Category Archives: Emotional Injury

SURVIVING AIN’T LIVING

Posted on by under denial, desire, Divine Truth, Emotional Injury, emotions, Facade, fear, God, God's Love, God's Truth, Mary and Jesus, Nature, self worth, shame, Spirits

fight-or-flight-uncertainty

I had a realisation in early November that I had spent a lot of my life in survival mode. In fact it has become a recognisable bed I was lying in, but not a very safe one. The last 3-4 years have been particularly bad and my external life had reflected that financially, in my home situation, physically via the cancer and emotionally just feeling numb and being okay about having so little.

Living in survival mode means you are always living in fear: fear of death, fear of destruction, fear that the few things you have in life will crumble away and you will fall into the abyss.  That is how I have felt for as long as I can remember. This terrible fear led to becoming a control freak – trying to manage aspects of my life – money, relationships, day to day living, and my son – so as to feel “safe.”  Living in the fear, but pretending to yourself you are not; “its okay you’ve got it all under control Maxine.”

But the fact is in all those aspects of my life, I may have controlled them or felt I did, but they weren’t natural or loving and none were being done very well. Control does not allow for love to flow and controlling addictively to avoid fear is unloving. Avoiding fear, living in fear is unloving, restrictive and self-denying as well as unloving to others as to avoid feeling vulnerable you try to control those around you, sometimes heavily disguised as “taking care” of them, but still controlling them.

Being in survival mode is really bad for your health too. When we are in flight or fright mode we produce adrenalin by the pint and all this adrenalin constantly pumping around our system isn’t good. In the end it creates a toxic environment and it is exhausting. Now that I have started to pay attention to my fear, I have become aware that daily I do so many things to avoid feeling unsafe physically, emotionally and spiritually.

I have become an expert in batting back, ducking, avoiding, distracting myself from feeling fear. In the process I have created a facade that is dull and hard and uncreative. I have lost more and more of myself.

However, compassionately, there are some deep causal events and emotions that started this whole survival mode. John Bradshaw, in his book Homecoming, says “a witness to violence is a victim to violence.” I had a father who was violent, a step father who was even more so both, physically and mentally to my mother. I sat on the stairs or behind my bedroom door many times listening to the shouting and violence going on near me. I even have a memory of standing in my cot and feeling this big dark red cloud coming into the room. It was rage – I think it was my father’s rage, at my mother, I don’t have the details, but I feel panicky and scared…and there is still much I haven’t remembered yet.

Then there is the other violence, of being shouted at, clipped round the ear, blamed and shamed in one way or another as my parents, unable to cope with their own emotions, sent them my way. The terror that comes when you think your mother has killed herself – again and again and again: all these things and so many more.  I wish my experience was unusual, but it isn’t or am I minimizing it? As a small child, all these things shake you to the core and it has left me with the constant feeling that my world will end at any moment, that there is no solid foundation to exist from and at times no real love to be found.

When I hit the wall in November, my body aching from doing a job that was too demanding and pushing myself to the limits with it, and only months after major surgery and cancer and then coming home to live in a place I really don’t like, reduced down to living pretty much in one room with no space to get the things I love out – my art materials and writing materials and no money to buy new clothes when I need to or enjoy things I love, counting every penny and struggling to pay off some debts.

So I started to feel some emotions about it – yes mostly effect emotions – sadness, and some frustration, but mostly sadness, at the situation I was in, and created by my unhealed emotions, my choice to keep suppressing them. A painful realisation, but to be frank to feel something was a good thing and it created some small shifts in me, about what God wants for me and it not this – this small life.

In relation to this, for the last 2-3 of years I have also become aware that I have attracted a large group of spirits who do not want what is best for me, but only want to control my life, zap my energy and keep me small and at times completely destroy me. They have been with me for a good while I feel. By not feeling my emotions I allow that attraction to continue. It has been tough dealing with this. I feel them sitting on my shoulders, at times suffocating and crowded. It has kept me awake at night the last few months and I have felt I have no privacy whatsoever. Every time I try to take a step forward I feel they come for me. It has felt like a real battle for my soul. So I am in the process of feeling more truth about this, bit by bit.

I am letting myself feel that facade, I am returning to long-ignored passions that connect with my real self and I am doing a few things to come outside of my “comfort” zone/prison. They are a few small steps, but I am feeling a shift in some areas. I still have much to learn and feel and discover, but letting that control addiction go is tricky, but I really am beginning to dislike it. It doesn’t feel like me, just like a strange creature that has taken over. Plan A: to turn from rock to river!

I wanted to share this, to help those of you who may be doing the same as I have been. It is so important to be honest with ourselves, to look at our lives and see what it is showing us about our unhealed emotions, our self worth and our denial. We do have the power to change all this and we have much greater power to change all this if we include God in the process.  Step one, for me, is working through blocks to receiving God’s love. (which would so help me soften to emotions).

The blocks I think I have identified about God are (constantly up for review!):

  • Anger that God has made this so difficult (I feel it is very difficult).
  • Fear I will never receive God’s love/lack of faith
  • False beliefs about God judging me and deciding I don’t deserve Love ( parental stuff)
  • An addictive demand that God should give me love despite my lack of desire/fears about receiving or when I am being unloving.
  • Lack of faith that God is good and that her Love will make me happy.
  • I have more faith in my addictions
  • Lack of self worth prevents the openness to receiving.
  • A fear of emotional overwhelm/losing control if I receive God’s love; what will happen?

 

These realisations have created some changes. A week after my meltdown a new job came up and I got it and I am working in a more loving environment – though still having to watch my own self care in it, and with that my finances have improved and I am looking for somewhere new to live, and I am writing more and have joined something called solo autobiographical theatre which is triggering memories and emotions and pulling me out of a comfort zone and challenging me to do it despite fears that come up.

The Divine truth teachings are never far from my mind and heart. The God blocks are still there, but by listening to the videos by Jesus and Mary, I learn about God’s truth and re-educate myself about Love and Truth and error and as always nature is one of my greatest teachers about God and her Love. Also, books like the Robert James Lee trilogy (see the extras page) give such hope and wonder and curiosity to keep searching and investigating the truth about God, and Love and life. I am blessed to have this knowledge and experience at my fingertips and I do not want to walk away from it until I start to really walk it and keep walking it, with no turning back and no fear.

This year is about my moving out of survival mode, of really finding out what being me is about, what loving myself is really about: to move from the pretend love that feeding my addictions gives me and finding out what God’s love really feels like.  To create a blunt analogy I feel I have been clinging to a pile of hard crap that I have convinced myself was a soft cushion: comfortable, but sticky and not allowing me to move much. Clinging because I felt there was this deep bottomless pit below, a drop into the unknown, to a point of meaninglessness and death, very related to childhood fears and flight/fright mode.  Now it is time to let go of clinging to this crap, falling into the abyss…whatever it may. My feeling is instead of nothingness or danger , I will find God’s hands there ready to catch me and lift me up to greater heights, even with wings to fly – just has he planned. I can see even see that knowing smile…… Yes my child, here YOU are… here you truly are…

Oh goodness, now won’t that be wonderful…

Maxine

THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT…ROBBY

Posted on by under abandonment, addictions, Divine Truth, Emotional Injury, emotions, Expectations and Demands, Facade, fear, Gender Wounds, heal, humility, Hurt Self, REal self, Soul, soulmate, True Self, Uncategorized

me and robby edit 2

 

This is a topic I have been thinking and feeling about for a few weeks and I had a big fear about writing it and being “wrong” and there is still some fear there, but in the process of feeling about the topic of Robby, so to speak, I have come to some new awareness. Robby and I are currently apart. We have not lived together for over a year now. During that year we been apart, and then drifted back together, tried to make a go of it, but it has not worked.  It has been very confusing, sad, scary and at times frustrating. By October, Robby had had enough of the to-ing and fro-ing – and over the next few weeks it became apparent that we were not resolving anything and going round in circles, nothing was clear except that and so we are now just friends. However, for me, in my own pondering and feeling about all this, no matter what seems to happen, and unlike other relationships I have been in, there is something about Robby that I cannot shake off. When we are apart, I never feel quite separate from him …there is a pull in my heart in his direction that in many ways makes no sense when I look at what our relationship has been so far. So what is this strange and curious journey we have been on and in some ways are still on?

In the ‘About Me’ section of my blog I talk a little about my relationship with Robby and the feeling that we may be soulmates, but also that we don’t know that because we both have a large amount of emotional injuries that impacted our relationship and in fact any relationship we may try to have still. We have been on a roller coaster over the last 4 years a bit of good, but a fair bit of bad and ugly too.   Robby has given me permission to talk openly about our relationship and he has a strong belief in the power of my writing to help others and discover my true self along the way.

The issue of soulmates, sexuality and gender wounds is a massive one for all of us and it impacts our world greatly. Jesus and Mary teach about soulmates, but they have also experienced their journey together and so talk very much from personal experience. I will give a brief explanation of soulmates, as taught by Jesus and Mary, before talking more about Robby and I. I highly recommend listening to the Soulmate Relationship talks from 2010 on the Divine Truth website (or go to the Divine Truth YouTube channel and search under soul mate) for a fuller understanding of what I write. I also found the talks on Sex and Sexuality very helpful. There are also shorter talks on Partnerships on the Divine Truth FAQ channel.

Jesus teaches that God created billions of souls (her children), who before they incarnate on earth are not conscious of themselves as individuals and it is the incarnation process that allows us to discover our individuation. Each soul has a unique personality and quality that is a gift to our life. When the time is right to incarnate a soul is drawn to a parent in a law of attraction for the parents so that they can progress in love: the child reflecting back unhealed emotions, (that is the current situation in our state of error). Before it incarnates a soul splits in half and one half incarnates first to one set of parents. The second half incarnates sometime after, anytime from a short time up to about 20 years after.

God, our parent, has both male and female qualities. Each whole soul can have a mixture of male and female qualities to a varying degree. Most souls are fairly even so that one half will be born into a male body and one half into a female body (heterosexual). Some complete souls will be predominantly male and will split into two males bodies (homosexual) and some will be predominantly female and will split into two female bodies (lesbian).

Our soul represents the true us, containing such things as our personality, emotions, memories, intentions, passions and desires. Incarnation is the time we individualise and learn about love. When we incarnate we gain two bodies: a physical body and a spirit body that exist at the same time and are encompassed by our half of the soul. Currently, when we “die” our physical body dies, but we continue to live in our spirit body and we continue to live our lives as we have, making choices, experiencing and living. Spirit world contains many spheres, from the lowest to the celestials. We move up the spheres by progressing in love: some through the natural love path, reaching the sixth sphere – the highest sphere attainable through that path. Others choose the Divine Love Path and can pass into the celestial spheres, of which, there are currently 36, but development there is infinite so there may be more in the future.

