Relationshipscentral

Sabotage

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy F) — Sun, 04 Oct 2015 19:52:00 +0000

In other words throwing a spanner n the works. You may be familiar with the concept of an internalsaboteur. Have you ever considered that once upon a time you had an externalsaboteur and you may still be attracting them now? There you are sailing along feeling fine and someone says something to you that triggers all your self doubt; it’s usually something that hurts like hell, if you allow yourself to feel it. Suddenly you don’t believe in yourself any more. You know the kind of person. They will be negative, probably bitter and disgruntled with themselves and their own life. They get to you and you don’t know why. Somehow, you can’t shake off that negative feeling you didn’t have before.

This is because you don’t have enough confidence in yourself, because you have been sabotaged early in your life and have learned to sabotage yourself. An external saboteur is not a friend, but they are a gift. They can challenge you to look at your internal saboteur. How do you sabotage yourself? Can you identify your own destructiveness? And how do you deal with your own pain and bitterness? Do you spit it out onto other people in unkind words, judgements, and criticisms? Or do you treat people who are hurting, including yourself, with compassion? There are choices.

However, do you go back again and again for more of this treatment, because you believe you need these people in your life? You were once dependent on the people who originally sabotaged you. Do you need them now? Is it worth the price you have to pay in feeling BAD because they feel bad about themselves. I don’t think so. It is always useful to examine the reality of your current dependencies. And guilt. Do you feel guilty in letting these people down because they are also kind to you. Very often people who hurt you are also kind to you. This is called a double bind. It is also crazy making. You are having to deal with what appears to be two sets of values. Beware. Examine your own motives. And examine theirs. Very often people who are kind to you and then insult you are also dependent on you. That does not mean you have to be a receptacle for their unhappiness.

Loneliness

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy F) — Sun, 04 Oct 2015 18:45:00 +0000

We are naturally social beings. You do need interaction with other people, not just to alleviate loneliness, but to nourish and learn from each other; for inspiration, mutual exchange and even healing.

There are all sorts of remedies for loneliness: the fellowship and community that comes with some religions, social networking, keeping a pet. But, you can feel lonely within these situations, even within a relationship, marriage, or family. Maybe you felt lonely within your original family, alienated from them, and continue to feel alienated in all social situations, and in the world you live in. You feel you have nothing in common with anybody and may feel trapped within yourself. It follows that you are not happy in your own company.

This kind of loneliness is a result of being alienated from yourself. When you are happy with who you are, you are happy in your own company. You can spend long periods of time in solitude and enjoy it. This is not the same as isolation. You do not feel abandoned; and you have the choice to spend time with other people.

You may have been alienated from your self in childhood, by not being validated, being told there was something wrong with you, all undermining your confidence in your self. When you have confidence in your self, in who you are, you will not feel lonely. You will like yourself and enjoy your own company. Your experience of who you are may have been undermined by negativity, negating you. This was not your fault. It may have been just the negativity of others around you, using you to vent their unhappiness in their own lives, or to justify their feelings of inadequacy. But you believed there was something wrong with you because they said so. In order to heal this alienation you feel, it is important that you validate your self now.

Remember, life is not a competition. You are no better or worse than anyone else. You are just who you are and you can validate that now. You can reunite yourself with the person who is most precious to you and who is your best companion – you. You are only your worst enemy when you feed yourself the negativity that you were fed on, the lies about yourself. You need to know that people who negate you are feeling terribly negative about themselves. They hurt you because they are hurting. This does not mean there is anything wrong with YOU.

Change

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy F) — Sat, 03 Oct 2015 20:18:00 +0000

Change is inevitable; a fact of life. Change enables you to change, transform, and grow. It happens every day. It brings new life. It is always for the better. In itself, change is not painful. It is a natural transition. It is resistance to change, holding on that causes pain, physical and emotional. It can damage your health. Let go of the myth that change is a bad thing, or that it means you are unstable. Allowing change means you are flexible. Resisting change will make you rigid and therefore unstable.

Allowing change means going with the flow, following your path, even though you don’t seem to have chosen that path. It means being still, waiting, and listening to yourself until you do find your way. It also means using your intuition. You have an inner voice. You may not be listening to it, you may be silencing it because it makes inconvenient suggestions, gives you unacceptable instructions. If you do listen, you may have to change something. This means letting go of what has become redundant in your life, coping mechanisms, lifestyle, habits, even addictions. It means letting go of the props you think you need to function; props that support your false pride because you do not have a clear sense of self; props to support a life that is barren, empty, and meaningless and does not support or serve the purpose of who you really are.

