I have just read a wonderful story, written by a sister also trying to follow the Way. It is a lovely analogy of all of our stories and the hope we have to do things differently. Please check out the link below:
https://divinetruthhub.com/a-story-about-hurt-in-wolfdom/
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).
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….
“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
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:
Jesus has a great analogy of our three selves. He likens us to an egg and for me that image works really well. The beautiful golden center is our real self: the wonderful true self that God created, the one we are trying to discover in our physical incarnation. The egg white is the hurt self: that part of us that is damaged from the environment we are brought up in from conception. The shell is the outer layer, our facade self: the part that is firstly created by our parents and environment and then developed by ourselves. It is the part of us we create to survive, the part created by the suppression of our real self and hurt self: the suppression of our emotions. It is this part I am focusing on today as it is this part that is the most heart-breaking for me at the moment.
But first, the real self. To be frank, I know very little about the real self. I have some intellectual understanding from the Divine Truth teachings and my own hopes. It is the part most connected to the soul God created me to me: my true personality, my true desires and passions and the part aligned with God’s love and truth. Very few of us discover our true selves in our physical incarnation because currently and for thousands of years now we just haven’t developed in love enough: love as God understands, not the human version. Our real self is hidden just like the yolk of an egg: hidden deep in the core, unseen until we crack open the egg, let the shell break and the white ooze away.
The white of the egg, so to speak, the next layer of our selves is the hurt self: the damaged, wounded child mostly. It’s the damage we inherit, the damage done to us by our parents and others in our environment, and we can build on that damage by not acknowledging that hurt child, ignoring her and acting out from this hurt place. This lost child is full of pain so it can feel a hard place to go. Why do we need to relive it, we ask. We don’t, but we use this fear to justify not letting her have a voice. As adults though, we can provide a safe place, a loving permission for her to express and feel all that locked up emotion without actually reliving the events. Yes it will feel overwhelming, but it will set us free. I haven’t got there really. I have cried over events from my past, but so far it’s mostly tears over the effects, rather than crying about the cause. The adult me thinks she protects her by keeping her locked away, too scared of being overwhelmed with emotion. And sadly, I have got very very good at locking her up. I have been listening to the Divine Truth teachings for nearly three years and sometimes I have felt I was on The Way, but the truth is I have listened to much and understood a lot with my mind, with the odd flash into my soul. I feel very much I have heard Truth in these teachings, but The Way is an emotional journey – it needs to be felt, experienced because the change happens in our soul and our soul is emotional, and our soul is connected to God, and God is emotional. I find it a beautiful concept, but one so different to what I know: it is a huge shift. Yet, at the same time I am very tired of the old way, the way mostly managed by my facade.
So we come to the shell, the mask, the facade. Well I listened to a talk on the facade about 18 months ago and I don’t think I really heard a thing. I know the meaning of the word, but I didn’t get it and now I finally know why. The recent teachings on deconstructing the facade were like a big bell ringing in my ears: I got it! Well much more than I ever have. Weird really as I believe it was my facade which prevented me from understanding it before. Our facade is created from wanting to avoid the pain, from the moment we are not accepted as our real self, in our real emotions, by our parents, our facade starts to be created. We start to become the person our parents want us to be, our teachers and the rest of our world wants us to be. This facade is about fitting into the world, surviving. We become the person our parents are happy with to avoid punishment and judgement. Very sadly, we lose touch with finding or knowing our real safe as layers of hurt develop from this rejection of our self and the building of facade we believe necessary for survival.
We don’t even know how much we are living as a facade and we develop it further as adults: developing many facades depending on where and who we are with. One for our parents, one for our lovers, our friends, our work. Most of us even accept we have a facade for work, and one for our family and some friends, but we often believe we let our real selves out with our long term friendship and love relationships. However, our facade permeates every aspect and every relationship. I had, like alot of us, a childhood where my emotions were suppressed and I was punished if I did not conform to my parents idea of being a “good girl” and on reflection, I see my facade was developing from a very young age, and as more events occured, the more I buried my real self and my hurt self. It deeply saddens me to see how much and thick my facade is.