During our life on earth we can all meet and be with our soulmate. However, because our current soul condition on the earth is nearly all equivalent to the first sphere because we have so many emotional injuries we may never meet our soulmate whilst on earth, or we do and don’t recognise them and/or reject them or sometimes we could be married to them and not know they are our soulmate and in fact still have a very co-dependent addictive relationship: so we are in a relationship with them, but it is a damaging one, on a soul level and is not really a soulmate relationship. As I understand it, being in a soulmate relationship requires the main qualities needed on the Divine Love Path (also called The Way of God’s Love): truth, love and humility from God’s perspective as well as desire to progress in love from each half of the soul. In the end, if one half of a soul progresses to a high state of love the other half will automatically be drawn to them.

Currently, on earth, we are not taught about soulmates or it is told incorrectly as it was to me through the Twin Flame teachings, so we grow up not even aware we have one soulmate, one perfectly made mate, just for us: one of God’s gifts to us. Our soulmate will have similar personality traits and in their progression the same main desires and passions. If the soulmate halves choose the Divine Love Path and get beyond the 7th sphere they can continue to progress to the 36th sphere and join again in Soul Union. This is what Mary and Jesus have done and is the only state that allowed them to choose to reincarnate. I don’t think words can convey the state of bliss that must be and it is not something I feel qualified to comment on. The Robert James Lee books and the Padgett messages give some idea of what it is like in the celestial spheres as well as the power of the soulmate relationship. (See the ‘Extra’ section on my website).

soulmate

So where am I? I can only give the perspective from my current viewpoint, but I do feel that all the information given by Jesus and Mary is correct. It just makes sense to me. It is clear and loving. God created us to innately seek two things: God and our soulmate so we all have this ember burning in us somewhere and many of us have memories of feeling this longing, for the One. These days it is often decorated in Hollywood and Mills & Boon ideas of romance: we meet, we know, we seek, we find and once we really decide then that’s it – happiness with little or no problems: remember that final screen kiss which silently promises all?  But we all know from experience it is not that simple and in fact there are more songs and more movies about the loss of relationship than about successful true love. I have come to the truth that with my experience of “love” from my environment as a child, I do not know much, if anything, about real love: love that is unconditionally without demands or expectations, that just exists and lives regardless. We believe we have it for our children, but as a parent, I do not always unconditionally love my son. When I am tired, angry, afraid I do not love him regardless. I do not have that level of development. I want to, but I do not and I know I have little, if any memory, so far of being unconditionally loved as a child, so what do I know of it?

I decided it is better to start from the truth I know so little and try to discover the truth, because the reason I currently struggle to love or to receive love is because the “love “ I have experienced has been very conditional. This is true for many of us, including Robby. He does not remember being loved at all. His father was strict and emotionally distant and his mother was so wrapped up in her own woes and anger at men she could not love as a mother should. They provided a secure physical home and food and clothes, but no affection, only rules and regulations and harshness.

My mother’s emotional injuries mean that she was such a wounded child she could not give us love, but in fact demanded through projections that we love her, make her feel better and provide her with things that no child should have to. As the eldest, I particularly felt this: my mother’s neediness and instability. I felt like her emotional husband and carer/parent.  My father left when I was about 4 or 5 and I had two stepfathers all of whom I felt rejected by in various ways. There was domestic violence, alcoholism and day to day drama. Where were lessons in love in any of this?

During my adult life I had relationships of course. The first serious one was just like my father: irresponsible, chauvinistic and at times frightening. After that I has boyfriend the complete opposite: passive, but still wanting looking after and I did it because I had looked after my mother and I knew nothing else. I had a few brief affairs that were painful and finally a more caring relationship, but we were more friends than lovers. Following this was a “big connection” that was just a highly addictive and damaging relationship. (Not coincidental during my interest in New Age ideas that encourage and feed this “I just felt this amazing connection” stuff). By the time Robby had come into my life I really did not want a relationship. In fact I told God I would wait as many years as it needed until I found my soulmate, as that was the only one I wanted. I had the desire, but it was a desire, coming from pain and disappointment and fear of more pain and disappointment, though I don’t think I knew that at the time.

I was working as a healer and doing readings in Glastonbury when Robby and I met. I had just come across Divine Truth, but was still uncertain and still trying to understand why the “big connection” had come crashing round my ears and was still working as healer/ card reader. Robby came thundering into my little room asking for a reading and I remember this feeling of feeling slightly knocked sideways by his presence. I composed myself enough to do a reading and found him to be unusually honest about himself. For him, he had a relationship at the time that was coming to an end, and he had had a feeling, and told her so, that his soulmate was nearby, without having a clue what he was saying.  But over the next few weeks, he used to pop in to say hi and we became friends.

During that summer we bumped into each other sometimes and one day he came on a trip with a Dutch friend down to Tintagel. Robby is Flemish so they could chat in Dutch. We had a great day with her and my son and I was touched by Robby’s playfulness. I ran into the sea and Robby joined me and I remember this point when he came towards me, didn’t touch me, but I felt something. Only I was aware of it, but it frightened me and I pushed it aside. There had been other times before that when he would text me, intuitively knowing when something was up and when I saw him, he began to disturb my equilibrium, which I kept trying to ignore and I still like his company.

Then one day I had been to see a friend at the Ashram and afterwards I had a strong urge to go to the orchard behind Glastonbury Tor. All the way there, I kept hearing Robby’s name, “Robby, Robby, Robby,” again and again. Unbeknownst to me he was sitting in that orchard telling God he was ready for his soulmate. A few minutes later I suddenly appeared. He didn’t tell me at that time about his prayer, but we sat together. I did not feel relaxed, (my equilibrium blown again) and he touched my shoulders at one point and it made me really nervous. Nothing was said between us, but I could not shake the feeling that something was going on.

As friends, we had made a deal of honesty right from the start, so after a couple of days of feeling this, I decided I needed to be honest and confront what I felt was happening. I knocked on the door of the caravan where he was staying and asked him if he felt something was happening. He honestly said he didn’t know. However, something did change and we arranged to meet for a coffee the next day before I drove off to a friend’s wedding for a few days. By that time, Robby was often sensing me and he knew before I arrived back a few days later that I was about to appear and I did. This sort of thing continues until today.

For two weeks we had a wonderful time and then he lost his accommodation. Without a doubt I suggested he move in. Not normally what I do, but it felt right. We were big into “signs “ then and numerology and we took the he “sign” of a rainbow and the number 2222 appearing, as well as a love song on the radio as signs this was the right thing. Robby moved in and I think we had another couple weeks of a honeymoon period and then the shit started to hit the fan, so to speak.

Robby’s anger and the issues from his previous relationship with an alcoholic, my sexual issues from my previous relationship – both related to deeper causal emotions. Lots of things got triggered. We made attempts to understand, feel it, but we weren’t very good at the feeling part – still aren’t. We were both heavily suppressed as children and so allowing too much emotion terrifies us. Over time we settled into a pattern, which actually became a heavily co-dependent relationship. So regardless of being soulmates, or not, we not really loving each other. Co-dependence is a bartering system and is never loving and in fact degrades our soul. If we are soulmates, that of course, impacts our whole soul.

One of our big co-dependent emotions was Robby wanted to be rescued and I was addicted to rescuing. Robby’s desire to be rescued created neediness in him, and was part of low self worth and not feeling loved. It meant he often projected a lot of fear.  My rescuing was something I have been doing since a child to my own detriment, but I would say in later years has also become part of my horrible control addiction. For me, control feels like security, but it is an unloving and ugly addiction, creating a lot of angry projections.

As you can imagine, this is not the making of an open and passionate relationship. We also, like most, have many gender wounds: layers of anger and hurt. There was and still is so much “Stuff” in the way it is a miracle we are still even friends. But we are and when we decided to try and break that co-dependence things improved individually. Robby learnt to stand on his own two feet more and I felt less drained and demanded of. We have been at least trying to feel what is really loving in some areas.

The other thing we do trigger some deep emotions in each other. For instance, I trigger a lot of Robby’s injuries about his mother. He struggles to see me emotional and I have let him shut me down many times (something I am also used to letting happen and choose to). His mother was constantly sad and crying. He triggers lots of things in me: anger at men, hurt over being used for what I can give rather than whom I am and many things. These triggers are a gift if we have humility – the willingness to feel all of our emotions, but I have not been good at that, though I am getting better in some areas.

But all I know is right now, I look at Robby and I have such compassion for his injuries. I see and feel his struggles – sometimes more than I feel my own. I see both of us blundering along and have compassion and understanding that right now to be intimate is almost impossible until we heal more, but mostly until we have a real desire to be humble in relationships, a real desire for complete truth and a real desire to learn about love, to love and be loved. John Bradshaw, in his book, Homecoming, talks about when we have unmet needs as a child, when we are not validated and accepted and loved for who we truly are, we lose our authentic self, we create a facade and become what our parents and others want us to be. We do it to survive as a child and by the time we are adults we forget and continue with our facade, which grows ever stronger as we continue to live in our hurt. So how can we be intimate, be our true selves with someone when we don’t have a clue who that is. He says it is impossible to be intimate if we have no sense of self. That makes sense in my life and my relationships. Neither Robby nor I have much sense of self.

For me, the other big emotion is abandonment. When Robby recently said he felt open to a relationship with someone else so that he could experience something more loving, I felt numb. I am disassociated, but when I let some feeling come, inside I felt “Well I expect it, they all leave; I will never be the one to be the one that wows them – I am just not enough. I don’t blame them, I am just not lovable. No one will love me forever and I am not surprised.”  My wounded child is so hurt she believes it, I believe – emotionally. That is the grief that I am afraid off – it seems so overwhelming still. But there it is.

Normally, through all the difficulties I would have totally given up and not been too bothered about seeing that partner again. But with Robby it is different. The truth is I have some big emotions, a huge amount of fear that is even preventing any desire for a relationship – until I think about Robby. I don’t feel I want to go back to what we had – there was much wrong in how we were doing things. And sometimes, I look at other men, and I find them attractive and I know Robby has felt the same with women. Yet now even, when I do, I often think, “oh but that’s not Robby.” I know I have a ton of stuff to heal and a lot to learn about being loving in a relationship and still a lot of anger, fear and sadness about men to release. That will remain as such, until it doesn’t, but if I try to truly imagine being with someone else, I can’t. I also, don’t know how it could work with Robby, but I can’t break this feeling that he is somehow part of me.

Only time and my willingness to heal my emotions will reveal the truth of him being my soulmate or not, but in the meantime here is the punch line….

Quite separately, Robby got offered a new job and took it. I applied for a new job and took it. It turns out we are now working for the SAME team and work together every day! It is proving hard to get rid of each other… lol!

So watch this space….

