To
Conscious Love
By James Lee Christensen Ph D
This work © 2010 by Dr. Jim Christensen. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used without Dr. Christensen's express, written permission.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 Five Points of Information
Chapter 2 My Begonias
Chapter 3 My Dream
Chapter 4 Relationships and Perception
Chapter 5 Five Realities, First Reality
Chapter 6 Second–Fourth Reality
Chapter 7 Fifth Reality
Chapter 8 Positive Projections
Chapter 9 Negative Projections
Chapter 10 Three Examples
Chapter 11 Conditional-Unconditional Gifts
Chapter 12 Depth Communication
Chapter 13 Three Examples
Chapter 14 On The Beach
Path to Conscious Love is a journey. It is a journey I’ve taken to heal my life. For me it has been and is yet a physical, emotional, spiritual journey. I share with you events of my life that have been emotionally traumatic and powerful for me. Some of the choices reactions and adaptations I made to these events have been healthy and life affirming and some have been destructive and abusive to myself and others.
When I began to heal I was fifty-five years old. The majority of my healing has been around events that occurred in my childhood and young adult life. While they occurred early in my life it was in my fifty fifth year I found the courage to begin to heal.
Much of my journey has been in the presence of compassionate, gentle, caring, supportive persons who have also embraced and embarked on their own journey of healing, love and discovery. I have come to believe it is in this sharing with others we each may find insight, emotional healing, love, peace and spiritual growth.
To begin, I welcome you.
Welcome. Welcome to a journey of healing and love, a journey of vision and feeling. At this beginning I acknowledge this journey is my journey however let this journey be your journey. Where it fits let "I" and "me" be you the one hearing, the one reading these words.
This is I. This is my journey. It is mine alone. There is no one but me who can walk this path, follow this trail, or take my journey. No matter how much others may love me or hate me or are indifferent to me or want to force me to do this, they do not have the power to make me take this healing journey. I alone have this power. There is only one and it is I. I alone have the power to choose to make this journey.
I acknowledge this journey will present to me challenging and gentle opportunities to increase my awareness of others and myself.
There are five points of information I need to make this journey successfully.
The first point is that much of what follows is expressed in first person. It is the language of I and me. "I" is a bridge. This bridge will become more evident to me as I walk this path. I will find it is in re-experiencing and gaining more information about some of the powerful events of my life I have the opportunity to discover my own unknown, hidden, entrance and passageway to emotional intimacy, empathic communication and conscious love. In re-examining and feeling my way through these important powerful events that have impacted my life I will be able to heal and grow and discover my own inner strength to offer and accept love.
The second point of information I need is about my answer to the following question and invitation.
The question: "Am I willing to recall and feel again the happy, sad and painful events of my youth and childhood, to acknowledge and accept the feelings I experienced then and be open to acknowledge and accept the thoughts and feelings I have about these events now?"
The invitation is: "To be open, to see a higher clearer view of what happened to me then and now be willing to learn how to express my feelings about these events in ways that are healthy and life affirming to myself and others?"
I will ponder and think about this question this invitation. I acknowledge that if I answer, "Yes" to both the question and the invitation, what follows has the power to change my life in positive ways forever.
The third point of information I need is a map of the trail. My map comes from my desire, hope, belief and faith that I can heal, that I can find within myself the power to love and the courage to surrender to being loved.
This map is also offered to me by many good people, both men and women, who I will meet and who will at times be present with me as I walk on my healing path. They will come to me on my journey. They will give me hours and days of the gentle gift of their precious presence, guidance and love. At times they will take me by the hand and walk with me on their own healing path. And sometimes when I get stuck they will suggest to me where I might go, what I might do.
Finding this map is an important step in my healing. I acknowledge a map is just a map, it is not the journey. My journey is about healing my emotional wounds. I now commit to do what I need to do to heal.
Now I look at the map. I see the path. It is at high altitude. It is an exciting, very challenging, sometimes steep, yet safe and very rarely traveled path. The first part of the path is for me to carefully, even fearfully, courageously, choose to walk the path. It is a courageous energy consuming, some-times exhausting, some-times frightening, some-times tearful experience for me to make this journey. It is clear to me this is not an easy journey. I am worth it. My journey is worth my time and energy. I choose to do this, to now tell myself as best I know, the truth about myself. I now realize this may be the reason this path is so rarely traveled.
Silently and quietly to myself I acknowledge to walk this path is for me to heal my life. Now I choose to take the time. I commit and focus my energy to heal my life.
The fourth point of information I need to successfully make this journey is about some things I will see along the trail. The trail I take is a path of my feelings, emotions and thoughts. I will see many flowers along the way. These flowers are my feelings, emotions and thoughts. It is by focusing on them I begin to learn how to heal and grow. What follows will teach me how to experience, examine, feel, cherish, honor and heal by carefully exploring and sensing the teaching, revealing, essence, of these beautiful flowers.