Remember, without a sense of self and a life of your own, you will feel the pain of the emptiness in your life. You use props to kill this pain and fill up this emptiness, including other people. You try to get your sense of self from them and live your life through them. So change can only be a good thing because it helps you to see who you are and brings you new life all the time, life that is more suitable to your real needs, not the needs of your false pride, your façade that covers up your feelings of inadequacy.

If you have a sense of loss, it will be the loss of something that wasn’t working for you anyway. Not necessarily a loss of your life, but the way you live that life. If you allow change, each day will be a fresh awakening, a birth of a new life, even though the day may feel empty, a clean slate, when you start it. This need not be something to fear. Your day will become filled with what is right for you. This takes some trust, especially trusting yourself, to find what is right for you. It also takes letting go of illusions, hopes, fears, thinking ahead rather than staying in the present moment. Only when you pay attention to the present moment can change happen because, instead of getting in your own way, you allow it to happen; you allow the day to happen, as it should be. Not only does change bring new life, it also renews life. It may destroy old life, what is no longer needed or functional, what no longer serves your life’s purpose, what needs to drop away. What also drops away is what you thought you needed to support yourself and your life, and this is a relief. It is an extra burden you have been carrying. This does not leave your life empty. It leaves it pregnant with, possibility, potential, and purpose. Therefore, life is more fulfilling.

Allowing change is a practice that has to be practised every day until you are used to it and it becomes a part of your life. It is a process of surrender to what is. There is no place here for false pride. It is a practice of humility. You may have learned to resist change, a practice that you would have to unlearn, just as you learned it for many years of your life.

Acceptance (II)

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy F) — Sun, 20 Sep 2015 18:05:00 +0000

Acceptance means feeling the pain instead of raging against it. It means letting go of an attempt at controlling something you have no control over. Accepting something you are raging against may lead you to finding ways to make changes to your painful situation. But it may also lead you to compassion. Compassion in relationship means you start to feel for, or rather with, the other person. You see their point of view; you develop empathy. This may not change the situation, although it might, but it may well make it less painful, because you are accepting it as it is. You still have the possibility of making changes. You have more choices because you no longer feel trapped, impotent, and therefore unable to change anything.

Acceptance brings you peace in yourself. It is also a way of accepting yourself and how you feel. You are accepting your truth. You are no longer bearing the strain of denial. That, in itself, is a relief. You will have more peace in your relationships if you have peace in yourself. You may not find the relationship suitable, but it will no longer be a battle; and there’s every possibility you may find a way to make it WORK.

Acceptance also means accepting the other person as they are; not expecting them to change. One sign of a dependent relationship is that you want the other person to change. Your love for them is conditional. When you accept the other person for who they are, warts and all, you can feel compassion, which is love. Then you can choose whether you will accept their behaviour, or not. It is their choice to change their behaviour, or not. You cannot change it for them. Therefore, you have to accept their decision and make your own choices.

Acceptance

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy F) — Fri, 18 Sep 2015 09:10:00 +0000

After ambivalence, comes acceptance. More about that later. But, for now:

God, give me grace to accept with serenity

the things that cannot be changed,

Courage to change the things

which should be changed,

and the Wisdom to distinguish

the one from the other.

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)

Fairness and Justice – Developing Ambivalence

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy F) — Fri, 18 Sep 2015 09:00:00 +0000

Is there a kind of ambivalence that comes at adolescence? Of course there is.

Adolescence is a no-man’s-land between childhood and adulthood. There is the need to separate and the desire to cling, to assert independence and autonomy, while remaining dependent. There is a struggle between perceived freedom and the perceived burden of responsibility. In effect, it is the taking up of responsibility that gives you freedom, because you have more choices. But, for an adolescent, there is also the fear of moving away from the known, the familiar, the family and, at the same time, the exhilaration and excitement of stepping out into the new and the unknown. Life is an adventure, albeit beset with fears to face and hurdles to overcome.

But there is something else that changes at adolescence. It is a time of learning that not all is perfect in the adult world. It may be a time of letting go of some of the ideals of childhood. This is what I mean by developing ambivalence.

You may expect to be treated with fairness and justice and find that not all is fair or just in the world you live in. You may have to accept imperfection, and struggle with that to learn who you are and where you stand and how to relate with less than perfect others. Developing ambivalence means learning to live with the good and the bad in life and learning how to make the most of them, and yourself.

