“I Don’t Know Anything!”

“One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.” Socrates

One of my all-time favorite movie lines is in the Alastair Sims version of A Christmas Carol. Scrooge has just returned from his night with the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future. He is thrilled that it is Christmas Day and that he has an opportunity to act on his new understandings of life and love. With his new awareness of what life is really about, he delightedly states, “I don’t know anything! I never did know anything but now I KNOW I don’t know anything!”

This is actually a very profound statement. What it means to me is that our ego mind always thinks it knows stuff, but the truth is that it doesn’t know anything. A turning point in my life came when I KNEW I didn’t know anything—when I knew that truth doesn’t come FROM my ego wounded mind, but rather THROUGH my mind.

The Touch That Heals Trauma

Discovering the Healing Power of Loving Holding

Years ago, Erika and I discovered the healing power of mothering, and we wrote about it in “Healing Your Aloneness.” What we discovered has now been verified over and over. In his excellent book, “In An Unspoken Voice,” author Peter Levine tells a heartwarming story. When National Guard soldiers were ordered to remove Elian Gonzales – the young boy who became a pawn in a political battle in Florida – from the hands of his Cuban exile cousins living in Miami, they trained a female federal agent to caringly take the boy from the cousins and angry onlookers. Knowing he would be extremely frightened, and not wanting to further traumatize him…

“The agent held him firmly enough to not be ripped away by the angry mob, yet gently enough for her embrace to match the words she calmly recited in Spanish,”Elian, this may seem scary right now, but it soon will be better. We’re taking you to your papa…You will not be taken back to Cuba [which was true for the time being]…You will not be put on a boat again [he had been brought to Miami on a treacherous boat ride]…You are with people who care for you and are going to take care of you.’” p.265

As she rocked him gently and spoke soothingly to him, he relaxed.

Levine goes on to describe another dramatic mothering scene that occurred during the East Timor conflict. As dazed and disoriented refugees wandered into a refugee camp, a group of Portuguese nuns greeted and gently held and rocked the children and the most shocked adults, whispering soothing words to them, thawing them out of shock with their love.

How To Love Myself? Six Steps to Loving Yourself

Practicing these Six Steps are essential for learning how to love yourself and share your love with others.

Imagine that you have a baby and you want to be a loving parent. One of the things loving parents do is keep a baby monitor on when their baby is sleeping or in another room, so they can immediately attend to their child as soon as he or she cries.

Step One – Your Inner Baby Monitor

Step One is having your inner baby monitor on, which means that you practice being present in your body, which is where your feelings are, rather just focused in your mind – so that you know immediately as soon as you have a feeling that needs attention. This is especially important right now with all the challenges we are facing on our planet.

Managing This Challenging Time As A Loving Adult

Emotionally and Spiritually

Please be very kind and gentle with yourself. It’s very important to not allow your wounded self to scare you, because our main line of defense against the Coronavirus is our immune system, and stress erodes the immune system.

Start by acknowledging to yourself that this is a very challenging time. Imagine that your intention is to soothe a scared child, rather than further scaring the child. This is the time to stay open to your higher guidance and bring comfort and compassion to your inner child, especially if you feel anxious. It’s also a time to reach out to friends with whom you can connect – on the phone, or via Skype or Zoom. While it’s important to stay home and not be around people, it’s also important to stay connected with the people whom you can support and who can support you, especially if you are alone.

Do You Take Accountability For Your Mistakes?

What’s the first thing you think when you make a mistake? If you’re like most people, you will either blame someone else or blame yourself.

Blaming, even blaming yourself, is not at all the same thing as being accountable.

Why is it so hard to be accountable for ourselves – to take responsibility for ourselves? One of the problems may lie in the connotations we have applied to these words.

Discovering The Pearl From the Wounds

“A pearl is a beautiful thing that is produced by an injured life. It is the tear [that results] from the injury of the oyster. The treasure of our being in this world is also produced by an injured life. If we had not been wounded, if we had not been injured, then we will not produce the pearl.” ~ Stephan Hoeller

I used to envy people who seemed to lead easy, uneventful lives. From day one, my life was not easy or uneventful. There seemed to be challenges at every step. Why was I so unlucky?

I no longer look at it that way. Now I’m grateful for every challenge that honed me into learning how to be a loving adult. Had I not had the injuries – the woundedness – I might never have embraced the learning path.

I meet people time and again who were never truly challenged until they lost a loved one, or got cancer or lost all their money. They are so unprepared to manage these huge life challenges, because they haven’t yet discovered the pearl – who they are in their essence – and they haven’t yet connected with their Guidance and developed their loving adult.

How To Heal The Fear Of Getting Hurt Again

Are you putting off opening to another relationship for fear of getting hurt again?

You’ve been hurt over and over in your relationships, and now you are hesitant to seek a relationship for fear of getting hurt again. You might be asking, as many of my clients do, “How do I overcome my fear of being hurt again in a relationship?”