On the way I will see encounter and experience my flowers of gentleness, sensitivity, vision, awareness, tenderness, my perception, empathy, beauty, peace, serenity and compassion and wild flowers, reds and yellows, pinks and blues, some with thorns of anger, pain, regret, abuse, remorse, lies, delusion, sadness and tears.
The fifth and last point of information I need to succeed in making my journey focuses on a process of actions I make as I travel along my path. My journey involves three actions. Each action represents an additional and new part of my journey.
The actions are: First, I focus on an early childhood, or youthful experience. This is an experience that still bothers me. I give myself permission to feel what I felt then and feel now.
Second, in doing this I give myself permission to acknowledge and allow my emotions, my feelings to be present and rise within me. I acknowledge managing my feelings and emotions, even my deepest, most profound feelings and emotions, is solely my responsibility.
Third I now do this. I recall a troubling event. I permit it to rise within me. I am completely aware of each and every element and each and every moment of this event. I am aware of my thoughts, feelings and emotions.
I may speak them out loud. I may record them. I may write them down. I find ways to express them outwardly. I express them outwardly rather than repress them inwardly. I find ways to do this that are life affirming and healthy to myself and others. I accept doing this may bring back memories of events I have forgotten. These events I may also work through with the same three-step process.
In summary the five points of information I need to make my journey successfully are; first I use the language of "I" and "me"; second I am able to answer "yes" to the question and invitation; third I find and accept my high altitude, rarely traveled, trail-map; fourth I accept the beautiful flowers of my inner thoughts, emotions and feelings and am open to the support and love of mentors I meet; and fifth each time I re-experience an important event of my life I will be open to see a higher clearer view of my feelings, emotions and thoughts, then and now. I will find healthy life affirming ways to express my emotions, feelings and thoughts, outwardly.
I now have the five guiding points I need to make my journey. I am prepared to begin. I pray. I ask for counsel, inspiration, guidance, support, vision, health, safety, the courage to change, to heal, that I might find deep within myself the gifts, Father, that thou hast given me - gentle strength, dedication and the power to forgive and to love. Father, may thy spirit guide me.
I begin the journey. I become aware my first step is an Awakening. Even here at the beginning, I begin to awaken to conscious love. This awakening for me is in my contemplating that the greatest gift of love I can give to those I love is to heal my life. In my healing I will find emotional depths in me hitherto unknown to me, where I am able to offer deeper, more profound, gentle, sensitive, intimate love to you and to myself. This love I have dreamed of but never believed existed.
As I begin to walk my path, I see mountain meadows before me with a gentle flowing stream. There are patches of beautiful yellow flowers I have not seen before in the meadows. After walking for some time and wanting to rest I set down in the midst of these flowers.
An old man appears on my trail. I say, "Hi" to him and he says "Hi" back to me. He sits down in this same patch of beautiful yellow flowers. I sense compassion in his gaze. I ask him, "Who are you?" He answers simple, "I am you." Surprisingly, I feel safe and comforted by his response. I say, "Please tell me more."
He says." I anticipated and prepared myself for your coming." He then shares with me first, an explanation and then an event that occurred in his childhood. He continues, "In what I am about to tell you, I share my feelings and healing experiences with you. They are experiences that have happened and are happening to me. Here are scenes that are sensitive, deep, emotionally intimate and moving for me. Are you open to hear this Jim?" Feeling amazed at his candor, I softly respond "Yes".
He begins. "This is about My Begonias. My Father died when I was five years old. Many times when I was five I went to the old sawmill. It was up the canyon about two miles. Donny was my same age. There were huge piles of sawdust and planer shavings at the mill. Donny's father and his father's brother owned and operated the old sawmill. Donny and I spent much of this summer building caves in the shaving piles, our own secret little hideouts. We were the best of friends. We laughed and played. He showed me how to make chewing gum out of pitch from a certain pine tree. I knew our friendship would last forever.
The following year we went to first grade. There were only four boys, counting myself, and one girl. Somehow, Donny became better friends with the other boys and I became the object of their derision. I spent many days feeling alone. I felt like I didn't fit in. I didn't know I was taller than the rest, till I saw a photograph of the five of us. I didn't recognize the one tall kid in the picture. I asked someone who it was and I was shocked when they said it was I.