Beware, you may be seeking to claim justice for old wrongs and fairness for times when you felt you were treated unfairly. Beware, because you could end up seeking vengeance and retaliating. (See my earlier posts).

Revenge and Retaliation

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy F) — Thu, 17 Sep 2015 20:02:00 +0000

In the competitive relationship you are dependent on the other person for revenge. You are seeking revenge for what has been done to you, not just by them, but they get all the blame for it. They are a very convenient hook, because they want revenge too. As in any dependent relationship, you are using one another. In this case, you are using one another to seek revenge. So you retaliate for every slight. You compete to see who can retaliate more, wreak the worst revenge. Battle ensues. Yes, this is the same mechanism as war.

Revenge and retaliation are the products of fear – of a perceived threat that you feed with your own fear, your own revenge, and retaliation. This becomes a vicious cycle. Nobody wins because nobody achieves inner peace. They say that revenge is sweet but, like sugar, it is addictive. That means it doesn’t satisfy for very long; and you have to repeat it, usually in increasing amounts. It is also dangerous and bad for your health.

In the competitive relationship, you need revenge because your perception is that you can’t let the other person win, or control you. This is a myth. If the other person wins, so do you. You both get peace and autonomy. Proving someone else wrong so that you can feel good or in control doesn’t work. Revenge may taste sweet, for a while, but it makes you feel BAD. It leaves a bitter after taste that lingers. It leaves you feeling ultimately trapped.

Retaliation is similar to revenge. You have to win. You have to be top dog. You want your share of the action. Both revenge and retaliation are ways of lashing out. That is a primal rage, and therefore fear, reaction to pain. But it’s also an avoidance. You have a choice. Retaliation and revenge bring you short-term gain and eventually more, long-term pain. Feeling the pain instead of lashing out allows you to assess your situation and make attempts to heal, yourself, the relationship, and eventually bring peace and freedom into your life again. It allows you to face the reality of what is happening to you and therefore make choices and changes. This is short-term pain that leads to long-term gain.

Revenge and retaliation are ways of acting out your pain by raging against it; the pain that you feel when someone hurts, rejects, or tries to control you, or the pain you may have felt in the past that is being triggered in the present. This rage is an attempt at denial. If you do not face this pain, you will be trapped in competitive, revengeful, retaliating, dangerous relating until you do. Revenge and competitiveness are adolescent games.

It is an act of love for yourself to face the real feelings that competitiveness, with all its abuse and rejection, arouses in you. When you love yourself, you will no longer have a need to be competitive. You will have nothing to prove. You will accept yourself as you are and move away from behaviour that destroys your peace of mind and your wellbeing.

Ego – The Myth

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy F) — Wed, 16 Sep 2015 20:05:00 +0000

My next beef is ‘ego’. Don’t tell me, or anyone else, to let go of their ego. You need an ego to function in the world. What you are really referring to is FALSE PRIDE; egotism, if you like, or conceit.

If you have a strong, well-defined, functioning ego, you won’t need false pride. False pride gives you an identity when you don’t have one, a sense of power when you feel powerless. It substitutes for your sense of self when you don’t know who you are. It gives you a false identity and also covers shame.

A functioning ego is aligned with your true identity and your authentic self. It enables you to have a healthy pride in that self because you are not living a lie. You need that ego for your self-esteem.

Letting go of your falseego means letting go of your lies about who you are deep inside. It means dropping façades, roles, and false impressions. It means being genuine. You can only do this when you stop deluding yourself, when you are honest, when you realise that you are carrying a burden. Letting go will be a relief. Letting go of false pride always makes you feel better. As you grow and get to know yourself, aspects of your false pride will become redundant.

We Are One – Separateness and Unity

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy F) — Wed, 16 Sep 2015 20:01:00 +0000

I have a bit of a beef about that statement “We are all one,” so often stated in religious or spiritual beliefs.

Yes, there is a unity you can have with other people. This is called LOVE; not to be confused with dependency, which is a kind of merging and based on perceived need. When you merge with another person, you have no boundaries. You don’t know where you end and they begin. At the same time, you have no conception of your own separateness, your individuality.

Only two individuals can unite. This necessitates first gaining independence, separateness, and autonomy. You cannot relinquish autonomy if you don’t first possess it. Anything else is dangerous, chaotic, and ends up with blaming because, without first having autonomy, neither you nor the other person can deliver unity, which is mature, unconditional love. You need independence and autonomy to be mature.