THERE IS ALWAYS A GIFT OF LOVE

Posted on by under addictions, Disability, Emotional Injury, God's Love

gift-box

This summer has been extremely busy for me. I have been working and selling and packing up my bits to move to a smaller – and more importantly cheaper place to live. But mostly, I have had the task of helping my son set up his new life following his graduation from college where he achieved an NVQ in Hospitality as well as a number of other qualifications and certificates. He has worked hard for three years at the most progressive college in the UK, as far as I can see: Foxes Academy.

I drove round hundreds of miles to check out different colleges, but nothing stood out like Foxes and when we visited I got that feeling right in my gut that lets me know: this is it! This is the place! (Or the person or the thing to do) When it comes to my gut feelings about Ben it has always worked out.  I have fought many a professional, found my voice on behalf of him many, many times and followed my gut, listened to my heart, had faith and quietened the fears created by professional opinion and “realism.”

I have spoken up on his behalf much better than I have for myself. I have discovered a strong assertiveness and determination with regards to helping him create a meaningful and happy life more than I have for myself.  On reflection, this is an error, as in God’s eyes I am no less important than Ben; in God’s eye’s I am equally loved and equally have the right to a happy and meaningful life. Intellectually I get that; emotionally I have yet to. But that will come – when the error is released.

In the meantime, Ben has not had the ability to speak up as he would have needed to or access to the right information or understanding to fight for his own needs because Ben has Down’s syndrome.  He has had to grow and learn and experience in a body and brain messed up by an extra chromosome – well that is the physical cause.  The emotional and soul based cause is multi-generational, including myself and his father: error based emotions eventually impacting the physical world so much as to “disable” a potential healthy human body, which in turn impacts the soul. Of course we have the potential to help our children to heal by correcting the emotional error and false beliefs in ourselves.

However, I did want to talk too much about Ben’s dis-ability, but rather his capability. I am not trying to brush over the struggles and pains of having a disability or of being a parent, but this summer, I have just felt the beauty in Ben, the silver lining, the way God uses every situation to Love –  and I wanted to share it. I may have been Ben’s voice many times; I may have drudged my way through a ton of paperwork, phone calls and meetings to get basic rights for him whilst ignoring the doctor’s so-called predictions of what he wouldn’t be able to do, but in the end it has been Ben who has done it.

The truth is Ben has proven them wrong many times: crashing through their thinly disguised pessimism. The truth is Ben has a soul based knowing at times uninhibited by fears of looking silly or sounding ridiculous. The truth is he like many people with learning disabilities, smash through our complicated thinking with a simple, heart-felt answer to the big questions about life and love. The truth is I may have helped Ben at times, but he has helped me and others in deeper, more meaningful ways ten-fold over.

What I find amazing is that even though it is human error and arrogance that has caused these problems, a gift has been created for us and in this gift is another demonstration of Love – the love of God: pure, simple and powerful.  This is what I want to demonstrate today.

For my son it is not an easy at times: he is frustrated he cannot speak clearly and be understood easily. He has limits on his intelligence that mean he cannot just go out in the world independently – he has to rely on the help of others. His dreams are restricted compared to others of the same age.  For instant, he cannot just hop on a plane to Japan if he wishes; he cannot go to the bank and sort out a mortgage.

In our materialistic, economy-based Western world he is unlikely to be seen as a success because he is unable to earn lots of money to plough back into the money market, or become a celebrity, or get a degree in Astro-physics and design a rocket to Mars. We have encountered people who ask what a person like Ben can contribute to society. Are they just not a drain on the economy? (This included a cardiologist we once met in a famous London hospital!).

There are two reasons this is both arrogant and ignorant. Firstly, Ben did not choose this. He did not choose to be born in this body; he did not choose to have a learning disability or a heart defect or poor eyesight or poor speech.  It is not his fault. Ben has to try to survive against the odds in many ways and has no choice, but to need help. He is part of the most vulnerable in society – not by choice, not by harming himself or others, but just by being born as he is.

Secondly, not realising what Ben and people like contribute is to really lose touch with what being human is or created to be.  To value only the material, the physical, the monetary is empty: a house built on sand.  Ben demonstrates every day his humanity, his love, his openness, his free spirit. He is as capable of being inhibited by external forces; including me of course as any person is, but mostly, I have tried to allow him to just be him: loving, cheeky, fun, kind and brave.

Ben demonstrates to me how to let love flow through you, he reminded me how to be silly again. He taught me spontaneity, living in the moment, how to be free in that moment. I let go a bit with him. I happily would sing out loud on my way down and around the shops with him in his buggy. We would make up songs and rhymes to teach him colours, numbers, shapes, animals. I sang “Chitty, chitty, bang, bang” for hours and hours.

He gave me a chance to love freely. My heart skipped a beat to watch him sleep, to wonder at this miracle of life that lay before me. When he was born, it was traumatic – discovering he had Down’s syndrome. It was traumatic that first year before the holes in his heart were repaired.  But I always loved him from the womb all the way through. My heart ached, not knowing what he or we were going to go through, but I knew he was innocent and he needed care. I was a single parent, for most of the first ten years. It was tough at times: I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know how to love myself, so loving someone else wasn’t always possible.

I would struggle, but then the magic would happen. A trip to the supermarket became a dance down the aisles or me running about picking up clothes he was trying to remove. Nothing was “normal” and yet it felt more alive than normal. He walked three years earlier than they predicted: he was out of nappies three years earlier than they predicted. He loved to dance and sing. We had our own secret sign for music. He walked further than they said he would. He was incredibly fit following his surgery; he never got fat and he never had mucus and the hearing loss they predicted.

He was and is a near- fearless climber, loves to free-run, break dance and can drum for hours.  He learns the drums by listening to music over and over, repeating it many times until he knows it. He can recognise a song from the first two notes. He is a romantic and loves feeling “in love.”  He wants to marry one day. He is a stronger and braver swimmer than I and a good athlete.  He is incredibly perceptive about people and his reaction to someone says a lot.

Music, sports and food are his loves. When he eats he does not talk and will not talk with you. Instead, he sits and tastes passionately every mouthful. If he goes out for the day, the first thing he will tell you is what he had to eat.

At college he was challenged to go beyond any previous pre-conceptions of what an adult with a learning disability can do.  For years, post 16/18 education has been much the same old thing: life skills, gardening, craft and animal care, possibly a bit of catering. There was no particular goal except to teach some life skills and give them something to do for 3-5 years. Foxes have a different view: they are getting them ready to have a life – to live as independently as possible, to find meaningful work and interests and relationships, including love and sex relationships. Foxes are all about outcomes.

Since he left for college 3 years ago, I went on quite a journey within myself: a grieving and a lot of facing some harsh truths about my parenting.  I tried to be the parent I didn’t receive myself, but not having a clue I have made many mistakes.   When he left for college I spent a day sorting through the 5 boxes of paperwork from his years in education and the health system. It took over 3 hours to burn it and I cried over most of the papers I read through. I told myself I was letting go, but it took a bit longer than that and in truth, is ongoing.

The first two terms Ben did well, settled in, enjoyed his work and social life, but he also had some problems with a girlfriend who was controlling and bossy and was easily influenced by others. He came home for the holidays and we had some sticky moments. It took a while for the penny to drop, but I started to see that I was micro-managing too much – in fact trying to control his choices, as well as project demands at him.  At times he was aggressive with me and/or himself.  I was doing too much for him and expecting him to fulfil emotional “holes” I needed to fill myself. I started to see I was harming him and what I was calling love wasn’t.

Over the next few months I focused on “un-hooking”, watching out for my addictions with him and try to own the feelings and fears. It wasn’t all perfect, but goodness a change happened in him. At college, the penny dropped that he was there for himself, for his own aspirations and dreams. He started to do much better and cope much better with the challenges that came. Last year he was second outstanding learner and he has come out more mature, more confident and capable. He is bold and decisive and chose a new life, living with a friend, away from me, with support workers to help him. He was fully involved in interviewing and choosing his support workers and we are currently settling him into his new life.

I still have to watch myself, to step back. I encourage Ben to tell me when I am being to bossy or interfering, when he wants me to not be around or not to help. We are really working on a more honest relationship and he is speaking up more clearly and assertively. His courage is incredible and I am honoured to see this young man grow. He has such character, such a sense of fun and incredible love in him. He also shows a perception about life and talks about wanting to teach others how to have an open heart.

I feel stiff next to him. I can feel the walls around my heart built up from my injuries – from my childhood and what has happened since.  Yet I have this son – well God’s son, this soul in my guardianship demonstrating to me that opening is the way forward. He is lighter and freer than I and I long to feel that.

As parents of children with disabilities, the trauma of discovering your child is not quite what you thought, what you may have been through with them – through illness, or schools or other care needs creates a strong protectiveness.  We can feel them so vulnerable that our fears and unshed tears drive our actions, which we may think of as love, but isn’t always, especially as emerging adults. We can feel an internal pressure to make them feel okay, to feel better because we don’t want to feel vulnerable about them ourselves – somewhere inside we may know unconsciously we have some responsibility for what has happened. Whatever our feelings, and for their sakes, we need to own our emotions – our fears, our grief, our anger, feeling overwhelmed, exhausted –  we need to be brave and honest and unselfish.  Like any adult, they need room to breathe, to explore and to experiment. They need room to make mistakes and learn how to cope with that and to learn to live in a world they probably don’t really get, but one they can benefit from given the right help balanced with the right freedom to choose and live.

We must not patronise them, they are great teachers:

Ben’s bravery shows me I need to be braver.

Ben’s openness shows me the freedom in breaking down those walls around my heart.

Ben’s spontaneity and joy is there for my inner child to awaken again.

Ben’s pleasure in simple, everyday things demonstrates an unspoken gratitude and acceptance.

Ben is happy in his own skin, happy to say he is handsome, he is a dude, and he is a good dancer. He is not obsessed in judging his body as I have mine. He is just “this is me and this is okay.”

For Ben, life is now, in this moment – whether it is eating something delicious, doing a cartwheel, drumming to Muse, or singing along to Lazy Town. He is not wasting energy mentally fretting over yesterday or tomorrow. The only real time for him is now and therefore he gains more from the moment than I do.

Ben has compassion. He is not happy to see a man sleeping in a doorway, or a child screaming or a dog yelping. He “feels it in his heart” that something is not okay and he wants to change it – with Love and kindness.

Because of all this, Ben is closer to God than I at the moment. These qualities he demonstrates are qualities and attributes of God.  There is the gift: God appears in many ways, through many people and the way they live their lives. Even in what can seem a tragedy to many, God finds ways to express and demonstrate Love, to help us see where we can improve, where we can be more honest and reflective, to create change.