One day when I started walking home the three grabbed me around the neck in a fighting way and tried to pull and wrestle me to the ground. They got me partly to the ground. One of them said, "There." They went back to the school. Weeping, I got up and walked home on the old dirt road. It was clear to me, I was alone. I felt so alone. I felt so much pain. I felt like I wanted to disappear. I realize years later that I made a decision then that I would never let myself open up and be so exposed, so vulnerable, so unprotected to that much pain, ever again. In my innocence I felt like I had invited Donny into the center of my soul. I had opened myself up. I decided I would close out anything that would hurt me this much. I built a wall around me to keep out the hurt. I came to describe my deepest tender inner feelings as flowers.
I made a vow to myself I would protect and never let anyone hurt me this much again. I called them my Begonias. I looked at them and realized I had permitted them to be trampled on and broken by Donny. I picked up and threw away the dead parts of my Begonias and propped up the broken branches as best I could. I built a granite crypt around them, around me, with a huge two foot thick granite door. I could only open it with my greatest effort. I only opened it when I knew it was safe and there was no one around. I made a small slit in the top of this crypt for sunlight to come in and give light to these crumpled flowers, to my most tender feelings.
Like concentric circles in an archery target, I planted rings of flowers around my granite crypt as sensory indicators. They would be protectors to let me know when and if someone was trying to get into the center of my soul, my granite crypt and might intentionally or unintentionally step on, or in some way move, to injure my fragile, disfigured soul. I knew these flowers would never be normal again.
The best I could do was to guard them and make sure no one had access to them again. I planted tulips in the ring closest to my granite crypt. They only flower once a year. I can store the bulbs in the winter and protect them. They represent that part of me that is still very tender however a place where I could consider letting in a most trusted and safe person if I found such a person.
I planted roses in the next outer ring. Roses can stay out all winter and I can cover, fertilize and prune them and they will survive. This is a part of me were I felt I may be able to let my wife and my closest friends see and be aware of. In the next ring out I planted wild blue lupine. They are perennials. They pretty well survive on their own with a little bit of water. Here I felt I might let more of my friends enter and see this part of me but certainly not a casual observer or a member of my family of origin or a counselor or therapist. Reflecting, I realized I had never let anyone close enough to me to be in my wild blue lupines. In the outer most ring I planted dandelions. They are the hardiest flowering plants I could find and they grow up again when they are tromped on, taken for granted and abused. They survive even when their tops are cut off below the ground.
This is the part of me I let most people see, counselors and therapists, my family of origin, causal acquaintances and people out in the world. I never allowed anyone inside my granite crypt. When I had in my innocence invited Donny and then later felt so much pain, sadness, sorrow, loneliness, fear, grief, remorse, regret, I resolved to never let anyone emotionally this close to me again.
I let most people into my dandelion ring and no further. This is the tough exterior part of me that can recover pretty quickly and because it can reseed itself, it is pretty hardy. I did not let anyone closer. Inside the crypt where I have lived most of my life are my Begonias, my most tender feelings, the most delicate part of me. It is safe, totally isolated, alone, solitary, protected, cut off from everyone. I shared this part of me with no one.
Then one day when I was about 45 years old in a moment of great courage I told a group about Donny, my Begonias and my granite crypt. I explained how I felt so safe, yet imprisoned, isolated, yet lonely, secure but also lost.
Some days later a gentle compassionate person from this group, a woman, came to me and explained she also had a place in her soul quite like my granite crypt, my begonias and my loneliness.
She shared with me some of the deep, never before shared, secrets of her own soul. I was deeply impressed even disarmed, by her courage. We became friends. I felt safe in her presence. I felt a bond forming between her and me. It was amazingly like the bond I had felt with Donny. It frightened me. I begin to wonder if telling the group about Donny, my begonias and my granite crypt, meant that I had opened myself up again to the intense pain of my childhood.
One day, she asked if I would give her permission to enter my granite crypt. She asked me to share with her my most tender, sensitive, fragile feelings. Suddenly, I felt fear. I had feelings of being exposed and vulnerable. I thought of trying to make up some excuse, like, "Not right now maybe later." The thoughts that went through my mind were, "I have protected myself all these years. I am still emotionally disfigured from my choosing to let Donny into the sacred interior of my soul. I have not been able to heal after all these years. My begonias have never been able to grow straight and upright since they were damaged. Do I do this all again? Should I give you permission to open up my old wounds all over again? What guarantee do I have that I won't just be wounded one more time?"
She was silent for a while. Then she said, "I'll be careful I will not go anywhere unless you give me permission." I said, "Yes but what if unintentionally you step on, or sit on, or brush up against, or break these tender flowers I have been guarding for so long?" She thought for a while and then gently suggested, "Jim could you put them in flower pots, so you could move them and make sure no one, even I, hurts you so again?"