So what is the problem with the facade? Jesus describes the qualities of the facade as insensitive, unaware, false, controlled, untrusting, dishonest, insincere, illogical, unemotional, immovable, thoughtless, irrational, reckless, irresponsible and careless. It loves compulsion, addiction, resistance, manipulation and coercion: it loves cruelty, nastiness, meanness, arrogance, condescension and superiority. It is the main cause of our unloving actions. Do you recognise it’s existence and influence in your life? in this world? Yep! It’s pretty unpleasant, dark, even tragic that we are so far from our true self, from Truth, and from Love, real love.
All week I have been reeling a bit from the realisation that it has been my facade keeping me from God; from feeling my hurt self; from knowing my real self; from knowing Truth and from feeling Real Love. The facade cares not for any of those things. The facade cares only to keep it’s addictions met: to have it’s own way. Mine is controlling, minimising and untrusting. Mine controls my emotions and tries to control my environment and other’s in it. It pushes me to follow compulsions, to do anything to feel good and avoid the pain inside or search for the real me. However, the feel good of the facade is temporary, relying on the quick fix of addictions. It is the greatest con artist and the reason for much unhappiness and unloving behaviour. It’s our dark mate, disguised as our friend. It sucks away the life in us, we age and shrivel. Pretty awful stuff!
But my goodness what a discovery: this truth. The walls of my facade are thick, containing many bricks, but I plan to knock each one out. It will be the hardest thing we do in our life, says Jesus, deconstructing our facade, but the most rewarding. Once a crack in our shell appears, our hurt self can ooze out and we can start to taste the golden yolk of our real self. Therein lies our true joy and therein we can connect with our true parent, God, who is patiently waiting for us to want to know him, to receive her love and receive all of the gifts he has waiting for us. Knowing God, knowing ourselves, finally experiencing real love, free from addictions is where our true life is, our real happiness and the transformation of our souls into an ever expanding wonder of the universe.
As far as I can see, there is no other way. This all makes so much sense to me. Why? Because it is SO different from other things I have tried or studied: because it is SO different from how we live in the world now, how we know ourselves – that way hasn’t been working and the world is now in a dark place. I want something different, for myself, for the human race, and for this beautiful planet. So I am about to start the most difficult thing I have ever done: deconstructing my facade. I have been feeling it this week: it’s heaviness, it’s rigidity, it’s addictions and habitual behaviour. I can see it rears it’s ugly head in my writing, interferes with my expression. It feels like a heavy tight suit, some thing like a straight jacket. It restricts me and I don’t want to be restricted. It keeps far away from love, and I want to find out what love really is. It lies to me and I don’t want lies anymore – I am looking for truth. It pushes and shoves me and I don’t want to be pushed, I am tired of trying. I want to connect to God, even though I don’t really know what that will mean yet and I want to experience love with my soul mate and know my whole soul.
So here I stand: knowing very little about love or truth, not knowing who I am. I am confused, but at peace with being this way as I have faith it is all to be found and even though I may have given up on God for most of my life, he never gave up on me and I have a teeny bit of faith knowing God will be more a wonder than I can imagine. Thank goodness there are some who are The Way – Showers. They give me hope and faith this is really worth trying and not listening to my facade – I have some faith in myself.
I want to become a Divine Angel: a healed human, feeling God’s love all the time. When I feel this I can see rainbow colours and lights in my third eye: it looks pretty cool. Just putting one foot forward….. and one day I hope that foot will belong to my real self only.