If you don’t have autonomy, you will get into a competitive relationship from which you can’t separate because you are afraid to. You are still trying to seek revenge on the parents/family who bound you to them because of their need for you, so that you would not leave them. You punish yourself and the other person by trying to score points, to be top dog, to dominate and control them; or you submit to them, asserting your own control through passivity, making them dependent on you. This is not love; it is conflict. There is no unity, even though neither of you can separate. You do not have autonomy, You end up bound together by mutual hatred. You have no inner peace, because you are tormenting yourself. Competition makes you feel BAD. So you cannot love.

It is only through reciprocal relationships that you can unite in a healthy way. However much we are all one, there is no short cut to unity. You need first to leave your past grudges behind you and that means admitting that you have them – and why. Then you can have intimacy, which is knowing the difference between ME and US and being able to move freely from one to the other and back again.

(See Competitive Relationships – 14 April 2010)

Playground (Schoolyard) Mentality

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy F) — Wed, 16 Sep 2015 19:57:00 +0000

Playground mentality is based on the law of the jungle. It assumes you are under threat, that others are out to get you, You function on basic instincts. It is the survival of the fittest, so you use competitive, point-scoring behaviour, based on a need for power. This is particularly strong at adolescence, when you are trying to find your place in your world and separate from your parents and family. Your are seeking power and autonomy.

In your family, you may get good guidance; often you don’t. In any case you have to test yourself out.

Just think of all the things you did to cope in the playground (schoolyard). How did you join in? Get accepted? Or stay out of it? Keep yourself safe? How did you get your sense of autonomy and power? Who did you gang up with? Or did you isolate? What did you hide behind?

And how are you still doing these things today? How is playground mentality, and therefore competitiveness, affecting your life today?

Emancipation

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy F) — Sat, 11 Oct 2014 21:19:00 +0000

Are you an emancipated man or an emancipated woman? You are only emancipated to the extent that you are no longer tied into mental concepts (scripts) because they restrict your freedom and hold you back. And you can't always be aware of these until something evokes them - and then you may not listen. Your freedom is restricted when you blame other people for your own shortcomings and inabilities, when they are not how you want them to be in order to make it convenient for you. Then you have to live with a mental concept, a label of blame you put on them, that restricts your freedom because you are unwilling to take responsibility for the reality of you own life and decisions. The same is true if you are tied into concepts about yourself acquired when you were blamed. These false self-concepts restrict you.

Emancipation means freedom. It means standing up for what you believe in. It means not compromising your self. That also means taking responsibility. Emancipation does not allow for dependency, which traps you. You have to be willing to stand on your own feet. But it does mean interdependence and reciprocity – being willing to work together with others for mutual happiness. And it means accepting the consequences of your actions and decisions, as well as allowing others to take responsibility for theirs.

Emancipation requires plain speaking, telling it how it is – honesty, especially with yourself. Your lies and denials will trap you – no excuses. It means accepting that not everyone will like you. You can't always please others when you're pleasing yourself.

Although freedom is your birthright, it often takes courage to go for it. It also takes knowing how. The first step is being honest with yourself and not makes excuses.

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy F) — Tue, 20 May 2014 19:14:00 +0000

Empathy

Empathy is feeling with.

Sympathy is feeling like.
Empathy connects. Sympathy, albeit well-meaning, separates; it can be patronising.
Empathy is putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, rather than trying to identify with them. It is listening with your heart – not your head; allowing in what the other person is feeling; being there for them, not for you.

It may mean saying nothing, or very little, because it is about being not about doing.

When you empathise, you don’t sacrifice yourself or your own needs; and you still have boundaries. But you no longer attempt to fend off the other person, which uses a lot of your energy and is depleting; and doesn’t make them feel better either. When you empathise, an exchange takes place that is restoring and healing for both of you. You gain more through empathising than you do through defending yourself against uncomfortable, often painful, feelings you believe you cannot tolerate.

You will feel something, but you need to check this out. You are an adult; can you tolerate feelings now that you could not tolerate as a child – even rage and pain? If you do, you will end up feeling far less threatened than you were before – stronger and more grounded for the experience; and closer to the other person. You will feel more love in your life.