I was blown away with her suggestion. My first thought was, "Well don't you think I would have thought of that, if it were possible?" Then much to my astonishment I realized I had never thought of that. Wow! What an astounding idea. Is it possible I could actually take care of, manage and protect these most tender, most sensitive, most delicate, feelings of mine in my relationship with others. Wow! What a mind blowing experience. I said, "Let me think and feel my way through this Okay." She smiled and said, "Okay".
I thought about this for days. Then I carefully dug up my begonias in my granite crypt and put them in flowerpots. I put them in exactly the locations where they had been growing for years. This great teacher came back and asked again if today, I would allow her into my granite crypt. I said. "Okay please be careful. I will tell you where to step and where to sit. Let me take you by the hand. Okay, now, here come through my dandelion ring and now through these, my beautiful blue lupines. Here are my gorgeous roses. Here are my multi-colored tulips which only my eyes have ever seen before. This is my great granite door, will you help me open it?" And she did.
We went inside. We left the door slightly ajar for light. I showed her where to sit just across from me. I told her about my sad times and good times, the great yearning I have to love and be loved, to cry, to create, to fly, to understand. I shared with her my burning desire to ask her questions about herself, to discover and explore emotional intimacy. I told her my dreams, the good ones and the bad ones, the scary ones and the sexy ones, my hope that Father is, that we are not alone, that life has meaning, that I am scared. I cried in her presence. She accepted my tears. I bore my soul and she listened.
She invited me to enter her soul and took my by the hand to the center of her being. She told me the truths of her life. I became immersed in the elegance, beauty and gentleness of her honesty, of her soul, of her being.
Days later she suggested to me that I might push on the side of the walls of my granite crypt for she sensed that I had many more, even fields of many kinds of flowers I had just been unable to see. She suggested my capacity to love, vastly exceeded my skills to love. She also suggested that my ability to take care of myself in loving ways was greater than I was aware and that my growth in both these places was limitless. I sensed she had felt and discovered these very things in her own life.
So I began pushing on the great blocks in my granite crypt. I pushed on one and it did not move. I kept pushing on different ones and they did not move. Then on one in the center of the wall of my granite crypt I pushed and it opened up like a door and I saw fields and varieties of my flowers I had never seen or known before. They were not crumpled or damaged. They were healthy alive too numerous to count and beautiful. I can see my capacity to love does exceed my skill to love. Like the many variety of flowers that thrive in my soul, my skills to love are now slowly increasing, growing and flourishing.
With these discoveries, this teacher, this union, I experience more intimacy, compassion and love now than I have ever known before. The power of these experiences rest with me today. I will never go back to my granite crypt alone. There are safe gentle people. I listen to them. They touch me. They teach me. They share their souls, with me. This I do. I can take care of myself better. I can move the flowerpots of my soul. I share the variety of flowers of my soul today more freely. These events have had a continuous unfolding healing effect in my life."
Then this great old gentle man pauses, extends his hand and touches me on my arm. I feel overwhelmed by his compassion and what he as told me. I realize this is my own history, events of my life, my experiences, my feelings. We are in silence for some long moments. He remains quiet.
After a time I sense he has some more important information for me. I ask him if he would help me recall and then explain to me more about my feelings and how I might understand, respond to, protect and manage them. He smiles, looks at me with this gentle gaze of compassion and says, "Yes, Jim, feelings are emotions. Emotions are energy in motion. My emotion, is energy, in motion, in me. This energy, will go somewhere, and it will have effects. It will have consequences. Jim though it may take time for me to see it, this energy, has powerful, identifiable, consequences in me. I can hold this energy in. I can express it outwardly.
And Jim the word express is a word that has two parts. "Ex" means out and "press" here, means to push. So here express means to push out. When I express my feelings I push them out so they become outwardly visible, heard and identifiable to me and others who may be present. Thus I can express my thoughts and feelings outwardly where I see hear and can identify them. I have found a major part of my healing is to acknowledge and express my feelings outwardly Jim and to do this in life affirming, healthy ways.
Choosing, over an extend period of time, to hold in or repress or contain or implode this much energy in motion in me has negative consequences for me. The pressure cooker consequence of imploding, repressing or containing this much energy inwardly for extended periods of time, while I may not be consciously aware of it, results in physical and emotional illness in me. When the pressure cooker consequence of repressed emotions implodes inwardly one of many likely manifestations is depression.
And Jim expressed outwardly it may appear as uncontrollable explosive anger and rage for me. Repressed emotions may becomes manifest in me as an addiction or I may have serious emotional and physical ailments. I may feel compelled to do things and not understand why. I may have thoughts of killing myself.