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
When you reach that point of enough is enough it is a powerful point of change in your soul if you embrace it. By that I mean embracing all the emotions within and below that feeling: the anger, the fear, the despair, the sadness, the anticipation. Today I reached an “enough is enough” point. Today I felt the fire in my belly as I cried from within and realised what I had been viewing as enough, as ok, was not: what I believed to be alright for me to accept for myself was not good enough anymore. It was small thinking, shrinking violet stuff, that does not reflect the true light God gave me. Instead I have been living the life others told or projected at me and I believed them! I saw myself as unimportant, incapable, untalented, unattractive and without impact, all my efforts unnoticed and irrelevant. But listening to the Divine Truth teaching the last couple of years has taught me that much of what I was thinking was irrational and illogical, from a wounded place and false beliefs. So when I think of these “small” and negative thoughts about myself it does not equate logically with my belief that I am a child of God and loved beyond measure. It is not that God doesn’t love me this “small” me: she does, but that like any true parent, she lovingly rejoices when I am doing what I love, when I grow into the soul She intended. As far as we know God’s plans for us are infinite. They are as wondrous or more wondrous than all her beautiful creations on this planet. Look at detail in a snowflake, the colours in a feather, the various songs of the birds, the individual cells and workings of our physical bodies: God’s creation is intricate, beautiful, fascinating, and evolving. We are his children and we are all these things and more.
But most of us live in the shadow of ourselves, crawling on the floor, when we were actually made to dance wildly. We continue in our low movements for a long time, until we develop a desire for something else. Sometimes it is a quiet stirring within, a gentle observation of the people and life around you. We start to notice what we are NOT and what we do not want to be; we start to question our lives, our work, our relationships. For many of us there are long periods of numbness, of a feeling of vague questioning of how we live: we have opened our eyes a little wider. In each of these moments we can continue to open our eyes to more or we can close them again out of fear, or swing back and forth between the two. In each of these moments we can decide to feel a bit more than the numbness, the confusion and instead to really feel the other emotions we are hiding.
So enough is enough gives us the opportunity to feel many things. I am still in the middle of it and as I write I can feel anger, frustration, fear and some deep underlying grief. I have had enough of financial struggle, I have had enough of not having a real home, I have had enough of not feeling who I am, I have had enough of not fully embracing my desires, of not living with passion. I have had enough! As I sit and list these a deep sadness arises, one I know I am only touching the surface of, but which I know is a blessing to feel. Not feeling this sadness has kept me stuck and wanting many times: a feeling of being half-alive or less. What low sense of worth kept me living in this way? Kept me from dancing my dance with zest and wonder? So many things, so many suppressed emotions which I am praying to feel and release. I can feel how afraid I have been of coming out of my shell, my little protective bubble, my cocoon as I call it. A cocoon I made way back in my childhood to survive that has now become my prison of fear. I have been trying to knock through the walls of this prison, brick by brick and I know when I hit an “enough” point it can involve me knocking through a whole section of the wall if I desire it with all my heart. And I do. I have reached the end of this particular tether.
Even as I write I feel so many things, but I am glad to feel the emotions in motion. Many times in my life I have felt so little and be so out of tune with what was true for me; what was real; what I desired. Now I know that to feel everything is how God intended me to be. When I shut down the sad and bad feelings I also shut down to the joy and love. Even though for me to try to feel everything is a rocky road right now I really know deep in my soul this is what I must do, what we all need to do, to get back, to be as God intended us to be: fully emotional beings and fully alive.
Enough is enough is a crisis point in our journeys and any crisis point is an opportunity and with any opportunity we have a choice. A choice to be more loving or a choice to be unloving. For me there is no choice right now than to be loving to myself, to open inch by inch, millimetre by millimetre to God’s love. In fact “enough is enough” increases my desire more and more, to be more loving, especially to myself right now. And even though there is some anger to feel and feel below, I also feel passion. Passion to love myself, passion to live my dreams and desires, passion to help others with what I am learning and experiencing and feeling, passion to connect with myself and my soul mate and more passion to connect to my true parent, our mother/father God.
