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Post by desire2bme on May 23, 2014 2:51:21 GMT 10
Hello James and everyone else here. I have a question about the actual ability to release emotion through being able to cry. I have been doing some kind of work relating to my childhood emotions in one way or another for 20 plus years now. Along the way, I have learned of all the many ways that I say with one part of me that I want to feel and know the truth while other parts of me still have lived in opposition to this desire. More recently, I have been living at a new place where I feel I am more sincere in my desire for truth and living honest with how I feel. As a result of this deeper desire, I live with the constant ache inside that leads me to offer up the prayer without words that just LONGS and LONGS and LONGS for the truth about my whole life along with my desire to be able to feel the Diving Love of Mother-Father God. I find most of the real work and guidance and teaching for me goes on at night after I ask with words to be taught the truth during my sleep (or after I wake up out of my sleep in the night hours). The teaching and help given me at these times comes byway of impression upon my soul and as that happens my mind wildly tries to figure out how to put words upon the soul learning that is going on. All this said, I want to come back to the reason for this particular post. I find that I am learning so many things...so many of the dots from my childhood are being connected and I am learning a deeper compassion on the child I was/am. What frustrates me is that I can not cry. As I write this, what comes through my mind is this thought, "If you really cared, you would cry." That must be some kind of false belief I carry about myself. I know I cared so very deeply as a child, so much that I stopped myself from the ability to feel how much I cared. Sometimes, I wonder if my tears are waiting for my own more perfected presence with myself....that there is the child in me that doesn't trust me enough to just fall down and cry. In my family of 12 siblings there was no time for tears and anyone who did cry was a "bellering cow" or just a "big baby". Even though I have known for many years now that it was wrong to have been treated this way as a child and feel the authentic waves of sadness from those times, still I can not cry. I sense there is something that I am completely blind to yet concerning the child that holds the key to this. She has taught me thus far that there is always a wise reason why things stay locked up and to just keep on desiring and asking for the truth surrounding this. How has this issue been for you, James? (and anyone else who is willing to share your own work concerning this issue of crying your eyes out or like me...not being able to.) Thank you so much for all of your time and personal work to put your own process here on the internet. It makes me feel not so fucking crazy!
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Post by James on May 23, 2014 13:34:23 GMT 10
Hello desire2bme - I like that, it’s certainly a good place to start, and welcome to the forum. Your post is challenging to say the least, particularly taking into account the limitations of communicating this way over the Internet. It immediately stirs up in me memories of times during my healing when I’ve felt full of so many unshed tears and have wished, longed and begged they would come out. But I also realised at such times that I was scared of that happening, as much as I wanted it to, because crying when I was little brought so much horrendous unloving response from my parents, that I felt my whole existence was going to end. So to feeling you can’t cry because of the punishment or fear of annihilation if you do, being so great, is a fucking awful state to be placed in.
When you said "If you really cared, you would cry.”, my first reaction to this is: Who said this too you? It’s such a nasty and unloving manipulative thing to say. That’s how I interpret it anyway. So why are you putting this pressure on yourself? Or, can you feel if anyone is putting it on you? Do you believe you are not truly caring? And if so, what do you believe you are? Do you feel you are really underneath it all, a horribly, uncaring, despicably bad person, someone who doesn’t care at all? And would that sort of person be the worst sort of person you could be? And why do you want to cry anyway? Can you write to me about why you feel you want to cry - why do you REALLY feel you want to? And if it’s too much to consider exposing yourself in public but you would like to write about such feelings and emotions, I’d be more than happy to start a private board for members only.
For a long time I struggled with the notion: if I want people to express their bad feelings on a forum, what happens when someone comes along and says they do, but they can’t - how would I deal with that? So how do I deal with someone who says they want to cry, but can’t? So I’m pleased you’ve come and here I am having to deal with this. And to be honest - I don’t have a clue what to say.
Marion says to you that at the age of ten she stopped herself crying, it only made things worse for her. Then she couldn’t cry for forty years. She had lots of therapy and cried during some of that, but never could just do what I think it is you’re wanting to do, cry that wonderful release cry when you let go and uncover the truth of what your pain is really all about. And that can only come about, as you’re probably aware as shown in your statement that: “Sometimes, I wonder if my tears are waiting for my own more perfected presence with myself....that there is the child in me that doesn't trust me enough to just fall down and cry.”, when you are loving of yourself enough, or feel loved and supported enough, to finally let go. And from her experience, that will come the more you can speak about all your bad feelings, longing for the truth of them all. So you have the longing - the desire, that much you’ve made very clear, so can and do you speak about it all to anyone?