Jim the opposite of repressed emotions is expressed emotions. The distinction between the two may seem unimportant yet a critical component in emotional healing involves feeling my emotions managing them and learning to express them outwardly in healthy life affirming ways
Jim, the path of healing is easy to describe yet very challenging to follow. Emotional healing commences when I give myself permission to focus in on important, usually disturbing, events of my life. I allow myself to feel what I felt then and feel now. I acknowledge and accept my feelings, emotions and thoughts. Expressing these outwardly in ways that are healthy and life affirming to myself and to others, is the challenge. This is a challenge at which we are very capable of succeeding."
Then this old man slowly stands, offers me a lifting hand. I stand and suddenly have feelings again this gently mentor has been sent to me that I might heal. I thank him. He smiles touches me on the arm again and says, "Go gently great one." I say, "Thank you. Thank you so much." He nods his head and slowly walks off down the trail.
Feeling like I would like to digest as much of this information as I can I return to my resting place in this beautiful patch of yellow flowers. Of the things he has told me the part of giving myself permission to feel what I really feel seems to be the beginning.
I decide to do this about a troubling dream that I have had. I give myself permission to acknowledge and feel my deepest core feelings about it. These feelings are about some things in this dream I have not wanted to think about or feel my way through. I choose now to feel what I really feel about this. I recall the dream. I sense my feelings about it. I let my feelings rise within me so I become fully aware of this dream, my feelings and my thoughts about my feelings then and now.
My Dream...
It's the spring of 1993. I'm sleeping in the car barn apartment and at 4:00 o'clock in the morning I start to have a dream. The dream is about my walking down a hill through dry weeds. It's fall. Little seed parachutes fly away off the tops of plants as I go down through the weeds. I see below me a long building that looks a little like a chicken coop. It's made out of cinder block. It's has a tin roof on it and it's has a couple of windows on the east side of it to let in light. It looks like it's about 30 feet wide and about 60 or 70 feel long. I am above it and I'm walking on a steep embankment down to the building. The building is on flat ground and the ground continues to fall away from the building on its far side. I get down to the building and approach the front door. It looks like it’s pretty well abandoned. Nobody has been around here for sometime. I open the wooden door on the south end of the building and look inside. There are two rows of back-to-back pens that look like rabbit pens to me. There is an isle down the middle and an isle down the east and west side of the building. These metal net wire pens are setting up on three feet high wooden legs. Excluding the isles, they extend the full length of the building. There are cross walks at both the south end and north end of the building.
I am attracted for some reason to the row of pens on my right, the east side of the building. These metal wire pens are back to back so the door on the east row of pens opens toward the windows. It looks like there are maybe 15 pens back to back down each row for a total of 60 pens in the building. I start walking down the isle between the cinder block wall and the row on the east side of the building. All the pens appear to be empty. The doors of almost all of them are ajar or open. I get about half way down the building and see that there is something hanging in the second to last pen. As I get closer to it, it looks like the dried out dead skin of an animal that was wired by its wrists and is hanging by these wires from the top of the cage. Its shape looks a little bit like a chimpanzee hanging by its wrists.
As I get closer, it still looks like it is a chimpanzee or something that had just been strung up by its wrists and died there. I open the door to the cage and look inside and much to my surprise inside this dried out skin carcass there are two eyes looking out at me and I realize it is a baby hanging there.
Oh, my Father, no not a baby. Who could have done this? Who would do this terrible thing to a child? Who would do this to this child? And I feel a lot of anger as I imagine some scientist in a white coat doing some scientific experiment. I feel like I want to hunt down the person or persons that did this to this child and somehow make them see the horrible thing they have done. I want them to see and feel the horrible consequence of this inhumane experiment.
Then though the child inside this dried out carcass cannot speak I get a clear message through the hollowed eyes of this tiny infant. The message is, "Does this mean I can have some water and a poof pillow I can reach to rub my toes on?" I feel a lot of anger about this whole thing and I mentally and emotionally ask this baby, "Who could have done this to you?" and I get a clear message back, "You did." "You did Jim."
And my response is "Oh Father no. I didn't do this." This child inside this dried out carcass said, "Yes you did."
Then I realized when I was a child, for many people around me and it seemed most people I was too loud, to energetic, to discovery oriented, wanting to know everything, asking questions, just really too much for them. And the message I got from them repeatedly was "You have really got to contain yourself here. If you don't we will leave you."
So I took this little child, me, and I took me to this building and put me in this cage. I told him I would come back regularly and visit him and bring him food and water and he would be ok. I knew it was my responsibility to keep him alive. I realized I knew that it had been so long since I had come back to visit him and bring him food and water that I was sure by now he would be dead. I also realized that when I put him in the cage, he could still move around and grab the sides of the cage and rattle the cage and make a lot of noise and people were still bothered by my questions and my energy and my excitement and my sadness and my tears and my crying and my whole energy and they said "You've got to contain this child or we will leave you. We will leave you here." So I went back to the cage and I tied him up to the top of the cage with wire and hung him by his wrists so his feet couldn't touch the floor and he couldn't rattle the cage.