I don’t believe we have to have a world with people with Down’s syndrome or other disabilities to demonstrate all these qualities or to bring out these qualities in ourselves. This is unloving as having a disability is not easy and I have seen grief and confusion in Ben at being “different,” but until we learn we have a choice in all these things, until we turn to God more and our own spirituality and soul, we can be good guardians to these brothers and sisters, whose worth is equal to our own. They often help us open our heart, have more compassion and understanding.

They can give us a taste of our Father, a doorway to heaven, by their own demonstration of love, fun and kindness, but also by what they bring out in us: patience, tolerance, humour, love, compassion and kindness.

In many ways, Ben is a man and in many ways he is Peter Pan – never growing up.  But I sense none of us really understand what being grown up is. We live in a world of injured souls, whose need to control their environment and “manage” life is seen as being an adult.  So in this way, Ben helps me question my own “adulthood”, my addiction to control, to avoid fear, what true responsibility is.

Maybe the Peter Pan’s of this world remind us of what Jesus said,   “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children.”

(Matthew 19:14)

So thank you Ben, and all the “Ben’s” out there. In adversity, you shine, with no self-pity. In a controlled world obsessed with what others think, you dance and sing, no matter what; you are freer. In a world full of competitiveness and hierarchy you only see equality; no man lesser than yourself. And most importantly, in a harsh world – you love.

love Maxine “mum”

mj-ben

THE PRESENT MOMENT’S TRUTH

Posted on by under addictions, Divine Truth, Emotional Injury, emotions, Expectations and Demands, Facade, God's Love, God's Truth, Hurt Self, trauma

sibling-child-abuse

“Traumatic events, by definition, overwhelm our ability to cope. When the mind becomes flooded with emotion, a circuit breaker is thrown that allows us to survive the experience fairly intact, that is, without becoming psychotic or frying out one of the brain centers. The cost of this blown circuit is emotion frozen within the body. In other words, we often unconsciously stop feeling our trauma partway into it, like a movie that is still going after the sound has been turned off. We cannot heal until we move fully through that trauma, including all the feelings of the event.”
― Susan Pease Banitt, The Trauma Tool Kit: Healing PTSD from the Inside Out

The trauma stuff is difficult… very difficult.

Lately, I have been examining all areas of my life. God’s Law of Attraction has been powerfully indicating to me how very out of harmony with love and truth I have been living. My old habit and still only fading habit is to look at myself judgementally in this – but I am gradually encouraging myself in more compassion for myself. It is very gradual, but I want to alter the harshness and pointless judgement of everything I say and do: that old, old voice that whatever I do isn’t good enough. This voice goes way back to a very young age and runs very deep, but it does not mean it is the truth. It is only what I was led to believe and I constantly have to remind myself that God does not believe this of me, in fact she believes I am able to do so much and waits patiently while I re-educate myself in her truth that I am ” the most wondrous of her creations.” *  Besides, self-judgement and self blame is actually a way to avoid how powerless we feel, it cons us into thinking it is just a matter of control, of getting it “right”, then we won’t feel so bad. I notice that if I don’t judge myself, blame or shame myself I am left with a  gap of “What do I do now?”

I have a long way to go before I know this in my heart, God’s truth about myself, but I feel lately I resist this truth a bit less, letting it creep very slowly into my soul. I have made mistakes, I have completely misunderstood love and what is right or wrong. Lately, I find myself without a home, little money and a body that is suffering. When are bodies are sick, we have to know that we have been missing all the other signs that our lives, our souls are misaligned and lacking in love: love for ourselves and for others. We are disconnected from our real selves, living in darkness to a certain extent, denial of our own denial, suppressed, suffering, lacking in joy, identity and love. Maybe, this is too frank for some of you, but getting frank and honest with myself, I realise is the only way forward and some of it ain’t pretty and some of it is incredibly sad.

I feel I have nothing and yet I have everything. It is strange, surreal place to be and yet a place of some fear,but also wonder. When are arms are empty, they are ready to be filled. Yet to say my cup is empty is wrong, actually as lately, I have been blessed with incredible kindness from friends and strangers. I realised a few weeks ago that I keep everyone at a very long arm’s length. I walk around with a warning sign flashing “don’t come to too close, keep back, stop!” At the same time I get angry when other’s don’t seem to care, I project my frustrations out in a unspoken demand of ” make me feel better, come on, make me feel better – NOW!” This projected anger helps me avoid the fears and terror and grief that no-one, not one soul, not even God loves me: that I am totally alone, abandoned, hung out to dry, irredeemable and unloved. It helps me avoid that feeling of powerlessness again: I can’t control people or how they feel and I want to on some level so I feel safe. Over the years, I have done so many things to avoid feeling unloved and unsafe, created many physical and emotional addictions. I have been seething with anger, frozen with fear and all hidden ( or I would like to think so) behind my “nice girl” mask. This mask is about control, not letting rip, not expressing my anger – even when alone, not feeling my fear, not breaking into a the million pieces of grief that I sometimes feel rising in my throat.

So I have created a panic button which freezes me when I feel someone is getting too close. I don’t know how to receive love because my beliefs about love are that it is conditional and that if someone “loves” me they will want something from me, take from me, use or abuse me. But, not allowing myself to express my anger, means I just fire it out silently to those who get in the firing line: damaging myself and them. It’s yukky stuff. I have tried to rant or shout or scream when alone, but it doesn’t last long so I always gave up. Now I realise, I am just going to have to practice it, same with the other emotions, practice, desire, desire, desire. And don’t live in the fear! So I have been letting people in a little and received kindness and unexpected love. Instead of ducking out of that tea with a friend, I just go and try to deal with whatever comes up for me and have a desire to be more loving, less demanding.

With all this observing of myself and my habits, my constant freezing in certain situations and sometimes flight/fright reactions I realise what a state of stress and struggle I am constantly in: no wonder my body is sick right now. So now I have to admit, that I have a lot of trauma to release from myself and I need help. I pray to God, I talk to him, I try to talk more and more to him, but still have blocks. I am looking for a trauma therapist too and a dear friend has sent me a little online trauma course. I can feel my resistance. My intellect knows I need this, a bit of my heart is crying out for it, but my fear and resistance in going there still exists. Just writing about it causes my throat to constrict a little and some desire to run a million miles away.

However, I have been doing that for far too long. I am currently blessed to be staying with new friends in a cosy home, where I have a little room and shower room. I gave some of my furniture to a charity and the rest of my stuff is in storage. But I am in a new location, in a beautiful Devon town, surrounded by green hills, currently changing into the golds and reds  of autumn. I can walk out my door and be in the countryside within minutes, I can buy wonderful organic food and enjoy this friendly town, which is softer and gentler than where I was living only 2 weeks ago. To me this is a sign of my desire to be softer and gentler, to find God in this “green and pleasant land.”  For a while, I will nestle here and learn more about love: loving myself, loving others and loving God…trying to get to know the truth. I pray I can truly start to heal, to stop resisting, to stop being strong and trying to control everything.

I hope I can start to peel the layers of the onion to get to that trauma place. I can feel there are dark places I don’t want to go, memories I am afraid of, truth about my family that is difficult to bear, and truth about how in my own denial, my own survival techniques, I myself have been much more unloving that I have ever liked to admit. I may have been damaged as a child, but I have continued to damage myself dreadfully over the years in every area. I currently have a huge wake up call, God is knocking loudly on my door and for that I am grateful.

The root meaning of crisis is opportunity so for me my current crisis is an opportunity: a great act of love calling me to love more in every area. I can’t say I am aware of the purity/impurity of what I write: I just write, in the hope that we all stop denying what our lives are reflecting back at us. If we are in struggle, we are not facing the truth about something, we are not allowing our feelings to be present: it means we are resistant and fearful, not trusting what God is trying to show us.

How we get so afraid to feel? It is what makes us human, our ability to feel all range of emotions, to dance in the fire and swim in the waters of our feelings. We were meant to be a river and we became rocks. The rock may be long lasting, strong, tough, solid, but it can not create water. Whereas,  water can shape and alter the rock in shape and form. A rock is static, rarely moving from one place, restricted. Yet water, can move over any place, it can permeate and move through tiny places, or gush through huge ravines. It connects everything and so much life exists in it. Indeed, the human body is 70-80 percent water. Water is free, ever-changing, sparkling. I love water, whether it’s a hot shower, a wild river or the vast ocean, so it seems mad that I have chosen to be a rock for so long! A stubborn, self reliant rock! I thought it was the only way to be, the only way to survive, but all I chose was an existence, not a life, not living. So can I join the gushing river? I hope so, though my fears make me step into a gentle brook first, dipping my toes in.

God knows I could dive in, I just have to believe it myself.

I do believe that being more compassionate with myself will help me soften to the emotions I need to feel, including those layers of trauma. One of the first things in the online course I am asked to do is to sit everyday for a short period and feel my body. That is become of aware of the feelings and sensations in my body. When we have had trauma we disassociate from ourselves so much. I have lived with various physical pains for years and just become used to it, almost numb. When I did the body exercise yesterday, I became aware of hip pain, knew pain, discomfort in my lower back, thoracic spine and an awful pain in my shoulders and neck: a feeling of someone pulling down my shoulders, but it being so rigid in my neck it was very uncomfortable and stiff, then from that pains in my head. Also, I realised I wasn’t breathing  a lot of the time. So I am doing a lot of holding on and the pain in my body represents suppressed emotional pain. Reconnecting with my physical body and it’s pain may be the first step and I can see the logic in it so I shall persevere.

But what I realised too it is easy to be distracted by trying to solve things externally. Yes, I can eat healthily, I can go for walks, I can receive other treatments, but it is my willingness to “dive in” that will produce results. And in fact, I do want to do this with God, not on my own. My self reliance is like a cancer in my soul and it needs a lot of work: it needs humility, a whole ton of it. In biology, cancer cells are very good at tricking the bodies inflammatory responses so that the normal immune responses don’t attack the cancer cells. Well my self reliance is the same – it is very good at tricking me and telling me there is no other way, but to help yourself: it is arrogant and rigid and I need to remind myself that it is a very good trickest and I must desire to know the real damage that is being done and to want to change it, by becoming more God reliant and more self responsible. Self responsibility is not self reliance, by the way, it is more humble and willing to face truth. Self reliance will accept anything, including lies, in order to maintain being “right.”

When I was younger, this self reliance, this toughness, probably helped me survive, and so well that I have a belief that I can not do without it. At the moment, this feels like one of my biggest battles, my biggest belief system to break down, the biggest shell to crack. But if I do, then I feel I will allow myself to feel those terrors and traumas and stop putting on the “strong” facade. May the ice queen melt! May she find a space and scream and shout and shiver and cry! Self reliance is nothing more than a big, ugly rock that needs smashing into a thousand pieces!

I know I have jumped around a bit today – trauma to tantrums, rocks to water, self reliance to surrender. It kind of symbolises my own unravelling, and that’s ok.