And from Marion’s healing experiences she says that it’s imperative that you can speak about all you are feeling - every tiny feeling, all the time and whenever you feel such feelings, to someone who is there ready to allow you to do so. Do you have someone in your life who would let you speak and speak and speak about all you feel without interfering or controlling you? Someone who is there with you and who understands that it’s vitally important that you can articulate - bring out and put into words, all your bad feelings. For it’s in the struggle of our trying to put into words all the feelings and emotions we feel as we’re longing for the truth of them, that helps us to move into and then through the blocks. And so by doing this you’ll slowly free yourself up and the crying will just naturally come as part of it all.
And if you don’t have such a person currently, Marion said she would beg and beg the Father (however you relate to God) to bring such a person into her life. All so she has someone who she can talk out all her feels to, someone who will just accept her to say all the bad stuff, and also someone who won’t interfere as in stop her speaking; but someone who is not just passively receiving it all, but wanting to engage and even argue and fight if necessary, someone who does want to understand you and all that you are. And that’s the most important part - we need to feel we are understood - THAT SOMEONE UNDERSTANDS THE PAIN WE ARE IN BECAUSE OUR PARENTS REFUSED TO; and be understood by the world, another person, and then even more importantly, by ourselves. And you are more than welcome to write your bad feelings on the forum and we can see what happens, it being better than nothing at least. I want to understand what you are feeling; I want you to tell me all about the pain you are in and all you are suffering. So please tell me.
For me, although I said at times I too have yearned to cry, I’ve felt as if a sea of crying has been banking up in me but it just won’t come, even feeling afterwards as if my eyes are sore from all the crying I have done when not one tear has actually come into them. And I’ve also felt that, and especially being a man, it was manly or required that I do not cry. And I’ve found that what’s happened through my healing years is that I’ve in fact slowly expressed bit by bit - and I still am, that sea of crying out of myself. So I’ve talked it out of myself rather than cried it. However I’m not saying that you should just talk it out too and you won’t feel like crying, as you do feel the crying in you, as Marion did in herself, and she has cried a lot through her healing, but still a lot of the times as we’ve been speaking about our pain, tears will start to come but not continue, with the talking being more important. You see when you talk and express, and I say this meaning talk with the full emotion of what you’re feeling and not just some dry monotonous talking telling how you are feeling, it is in the very act of you speaking about yourself, how you truly feel, the truth of your feelings, that you are revealing the truth of yourself, the truth of your soul to yourself. You are saying, this is me, this is me because this is how I feel. And it’s absolutely and perfectly right that if you feel bad, then that is how you feel, and you tell and don’t keep it all in. And we need to hear ourselves saying such truth. So we need to say I’M SO ANGRY... because we are angry, we wouldn’t be if we didn’t feel that way. So when you write if that’s all you can do, say out loud if you can all you are feeling so you can hear the words and feel the actual energy and emotion of them coming out of you, and this helps to stay connected to the feelings which often releases yet more emotion, all of which over the years of work you’ve done on yourself, I’m sure you’ve experienced.
And who wants to be called a Big Baby if they cry, that’s a lot of pressure from within such a large family to not cry. So yes I imagine you would feel very sad about this, and no doubt, also very angry - have you expressed anger about not being allowed to cry?
Anyway, I don’t think I’ve been much help to you, I don’t know if I can be of any help. But please if you want to ask more about it, do so. I’m happy and would even like you to go on and on and on about your not being able to cry and how that makes you feel. So, how does it make you feel not being able to cry? And if anything I’ve said makes you feel bad, say so, and why it does, as that would be a good place for us to start on a more personal basis.
I feel for you having to struggle on by yourself, as that’s the impression I get from what you’ve said. It’s too daunting a task to be expected to do it all by yourself, and alone. No one should have to do that when they want to uncover the truth of themselves.
So having read all I’ve said, is there still one nagging thing you feel about why you can’t cry... what is it... what is the main worry you have about it?
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Post by wesley on May 23, 2014 17:51:53 GMT 10
Hello Desire2bme. Welcome. Some very inspiring and Truth filled posts from some great family members in my opinion are here on this site .
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Post by desire2bme on May 24, 2014 0:02:26 GMT 10
Thanks so much for your quick reply to my question, James and your encouragement as well, Wesley. I will be taking some time today to go over all that you have provided me with to prompt what needs to be expressed out of me. Real and raw companionship (even long distance) is like GOLD to me at this point in my journey. I will share a bit about what companionship I presently do have when I come back and share what comes as I contemplate what you have written. I will leave you with something I wrote quite recently as I have been asking God about my lack of tears.