I brought him a poof pillow so he could brush it with his feet but make no noise. The pillow had long since disintegrated. And for years I went back and fed him food and gave him a drink to keep him alive. But I realize now, it had been a long time since I had been back here and I felt sure he had died.
I reached in the cage undid the wires and pulled this dry hard carcass out of the cage. I looked inside the carcass and realized that the baby was still barely alive. I reached in the carcass and lifted the baby out and said to him: "What do I need to do to make amends here?" And his message very clear to me was: "I don't trust you." And I pleaded and cried with him and said: "Give me another chance." And he said, "I will, you have got to listen to me." And I said: "I will listen." And he said: "You are so ill that it is going to take a long time." And I said to him: "I know, I am so sorry I did this to you. I will take the time and I will listen." And he said: "Give me a drink."
I found fresh water and gave him a drink and he said: "Hold me close." And I did and I carried him out of the building and I carry him with me to this day.
The startling thing I have found about him is that he never lies. He tells me the truth about myself no matter how hard it is for me to hear it. And he has helped me heal so much of my life. I have found out he is the feeling part of me. Oh Father help me to keep this little boy, this baby, this me, the child in me alive and safe. Help me to listen to him that we might both grow together, is my prayer.
As the dream unfolded I began to wonder about the folks who told me they would leave me if I didn't get this young child contained. I began to realize that if I didn't contain him and they left me I would have no one and I would die. I felt really angry about this having to contain and incarcerate me in order to be with them. I felt like the choice I had made was incarceration or death.
And the phrase that came to me that describe those who required me to put me in a cage was: "You dirty bastards". And the phrase shocked me. And the dark side for me is I felt if I really fundamentally, unequivocally continued to energize me and I followed them when they attempted to abandon me then in their rage, anger and contempt for me, they would kill me. I thought about it. I realized they were dirty because they had forsaken their own child, their own creativity, their own exploration, their own desire to discover, their own desire to be fully human even divine to love and be loved.
They are dirty bastards. They are now illegitimate children. They had faced the same threat of abandonment and death as I and they had made the same choice to survive as I. I wondered if their inner creative energy and spirit was still alive or was it dead. I felt their dirty concessions placed on me. They had forced on me the contempt they felt for not being able to escape their own imprisonment. I wondered if they were in denial about their own creative, exploring, loud, excited, powerful, deeply feeling, tearful, beautiful selves. I wondered if they had replaced their own authentic child with a false child that they had manufactured in order to fit. I felt like they made the same concessions that I made and we lost contact with our own true being.
I gave in, gave up, hoped and wanted to survive. I know now that I need not feel defective for accepting and entering into unconscionable bargains with people who had power of life and death over me. I acknowledge I did this to survive and choosing to survive was the right choice. Some children died. Some of us died physically. Some of us died emotionally. Some of us died spiritually. I am still alive. I acknowledge the wounds I carry came from generations of families before me. I do not have the power to break this multi-generational illness in them. I have the power to break it in me. I don't have to smile when I cry.
The part that is so hard for me, is my realization that I have been my own dirty bastard by incarcerating, imprisoning, binding, suspending and almost letting die, my own deep inner truths, my own inner self, my own inner me, my love and divinity. And at times I have been this dirty bastard to my children, to my wife and to those I love.
Oh Father, the price is too high. I now choose, with your help, this opportunity to become, to become true, to be born again, to reach and express the human and divine part of me. This I now accept, honor, creatively, lovingly internalize, express, search for and explore. And I need you, my companion. I need you to be gentle, firm, truthful and patient. This is my resolve thoughts and feelings to this date about my dream.
And there is a nagging thought with which I have struggled. The struggle has been my wanting to understand the characteristics and quality of a bargain that is unconscionable, an agreement in which conscience seems to be lacking. My sense is, it is a bargain between two persons where the negative consequences of the bargain are not understood by either one. It is where ones conscience does not realistically understand the consequences of the bargain. My sense is, it is about "conscience" "bargain" and "consequences."
I sense it may be something like this: Joe has been lost in the burning desert for four days and nights and is near death. John out riding on his dirt bike sees Joe in the distance. As he approaches him he becomes aware of Joe’s desperate condition. John having two canteens of water decides to make a bargain with Joe. John explains to Joe he will give him water and a ride to safety if Joe will agree to be his servant (slave) for the rest of his life. Joe not seeing any other options, agrees. John gives Joe water and takes him to his home. Joe honors his bargain with John and becomes his slave. However, Joe after some time finds out that some of the things John requires him to do is a flagrant violation of Joe’s conscience. He concludes that being a slave to John is not in John’s or his own best interest and leaves.