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy F) — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 15:37:00 +0000

Happiness

It’s OK to be happy. Many people feel guilty about being happy. Even if people around you are unhappy, which includes miserable and just plain negative, it’s still OK for you to be happy. Our happiness, and theirs, is our/their own responsibility. We are all, essentially, happy souls. If you’re happy, it doesn’t matter if it’s raining and if you’re miserable, the sun won’t necessarily cheer you up. And if you join other people in their misery, guess what, it won’t make them happy – well, at least, not for long. Sure, you can have empathy, but don’t join the misery. Hold onto your happiness because it’s your birthright. You deserve to be happy.

Happiness is your essential nature so don’t veer away from that; it’s easy to get seduced. Don’t look for things to make you happy, It won’t work. You need to be happy in yourself. When you are happy in yourself, that’s what keeps you grounded and feeling safe. And, when you’re not grounded in your own, essential, happy nature, that’s when other people can drag you into their misery and negativity. Watch out! You can cope with whatever comes up when you’re happy and grounded. You will function more fully, healthily and effectively.

You can use those moments of being dragged into negativity to be aware of how you negate yourself, dissipating your own happiness. You can learn from unhappy people just what it is that is lacking in yourself that makes you so unhappy; where you are living a life that is not true to yourself. Let negativity be your teacher, but always aim for happiness. It is not an illusion. It really does exist. And it’s not too much to ask for.

It’s a simple as that.

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy F) — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 02:04:00 +0000

Growth is an Ongoing Process

Life is an ongoing process of blocks we have to negotiate, or not, in order to grow. That never stops. Surmounting the blocks is an opportunity to learn, to grow, and to blossom – spiritually, emotionally and intellectually.

Moving through even affects your body. If you don’t negotiate the blocks, don’t accept the challenge they present, and the opportunity, you don’t grow. You stay stuck, with consequent results, ranging from depression and anxiety to physical ailments. As you get older, it is harder and more taxing on your physical and mental wellbeing to stay in denial.

It is not old age that brings you physical ailments, but your body telling you it’s time to let go of what held you back in the past, probably the far distant past, and to move forward in freedom, at any age. Even the freedom to die without fear when your time comes is worth working for.

Judgement

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy F) — Sun, 06 May 2012 17:18:00 +0000

As I get older, inner peace becomes more important to me than external appearances or possessions. Liking myself is more important than what other people think of me.

But my inner judge doesn’t always let me like or enjoy my, wonderful, self as much as I would like to. Very often my inner judge gets projected onto other people. I imagine them judging me when they’re not. This comes out of my experience of patriarchy; by being judged and controlled by those who had so-called, authority in my impressionable years; those years when I believed what I was told and was forming an identity and opinion of myself. This identity and opinion was formed partly out of other people’s opinions, not my own experience. It was about what other people thought of me. It took a long time to think for myself.

As I was still trying to find out who I was, I took on board their perceptions and made them my own. I was also taught not to question. Little wonder I was confused. I thought I was ‘bad’ and ‘wrong’ – more judgements. These days I have the leisure to question my judgements and to unravel the confusion. I like the person I am, even though it may be different to how I perceive other people to be – another judgement. I rejoice in my uniqueness and get on with enjoying my life. I look for likenesses and shared humanities in other people, not differences. I don’t look for clones but enjoy meeting points instead. I accept differences and enjoy them too; they enrich my life. I no longer need other people to affirm my reality. I do that for myself, even if it is different from the reality of those who might judge me. If I cannot accept myself, who else will?

Patriarchy – You Are Wonderful

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy F) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 19:59:00 +0000

Patriarchy isn’t a word we hear much these days. But many of us grew up with the effects of it. Men and especially fathers were ‘given’ authority that they did not necessarily possess; ‘given’ authority, rather than ‘inner’ authority. Along with ‘authority’ they were given the right to control, bully and abuse – because bullying is abusive.

If you grew up in a patriarchal family and a patriarchal society, you were probably never told how wonderful you are. This is so important, because we are all wonderful. It’s important to know that and to see the wonder in everybody else, each person you know and meet.

If you relate with what is wonderful in yourself and others, your world becomes not only a wonderful place, but also a safer place. When you relate with wonder, you live with wonder, which is fresh and new and ‘awesome’ every day.

If you were put down by so-called authority, controlled and bullied, you will live with fear. You need to remember just how wonderful you are in order to combat this fear and to create a reality that is based on your inner being, your belief in yourself, as well as that of others, which is, indeed, good and wonderful. You will then have a lot more peace in your world and there will be peace in the world at large.