I need you
To feed me when I am hungry
To change me when my diaper is wet or dirty
To pick me up so I can feel close to your heart
To help me know I am safe and kept from harm
I need this all the time, everyday
And I can’t do these things for myself
If you don’t do it, I will cry
And cry and cry and cry some more
Finally, when I am all worked up
And filled full of fear and stress
I will go silent
You will not hear from me anymore
I have given up and learned
To find a way to numb how painful it feels
To not be seen and not be heard.
I will cut off my hands and my feet.
And make it my fault.
If I had hands to reach out, I could be picked up by you
But my hands don’t work and that’s my fault.
If my feet worked properly, I could kick them and make myself visible to you
But they also are useless to do their job
And so I cut them off as well
It’s my fault
If I had the right way of communicating my needs to you
You’d hear, you’d see
I am worthless and useless now
And that’s much better than feeling the pain
Of having hands that are able to receive, but have no one there giving to me
Having feet that can walk, but when using them feel the pain of “being in the way”
Yes, it will be a difficult life
But not as painful as living whole and feeling how it feels
To just be me
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Post by desire2bme on May 24, 2014 9:36:36 GMT 10
I went to bed last night asking to be taught some more about this issue in my life. I woke up with the phrase: "It would be the end of you...you would die." My gut resonated with this emotional belief that still lives in me. I feel that I had to cut off my capacity to open up to the daily emotions of powerlessness and helplessness - the neglect was horrid. "Somebody stick a bottle in her mouth" was something that came back to me at one point in my memories and when I shared that with an older sister, she said that was the way babies were often handled (or shall I say, NOT handled). I am second to the youngest of the 12 of us. My father's alcoholism was full blown by the time I was born and my mother's need to chase after him and keep on trying to change him was also in high gear. The truth of the matter was that trying to control my father was my mom's priority, so not only was I competing with the rest of my siblings for attention but ultimately my own parent. I was not willing to try to compete (it was a no-win situation) and gave up the belief that it would ever happen. I took on the role of my mother's confidant, thinking I was her protector as well as my younger sister's protection. My mother would have the two of us sleep with her in my parent's bed so that when my dad came home drunk he'd have no place in her bed to sleep. I was scared to death of my dad when he was drunk, but could not show it and so my body would just tremble and my teeth would chatter. My mom was completely absent in seeing what went on with me as I laid right next to her in bed going through this time after time. I felt I had no choice but to stay in the bed "protecting" my mom from my dad. How very sad a picture is all of this...so sad.
I have expressed a lot of my rage, hatred and resentment toward my parents (both dead now)...not to them personally, but during walks I have taken out here where I live in the country where no one can hear me when I yell out loud. My husband through the years has also gotten the brunt of my left-over anger esp. toward my dad. A big shift has happened with us since I have been able to see through the emotional triggers he brings to me. I don't give myself permission to dump on him anymore, but take time with myself to work through feeling the emotions he helps bring to the surface. More recently, I have been able to sit with extreme feelings of loneliness...waves of it washing through me when my husband gets depressed and isolates himself. The words come to me saying, "This is just the way you experienced life day after day after day in you home...isolated from everyone of your siblings and parents. No one was connected to their own heart and everyone just found their own way to survive." And so now I just welcome the ache and just feel it without trying to move away from it anymore. Seems all my repressed emotion is covered with loneliness.
Why do I put pressure on myself to cry? I think it comes from wanting to feel the release physically as the emotions pass through me as well as believing that a healthy human being cries when they feel sad. So the question I ask myself is "Am I trying to use crying as the "fix" to feel better and get past these pockets of pain quicker?" Yes, I believe there is some of that. What has been coming to me lately in dreams is to what extent the family dynamics were fucked up..."the bigger picture" is being revealed to me of the complete pervasiveness of the feelings of aloneness that I lived in growing up. The one dream was finding my home as a giant cat litter box full of shit. I smelled of it...the SHAME hit me before I left my mother's womb and it affected my ability to believe I could have any friends in school. I was that kid who had her winter jacket hood tied so shut tight that I could barely see where I was walking and I would get on the school bus, find a seat by the window and never gaze anywhere but out that window the whole way to school. Am just recently getting it how covered over I was with shame and how I believed it was me. The color of my parka was red...how could I have attracted more attention to myself than I was by trying to hide myself in this way? If it wasn't so pitiful, I could laugh about it.
I had a memory also come to me about my brother next in age. My older siblings tell the story about him how when it was time for him to go to kindergarten, the teacher would call my mother saying Jimmy wouldn't stop crying when he was in class. It went on for quite some time. Being that is what my mother had to "put up with" with him, I did not in anyway want to be that kind of burden to her. Instead of crying, I lived in the classroom as a mute child. Children who just don't talk are often times just overlooked...I think that's what happened with me both at home and at school. I do remember being in kindergarten standing in a corner while my classmates played together. I did not know how to "play" and I have no memory of how my teacher handled this. All I know is that I wanted to hide and just get through the day without standing out at all.