He leaves under the belief that John’s demands at the time the bargain was made were unreasonable and inappropriate and not in the best interests of either of them. Thus he concludes his bargain with John was unconscionable.
John finds Joe and tells Joe he owes a life of servitude to him. John explains to Joe that he would be dead without the life saving intervention he gave to Joe. Joe explains to John that slavery is a form of living death and that his bargain with John was unconscionable and for him to honor that bargain would be destructive for both John and himself. Joe refuses to return.
Now I realize it is evening. The sun is just setting on the western horizon, in splendid colors of yellows, oranges, grays and blues. I also am totally exhausted. The power, clarity, relevance and enlightenment, I have experienced today, overwhelms me.
I decide to call this day, my beautiful, yellow flowers, healing day. I take an apple, orange and a can of kipper snacks from my pack, eat them, watch my little camp-fire till it goes out, crawl into my sleeping bag in my tent and fall asleep.
As I am walking on my trail the next day and early in the morning I realize it is okay for me to write down my experience, my thoughts and feelings. I can keep my writings in a safe place. I can read my notes later. If I need to, I can change any part of what I have written and make it fit more closely what I experienced then and what I experience now. This is externalizing my thoughts and feelings and expressing them outwardly in a healthy life affirming way.
I acknowledge this is part of my healing. It is permission I give myself to re-experience troubling events in my life. In my head, in my heart, I can recall these experiences. I can re-talk, rewrite and write a new script of each event. I can take the time to recreate and create a new expression of them. I can reconcile, complete, confront, learn from and come to peace, with these events. I can find a resting place that is healthy, beautiful, peaceful and life affirming for me.
I realize in some ways it is as if I am a recovering alcoholic. I dare and choose to be sober about my life, to feel and tell myself the truth about myself, to separate out the lies and the distortions, to find the truth of who I am, who I am capable of being and becoming. It is here the substance and power of conscious love slowly emerges and becomes evident to me. Here a door opens inside me and offers me the courage, the discipline to begin to heal my own life. This is the beginning for me of the gentle healing balm of conscious love.
In the broadest sense my journey is to find, express and reside in an ever increasing, life enriching environment. I acknowledge this environment will bring tears, even anger and sadness, yet understanding, peace, joy, creativity, excitement, delightful caring, anticipation and acceptance to my soul.
I see it is a consequence of relationships I have grown to be who I am. It is a consequence of these relationships and my decisions in regard to them I need to heal. It is clear to me I need more information about my relationship with others and with myself. I am troubled and wonder what I can do. I become aware that as I have been walking I have come into a forest of old growth pines. They are huge pines, tall and stately, soaring into the sky. I am impressed. There are numerous small delicate blue flowers covering the forest floor. As I am walking along my trail I see a person up ahead sitting on a log. I approach and I see it is a woman. She is surrounded by a patch of these small delicate blue flowers. I walk up to her.
She says: "Hi." I say: "Hi."
We strike up a conversation. I have the feeling she also has been sent to me to give me some important information. She looks into my eyes and says: "I've been waiting for you. I have some information for you that I believe will help you."
I respond: "Oh, thank you. Thank you for being here. I need to know a lot more about my relationship with others, my relationship with myself and now, my relationship with you. Can you help me?" She answers: "Yes Jim, This is the reason I have come to be with you. Are you ready, willing and open to hear and ponder what I am about to tell you?" I answer: "Yes I'm ready."
She begins with: "Okay. Some of the oldest historic records we have Jim help us to define and understand human relationships. In the Bible in Genesis four relationships are identified: ones relationship with Father, our relationship with another person, the relationship with ones self and the relationship with the earth and world. The theme of the Garden of Eden marks a dramatic and eternal shift in each of these four relationships.
In tempting Eve the serpent tells her a half-truth and half lie. He encourages her to break the bonds of innocence and ignorance by partaking of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. He tells her: "Ye shall not surely die:" "ye shall be as Fathers, knowing good and evil" GENESIS 3:4-5. The half-truth of the message is we do have the right to choose between good and evil. The half lie is we will die.
Next, Paul in the following statement to the Corinthians identifies profound implications in relationships in a very revealing way. He says: "For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face. Now I know in part; but then shall I know even also as I am known." 1 CORINTHIANS 13:12
He is pointing out when limited only to my view of myself, looking out only through my eyes, "we, I, see through a glass darkly..." " know(ing) in part". But he adds I have the potential to see more clearly and completely than in part and through a glass darkly. I can see myself clearly and completely when I see myself face to face and know myself even also as I am known by others. He is speaking of me knowing myself as if standing face to face to myself and knowing myself as I am known by Father, you, others and world " then shall I know (myself) even also as I am known." This is coming to know myself from the point of view of you, others, world and Father.