The Narrow way, as Jesus calls it, the Way of building a relationship God through Divine Truth, receiving Divine Love and humility ( the willingness to feel ALL of your emotions) is hard at times. It is so different from anything we have known. It confronts everything we think we know and in its process I have lost friends, confused my family and faced some tough truths about myself. But, I have also discovered how incredibly loving God has made this universe and beyond, for us. It may not appear so to some, but now I have an understanding of God’s laws and more of an understanding of why I have been unhappy and how to change that, I know this is The Way home; this is The Way to heaven. I have a huge way to go to say I have true humility. I resist, I fight, I beg, I jump back in fear, I rage: pulled between what I thought I knew, how I was existing, by not feeling much and the discovery of this new way which wants me to feel everything. But I have tried a million other ways to heal, to be happy and they have only been temporary. This Way is lasting…this Way transforms my soul to how God intended it: pure, innocent, loving, joyful and playful. This Way has become my Way.. not as a follower but as an active participant and creator of my own life. By my own will and desire I choose Love, I choose humility and I choose Truth: God’s truth. I may only just be letting go of the milk bottle in my growth, but I will not give up. I have had enough of what I have known before. Enough is truly enough and I am eternally grateful for the teachings I have listened to, that have now, in time sung their truth in my soul. Now I choose, I desire a new way, the Narrow Way.
So yes enough is enough and now there is more…
With love, Maxine
(if you want to know more please see the “about us” section and the links in the extra section)
Firstly, I have updated our “About Us” section if you want to know a bit more about our path and what inspires us. It will also help you understand why we are so keen to feel all of our emotions and heal on a soul level.. This poem is pretty raw and because of that a bit erratic in its form, but I have written it as it came out ( as I do for most of my poems) … Most of us find the injuries around our mother pretty hard to deal with, especially as society has “mother” as a bit of an untouchable in a way. But as children, our mothers are our main carers so what happens around them impacts us deeply. This is not just about my mother, this is about her mother and her mother’s mother and many mothers. So much is done unconsciously, but its never to late to see the truth of our unloving behaviour, even though it feels really, really uncomfortable. However, if we want change, to move forward, we need to tell the truth, without blame, just the truth. Turns out our mothers are human and flawed like the rest of us…
VOICE OF THE DAUGHTER
I am the Unloved
The Unlovable.
I am the doubtable
The un-floutable,
The One not good enough, not ever.
I wore my heart on my sleeve..
You smashed it
Bashed it
Whacked it,
Smothered it.
You were meant to show me love,
but you taught me shame.
You were meant to let me grow,
but you just sent out, I was to blame
for all the troubles in your life,
for feeling trapped,
locked in strife.
You never took responsiblity
for the pain you caused.
Instead I thought it was me
I was the one.. flawed.
Floored by your anger,
Your hate, your fear.
You could cry,
I wasn’t allowed tears.
Narcissistic Queen
How cruel you could be.
Rant, blame and shame
at the top of your tree.
You didn’t know just
How much you manipulated me.
I knew you were wounded,
hurting deep below
But instead of owning it,
you gave out the blows.
I was 1, 2 and 3,
4, 5 and 6
Under the spell of your tricks.
7, 8 and 9 and so it goes on.
I am under your thumb.
Hooked, line and sunk,
nearly drowned in you sick, little games.
No matter, the cause, I want to say STOP!
I will not, any longer, be your puppet.
I will not, any longer,
believe all the lies.
Or that I was to blame.
A child who was innocent
is shouting back,
loudly saying NO, so that you hear.
I know you were hurt as a child,
But is didn’t mean hurt me too.
It was a chance for you to
change the cycle of pain,
and face the truth.
So hooks I remove you
I take a step back.
It’s time for me now
It’s time to cry all the tears
I suppressed again and again.
It’s time to release the pressure at last.
To lift the weight from my soul.
Every feeling let out now
Will help me know
I am not what you said I was.
I am God’s child ( as are you).
Time to break the chain,
To feel,
To renew.
So go from my door,
Leave me be, for now.
Give me space to breath
Find out who I am.
Free from the shadow,
of childhood pain.
When tears have flowed,
my soul will gain,
the chance to express
Its beauty once more.
To open my heart,
Open the door to
Love and joy, all the things I forgot.
So now I say Stop,
to your unloving behaviour,
from future attacks.
This girl, this woman
is fighting back.