So can and do I speak about this with anyone? My husband now sees that I am on a constant mission to work through my repressed emotions. He is getting better at not taking what I am discovering personally but often times shuts down and just says nothing when I tell him how I am feeling. I realize I am shining light each time onto his own unfinished grief from his own childhood which he is just beginning to welcome the idea of. More often than not, how he handles me expressing my emotions helps me to just feel how it was growing up with siblings who didn't think our family was as crazy as it was. So instead of it being a relief to be able to share with my husband, it often instead takes me straight into feeling the pain of not being understood or heard. At first this was something that I wanted to find a way to change or stop, but as I have welcomed it , it has been a huge help for me to get deeper in touch with how alone and abandoned I have felt all of my life....no, I am not a glutton for punishment, but am just finding that if I accept my husband where he is at in his own healing process and his ability to support (mostly lack of ability) that I am able to actually feel the pain I have been asking to be able to feel from my childhood.
Time to wrap this one up...for now at least, but wanted to say to you James that your response "Your post is challenging to say the least" kind of threw me. I guess I just thought my question would be just another subject that you would identify with and share with me about as far as how it has been for you. Do I sound desperate and pitiful, I wondered? Is there some way that I come across as strange or weird in how I ask my question? Do I sound like I need to be rescued or fixed or given some kind of perfect answer because I come across as fragile? What is it? Just interesting how I took all that. Also before I close I want to thank Marion for sharing in this question and giving her help. I so appreciate her own unique way of seeing things and sharing what has been most powerful for her in working through her emotions. Love to you both and for now...ta ta!
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Post by James on May 24, 2014 14:22:46 GMT 10
Thank you desire2bme for posting all you did. And no you don’t sound desperate or pitiful, nor did you come across as strange or weird, god, far from it; nor do you come across as fragile or needing to be fixed. No, none of those things that’s for sure. And I feel very lucky to have two women such as yourself and Samantha who are so competent in and with their own feelings come to the forum. And I want to add, that from reading your next two posts you don’t sound like you need my help, not that I could give it, for as you see, I’m hopeless when it comes to doing what I write about. I might be okay with some of the theory, but without Marion’s constant help, I’d be a lost cause - and I still am if you ask her!
But now I understand you are little better, and gee, the only thing that comes to mind now concerning why you can’t cry as you feel you’d like to, is to do as Marion always says and what the Mother and Father have always said to her: Keep Going. I mean, from all you’ve said you seem to have a very good grasp of looking to your feelings and they leading and showing you what you need to know, so it’s more as you said, possibly in time when you require it, then you’ll be able to cry, but I don’t know - hey, I wouldn’t have a clue. And I even thought as I just wrote to Wes, perhaps your soul and the Mother and Father are even holding your tears back as a way of keeping the inner pressure up on you, but I don’t know. Really it’s what I want this forum to be, a place where people can write and tell about their feeling-healing experiences so we can all understand what it’s like and how it all works, all as amazing as it is. And I certainly don’t want to try and answer or fix your problems, shit I do that enough with myself and trying to do it to Marion. All I want to do, if I can, is just guide people who don’t understand the principles of it all as I understand them to be and who would like to see it from my perspective, and possibly give a prompt here and there all based on how Marion has helped me. In no way do I want to try and set myself up as the one who can help everyone, especially in the department of feelings, when it’s very clear that between Marion, Samantha and yourself, you women have it all over the likes of me. I don’t need any proof to show me that women will be the leaders in healing themselves, and mostly I think men will be lucky if you bother to take the time with helping us.
Also, I was wondering, what is your spiritual focus with it all? Do you have a spiritual goal? And what is your relationship with God, how to do you relate to God? And you long for the Divine Love you said, how long have you been doing that; and how did it come about? And what led you to the forum?
And I would love you to share more about your story; and have you had professional therapy at any time? And that poem (?), that was very intense and heartrending, very good, and yes terribly sad. To feel you need to amputate your hands and feet so you won’t be in the way. Agh, no wonder you want to cry and cry. I may be way off about this, but also I understand how you can’t, you having to be the strong protecting one who doesn’t cry or show any weakness, always the dependable and powerful and controlling one - controlling of yourself to the degree of not even allowing yourself to have your hands and feet. So perhaps you have to control yourself to the degree of not allowing yourself to cry - I think you suggested or said that. Would crying actually be the cutting off of your hands and feet? And I understand how you can’t be seen to be weak and needy like your brother. And I’d like to hear more about how you came to see you were projecting onto your husband and more of how he takes all that you’re doing. And how bad it is that we as children take it all on blaming ourselves. I can understand being terrified of crying, of really letting go, because what then happens, what happens when you’ve got no one to save and hold you and you just keep falling...