Remember, it is patriarchy that creates wars and always has done. It is the fear it has engendered that makes us frightened today. If we have peace in our selves, if we have that sense of wonder, we will not want to go to war with each other. We will not want to spoil and destroy it – we will not be fighting with ourselves.

Loneliness and Abandonment

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy F) — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 11:57:00 +0000

Loneliness and abandonment are not the same. Abandonment implies helplessness and even annihilation. An abandoned child will eventually die if they are not rescued, so will an adult who is abandoned, perhaps, in a desert or on a deserted island. But a child can ‘cease to be’ if it feels emotionally abandoned, even if its physical needs are met. This child grows up searching for itself, often in others (see Codependency), or holding other people at bay because he/she doesn’t know who they are and fears losing an already weak identity; fears being taken over or overwhelmed by someone else’s.

It’s natural to be lonely if you don’t have enough social interaction. After all, we are social beings. It’s possible to spend long periods in solitude, especially if you have a need to do this. If you are strong enough emotionally, if you have a strong enough sense of self, you can enjoy this experience. But, for most of us in ‘normal’ or ‘general’ circumstances, we do need other people; we need relationships.

Although periods of solitude can be highly creative, and may even be necessary for creativity, loneliness can be debilitating and restrict your creativity. Loneliness isn’t something to be feared, but maybe to be remedied. This is within your power. It is the fear of abandonment, coming from your childhood experience, which makes you feel powerless. This fear can make you cling to unsuitable relationships that restrict your creativity because they drain, or at least, demand your energy. Or you can attempt to control the fear by withdrawing and withholding from relationships. This ultimately makes you lonelier – as does does the compulsive and addictive behaviours you may adopt to kill the pain of legitimate loneliness.

If you can balance the fear you still carry from childhood abandonment with the very genuine need for human interaction in the present, you will be able to let go of your addictive, and destructive, behaviours. The paradox is, if you let go of these behaviours, even though you create a vacuum for a short while, you will love yourself more and therefore attract the relationships you crave – as well as feeling less lonely because you are enjoying your own company. If you forgive your childhood abandonment, you will no longer be raging against it, retaliating with destructive behaviours towards yourself and be able to move out of you adult loneliness into fulfilling relationships.

To an English Friend in Africa by Ben Okri

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy F) — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 20:56:00 +0000

This has such insight:

To an English Friend in Africa

Be grateful for freedom
To see other dreams.
Bless your loneliness as much as you drank
Of your former companionships.
All that you are experiencing now
Will become moods of future joys
So bless it all.
Do not think your ways superior
To another's
Do not venture to judge
But see things with fresh and open eyes
Do not condemn
But praise what you can
And when you can't be silent.

Time is now a gift for you
A gift of freedom
To think and remember and understand
The ever perplexing past
And to re-create yourself anew
In order to transform time.

Live while you are alive.
Learn the ways of silence and wisdom
Learn to act, learn a new speech
Learn to be what you are in the seed of your spirit
Learn to free yourself from all things that have moulded you
And which limit your secret and undiscovered road.

Remember that all things which happen
To you are raw materials
Endlessly fertile

Endlessly yielding of thoughts that could change
Your life and go on doing for ever.

Never forget to pray and be thankful
For all the things good or bad on the rich road;
For everything is changeable
So long as you live while you are alive.

Fear not, but be full of light and love;
Fear not but be alert and receptive;
Fear not but act decisively when you should;
Fear not, but know when to stop;
Fear not for you are loved by me;
Fear not, for death is not the real terror,
But life -magically - is.

Be joyful in your silence
Be strong in your patience
Do not try to wrestle with the universe
But be sometimes like water or air
Sometimes like fire

Live slowly, think slowly, for time is a mystery.
Never forget that love
Requires that you be
The greatest person you are capable of being,
Self-generating and strong and gentle-
Your own hero and star.

Love demands the best in us
To always and in time overcome the worst
And lowest in our souls.
Love the world wisely.

It is love alone that is the greatest weapon
And the deepest and hardest secret.

So fear not, my friend.
The darkness is gentler than you think.
Be grateful for the manifold
Dreams of creation
And the many ways of unnumbered peoples.

Be grateful for life as you live it.
And may a wonderful light
Always guide you on the unfolding road.

