer perspective in order to become more aware of our own internal cause and effect - so that we can change the ego programming and transform how we relate to our own emotions by recognizing them as energy that needs to flow.
"I have had many clients who have practiced sitting in meditation for many years, who were taught to use meditation as a way of repressing the feelings - "observing" the feelings is not the same as owning and feeling and experiencing. Just as some "new age" or Metaphysical people use Spiritual Truths as another tool to deny the feelings (I have worked with many people who thought they had no right to be angry at their parents because they "chose" them - that choice was made in alignment with the need to settle Karma, not of totally free selection, and in no way negates our need to own our right to be angry about how their behavior affected us. Just the other day a friend told me that her boyfriends mother refuses to take any responsibility for what happened in his childhood because he "chose" her.) so too have meditation practices of observing the feelings been used by some to avoid feeling the feelings.(Being able to observe ourselves is a very important tool in the process but like any other tool - acceptance, forgiveness, honesty, etc. - can be taken out of balance and applied dysfunctionally.)
I dated a woman for a while who had been practicing for many years - it was very interesting for me to observe (I was at a point in my process where I was working on letting go of rescuing and needing to change the other person - so I was just observing) how she ignored conflict. We never did any processing of difficulties which arose because she would act as if it never happened. Avoiding conflict also denies intimacy - we cannot be emotionally intimate with someone we can't be angry at. Conflict is an inherent part of relationships and is to be worked through to grow from - it is the garden out of which deeper intimacy grows." - Buddha, Buddhism, and Japanese cultural dysfunction
Many people use meditation as a form of antidepressant to stay disassociated from their feelings. There are also many people who use wonderful tools like positive affirmations and positive visualization to discount and deny emotions. Meditation and chanting, affirmations and visualization, music and dancing, movement and exercise, etc., are tools that can be very helpful in maintaining some balance on our recovery journey / spiritual path - but can also be used in ways that deny feelings. Positive affirmations and visualization are vital in changing our perspective of life away from the negative programming of childhood into alignment with Metaphysical Law / the Law of Attraction - but it is vital to honor our emotions and emotional process if we truly want to start having some freedom from the past.
I am in this article going to using some quotes and excerpts from some of my writing to try to communicate about the metaphysics of emotional energy as I understand it. I am not going to do a lot of additional writing about it at this time, just a few comments to introduce or sum up the quotes I will be using. As I made a point of stating in my article on the Law of Attraction, it is not necessary to understand all of this, what is important is to be open to larger concepts that can help us find a more enjoyable, balanced, and functional way to relate to this human adventure we are experiencing - a way of living that helps us to be more Loving to our selves and others, that helps us to manifest more Love into human consciousness on the planet."I want to again emphasis that it is not necessary to understand all of this metaphysical stuff. What is important is to feel the resonance of Truth that will help you remember that it is all perfect when looked at from a large enough paradigm. Emotional energy is generated in our emotional body on the Etheric plane. That is where the chakra system exists. Many of you have probably had energy work done that helps you to understand that there is Truth in the ancient Chinese techniques of acupuncture. That there are energy junctions in our body - that are not acknowledged in traditional Western medicine - that do affect our physical bodies.In December of 1999 I published an article entitled My Spiritual Belief System and the New Millennium. That article is now completely available only in a subscription area of my site but the following quote can be found on the part of the page that is still available.
Opening up your imagination to remembering that this human experience includes dimensions and levels that are not concrete and rational from a three-dimensional perspective will help you to change your relationship with your own emotions. Emotions are energy. They exist on a level of reality that needs to be honored and respected if we are going to heal our relationship with ourselves. Discounting emotions is dysfunctional if our goal is to see ourselves and our relationships clearly enough to heal and tune into Love and Joy." - Attack on America - Chapter 8 At War Within
"So, as this millennium draws to a close, here is my Spiritual Belief system as it relates to the evolution of human kind and the New Millennium. I am publishing this here for the world to see, not out of some delusion that I know everything, but rather to share with you a perspective that gives me comfort because it supports my need to believe that the ultimate governing principle in the Universe is Love. My belief system developed out of my need to find a paradigm that would support the belief that Unconditional Love is the Ultimate Truth. This belief system not only resonates in my heart as Truth - it also gave me permission to start believing that I am Lovable and Loved.In the Law of Attraction article a quote is included from the Author's Foreword of my book that sums up part of the reason I am writing this article. I will include a paragraph of it here just to reiterate that purpose.
Integrating this belief system into my emotional relationship with life has helped me: to learn to be more Loving to my self and others; to experience life as a journey of growth even when it feels like punishment; to relax, let go of fear, and enJoy life for more moments of the day than I ever believed possible. This belief paradigm is my Truth, and it supports the fundamental principle that I have committed my life to teaching and remembering: Love is the Ultimate Truth." - My Spiritual Belief System and the New Millennium
I share this message with you, the reader of this book, in the hopes that it will help you to remember the Truth of who you are, and why you are here. This information is not meant to be absolute or the final word - it is meant as an alternative perspective for you to consider. A Cosmic Perspective that just might help to make life an easier, more enjoyable experience for you.
February 26, 20131 - I have now published this article as an ebook available in
both 