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Post by desire2bme on May 25, 2014 13:16:55 GMT 10
It has not been that long since I have retired my Savior-of-the-world cape...my life time addiction so as to feel worthy and competent. Growing up in an alcoholic household, as I child I assumed that the family's problems were all because of my father's drinking. Everybody pointed in his direction as we all chose our own roles to play that would numb our own pain we each inherited from the present and previous generations. It has only been lately that I am feeling it to the bone how that the whole family (most importantly myself) has equal dysfunction and not just the one we all could easily blame. I became a blind guide as I thought I saw through and grew up and out of the childhood rules and roles I played as I moved away from the family. In my early 20's I was drawn toward my next dysfunctional family that played by many similar rules but just with different faces and people in positions playing parents to children: the church. My facade I built as a child in order to protect myself from others getting close to me was just right for the church setting. As I write about it, there comes the idea of how perfect a transition this was for me to slip in to this institution (My first church in adulthood was an Assembly of God church) that provided a venue to begin my search for just Who this God is. I easily became the "good girl" who loved God as much as a person can when you are believing that everything in the Bible is true and learn not to ask uncomfortable questions to those in charge.
For quite some time, I lived as one who saw anyone who didn't believe in the Bible as the whole truth of God as going to hell. When you are as numbed out as I was back then, there just isn't the prick in the heart that you can feel in order to wake up out of that horrible nightmare presented as "The gospel...the Good News." Having lived that scene with all the sincerity I could muster and trying to follow all of the rules - asking What would Jesus do - I understand completely the draw it has upon people and why some never question it...esp. when children are raised under a certain religion. Without dethroning our parents, we need pseudo gods that will continue to act as our parents that will smile when we play our roles as we all sing Kumbayah and grace the world with the word of God getting people "saved." Religion was definitely my drug of choice and I blindly followed along in the evangelical world of churches until I was in my late 20's. It was when I went to bible school out of my exuberance for really wanting to give my whole heart and life to God that I began to do a little bit more thinking for myself, yet still did not deter from believing all answers I'd ever need would be found in the pages of the Bible. If something didn't quite line up or make sense, it had to be because I missed something...not because there was more to God than God's Word/the bible. I graduated and began my work at a place that helped addicts and women in crisis called Teen Challenge (it is like a rehab place with a religious bent, teaching the bible and relationship with God as the way out of addiction). It was a huge beautiful old house where I was a live in counselor along with another gal and an older couple who directed this particular ministry. My eyes continued to open up to seeing that I had just as many problems as those coming in for help, yet I followed along playing my role as counselor best I could...until I just couldn't anymore.
At this point came the next teaching tool for me to move into my own personal life healing. Through Teen Challenge, I had met a man who was leading christian support groups that had it's initial first phase of the work using John Bradshaw's inner child work. I left the crisis center and began working with this man, helping facilitate the groups and reaping all the benefits from being involved in it. I learned so much about myself and my childhood, but trying to keep everything under the lid of the christian God limited my ability to grow past many things. It was perfect at the time for how deep I was ready to go. I ended up meeting my husband through one of the groups. He and I became friends as he shared an interest in attending more than one group in order to go deeper into his own healing work so we saw each other a few times a week via the groups. He was in process of getting a divorce and I had no interest in him beyond him being a guy who seemed quite devastated at the point he was at in his life and who found these groups as his life boat. As his divorce finalized, soon after I was struck by cupid's arrow with "feelings" for him. We married within about 6 months time. I ended up burning out from doing counseling in an office along with continuing with the work of the support groups and quit that line of work. Marriage was already taking it's toll upon me (stuff you might guess comes from marrying someone fresh out of his divorce and me thinking marriage was "the answer" to happiness). Ugh!