March 1991

The Magical Child

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy F) — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 17:49:00 +0000

I had a magical experience on Sunday night. My two companions saw the magic in me. They saw me smile and cheered for me, told me I looked beautiful. My bitter friend rejected me when I tried to share my experience with her, like a grumpy parent rejecting an excited and enthusiastic child. I’m sure that was done to her as a child, as it was to me. The result is to compromise in trying to be accepted and lose your magic in the process. You become what you think you are wanted to be and not who you are.

My image for this is a child presenting a dandelion to their mother as a beautiful flower and being brushed away and told, ‘It’s only a wee-the-bed.’ How easily you can get discouraged by someone else’s jaundiced view, especially if they are someone you want to accept and love you. How easily you lose the magic in your heart. How easily you devalue magical experiences, debase them and turn them into something gross and mundane. How easily you deny the worth of your reality.

But, to meet a fellow traveller, (if you believe you are on a path), and share one insight, or more, for a moment, an hour, or maybe longer – it doesn’t matter how short or how long – is pure magic. This is the stuff that healthy relationship is made of.

When we are honest with one another, when we meet with open hearts to share our truths and receive each other, listen, take each other in, that’s when the magic happens because we are nurturing the magic, the divinity in each other. How many of you can claim you had that nurtured in you as a child? Some children do.

Appropriateness and Cross Gender Fertilisation

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy F) — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 16:55:00 +0000

I met a man on Sunday who opened his heart to me. He was the most real person I have heard for a long time, speaking his truth with passion. I just know my pot/kettle friend would have attacked him. I stood up and cheered for him. I don’t think his truth gets heard very often.

If you’ve not been listened to as children, you often share inappropriately. It’s been said that adult children of dysfunctional families tell their life story to the lady at the supermarket checkout but keep their truth secret from their friends. They haven’t learned appropriateness.

My friend (new friend) on Sunday knew he was safe with me and another mutual friend present. I didn’t necessarily agree with everything he said. But I listened and thought about it – for half the night, actually. He gave me plenty of food for thought. It’s good to hear another point of view, especially a man’s, if you’re a woman, even if it does challenge you. I believe women with women can collude with one another in gender based biases. Maybe men do that too. There’s something refreshing and fertilising about cross gender conversations and revelations, not to mention surprising.

We used to use an exercise in groups called the Fish Bowl. The men would sit in a tight circle and the women would sit close behind them in another circle. The men were given various subjects to discuss, relating to relationships with women. The women were not allowed to comment. Then they changed places for their discussions. At the end there would be sharing. Both genders were surprised and pleased by what they heard.

The Pot, The Kettle And Denial

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy F) — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 16:03:00 +0000

This morning a friend rang, in a hurry as usual. She wanted to go to the cinema. It calms her. I said it wasn’t open and that I’d been trying to ring her, to share something important, insights into a common problem we have that I’d got from another person. She didn’t want to talk about that and I didn’t get a chance to ask about her weekend. She hung up, leaving me feeling breathless. Not long after, I got an email from her attacking me and telling me I talk ninety percent about me, don’t have listening skills and don’t ask questions about her.

My reply: ‘I think this is a case of pot and kettle.’

It’s my own fault. I left myself open. I tried to share something that’s painful to her. Well, it’s a shared problem. It’s painful for me too. Maybe it comes to ladies of a certain age -:) But I was grateful to the man who opened his heart to me on Sunday and shared his insights, however painful and challenging they were for me to listen to and look at – some bits of myself I’d rather not deal with; but I’m willing to. He reminded me about a few things I’d forgotten about relationships. I tend to rise to challenges. My friend didn’t want to. She prefers to blame other people, circumstances, and go to the cinema to escape her pain instead. But that’s after she delivered a dose of it to me by attacking me.

OK, I shared something important with someone I now know it’s not safe to share with. (I’ll write about appropriateness). I won’t be doing that again. For me, if it’s not possible to share with a friend, then there is no friendship. If a friend says, ‘I don’t want to go there,’ I respect that, and friends do at times. But if they attack or blame or accuse me, that’s not on, especially when they’re accusing me of exactly what they’re doing – in this case not listening. And, if you don’t listen to yourself, how can you listen to others. If you don’t admit you’re in pain, avoid it by running away (to the pictures, or the beach, or wherever), you will hurt others.

Pot and kettle: as it happens, she did me a favour. She enabled me to see where I am hurting myself – certainly by giving my power away, and then becoming a victim of someone else’s pain. The only problem is, I won’t be able to discuss this with her now. Her next email said, let’s move on. She was obviously not open for further discussion. But we can’t move on, because it will happen again, and I’m not up for that. That’s the sad part. If you deny your pain, you’re likely to push other people away from you. Your defences will stop them approaching. You deny yourself intimacy. That’s what the man on Sunday taught me.