It’s important to understand that there are two kinds of hurt.

• The heartbreak that comes from someone being unloving – lying, betraying you, being angry or judgmental, suddenly ending a relationship, and so on.
• The hurt feelings that come from what you are telling yourself and how you might be judging yourself. Are you telling yourself things like, “What did I do wrong?” “How could I have been so stupid as to believe him (or her)?”

Healing involves learning from and lovingly managing both kinds of hurt.

Are You Hiding a Secret?

In my work with my clients, I’ve often wondered why some people jump right into Inner Bonding and take off with it, while others seem to keep getting stuck. Perhaps harboring a shameful secret is one of the reasons.

In order to move forward with Inner Bonding and in our lives, we need to be accepting of ourselves, but it might be very hard to accept yourself if you have done something, or if you feel things, that are generally judged to be wrong or bad, or that you believe are wrong or bad. One of the things I’ve seen occur in my Intensives is that the environment is so safe and accepting that a participant might feel safe enough to finally reveal the secret. Once the secret is out, there is much more space for self-acceptance.

Scapegoating: A Dysfunctional Family System

One issue that frequently emerges is when a person has been scapegoated in his or her family of origin, and might still, as an adult, be being scapegoated. Scapegoating is when someone is blaming you for their feelings, wrongdoings, mistakes, and projecting their woundedness on to you, with no empathy or compassion for how this feels to you.
 

In families, one member is often the target of judgments, criticism, accusations, blame and ostracism. Scapegoating often begins is childhood and may continue into adulthood with your family of origin or with your in-laws. If you have been or currently are the target of scapegoating, it’s important to realize that you are being abused.

What Are You Waiting For?

“One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon – instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.”
—Dale Carnegie, 1888-1955

Right now, take a breath and go inside. Is there something you are waiting for, to be happy? Are you putting off living until something magical happens? How often have you heard yourself say, “I’ll play, or create, or rest, or spend time with loved ones or take that vacation – when everything gets done.” Does everything ever get done?

Early one morning, as I was driving to the airport on my way to New York for an Intensive, a spectacular sunrise took my breath away. “How fortunate am I,” I thought, “that I get to drive to the airport basking in this incredible display of God’s art. How fortunate am I that I get to breathe in the fresh crisp air of fall.” It was one of those moments that filled my heart and soul with peace and joy and gratitude.

Releasing Pain – Essential for Physical and Emotional Health

Pain that is stuck in your body can cause many physical and emotional problems, and blocks out the enlivening flow of love, peace and joy – the flow of Spirit.

Growing up, all of us had pain from the loneliness, grief, helplessness and heartbreak of rejection, loss and engulfment. As little ones, we could not manage these huge painful feelings, so we found ways to avoid feeling them, which resulted in storing them in our body.

As adults, these painful feelings get triggered when others are rejecting or controlling, or by other painful events and circumstances. If we continue to avoid feeling our painful feelings, they may eventually result in illness, failed relationships, and even more loneliness and heartbreak.

Loving Yourself – Chore or Freedom?

“Some people regard discipline as a chore. For me, it is a kind of order that sets me free to fly.”
– Julie Andrews

How often have you said to yourself, “I have to take the time to do some Inner Bonding,” or “I’d better do my Inner Bonding work.”

If this is what you hear yourself say, it is your wounded self, trying to have control over getting you to do something that you think you ‘should’ do. Your wounded self likely sees Inner Bonding as a chore, something you ‘have to’ do to be okay. When this is your mindset about doing your inner work, then you might find yourself in resistance, because another aspect of your wounded self hates being told what you ‘should’ or ‘have to’ do.

The wounded self misses the point. Just as a diligent practice of playing the piano eventually gives you the freedom to play spontaneously, or the diligent practice of running gives you the freedom to run in a marathon, the diligent practice of Inner Bonding gives you the freedom to take loving care of yourself and bring yourself joy.

Choosing to be a Loving Adult

Some years back, I had the moving experience of working with Kevin (not his real name), a thirty-seven year old very talented branding artist we had hired to work on our website. From the moment I met Kevin, I knew he was a person I wanted to hire and work with. His demeanor was open, honest, caring and attentive. I had seen some of his work before speaking with him, and I was blown away by his creativity.

One evening, as we were having dinner, after working together for four solid days, I asked him how he had met his girlfriend. I had spent some time with Lila and Kevin and I was impressed with how loving they were with each other. They had been together for three and a half years.

How Do You Feel About Yourself?

Do you feel worthy, valuable, adequate, lovable, and secure?

Or, do you feel unworthy, worthless, inadequate, unlovable, and insecure?

Do you believe that your inner child is worthy enough for you to take loving care of yourself, or do you believe that your inner child doesn’t have enough value to make him or her worthy of being loved by you or by God?