Fast forward years into my marriage, regarding my spiritual path and search for Who God is, I began searching beyond the strict christian traditional religions (which caused further strain on my marriage, so I did my searching without much discussion at all with my husband). I would order book after book after book and read and read and read...Sufi, Buddism, Taoism, you name it...I was like the ball in the pinball machine bouncing all over the place and ended up settling for a while in a path called The Infinite Way, started by a man Joel Goldsmith. It was again such perfection going on even though I felt pretty crazy not being able to fully embody any of the paths wholly. It's what my heart was made for, to be whole-hearted and so I was living dissatisfied. What concerned me the most about the last path I settled in for a while was how out of touch people were with their emotions and bodies in general. It was where I would live and learn exactly what spiritual bypassing was. I was so thirsting for something raw and real by this time and this was not it. All very important things within all that I searched...am so glad to have gone through all that I experienced in able to find what truth there was along the way and keep on going. My last stop at the end of searching for God through any spiritual path/religion was through watching many of the videos regarding emotional processing provided by AJ Miller. It was through him also that I learned about the Padgett messages and the difference between Divine Love and natural love. It was while cruising on line through finding out that AJ Miller was not the only one who was involved in the Divine Love movement that I came across your site. I think your site was listed on the Truth For All People website. As I read and read and read both the CR site and the DLS site, I couldn't believe what I was seeing and feeling. It all meshed with where I was at...the end of using religion as my drug of choice and giving myself over to using my lifetime to processing out of all of the generational pain handed down to me. My latest books I had taken to reading were Alice Miller's. She spoke to places in me that nothing else had yet touched, so I was completely primed for what my eyes would feast upon as I read your words, James that you have provided on your websites...such a gift to this weary traveler's soul!
All these words and I have only answered partially one of your questions! My spiritual focus is coming into at-one-ment with God continuing to do my own personal healing work as deep as I can go while here on the planet, no matter where it leads me. I am so surprised to have found your site to finally have a real feeling of what fellowship in the spirit must be. I am used to doing on my spiritual work on my own and gave up really having any expectation of feeling truly joined in heart with others pursuing the same spiritual goals outside of any religion/spiritual path. It feels so good not to be bound by any man-made straight jacket any longer and instead to only pursue God with no need or any desire for any mediator. My relationship with God is my mainstay...the one thing that is my every day constant passion and desire. Since I have taken my parents off the pedestal of god and keep my face to the grindstone of doing my CR work, to have God to ask and long for the truth has become my reality...my necessity. The deeper I go in being able to have my eyes opened to the bigger picture, the wider my mouth opens saying WOW...I have yet to really comprehend Divine Love...and so the longing longing longing of my soul for It just keeps going 24/7. The pain that I have had to stop ignoring (that my marriage began to dredge up from day one) has been the greatest gift that ultimately disrobed me from playing savior to my husband or anyone else anymore. We were married for 19 years, got divorced and remarried after being divorced for a year.
My husband, I believe, is relieved most days to have me living more honestly with him as I do my healing work...even if it takes him to uncomfortable places in his own life. For me to have turned the train of our marriage around to be used as the crucible to bring to the surface and burn out of me all of the old pain (instead of projecting my shit onto him) has shifted everything for us in the marriage. There is nothing in our relationship out of bounds as far as it's ability to bring up things I need to work through from my past before I ever met him. I hold him with the knowledge that neither one of us know how things are going to go from day to day, year to year and I end up being surprised by how facing the painful wounds ultimately each time creates the kind of bonding with each other that can come no other way. Learning about my projecting came slowly for me through some of the spiritual paths that taught some about it, and then when our marriage ended, our year divorced brought clarity more and more in this area. I don't know how it happened...it seemed all of the sudden somehow enough shit hit the fan, the dots connected and the scales fell from my eyes in what seemed like overnight...I just found myself undone, seeing what I was making others responsible for and how I was blaming others for me abandoning my own life.
What you said about crying and what you had been discussing with Wes...how not finding ourselves being able to release through tears keeps a certain amount of tension going...YES, this is right in line with what came to me. It is how it is to be for me right now. I heard in my soul a conversation telling me that I knew how to cry and that I could cry when ever I will need to. I was reminded of when I moved away from my best friend and cried uncontrollably for 3 days and then also cried for 2 days prior to her funeral a couple years later. That example was given me to sit in front of my face that my body will release its tears when it needs to and that I need never doubt that by comparing my crying life with any one else's any more. You are right on, James as well regarding my need to stay in control and I don't doubt that this does affect how effectively my body is able to release itself through just falling down and crying. There are no quick easy answers to any subjects...that's what happens when we move beyond living superficially!
Thank you James for creating this place in space with your desire to join and learn from one another...it is a beautiful place indeed. You clearly underestimate your work and I do so appreciate your need to process through your writing...being a true example showing your way of using writing as one way to express what is inside asking to come out. Thank you so much for all that you have provided and all you continue to do. Cutting off my hands and feet...as I reclaim them, learning to live as myself, expressing myself freely, feeling the truth of the pain of my life...my limbs are being re-attached. I want to freely give, freely receive as I learn to live with the family God gives as I continue to grow. I want to walk toward others unashamed as I am no matter what I find inside that asks to be seen and heard. I am so glad that your websites are here for me at this time in my life and hope that in being a part of it through sharing like this back a forth that we may all grow exponentially in our progression toward personal wholeness and at-one-ment with God.