Community

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy F) — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 16:18:00 +0000

I’m no prophet, but I’ve been saying for years that the only way we’re going to survive things like the recession, global warming, diminishing resources and other unavoidable changes is through sharing resources and facilities by coming together in communities. This means co-operating and caring; looking out for one another, not just for number one. It also means facing the challenges of forming functional relationships.

That’s not so easy. It means learning to get along with one another. It also means finding like-minded people to ‘commune’ with. Not easy if you don’t first know your own mind. You need to be an individual in your own right before you can be ‘part of’ a community. That means moving from dependence to independence so you can interdepend. It also means letting go of your pseudo-independent position, where you appear not to need anybody. We do need each other, and that’s why we need communities.

You need clear personal boundaries before you can safely enter community. And you need your heart open so you can be honest and allow intimacy, when it’s appropriate. In any group of people it won’t necessarily be appropriate to be intimate with everybody. You will need discrimination and discernment in order to choose. The more necessary it becomes for us to build and live in communities, the more we will have to grow up.

Joy and Sorrow

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy F) — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 06:10:00 +0000

In my heart, where I find that bit of what I understand as God in me, my divinity, I find both joy and sorrow. I wonder if that’s what God is. I wonder if joy and sorrow always go together.

My mother used to say she didn’t believe there could be a God because, if there was, he wouldn’t let people suffer and there would be no death; a bit simplistic and naïve. But life isn’t simple – it’s complex. Maybe God doesn’t let us suffer – we do.

In my book, The Joy of Growing Up, I talk about learning to accept disappointments as part of the process of growing up. Maybe, as we move out of childhood fantasy, where everything is idealised and perfect, into accepting reality and into adulthood, we also learn to accept sorrow. We gain and we lose. That’s the cycle of life.

What’s important is not to let sorrow overwhelm joy. As you accept it, you also let it go. If you try to deny it, it will stay with you.

Cherish Yourself

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy F) — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 14:25:00 +0000

Remember, you have a bit of God, or what you know as God, in you – your divinity. When your self-esteem is low, or any time, remember to cherish this divinity. Whatever your circumstances, struggles, woes, that divinity is always there; a light shining, even in the darkest times. It is your essential self and needs to be valued.

I have an affirmation today that helps me nourish myself and reminds me of my divinity. When my environment enrages me because it does not suit my needs, does not resonate with me, I remind myself, “I am worth more than this.” I’ve written it on sheets of paper and pinned them to the too thin walls of my home where intrusive, inharmonious, often abusive noise comes through from my neighbours. This may sound arrogant or inflated but it feels true for me. It’s my way of reminding myself, and protecting myself from psychic pollution.

Why don’t I move? There are lots of reasons but maybe I have to discover/recover my true worth, all of it, before I can know just what I deserve and then materialise it.

Self-Respect, Self-Disgust and Self-Esteem

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy F) — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 14:21:00 +0000

Self-disgust is a product of growing up in an abusive culture. I say culture because abuse is the culture in some societies, which leads to a culture of abusive families. Abusive behaviour, which is also immature behaviour, is considered normal and excused.

Abusive behaviour is disgusting. Abuse is an expression of disgust and it engenders disgust in those who witness it. Children who grow up in a disgusting environment, learn self-disgust. They learn to hate themselves. This is because they can’t express, often not even articulate, their anger and loathing of what they experience around them. This turns into self-loathing because they can’t be true to themselves. They cannot speak up or be honest about what they are feeling. Anger turns inwards as rage, which becomes self-hatred. Even if the abuse is not directed at them, if they experience adults’ abusive behaviour towards one another, they are still being abused. They are experiencing some form of violence, which violates them. Adults who do not respect one another are openly disrespecting the feelings of the children who live in the environment they create.

Children who grow up in abusive families learn and adopt the models they see around them, especially as they are given no others. Because these are models of rage, they don’t learn how to express anger or articulate discomfort, disrespect and disgust potently. They grow up frustrated, raging and impotent. Then they feel disgust and loathing for themselves. They do not respect themselves because they feel bad with all these feelings inside them, unexpressed. They have low self-esteem.

So, think before you yell. You don’t know who may be listening, and suffering.