The quote from above about being the “most wondrous of your creations” is from the prayer that Jesus wrote. It was changed into the biblical from of the Lord’s prayer, but this is the full, unedited version ( As on the divinetruth.com website). I love it. Some of the words challenged me when I first read it, but now I love it , even when my emotions struggle with it, it reveals much and it has the power to express everything I can’t always find the words for:

My Father, Who is in Heaven , I recognise that You are All Holy and Loving and Merciful, and that I am Your child, and not the subservient, sinful, and depraved creature that false teachers would have me believe.

I know that I am the greatest of Your creations, and the most wonderful of all Your Handiworks, and the object of Your Great Soul’s Love and Tenderest Care.

I know that Your Will is that I become at-one with You and partake of Your Great Love which You have bestowed upon me through Your Mercy and Desire that I become, in truth, Your child through Love, and not through the sacrifice and death of any of Your Creatures.

I pray that You will open up my soul to the inflowing of Your Love, and that then will come to me Your Holy Spirit to bring into my soul this, Your Divine Love, in great abundance, until my soul is transformed into the very essence of Yourself; and that there will come to me faith – such faith as will cause me to realize that I truly am your child and one with You in very substance, and not in image only.

Let me have such faith, as will cause me to know that You are my Father, and the bestower of every good and perfect gift, and that, only I myself, can prevent Your Love from changing me from the mortal to the immortal.

Let me never cease to realise that Your Love is waiting for each and all of us, and, that when I come to You, in faith and earnest aspiration, Your Love will never be withheld from me.

Keep me in the shadow of Your Love every hour and moment of my life, and help me to overcome all the temptations of the flesh, and the influence of the powers of the evil ones who so constantly surround me and endeavour to turn my thoughts away from You to the pleasures and allurements of this world.

I thank you for Your Love and the privilege of receiving it, and I believe that You are my Father – the Loving Father who smiles upon me in my weakness, and is always ready to help me and take me into Your Arms of Love.

I pray this with all the earnestness and sincere longings of my soul, and, trusting in Your Love, give You all the glory and honour and love that my finite soul can give.

AMEN

AMEN!

with love

Maxine

THE WALLS AROUND OUR HEART

Posted on by under Divine Truth, Emotional Injury, God, heal, Heart words, love, poetry

https://video-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hvideo-xfp1/v/t42.1790-2/11017086_10153206602642276_1882098574_n.mp4?efg=eyJybHIiOjMwMCwicmxhIjoxODYzLCJ2ZW5jb2RlX3RhZyI6ImxlZ2FjeV9zZCJ9&rl=300&vabr=161&oh=4fbe7190340693977148479d20ec3d0b&oe=55B8E922

The other day I watched this amazing clip of a woman giving her wedding vows. It was so honest and raw that it hit me right in the heart. You may not agree with everything in the clip, but I certainly recognised parts of myself. I have a huge wall around my heart in relationships – mostly built of fear: fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, fear of anger/attack, fear of deceit, fear of abuse, being used… you get the gist. My experience of “love” is so messed up that I am afraid to really love or be loved and so I shut it out and run away physically or emotionally. “Love” is so connected with pain for many of us we don’t even realise that it was never love in the first place. Love does not include pain: pain comes from our unhealed emotions – shame, grief, fear, anger. All the stuff that got stuck creates situations that are painful. This is the Law of Attraction: constant events provided by this God-made law to show us what we need to feel and release. The longer we hold on the bigger the pain, the bigger the causal become, the more we have to heal emotionally. Love is actually the remedy: loving ourselves enough to allow those feelings to be felt, loving others enough not to project our fears and anger at them.

It is closer to the biblical quote of Corinthians 13: ” 4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is [never] angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

(The bit in brackets I have changed to never because it said “easily angered” and I believe love or God is never angry. I know some religions will disagree, but that is my personal belief and experience).

We need to reeducate our little hurt selves about love and feel all those emotions. I find re-educating my hurt self easier ( intellectually) but still walking around looking at my wall, instead of trusting God that he provided me with enough to knock through. So many times I feel I am a hypocrite – it’s so easy to say words, watch videos, get it in your head. It’s not real though until we live it and breath it: until it is in our heart, our soul.

THE WALLS OF MY HEART

I still cling to the walls round my heart,
Afraid, trembling,
The urge to run constant and repeating,
I blame, shift and shape
To avoid the terror
Of another trampling of my heart.
But these walls serve only as a prison,
Keeping out the garden of Eden,
The gift of understanding the truth about real love,
A gift eternally shone on us by God.
To bring us to our knees
And lay before Him
All our pain, terror and sadness,
So that we can love, laugh and live.

Yet we cling to these walls,
I cling to mine,
Banging raw knuckles at them ,
Again and again
Because a part of my soul,
Cries out for freedom,
Cries out to feel,
Cries out to reach out
And experience the true bliss
Given to us by God,
The wild, passionate knowing of a soul
In love
with all.
A beautiful constant flow from the rivers of heaven.
God wants to give us it all.
Yet we continue to resist, rebel, hate and yell.
We..I can not even love myself
With these walls around my heart,
I can not give myself fully to another. .
To you, my other half,
My beautiful soul mate.
Yes wounded birds we are,

But the cage we look out from,
Never had a key,
It was never locked.
Addicted to our pain,
Broken in a thousand pieces was all an illusion.
We were always whole in God’s eyes.
She just waits for us to truly learn about love.
Not the twisted, fake over-romanticised,
Vomiting, belief-in-heartbreak kinda love.
But the unconditional, pure love as shown by God:
A love with no walls, no cage and no prison.
Love that is true and real and big.
Love that is humble and honest,
Flowing and unafraid.

I have only touched the edge of this love
For brief, beautiful moments in my life.
But I have faith it exists.

And that knocks the first brick
from the first wall round my heart..

Pow!

Maxine Bell

Walls

from the first wall round my heart..Pow!

Sisters, Sisters, Sisters….. there were never such devoted Sisters….

Posted on by under abandonment, Divine Truth, Emotional Injury, emotions, fear, Gender Wounds, God's Love, God's Truth, Hurt Self, Narcissistic Mothers, self worth, shame, Soul

haynes-sisters

Sisters, Sisters, Sisters,

There were never such devoted sisters

Never had to have a chaperone “No, sir,”

I’m there to keep my eye on her

Caring, Sharing,

Every little thing that we are wearing…..

This is the song from White Christmas and a while back it kept popping into my head so I took that as a hint from my guides about some emotions that were coming up for me around friendships, particularly women so writing this helped me explore it a bit more.

If we believe we are all children of God, all men are our brothers and all women are our sisters. So when I refer to sisters here I talk just not of biological sisters we may have had, but also about our friendships: an area that has been a challenge for me all of my life.

All relationships have been a challenge for me, but those with women I have found difficult in ways I can not describe fully yet, as I am still investigating, still feeling through painful emotions and I have a way to go yet.

I find it hard to believe I am accepted and loved. I feel rejection in all sorts of scenario’s: an anxiety and fear that does not actually relay the truth of the situation – it is often just my fear and I live in it still and in the last few years it has got worse. Of course it has: I have not felt the causal emotion – the reason it all started.

The words to this song, from the movie White Christmas, intrigued me years ago: I had never had a friendship like that. I had had what I thought were close friends, but they didn’t seem to last. When I was a kid, we moved around a lot, so I made friends and then I would be off. One year I left a school, then plans changed and I was back there in September, but off again within a few months. I remember my discomfort at having to return after having said goodbye to everyone. I felt like everyone thought I had lied about leaving. When I was 12 we moved to Devon and I did stay in the same place for 6 years but by that time I was already uncertain and unsure of myself. I still made friends, still giggled together with others on the bus home from school, still compared notes on boys, but never felt that closeness with one particular friend and even if it started to feel like that, it seemed to change. I often felt like a strange creature with a secret world that no one understood or knew about: I often felt like an observer of my own life. I would relate to a certain point, but mostly I felt so utterly alone, in my thoughts and behaviour and with my feelings. My only true friend became the ocean, where I went to talk, cry, sing and write poetry: its strength, beauty and far out horizon gave me space to feel and express myself.

I moved away from the ocean when I was 18 and my tentative relationships with women continued. I would seem to make good friends but they only lasted a few years and then they were gone. We would lose contact or something would happen and we no longer had anything more to say to each other. One friend ended our relationship because I was “too thoughtful.” At the time it made no sense to me and I learned to trust or like myself even less: not knowing when I was giving too much, which sometimes led me to feel worn out and resentful if it felt like others were just taking and not giving: not understanding what I had done “wrong.” If problems arose in friendships I would often bury my head in the sand: not answer calls, pretend not to be in, panic if I bumped into them, or pretend everything was fine, but retain feelings of anger, confusion, fear,sadness and even devastation within.

I was too scared to speak up in case I was not liked anymore: I averted disaster to avoid the pain of rejection or judgement or punishment. The truth is I had become ashamed of myself, unsure, and certain I was not truly liked, that people would find out in the end how awful I was – that the real me was a bad, unlovable person.

Naturally, it was not just that I moved house a lot: in fact the constant moving, the never asking how we children felt about it was just a clue to the fact our feelings or the effects of the changes on us were never considered. I still have huge blanks in my memory, but my feelings tell me that everything was about the adults, especially about my mother. She was needy and narcissistic. Her own childhood, her own family history created a parent who really struggled to be a parent at all. How can you love your children when you do not know about love? When you do not know how to love yourself? All you do is believe that the world is against you and you fight in whatever way you need to to get attention, to get “love”. For my mother, the need was so great, the pain so deep, that she used her children to meet her emotional needs, which is very damaging.

The most painful emotional event for me was how my mother would pull me closer, tell me I was her favourite (which didn’t make me feel comfortable), get what she wanted from me, which could be any form of caring for her – either emotionally or physically. Then I would not do something as she expected in some way, if I didn’t make her feel better, if I didn’t stop her pain, didn’t do enough chores, didn’t listen to her enough, she would push me away – tell me I didn’t know what she was going through, that she “had sacrificed everything for her kids” and that we were ungrateful and I was a terrible daughter.  I would stand confused. I tried to please her more and more. I would get her breakfast in bed, I became an entertainer to make her smile. I feared her wrath. I feared the uncertainty of her moods and the events it created. I feared rejection and abandonment.

I became a carer, a people-pleaser. I had been taught my emotions didn’t matter and in fact to express them was “selfish.” I learnt that love meant I had to earn it, I had to be perfect: in this way the love I dreamed of became unattainable.

My fears became so great I suppressed them hugely and many times my own law of attraction brought me events where I was rejected by friends. Of course this is God’s law working with love to help us feel and release the painful emotions – but that is something I have only understood in the last couple of years. Most of my life I have continued to suffer and hide my pain, my aloneness..