Through anger, through fear,
Through terrible grief.
To shift my beliefs.
Unlovable to Loveable
Unloved to Loved.
“For far too long we have been seduced into walking a path that did not lead us to ourselves. For far too long we have said yes when we wanted to say no. And for far too long we have said no when we desperately wanted to say yes. . . . When we don’t listen to our intuition, we abandon our souls. And we abandon our souls because we are afraid if we don’t, others will abandon us.”
― Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice
I was looking at the word abandonment because I have been feeling the emotions in me, what it has meant to me. I like words and I am sometimes interested in where they come from, I break them down. This is what I saw: abandonment; ‘A -Band -On -Me.’ Then it made sense. A band on me… a band, as in a restricting, uncomfortable , sometimes suffocating band on me.
Abandonment: one of the biggest wounds in humanity which plays out and permeates our lives. It runs deep, it runs wide, it takes many forms. It is not just about the day our father left the house and never returned. The chances are he probably “left” emotionally and mentally even before he packed his suitcase.
A child feels every moment of abandonment like a punch to the chest. And currently every child is likely to experience it at some point during their childhood. It happens every time a parent is angry or in fear. For some this is infrequent and is not very damaging especially if that parent is normally very loving and recognises the emotional needs of that child, and allows that child to express its anger or grief about what has occurred. But for many of us, there is chronic abandonment: an emotionally unavailable parent or parents (whether physically present or not). These parents often or completely shut us down every time we try to express our own emotions: they can not handle or do not want to feel their own painful or negative emotions so they can not or will not deal with ours. Even though we are often the perfect reflection of their own unhealed emotions.
This emotional abandonment leaves most children in a void of not knowing: not knowing if they are loved, or who they are. John Bradshaw says it as it is:
“Since the earliest period of our life was preverbal, everything depended on emotional interaction. Without someone to reflect our emotions, we had no way of knowing who we were.” ( from Healing the Shame within you)
The messages are: “I can’t love you;” “you are unlovable;” “you are not enough;” “I wish you hadn’t been born;” “it’s your fault I am like this” and so forth. For a young soul, new to the world these messages are felt even before they are spoken in some way. For a young soul, trying to find out who she is it can slow down or even put a halt to that discovery. She just becomes all the false beliefs and messages she is told. She will grow to believe she is worthless, unloved and unlovable and she trusts no-one, mostly with an expectation they may “leave.” This belief affects every decision, every action and every relationship, most importantly and including the one with him/herself. It can lead to a cycle of self punishment that is just normal for him/ her. It is not always obvious to the world around her as so many live in this cycle it is normal and we choose to close our eyes to what is happening in us and around us.
How many of our young people struggle to find meaning in their life? How many are obsessed with celebrity lives, feeling that is the answer to their own emptiness? How many think alcohol is the only way to feel free, to live without abandon? When really it is just a way we use to not feel the pain of abandonment. For years I used food as my main source of self punishment: sometimes to feel in control of life, of my emotions, by starvation and other times.whilst I binged, as a numbing drug: a pushing down of the pain. I unconsciously suppressed my feelings in many other forms during the dance of low self-worth.
And sometimes I still do: I yell at the man I love. Inside little me is screaming, in panic, “He is going to leave me, he can’t really love me.” The difference now, thank God, is that I know its there, and I am peeling back the layers of my anger, fear and grief that abandonment brought me. I am easing the “band-on-me.” Denial will not do this, pretending everything is ok will not release this band. We have to be prepared to FEEL it. Not forever, just long enough to release it. Just enough to set us free. Feeling it will not destroy us. If we consciously just give ourselves permission to feel, when we do, when we let it exist and let it out of our soul, then we start to find out who we truly are: then we discover we are much more than we ever knew and certainly much more than what we have been told.
There is so much fear in this world just from this wound. If we want to change this world we need to be willing to feel the truth. Generations of parents are hurting generations of children from not acknowledging the truth of their patterns or their life, by denying their wounded emotions. This cycle has gone on for thousands of years. It is time to try something different: to break the chain. Let us be brave, let us surrender to our emotions with sincerity, without projection and blame. Just purely to know ourselves and to know Love: real love.