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Post by James on Jun 3, 2014 18:55:02 GMT 10
Desire, in some of your posts you refer to Mother-Father God; do you actually feel the personal presence of God as your true, personal, and so very own, Mother and Father? Do you relate to Them that way? Do you feel yourself as their little child, and you go to Them being that feeling-child expressing all your good and bad feelings to Them, telling Them all the time how you are feeling and what you want and how much you want to feel loved by Them?
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Post by desire2bme on Jun 4, 2014 1:10:46 GMT 10
Mother-Father (this way of addressing God) came to me in more of a functional and real way when I came to the end of seeking through religions. My using Mother-Father God are the words I use to describe the personal relational presence (vs. a belief system) that I feel especially in the middle of the night when I awake and find impressions and answers to questions coming to me/guidance toward feelings I am asking to become more aware of. I have a sense of feeling bonded with Them, but not yet as my "very own" Mother and Father. I believe the neglect that I suffered as a child from my blood parents really affects my ability to FEEL Their desire coming from Them toward me...how much they like connecting with me.
Because I had no experience of the parent-child bond in a feeling way with my parents, my tendency of relation with my spiritual Parent has more of the feel of student to Teacher. Within a classroom, I am one of MANY students just like in my home I was one of MANY children, so there's this feeling of not wanting to be a burden by calling attention to myself that I am still finding playing out. When I get a sense of a place that is surfacing that has been repressed, I feel my desperate need for help and "raise my hand" unlike what I did in school/family growing up. I have no doubt my hand is seen and I will be helped and guided, but still fear what might happen if I allow the "warmth and closeness" in along with being taught and guided. I have a memory of getting spanked by my father for reaching out for my older sister specifically for warmth and closeness. The family was watching television together and I had moved from sitting on the floor to sitting on her lap. It incited RAGE in my dad and he grabbed me by the back of the shirt and took me into the next room and beat my butt. "You're too old for that!" he screamed. I have no memory of anyone coming to my aid and everyone saw and heard what was being done to me.
So I know the neglect I experienced along with the actual physical abuse I saw more played out between my mother and father has locked me quite tight having fears of what might happen if I throw out the welcome mat for warmth and closeness. It is only by baby steps that I am opening up on my side to this as the desire is here in my heart to be free to feel Their depths of Love toward me (that I am their priority - MY VERY OWN parents - and not just one of many many children). I do ask with words on a more regular basis for Them to love me, telling them that I want to feel Them and I feel my longings toward them without words also constantly. It feels good to have the connection with Them and not have to tax my mind in order to take it in.
It has only been since I read your writings with Mary that I have been fostering more so the Mother side of Mother-Father God...asking to feel Her Mother Love and to help me know the truth about and feel through all of the patterns of neglect that get between my ability to feel held and mothered by Her. Being around that beautiful fawn this past weekend opened up something in me giving me more ability to unashamedly desire warmth and closeness when it comes to allowing Mothering for myself.
It is such a weird wound...this neglect...hard to know what I missed out on or even to feel angry at what was never given to myself or any of my siblings. I think this is why my relationship with my husband mines me so very very deeply down to the bone of feeling the rage and loneliness that I had to be feeling in my family of origin. He has the ability to take me into these pockets of pain that I numbed out so early on in my life. I feel grateful to feel so bad when they are opened up because it feels so good just to feel anything so deeply! I also get a sense as I am writing this that the pain I feel by him (my husband) keeping his life bottled up and not sharing his feelings with me is an out-picturing of where I am REALLY at in my own verbal expression with Them. There's tons of stuff churning inside me that I don't take the time to put verbal expression to...instead I may go take a walk in nature asking my questions inside my heart and having conversation with God silently...not aloud.
In my paintings, I end up having "helpers/supporters" appear in them, like angels aiding me, abiding with me. I have been asking to be able to actually feel them instead of only having the belief that they are with me. I am amazed at your writings, James with spirits and desire to open up myself to work through whatever it is that keeps me from feeling the personable relationship with them...it is the same "gap" I often feel with God. What comes right now concerning this gap is back what I wrote at the beginning of this...the neglect that I suffered as a child from my blood parents really affects my ability to FEEL Their desire coming from Them toward me...how much they like/enjoy connecting with me. I look forward to what writing about this today brings up for me to feel through. Thanks for asking these questions.
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Post by James on Jun 4, 2014 18:08:29 GMT 10
Yes, I understand how it is for you with the Mother and Father. You do have such a good grasp of it all, about all you've been through and how it all comes together.