Rather than face others judgement I judged myself first and have self punished myself in many, many ways all my life: through food, through poor self-care, through relationships, living in fear and not following my dreams and desires. I gave myself the slap before others did – it seemed the easier option. It is a route many of us take. One that imprisons us in fear and suppression. A prison cell that only we have the key to.

Of course I never did reach the perfection I felt  my parents wanted, no matter how hard I tried, particularly with my mother. So I mostly felt unloved and unaccepted.  The rest of the craziness of my childhood led me to feel invisible and insignificant.  Most of my life I have felt that no matter what I did or who I was, I could not be loved.

So why would I believe that a friend could really love me? Every other minute I wait to be “unloved”, rejected and alone. How can I trust my sisters, when the one big sister ( my mother) who was meant to guide me and teach me about love and trust, manipulated and hurt me. It may not have been consciously, but it happened. My hurt happened, as it has for so many of us on this planet: living and in spirit.

This is a fear, covering up a huge amount of grief and what is particularly painful for me right now is that it blocks me from receiving God’s love. I find it nearly impossible to connect to the feminine aspect of God. I often call my Father, but I can not say Mother to God without that sick feeling in my belly: an indication of my fear, blocks and pain. I have found the most incredible teachings of God’s truth and yet I can not fully embrace them whilst I block the most powerful love in the universe through my false beliefs and emotional injuries.

I recently wrote to Mary and Jesus and Mary said my unwillingness to feel my fear was blocking my progress. I totally agree and so I have been praying and letting myself start to feel some fear – it is a tiny trickle at the moment and sometimes I still revert to anger to avoid my fear, but I will keep going as what I do feel now is the pain of my suppression. I feel like an immovable rock and it hurts: it feels heavy and yukky. My body talks through pains in my shoulders and back: it tells me that my suppression is a burden, a heavy sack of “not love.”

I am also taking steps to not live in my fear: I called a friend I haven’t seen for a long time. I suggested to someone at work we go out to a cafe one day for a drink. I felt my fear when confronted with a woman at work who scared me. It’s amazing when you do feel your fear: everything changes. She is now more respectful of me and friendly. God’s laws working perfectly. The power of emotions to change our soul, even if it is just a little bit, which then in turn change our life. So if I start to feel more, my life will change more. These little steps out of my fear may seem silly, but for the last 3 years I have been a bit of hermit – avoiding situations where I might feel unaccepted, judged, or have to face angry women: avoiding friendships. Even when I write to Mary I feel my neediness – “love me, love me” as I seek approval. It’s sad and it’s also an unloving demand to Mary or anyone else I project it too. If I just feel the emotion that will stop. I have been in huge denial, and I at least hope that is changing.

Mary wrote some great stuff on fear and how to “jump from the plane” on her blog and she herself is a great inspiration as to watch her change throughout the videos on the Divine Truth website over the years and it has increased my faith in the process God has provided to heal our soul. To see her and Jesus, increase in love, increase in joy and passion touches my soul and provides hope and an example for us all: they really, really walk their walk.

At the moment I am still standing near the door of my plane (metaphorically) and starting to feel what the worse thing that could happen is if I feel my fear. I could die, I could go mad in the terror of my fall, but then I remember there is no death: then I remember that God loves me and wishes me no harm and I have daily evidence of that. Yes the fear I need to feel may be a castle of terror, but it is holding me back, locking me up and these days my desire to be free is starting to overtake my desire to be “safe.”

So watch out sisters, I may be coming out of the woodwork. I may even start to feel you like me: I may even start to like me myself. It doesn’t matter: all I know is it’s time for a change and it’s time to discover more about myself. Praying to be braver, more humble, more loving and more truthful: one step or one leap at a time.

Maxine

An Aside:

  •  I will put a link to Mary’s blog in the Extras section of the website.
  • Please note my previous posts are all below this one. You have to scroll down. Until I get the finances to upgrade it is a little fiddly, but I hope you find it worth it. 🙂
  • I am going to start adding books that have helped me too.

PAINTING MYSELF….

Posted on by under desire, Emotional Injury, emotions, God's Truth, Grief, humility, Hurt Self, REal self, Soul, True Self

Image

Much of who I am has been lost much of my life.

Many of you may feel this, I do.

It doesn’t mean we have done nothing with our life, but it can mean much of what we have done in life, work and love has occurred more because of the belief systems we were brought up in: what others made us believe about ourselves and who we are.   With this understanding I wonder how many of us actually follow our true desires and passions? Or are we following what others expect of us or what we feel is responsible, sensible? Or even what reflects our own lack of self worth or an inability to break away from cultural and social expectations? In fact there can be a huge self deception or denial that this has happened: we are so used to be “other” me we forget to even question who we are. I started writing this weeks ago and it has taken time for me to feel what it is I actually want to write as I have a myriad of emotions attached to these thoughts and the journey of self discovery continues.

I have known for years I wasn’t who I really am, but have felt lost in the search, apathetic and despairing at times as I listened to voices in my head saying I wasn’t worth the effort. Thank God in between these moments were  gifts of clarity and a fighting spirit that told me there was something else and to keep searching. I prayed and then I was gifted a wonderful law of attraction when this picture popped up on Facebook a while ago: it grabbed my attention and I never did read any of the words that came with it, as just looking at it, feeling what it meant for me was enough. It sent me into hours of feeling grief: a deep sadness that I didn’t know who I was. I stared at the beautiful lady, an artist’s creation, but asleep and unaware that she was a work in progress. She was alive, but not living. Yet the artist continued to paint, to bring her more alive: maybe one day she would notice and wake from her dreams to dance across the canvas. Maybe one day I will, I thought.

But first I needed to feel, to feel the incredible sadness I felt that at 47 I still couldn’t identify fully which bits of myself were really me, the true me: not wounded me, not facade me, not the me everyone else thought or expected I should be. I have searched before, but now I realised I had been looking with my mind too much: positive thinking, doing, doing, doing, change your thoughts, but all without really feeling so a temporary change followed by denial and frustration with myself. So logically if my mind hadn’t worked it out enough to make a permanent change I needed to experiment with another way. I have been listening to Divine truth talks for just over two years now, but it has taken time to get past some of the confronting emotions they bring up in me. On a soul level I recognised that I had found something beyond what I had known before and that it wouldn’t leave me. I had been asking passionately for truth a year before and I wasn’t going to throw it out when it finally came. In the talks, Jesus constantly says we need to develop humility: a willingness to feel all of our feelings. God made us emotional beings and yet we live in a world of fear: one where the biggest fear is feeling. In fact I think we have a terror of it, so convinced are we that emotions that overwhelm us, might kill us. However, I believe, it is suppressing what we truly feels is what kills us.

So I have and continue to feel what has brought me to this point of not knowing myself and even though I have a good way to go some of the clouds have started to lift. First thing, was at least intellectually accepting first until I feel it, that I am not what those voices have told me. I am not a piece of crap, a worthless person: I am not the only one God can’t save. The voices after all are just the voices of other adults in my childhood and human in spirit form that have similiar beliefs to my parents who join in the emotional abuse: the voices are just other wounded humans, who because they are not willing to feel their own feeling project at children, like I was, and that I/ we carry through to adulthood. Until now I have not known how to quiet the voices. Of course when you see why they are still wounded and still needing to hurt others ( consciously or unconsciously) there is the clue: I NEED TO FEEL MY FEELINGS not to stay like them. I also need to believe GOD’S TRUTH ABOUT ME: I am unconditionally loved and loveable – a wonderful creation. I chose to at least accept these two things intellectually at first, and as I allow my emotions to be  felt I have started to feel these truths more in my soul: a tiny bit right now, but its a start.

So what emotions? Well we will all have our own journey with this, but for me the first part was a life time of suppressed anger. I have for two years been making excuses about feeling my childhood anger: on we haven’t got enough space, what about the neighbours etc etc . However, the truth is I have been so terrified of punishment, of not being seen as a good girl, I chose not to feel and release it. Now I go in my bedroom and beat the crap out of my bed and look I am still alive! AND no one punished me! AND a couple of times it has led me to tears of sadness. Step by step , layer by layer : anger, fear, grief. Praying for God’s help and God’s love. I have stubbornly been very self reliant all of my life ( it felt safer) , but now I am finally surrendering to the idea I want and need help. And if I want help why not go to the top guy/girl. Always better to ask help from someone more loving, more knowing, more truthful than yourself. Stuff self reliance, giving God reliance a go!

This surrender is now uncovering joy I haven’t felt for years, love I didn’t know existed and a gentle blossoming and feeling I matter and I might even have something to contribute. I am allowed to follow my passions and desires!  When I was younger I was made to feel I had to be responsible for others, I became a carer of my mother many times , as she struggled with life,  unhappy in her own unfulfilled dreams.  The projections and expectations were so high I believed I had to care for others, except myself: in fact anything I did for myself was just selfish. Sadly, many of us believe this and the world is full of those who believe they need to self sacrifice themselves versus those who have a deep sense of real self-entitlement. Both are wounded states, from deep insecurities and self- doubt. I shrank in these false beliefs, I got lost, and in recent years have left my shattered dreams at the bottom of an ocean of despair.

There have been times when I pursued dreams and I remember the feeling of aliveness and passion: sheer joy. Yet they didn’t seem to lead anywhere because at the end of them ( like the degree I did when I was 30) I was lost again. My sense of self has been too fragile and I believed I would never be good enough, not matter what I did. I was also filled with an overdeveloped sense of responsiblity to my son and others: it was easier to help others than myself: huge amounts of guilt. If I truly decided to help myself I would need to face the truth of what happened to me as a child, I would need to feel how unloved and unaccepted I felt: that was too painful. Like many of us, I didn’t want to feel that.

Now I do! But now I can feel it  ( work in progress!) , not deny it. If I feel it , it moves and it eventually moves out of me: e-motion. The more I experiment with this, the more I feel the benefits. This really does work. I am healing my relationship with myself  ( which includes my soul mate) and with my creator, my parent: God. I still have a huge amount to discover, but like any good scientist, I now realise, things change because you don’t give up just because you have a bad day.  I feel like a I am crawling out of my chrysalis and God is holding my hand. Still scared, but not trying not to live in my fear.

Every day I grab more moments to find myself. The other day I had to shop for new clothes and as I tried on clothes I went on quite a journey working out what clothes were really me, tuning into feelings of expectations from others, my fears of what others would think and my small wounded self. Interesting how a shopping trip can become a new trip: finding me. Feeling my way round I found some great clothes.

So now I am an artist of myself and God provides the canvas……….. layer by layer, brushstroke by brushstroke……. here I come…..