Jim, the important point here is, a portion of this coming to know myself clearly and completely is me coming to know myself as you another human being know me. Here, I seek the gift of your awareness, your view of me, to begin to know myself as I am known by you, through your eyes, your feelings, your senses.
This knowing as Paul implies is a gift. It is a cognitive, emotional, physical, spiritual meld of me from you. It is a new and fresh encounter of me with myself. It is me seeing myself through your eyes. I come to know myself through you even also as I am known by you. Many authors speak of this yearning, this thirst to know even also as I am known by thee. We yearn to forge and even restore a bond to honesty, communion, accountability, peace, acceptance, truth and love. This yearning, this wholeness is the hope, the dream of human and divine relationships. With Eve we are condemned to neither the stagnation and vulnerability of innocence nor the eternal peril of isolation and ignorance.
Acknowledging risk we have the opportunity to experience life and be in search of and learn: What is "good". What is "evil". What is real. What is true? How can we be whole? What is woman? What is man? What is hate and what is love?"
She says, "Now Jim a pivotal component of relationships is imbedded in something called perception." I ask: "Will you explain perception to me?" She answers: "Yes this is part of the reason I have been sent to you."
I respond: "Thank you, thank you so much. Please explain perception to me."
She explains: "Perception is defined as one becoming aware of something through their senses. We have five senses: the sense of seeing, the sense of hearing, the sense of taste, the sense of touch and the sense of smell. And some suggest we have a sixth sense. This sense I will call a spiritual sense. These senses are my inner body feelings plus my bodies’ experience with things outside me.
Inner body feelings are feelings such as physical, emotional, mental, spiritual pain, sadness, hurt, confusion, frustration, fear, loss, anger, rage, impotence, powerlessness, hopelessness, loneliness, isolation and me not mattering. And my inner body feelings can also be feelings such as hope, joy, faith, wonder, beauty, excitement, sensitivity, awareness, contentment, vision, love, serenity, compassion, peace, solitude, prayer, desire and being open, honoring, accepting and celebrating being. Senses my body experiences as things outside me are such things as light for seeing, sound for hearing, a kitten for touch, a banana for taste and a rose for smell.
Our senses are the wellspring from whence our emotions and feelings arise. Jim information that comes to me through my senses combined with my thoughts and ideas is what makes up my perception. My perception of all things represents my reality. So it is my perception represents the most credible reality I am able to achieve in the present. I am in process, in search of more information about you, the universe and myself. My perception of what is real is dynamic always growing, forever changing and expanding. My perception is what I bring to my relationship with you. Our perceptions are what we bring to our relationships.
To understand my relationships I need to look carefully at my perception and the important role it plays in my life and in my relationships. Now Jim, there is another person who in a few moments will be coming down this trail who has important additional information for you about perception and relationships. The information he will share with you is important precisely because his perception is slightly different than mine. I enjoy his point of view and like to share my own views with his on perception and relationships."
A little puzzled, I respond with: "I am excited and grateful. Thanks for being here and especially thanks for your time and your willingness to contribute to my healing and growth."
The man soon appears. I introduce myself and ask, "Who are you?" he explains, "Jim, I have been sent to you, to be with you, in your healing. I am grateful to be here, to offer my friendship and share with you, my own healing path. Also, I am grateful to be a friend, of the beautiful woman who sits beside you. And Jim, I am you." Again, I am surprised. He is a slender old man with grey hair and compassion in his eyes. I smile. I ask him to explain more to me about perception and relationships. He smiles. She smiles. He begins with, " In my relationship with you :
First, I have my perception of myself.
Second. I have my perception of you.
Third, I believe you have your perception of yourself.
Fourth, I believe you have your perception of me.
These four perceptions, are what I call the Four Realities, in our relationship. I call them Realities, because I believe they are what is real, to us. They look like this:
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My socializing agents, projected into me, their reality. It became me. While I now own, and am responsible for, my perception of myself, and my projections, the original birthplace of most of my perception of myself, and my projections, were planted in me. Most of them, were planted in me, by my socializing agents.
For example, in romantic relationships my projections may be something like: "You are my savior". "I will die without you." "You are so beautiful." "I need you." " I've been searching for you all my life, and here you are. You and I, are a perfect match. I know you would never, do anything to hurt me. I love you so."
It is, in the enduring part of my relationships, where my negative projections are most likely to emerge. Negative projections, are my words, actions and gestures, I project onto you, which describe you in false, excessive, exaggerated, degrading, negative ways.