"It is such a weird wound...this neglect...hard to know what I missed out on or even to feel angry at what was never given to myself or any of my siblings." And I can relate to this, Marion's been so helpful pointing out that which I've missed out on. And it's taken me years to understand having been so heavily cocooned in my family's universe. But slowly I'm getting angrier at what I have missed out on.
Also, Desire and Wes, I won't be around for three of four days, I've used all my Internet data allowance for my month. So I'll speak to you soon.
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Post by James on Jun 16, 2014 18:14:37 GMT 10
Desire, Marion was saying this morning that it’s been coming to her these past days that we only cry when we can’t express all we feel. When we are a baby and young child, with our minds not as yet able to express - put into words - all the feelings we feel; when it becomes too overwhelming, we show such pain with tears all so as to try and gain the love and attention we need, showing something is not right. But as we get older, rightfully as we learn how to express ourselves without the need for tears, so we cry less. Certainly there will possibly always be times when we experience too much pain or happiness too fast, being unable to do anything more than show with tears what we are feeling, but as she said, if when that happens we can take the time to work through all we’re feeling, then we will be able to express and articulate such tears understanding what it’s all about.
So our crying is really the steam rushing up when we are boiling, seeking relief when there is no other way of expressing ourselves by articulating our feelings. And so as we keep so many of them repressed, we being so jammed up inside, often crying is the only way to release the pressure but rarely does anything to help us see why the deeper reasons why we are crying rather than the obvious superficial ones. And in this light, possibly it could even be said that such crying is yet another way to deny ourselves, to stop ourselves from having to work on expressing and seeking the truth of what is really going on within us. “Have a good cry and get it off your chest, then you’ll feel better”; yes, then you can carry on in the pain and suffering, not disturbing anyone, keeping it all in and bottled up until next time it all gets too much. Which is not as loving as saying “Tell me all about it, what’s wrong, speak to me, I want to know ALL of your pain - what really is going on inside you”.
So she wanted to tell you that it’s good and right that you can sense your crying and all those unshed tears in you from your early life, but it’s also good that you are not just crying all the time because it means you are expressing the causes of what made you cry, uncovering the truth of them and getting more in touch with your lost self. And should you need to be pushed into those deeper parts were you do cry, it all being just too much, then that will naturally occur; but really through our healing we’ll actually cry less then we might imagine or think we should as we uncover and reawaken such deeply buried pain, all because we are being true to it, and able to see what it’s causes are - because we’re connecting with the truth of it - with ourselves. Crying shows we’re losing ourselves or have lost it, whereas uncovering the truth shows we are coming back, regaining ourselves, staying connected. With a sudden shock we’re lost, we cry showing and expressing that, then with the talking all about our shocking feelings we feel, and even going deeper with them into our early life, reconnecting with such shocks that produced the same feelings back then, we are coming back and out and recovering ourselves as the truth comes to light.
She’s helped me understand more about the times when I feel like in some way I am crying yet no tears come whilst I speak about all that’s going on inside me, all the misery, hurt and pain. So now I understand more that we’re to speak it all out, to speak out all our tears; and from what you and Samantha have shown, speaking can be just as effective within your own mind, so far as uncovering truth for yourselves, as my speaking out loud to Marion.
So our tears are to come out in words, tears of feeling bad or feeling good, yet that’s also not to say we should try and stop ourselves crying believing instead it’s better to speak it out. We should of course always do as we feel. But I think as we progress more in our healing, so our being able to articulate ourselves better as we understand ourselves more, all helps to put into words all that happened to us from conception, and part of those words will be knowing those words are expressing the tears we had back then.
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Post by desire2bme on Jun 17, 2014 4:44:13 GMT 10
Thanks so much James, for relaying this from Marion. It gave me an "Ahhhhhh" inside as I read it and helps me to understand why I never had any good feeling when my mom would shed her tears while sharing the weekly reports of my dad's drinking escapades with my older sister when she'd come back home on weekends (to keep playing her emotional confidant role with my mother.) Her tears gave her just enough release and relief to keep on keeping on in her enabling role for another week. I secretly always hoped that these intimate "consoling" sessions between my sister and mother (that I would always take a front and center seat to watch and listen to) that they would one day come up with "the answer" that would stop the hell merry-go-round life that we lived at home.
You wrote of all the aspects concerning our crying so well, it is one post I will copy and keep close by to re-read. To allow ourselves and others plenty of room to feel what is surfacing without needing to come up with solutions to try to stop the pain from being felt all the way through, and to just keep on allowing the words and feelings to flow...if tears then fall along with it all naturally, then I say, "Let it rain!" And if it's a dry run with only words and feelings, this is VICTORY as well. Thank you SO MUCH for putting the wisdom of tears/no tears in print for me. I am so grateful for this.
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