With love to my brothers and sisters,

Maxine Bell

The Truth about Spirit World: as much as I know……Part 1

Posted on by under Divine Truth, Emotional Injury, God's Laws, God's Love, God's Truth, heal, Soul, Spirit body, Spirit World

spirt world - heaven and hell

 

I feel to respond on an article going round and round Facebook called “9 Things you realise after you die”. It is channelled information from a brother who has passed telling his sister what he has experienced. I respond from information from teaching that hit me right in the soul as truth, and confronted me a bit at first, but I feel absolutely to be truth now and from my own experience in conversations and visions with spirit humans ( ie those who have left their physical bodies behind)…. I have quite a bit to say so bear with me……… I really feel its time we knew the truth and used that truth to empower us and help ourselves and those brothers and sisters in the spirit world because we are much more entangled than we know.
The first thing I want to say is that there is not just one place you end up in when you pass in to spirit world. The spirit world has many many spheres ( about 36 currently and each spheres has many other layers. The barriers between the spheres are love barriers and prevent those whose soul condition is lesser than others going up to higher spheres to cause damage. This brings me to the point that when we pass into spirit world where we go depends on our soul condition ( ie how much love or lack of love is in our soul exists) and also the beliefs systems we had when we passed. The lowest sphere is the first sphere and contains the hells up to places that are similar to nicer places on earth. Life on earth is pretty much in this “vibration” if you want to think of it like this. It doesn’t mean there aren’t a few people on earth in a higher sphere condition, but as a whole we are in a very unloving state. All these spheres were actually created by us. God created us in a 6th sphere condition and gave us free will: the biggest gift we could be given to experience life as we chose. Unfortunately, we chose to abandon our parent and try to be come gods ourselves… this has darkened our condition and each generation passes on the unloving beliefs and wounds onto the next. The truth is many who pass stay earthbound either attached to things, people, places or to feed their addictions either physical or emotional. These spirits frequently influence our thoughts, behaviours or feelings because they can see our spirit bodies and the emotions in us. Some spirits, such as our guides, are loving in their suggestions, but many are not. You will know this if you are trying to give up a physical addiction, for instance, and for some reason you find it impossible. Good chance there are some spirits getting their “fix” via you.
Do not feel fearful, these are just humans, lost, misguided and sometimes just plan unloving – as on earth – they need to find a different way.
Now I will respond on each point in the article and I hope Billy himself may listen and continue to experiment with his life in spirit world to discover more truth.
1. Billy says, “ Life on earth isn’t a punishment for your past transgressions.”
No life on earth isn’t a punishment for our past transgressions. Life on earth is about experiencing ourself  and learning about love. Before we came here we were part of a whole soul, happy but unaware of our individual nature. The soul splits into two to incarnate and discover this “self”. Yes the two halves are soul mates and can come back together but that is a whole other subject. However, we do not just get away with our transgressions/sins/unloving behaviour. There is always a consequence on our soul for every action and thought that is loving or unloving. Love expands our soul. Unloving behaviour shrinks our soul and is subject to the Law of compensation. At some point we have to face the truth of our unloving behaviours, repent and atone for them.
2. Billy says, “You chose your life circumstances before you were born for soul-type reasons that are almost impossible to understand while you’re on earth.”

No you don’t. Your parents attract a soul that will allow them to heal; allow them to see what is unhealed and unloving in their soul. Children are our great reflections and teachers. As I have said before, we incarnate to experience our self, discover our attributes, our personality, our passions and desires. We are most often suppressed as children in one way or another , so currently on earth many of us don’t discover much about our true nature, but live often in our wounded or façade self.

The other truth is we don’t keep reincarnating: we don’t need to to progress. When we get to the highest spheres and reunite with our other half in soul union, we may if we choose return to earth: but it is a choice and in fact an incredible act of love to return to earth in its current low condition. Jesus and Mary are one soul who have done so in the  last 50 years. Jesus, being the first to ever reincarnate throughout earth’s history. The beliefs we have about reincarnation actually create a lot of harm as many spirits overcloak babies in their belief in reincarnation: this is not loving, whatever the intention. I had to ponder this one for many months because of all the past life memories I had had. I now know that what I felt were in fact the lives of spirits trying to develop a rapport with me. I have been tuned in spirits all my life without knowing and now thankfully, I can talk to them and find out even more truth and share with them what I know: a mutual learning experience

3. Billy says, “Everything changes.”

Well that is a universal truth I won’t argue with. In spirit world these changes manifest instantly. For example, if you pass with a lot of anger in your soul, you have a good chance of starting off in the hells. And there you stay until your are truthful with yourself that your anger is unloving/repent and/or you call for help. The moment you call for help it is there. In fact there is help always available even to the most evil of spirits, but it is often not seen or wanted, if you want to hold onto emotions like anger. If you are willing to face the truth of your soul condition in this state and work through your anger your location in the spirit world will change instantly to a better one. Your outward appearance will also instantly change ( the hells are good for your looks). In this way you can see instant progress ( or degradation if you choose). In our material world it takes a bit of time to see the changes.

4. Billy says, “Life is great, even the hard parts. And we all do things that we call mistakes. But so-called mistakes are okay. They’re just part of the earth deal.

Yes life is great and life is as important in spirit world as it is here. In fact spirit existence is just a continuation of our life. And yes God is very okay with us making mistakes. Mistakes may still have consequences though on our soul condition and we still may need to forgive or repent. But mistakes  are also part of the spirit existence, a part of life.

5. Billy says, “You’re meant to engage in all kinds of things on earth, things that may not make sense from a human point of view. So, take a moment before you judge yourself or your fellow man too harshly. Being completely non-judgmental while you’re alive is very advanced, though. You’d have to be a Buddha to be that advanced.

This engagement is true and this engagement continues in spirit world. God wants us to experiment and discover ourselves and truth – God’s truth. He also wants us to experience love – God’s love eventually. God is also happy to tell us everything, but in order to do we have to let go of false beliefs and errors in our soul. When we clear out the not so good stuff we can be filled with more truth and love. I totally agree with the no judgement comment. God does not judge and never did: that is a man made concept.
Buddha is more advanced than us on earth but he stuck in the 6th sphere ( a very nice place) because he won’t believe in God, which is an error in his soul, so he is a very good condition, but not perfected. Therefore there are many millions more advanced than him in the spheres above the 6th sphere.

We can only get above the 6th sphere if we develop a desire to know God, our parent, and ask to receive her love, to help us progress in love. Sorry but only self responsibility works in our progress: self reliance does NOT. The 7th sphere is the transition into the 8th where we become celestial beings. Yes all angels are advanced, totally healed, immensely loving humans. God doesn’t create “special people” or races. All are equal.

6. Billy says, “There isn’t only one right way for things to turn out.”

This is true of course. God gave us free will. We can progress or regress. We can be loving and happy or unloving and pretend happy/unhappy. There are many outcomes to our choices. However, God desires us to progress, to know him, to experience his unconditional love and truth, and to create and have everything we want. So does he want endless bliss for us? Of course – she loves us beyond anything.

7. Billy says, “Society teaches limitation. No matter what you’ve been taught, everything you ever need is already inside you. And who you really are is far beyond your comprehension. That’s why living squeezed into the human experience can be painful at times.”

Yes this is true : we have a very, very limited view of our possibilities. However, it is not all inside us. We have a physical body, a spirit body and a soul. Our soul has all our attributes, talents, desires, passions, emotions, personality, and more in it. So in that way we our there waiting. But, as I have said we shrink or expand the experience of knowing our soul depending on what we experience as a child, which affects our soul growth and then how we react to those effects. To expand we have to FEEL all the soul damage done to us and release it. When we release the error it makes more room for love and truth and increases our ability to create positive experiences for ourselves. We are not squeezed into our human experience as such: but we have made it that by our self reliance, unloving acts and rebellion against God and the gifts he gave us. We have shrunken ourselves and are just as capable of expanding our experience and endless possibilities as much in the physical body as we are in the spirit world.

8. Billy says, “At the center of everything is an energy, an immaterial material called LOVE. Wow, and how good it feels, this LOVE. You can’t imagine it. You really can’t. There is no way for you to experience the full power of LOVE while you’re on this plane”

At the center of everything is God, our creator and parent: Mother/Father God. And God is full of more love than we can comprehend. And in spirit world there are many loving spirits and guides who are there to help us and choose to share their love with us. God is not an energy, but an entity: a live, eternal, vibrant, incredible being. We have many false beliefs about God and they create blocks to us knowing God and receiving her love. God is not judgmental or punishing, or angry or fearful. Unconditional love is one of her attributes, as is creativity, passion, playfulness and much more. And it is not true you can experience the full power of love on earth: we just haven’t chosen that. Jesus is the only one so far to have healed everything in him, received God’s love and become at one with God on earth: hence the amount of love in him, as well as his healing abilities and truthful teaching ( the biblical version is not the correct truth).

9. Billy says, “Death isn’t as serious as you think it is. It’s actually very enjoyable. Couldn’t be better really. And saying goodbye to the people you love isn’t as serious as it seems either, because you will meet again.”

Well it isn’t death really : well only our physical body and God didn’t intend for that to die so soon. We die from our emotional injuries. Every illness, pain or disease or disability is caused by an emotional injury in ourselves or inherited from our parents. And yes if you chose to be loving, show a willingness to heal and feel the error in us, and progress in harmony with God’s laws, then yes you can have a party in spirit world: you can experience an endless amount of things and emotions. God made us emotional beings and yet life on earth and the lower spheres of spirits invests in suppressing our emotions: we are working against our own soul design and it is painful. And yes we can meet those we have known on earth if their own soul condition permits and if they won’t harm us. The truth is many of us will probably not chose to see many of our earthly family again and instead chose to hang out with brothers and sisters we have things in common with. We are all Gods’ children anyway.

If you are interested in finding out more there are wonderful channelled books from spirits such as “Wandering in the Spirits Lands” and “Through the Mists” Also go to the Divine Truth Channel on youtube or the website divinetruth.com where there are talks and many mediumship experiences with spirits to listen to.  There you will find much more information, from a brother and sister much more advanced in  love than me.

Thank you so much for listening and know that I share this with love and in the my desire for us all to know the truth.

Maxine Bell

Popping the Cork..

Posted on by under desire, Divine Truth, Emotional Injury, emotions, Facade, fear, God's Truth, Parenting, suppression

pop the cork

It has been a few weeks since I wrote. I have felt uninspired to write or pursue any other passions, like painting, dancing or the kayaking I have longed to try. I have been so flat and it happened out of the blue. Even writing today feels like I am pulling a heavy stone along with the keyboard: a dense weight is in my system that I didn’t understand until a few days ago. If you follow my posts you will know that Robby and I have a personal spiritual journey: soul journey and we feel we have a found a teacher who really understands God’s truth: Divine Truth. There is a ton of free talks and other resources on their website ( see the links page) and I have been listening to FAQs on the human soul. These talks contain incredible knowledge and I suddenly am getting an understanding of why I feel some things, but hardly anything of the deep causal emotions in me. These are the emotions that create change in our soul when we feel them and release them: when released they open a window for us to receive Gods love if we desire to. These are the ones I have really found hard to access. I understand many of them on an intellectual level. I can recall certain events in my childhood that created them. But feeling them? NO! And getting frustrated or judgmental about not feeling them only blocks the flow further.