It always amazes me how deep our grief goes. For many of us we don’t even know how much grief, how much sadness we hold inside us. We live, we breath, we move through life, but we age, we have times of depression, of struggle, of illness, of feeling something isn’t quite ok, but we often can’t name it. We are often encouraged to let the past go, to live in the now, plan for the future but our bodies, our minds, and actions tell us if this is working..or not.
But its not so much us holding onto the past, it is just that the past holds onto us when we haven’t admitted the truth of it. It’s not so much about the stories even: there are so many sad stories, so much loss in many peoples lives. It IS about locking up all that grief, all those fears; it is about how much we are encouraged to “not cry” as children; how we are taught to control ourselves; to convince others and then ourselves we feel better, we feel ok.
The truth is, for many of us, we can believe we “got over it”, but we haven’t. How do we know? Because all through the rest of our lives that unhealed, unfelt pain impacts us. We play out the hurt in our daily lives and our relationship with ourselves and with others. My father left when I was about 4 years old. I met him a couple of times as an adult and each time it didn’t work out. He just couldn’t do it. Now you could say, come on you hardly knew him, let it go, forgive and forget. I thought I had many times, but the truth is I never cried when he left, even though I remember him walking down the pathway to his car, I never cried. I remember feeling scared, but I never cried. Over the years, I thought about him, sometimes longed for him, dreamed he loved me – somewhere out there. And when that failed, I imagined my dad to be like Dick Van Dyck in Chitty Chitty Bang; a little self absorbed, but ultimately loving his children beyond anything else.
I was never someone’s “special girl” and I thought I had eventually accepted it. The truth was I had just numbed myself to the pain of losing him, of feeling and being unloved by my parent, of never feeling good enough to be loved. The truth is I have played out my deep fear of abandonment in every relationship: trusting no-one really, waiting for them to discover I just wasn’t lovable. I tried to be in control, end things before they did. My lack of self love took me into relationships I never should have had. LIke many women I mistook someone desiring me as love or completely convinced myself I was better on my own. And I was in complete denial of my anger towards my father for walking out that day and never coming back.
Robby will tell you as he has had to live with me trying to play this one out again. The difference is this time we are both trying to heal this type of grief completely from our soul. We have been praying for and slowly seeing the truth. Robby has been there whilst I finally admitted how angry I have been at men. I have been there as he also discovered how the pain from his own upbringing started to shift. Our fears have been jumping up one after the other. We never knew we had so many.
In the past I have tried many ways to heal: therapy, healing, workshops, positive thinking, EFT, yoga, affirmations etc. They helped, but nothing like what I have discovered in the last two years. These days I just pray, from my heart with a desire, a feeling. ask for God’s love to help me.This is how it works: you pray and the Law of Attraction brings you something to trigger the grief. (It can take more than a few goes if your pretty locked down) .
Tonight, for me, it was something as simple as a movie: The Last Song. A movie about a daughter and her estranged father. Over the course of the summer they heal their relationship and it was as I watching them, and feeling his real love for her, it really hit me that I had no memory of any father – daughter moments. That my father just couldn’t do it, that he didn’t love me for who I was, in fact didn’t love me at all as far as I could tell. The tears came and came, and then I realised it was not a personal reflection on me as a person. Gosh I was a child. It wasn’t me, he just couldn’t go there. I cried for not having a father, but I really cried for all the times I had felt small and unlovable and it had stopped me following my dreams. And I had many dreams and wanted many adventures. But my inner pain and the feelings of inadequacy it created, stopped me. Letting out that pain, crying tears of real grief are what reveals these truths. When we hit the real grief, the causal pain and release it we feel lighter and brighter. It is truly a weight off your heart.
It is correct that Truth can set you free, but real Truth also needs Love, unconditional Love, God’s Love. Truth is the key and Love is the hand that turns it.