Very often, when I ask my clients why they don’t take loving care of themselves, their answer is “I’m not worthy of love. I have no value.”

I always feel so sad to hear this.

The One New Year’s Resolution I Hope You Make…And Keep

One of the most important aspects of Inner Bonding is opening to a compassionate intention to learn. I’ve been thinking a lot about compassion, and I’ve realized that compassion is often more than people think it is.

Compassion does include the standard definition: the ability to feel empathy with another or others who are suffering, to be moved by the suffering and to want to help alleviate it.

Relationships: Accepting the Challenges or the Loneliness

“My inner child is lonely and wants to be in a relationship, but relationships are too hard. I feel like I don’t want to work that hard,” Karen told me in a phone session.

“Are you ready to fully accept the loneliness of never being in a relationship?”

“No, that sounds too sad and awful. But why do relationships have to be so hard? I’ve worked on myself for years, yet even relationships with close friends are hard. It shouldn’t be that way.”

“Karen, they are hard because most of us come from families where we did not see our parents or other caregivers being open to learning with each other, especially during conflict. We saw them get angry, give in, withdraw, resist and turn to various addictions. So this is what most of us learned to do. Relationships challenge us to give up trying to control each other and instead open to learning with ourselves and each other, so we can share love. When two people are open to learning, relationships are not hard. What’s challenging is reaching the point where we can stay open to learning in the face of conflict.

The Important Information Confusion Has For You

There are two kinds of situations that can cause confusion:

1) You might feel confused when your wounded self is in charge and you are judging yourself. This confusion is telling you that your wounded self is telling you a lie.

2) You will likely feel confused when you are with someone else who is lying to you. 

Confusion Stemming From Self-Judgment

In a session with Glenn, he told me about an incident involving his wife, Diana. Diana was telling him something while the TV was on, and he couldn’t focus on what she was saying. He became confused, and in his confusion, he got annoyed with her.

As we explored his annoyance, he became aware that he was judging himself coming from a false belief: “I should always know what to do.” His wounded self decided when he was very young that he was supposed to know what to do, since he often got punished for doing things wrong. So his feeling of confusion was not okay with him.

I asked him to go inside and lovingly embrace his feeling of confusion. Immediately he said, “My little boy is giggling in delight! He likes the feeling of confusion. It opens up his sense of wonder!”

“Glenn, are you willing to take your judgment off your feeling of confusion, and instead recognize that the feeling is informational?”

“Yes!”

“Now, go back to the situation and ask your Guidance what would be loving to your little boy in that situation with Diana?”

“I already know. I would say to Diana, ‘I can’t focus on what you are saying with the TV on. Do you mind if I turn it off?’ I can see that once I judged myself for feeling confused, I didn’t know what to do, so I got annoyed with her.”

Do We Have to Feel Good to Smile or Can we Smile to Feel Good?

I love it when I learn something new that adds a bit of joy to life. In the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, I read of a study done by three men – Paul Ekman, Wallace Friesen and Robert Levenson, on what happens in the body as a result of facial expressions.

Volunteers were “…hooked up to monitors measuring their heart rate and body temperature – the physiological signals of such emotions as anger, sadness, and fear. Half the volunteers were told to try to remember and relive a particularly stressful experience. The other half were simply shown how to create, on their faces, the expressions that corresponded to stressful emotions, such as anger, sadness, and fear. The second group, the people who were acting, showed the same physiological responses, the same heightened heart rate and body temperature, as the first group.” (p. 207)

You Don't Have to Live With Guilt

I grew up in a family that constantly used guilt as a form of control. Sometimes the guilt was somewhat subtle, such as “Fine, do what you want,” said with a blaming tone. Other times it was blatant, such as my grandmother (who lived with us) saying to me, whenever I didn’t do what she wanted, “How can you do this to me? You are so selfish.”

As an adolescent, if I came home five minutes after my curfew, I would hear my mother hissing at me from their bedroom as I tried to tiptoe into my room, her voice dripping with anger, “You’re late again. You know I worry about you.” My mother had many ways of making me responsible for her feelings – from her intense anger to her victim tears. I was always to blame.

How to Move Out of Your Ego Wounded Self

If you sometimes get stuck in your wounded self and can’t see how to get back into your loving adult, here are some ideas that may help you.

Sometimes, when we get stuck in our wounded self, it is hard to wind our way out of it. I’ve noticed what I do when I’m happy and my frequency is high, as opposed to when my frequency feels low.

It is helpful to me to keep a list of ways I’ve learned move myself from closed to open.

Here are some of the ways I’ve found work for me…

The subtlety of these choices is that I need to be consciously doing these things because it is loving for me to do them, rather than as a form of control. It’s possible for your wounded self to choose these same behaviors as a way to avoid responsibility for your feelings and avoid learning from your pain. When that is the intent, then these choices will not raise your frequency, which means you will not move out of your wounded self. So please be honest with yourself!