We can often believe we have the desire to feel things, but if we did, it would just happen. The truth is I must not have the desire or will to feel these emotions. If I did, I would feel them. This is just fact. The fact is I am terrified to feel these strong emotions, to be overwhelmed. I am terrified of my anger and afraid of the level of my fear and in denial about how deep my grief may go…. and there is not just one causal to clear. It is the same for many of us. From our birth we are blocked from expressing our soul, from expressing full stop. We learn very quickly that to express our emotions can lead to punishment, being ridiculed or humiliated. Our parents do it because it was done to them and so forth. Without judgement, observing an everyday event, I noticed a young mother on the bus with her baby last week. Every time it wimpered the dummy was put in her child’s mouth: it was silenced. I also felt how self conscious she felt if the baby made a noise, as though all eyes were on her and at times many were. I see it in the street too, a toddler yells, people stare and whisper, judging the mothers ability to keep her child quiet. We don’t like the noise, but we are terrified of the emotion. This shutting down of our children is acceptable and is even considered good discipline by the parents in our soceity. Despite outward changes in family life I observe the old belief that children should be seen and not heard running through family life, education and soceity.

In some families this becomes more extreme, where the parents lives dominant and the child is made to feel unloved, unseen and unheard. In mine, there was so much drama going on around the adults in the house, we all felt secondary and fairly invisible and unimportant. It may not have been deliberate but it just was: a sad and painful was. I quickly learned to silence myself. I created a cocoon to protect myself from anger and abuse. Of course it was an imaginary bolt hole. I still experienced the violence and chaos of my youth and sucked in all the emotions and much of myself to please my mother and the other adults around me. As a young adult I continued with this habit and now am an expert at sucking it in, maintaining “control” and avoiding those deep pains. But it has become exhausting. I am tired of the weight I feel in my body, on my shoulders, in my neck and hips. I am drained from holding in my emotions: stuffed full with pain with little room for  joy or love or my passions. It hurts. It hurts bad.

Jesus explains we need huge amounts of humility, desire and will to feel our emotions, especially if we have suppressed them all our life. Two weeks ago my guides gave me a cartoon picture in my third eye. It was me with a narrow topped bottle stuffing in what looked like enough cloth to make a hot air balloon. I was stuffing away trying to keep this “balloon” from escaping. So when I have believed I haven’t had enough will to feel my emotions, that I need to build up those muscles of my will I was shown I have enough will, but I need to change where I am using it: from an unloving ( to myself) suppression and resistance to my emotions into a more loving and freeing feeling of my emotions. I need to use my will to set myself free. I have wasted so much energy resisting and rebelling against my true feelings and nature: it makes no sense. In fact, on reflection I know this holding on to my emotions made me ill in the past.

Well it makes no sense any longer for me. I have listened to how my soul works and I get it all intellectually, but these last two weeks some of it has been hitting my soul; suppression, resistance, presence, dominance. The talk on suppression really hit me and I felt how pointless my suppression was, I felt how tired I had made myself and now I pray and will myself to change this. I am still terrified and unsure of myself in this process, but I know what I have heard is truth. I know God wants this for me and I want this for me and I want to want it more. I do not wish to continue how I lived in the past and present: imprisoned in fear, trapped and caught up in addictions to stop feeling the fear. I know my story: we all have one. Much has happened to us, but it is not permanent. We can change this, we can change ourselves and the world we live in. We can do it the long way: still rebelliously independent from God or we can do the short way with God’s love to help us. The short way may take 20 years, but its better than another 47 years like this or another 1000 years doing it on my own.

I know now that I lost my passions a few weeks ago when I suppressed another emotion. When I shut down one emotion (a painful one) in my soul I helped shut down the rest. So tonight I had to use my will to write: I had to feel how it felt when I tried to write. In the use of my will and my feeling something shifted a couple of paragraphs in as I felt the truth in my soul of what I am learning and experiencing in trying to follow The Way of God’s Love. I felt the passion for that truth and I felt my love of writing, of words, of language, of self expression. This weekend I may paint. Its been too long since I played with the colour palette and pulled out all my boxes of “Stuff”: bits of fabric, paints, glitter, threads, wool, fur, and so on.

Opening up to our passions is one way to feel again. As we allow a feeling, we allow more. God created us as emotional beings: an expression of some of his qualities. This world is emotional. Look at the incredible detail and beauty of nature, of life and our response to it. Who doesn’t sigh at a beautiful view? Who doesn’t feel it stirring something in their soul? In those moments, we feel awe, wonder, love, gratitude, and maybe even a sense of knowing our Parent.

I now know I must do what I can to feel, anything and everything; watching out for my automatic shut down. I do not yet comprehend what it is to really feel. I do not yet comprehend what it is to really love and be loved. My soul knows a little truth, a little love, but I have kept it crammed mostly full of pain. I am now choosing to shift my will to relieve myself of this pain, to learn to experience joy. For now, I am a strange concoction of resistance and fear sitting alongside determination and occasionally love. All I can say is thank God it is God helping me. I am a tough nut to crack so bringing in the big guns really is the only way.

I apologise for the lack of flow in my writing, but at least I wrote because I wanted to. On a final note I want to share a post I saw that inspired me to write tonight. A post that demonstrates the love, imagination and playfulness of our Creator and Parent, but also reminded me I can play too, that I am part of that loving creation. I saw the flowers, I laughed, I felt, I got to see a fragment of God’s love in a photo. Take a peek at these amazing images: what I am calling “The heART of God’s Love.”

http://pulptastic.com/16-flowers-that-look-like-something-else/

With love

Maxine

VULNERABLE WOMEN

Posted on by under Daughters, Emotional Injury, emotions, Expectations and Demands, Facade, Gender Wounds, God's Truth, Mothers, Uncategorized

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I went to beach today as many things have happened in the last few days that have brought up many different types of feelings in me: from anger, to fear, to sadness, to wonder, to joy, to relief. This is a relatively new experience: consciously choosing to connect with  my feelings, even the yucky ones. The sea seems to allow me better access to these feelings as well as some ponderings.

I sat on a large rock and was feeling some sadness about some things that happened to me as a child as a result of my mother’s anger and frustration at life. Thinking about her, myself and most of the women I come into contact with or observe I see how much we are holding on, how much we do not want to be or appear vulnerable in any way. The reasons for this are very old, of course. Thousands of years where we were treated as a second class citizens with no voice and not even the right to our own bodies. The amount of emotional injuries this has created in use through generations of women, what is passed onto us, and what we experience ourselves is massive. Even reading this will trigger many of you. But the truth is we need to feel it. The wounds around gender for men and women are many and deep: there is alot of repentance, anger and fear as well as huge amounts of grief for us to release. In fact, I believe if we could tackle the gender wounds the world would change beyond recognition.

For me, I have felt and continue to feel many things about gender. How I feel about women is affected by my relationship with my mother and how she feels about women and how my father feels about women. How I feel about men is affected by my father,  and how my mother feels about men. As a daughter I have felt my mother’s rage and I can feel how many women, including myself, have had a simmering rage in them about injustice, low self esteem, the way we are treated, not feeling heard or seen, or being treated as a sexual toy.  But the irony is, in our injured state we seemed to have shut down much of feminine nature. I am not talking about the desire to buy hundred of pairs of shoes, or straighten our hair. For me much of this is actually facade and/or avoidance of our true feelings.

So how have we dealt with our anger?

We have pretended we are not that angry. Instead we have learned to manipulate and control, using sex or other means. We “manage” the household so well, giving instructions left, right and center. Somewhere inside we feel if we control everything we will be safe and no one can hurt us. We become addicted to controlling our environment to feel safe and protected. If someone interferes, be it husband, child or another we feel threatened. It is then we may express our anger or just squash it down, bite our teeth and quietly project our anger out to whoever is in the way. We won’t allow ourselves to be vulnerable.

We fight back, become more like men ( or how we think men are) : tough, unemotional, free with our drinking and sexual behaviour. We convince ourselves we are equal, even when if we look deep inside, the messages from our environment are still permeating our soul: you are not so capable, you are not as strong, you are not as intelligent, your emotions are a weakness, you need to have sex with me to please me, to keep me; it is my right. We are afraid to be vulnerable.

We end up using our body and sex to manipulate and get what we want and then we deny the damage this has done to us. We are afraid to feel how casual sexual encounters or even dealing with sexual projections makes us feel. We don’t want to acknowledge our regrets or the affect on our self worth. We think if we act like men sexually, we are equal. But still for many in this world, we are not. But even men, are damaged by the false beliefs they are taught about sex. So it goes on, we do what we like, we deny how it made us feel, we don’t deal with what we really feel might be true. We are afraid to be vulnerable.

The irony is, in our efforts, to be “equal”, we become just like the injured men we dislike. We lose touch with our true feminine nature and the beauty of its expression. The irony is, the world needs this feminine nature to exist. It exists in God’s creation and it exists in us, and in men. The world needs our softness, our gentleness, our nuturing feelings, our feminine strength. The world and we need to allow all the gifts God gave us. So let’s admit we are afraid: of being hurt, humilated, and oppressed. Afraid that maybe what we have been told about being second class may be true: good for the kitchen, good for the bedroom and maybe not alot else. Of course, this is not true. In God’s eyes we are all her children: all equal, all equally loved and valued. It is our false beliefs, our wounded selves that created the untruths. To heal the wounded self, we need to be truthful about what we really feel, allow ourselves to feel it so that it can leave our soul and if you choose, pray for God’s help and love. ( For me things work quicker when I do that).

I have been the holder- on, the control freak, the silent angry, terrified woman projecting everywhere. I have been sexual injured many times in many ways and certainly not known how to love myself in this space. I walked in shame, blame and blamed. I have been tough, a survivor, a warrior, a fighter. What I haven’t been until now ( and it comes slowly) is myself, a woman loving and celebrating her vulnerability. What I haven’t been is powerfully gentle and soft. What I haven’t been is self- honouring and true to myself, not matter what pressure from outside forces. What I haven’t been is sexually free to say NO. Until now…. and now I am enjoying feeling the shift; I am enjoying finding out the truth of my anger, fear and grief; I am enjoying my recovery and discovery.

Even though this was written for and about women mostly, I know there is a similar journey for men. What a wonderful world it would be if we all did this: allowed ourselves to be vulnerable, to be open, to be truthful and to sit with each other as human beings, as children of God: accepting and accepted, loved and loving.

What a wonderful world it would be…