From EHTU-175

68 On Seeing Clearly Perhaps for the First Time
EXPERIENCE has taught us that all who enter this territory of willing exploration and recovery have to, sooner or later, put down their devices of mood alteration.

These devices may be some variation on chemical or substance use, or they may be activities that we do as part of our daily rituals, or they may be people with whom we are in relationships. Still, they are devices that we use either overtly or covertly to mood-alter, and they stand between us and our escape from the prison of our minds.

The Key Is Always In The Hand Of The Seeker.

69 On Seeing Clearly Perhaps for the First Time
EXPERIENCE has taught us that the process of no longer using any mind-changing, mood-altering devices (chemicals, or otherwise) can induce a twisted form of thinking for the first while. This twisted form of thinking sets into motion a false belief that the worst is over (this is called the pink cloud effect) and that all our problems are fixed.

Not true, but . . . well, not really true is a better way to try to describe it. If we really stopped and thought about it, not really is not even close to the truth of the matter, but we have taken a step in the right direction, finally. More land mines up ahead, though.

The truth is, life’s conundrum has just changed faces. It just sits there in another form, waiting, like a huge, silent demon, waiting and wanting to control everything in our lives that it can.

Quietly It Waits.

. . . You Stumble . . .

. . . It Stirs And Smiles . . .

Yet Again.

70 On Seeing Clearly Perhaps for the First Time
EXPERIENCE has taught us that the process of being out of touch with our true feelings induces grandiosity and compulsivity.

Grandiosity and compulsivity are clear symptoms that the demon is quietly waiting, and that the core problems have yet to be addressed. This insight often comes forward during some form of counseling or intimate sharing; it is generally when we get the first indicator that something is hiding in our blind spots and is having a profound effect on our lives.

Often it gets pointed out to us that we really don’t have friends or that our primary relationships are becoming progressively more non-intimate or . . . and there are hundreds of “or’s,” and our journey does not truly begin until we begin to notice this.

Know this.

Noticing And Accepting Are Two Different Places

71 On Seeing Clearly Perhaps for the First Time
EXPERIENCE has taught us that the process of accepting “life is not working the way we thought it should” often leaves us deeply shaken.

John Bradshaw said, “The disease of my disease was the hole in my soul, there was an insatiable child inside that was ruling my life.”

To heal ourselves and grow, each of us has to do what everyone else on the face of this planet has to do to come to spiritual completion. We have to surrender to the Greater Way of Things and experience that original pain that can only be discovered from our childhood, the pain we have kept bottled up inside for so long and avoided like the plague.

As Scott Peck points out, we have to go through the pain, to embrace it, to process it, to reduce it and transform it; that is the only way out.

The Way Out Is Through . . .

… Simple …

Just Hard To Do!

72 On Seeing Clearly Perhaps for the First Time
EXPERIENCE has taught us that people who identify themselves (willingly or not) as co-dependent will have to go through a process of unraveling and processing if they want to free themselves. This thought stems from Alice Miller’s benchmark work Drama of the Gifted Child.

“When we are in touch with our true feelings and can express them and not have to repress them, the energy to act them out at inappropriate times and places diminishes over time.”

It is a given that if we lost our voices to speak about our pain, then we will act it out. Conversely, as we recover and regain our ability to speak and process our deep-seated feelings, then the need to act out in order to be heard will diminish.


"It Is Very Striking To See How ... Acting Out Ceases When The Patient Begins To Experience His Own Feelings."

(Alice Miller)

73 On Seeing Clearly and Maybe Understanding for the First-Time
EXPERIENCE has taught us that sometimes there are things that we should not attempt. Things that can’t be done, things that we shouldn’t touch. Sometimes we just have to observe, and possibly be observed in the process.

Steinbeck put it thus: There Are Those Who Must Live In Rooms Of Experience That The Rest Of Us Can Never Enter Perhaps We Should Quit Trying To Intrude Into These Places, And Simply Learn To Guard The Door.”

John Steinbeck

74 On Seeing Clearly The Fantasy and the Reality
EXPERIENCE has taught us that deep inside each of us is a part of us that wants everything right now and a place for it to hide—something like Peter Pan and Never Never Land. In combination, this place in us and that part of us are very insatiable and very demanding. Some call it the inner child, but I have to wonder at that. I believe this to be a misnomer because it seems more complex than that. I have come to believe that this is the soul wearing the cloak of the inner child, hiding from the world it has been born into.

This place seems to be a shadowy land of the phases of who and what we were meant to be and what we are to becomehopefully; who we were last time around, and who we are right now, all rolled into one.

It is like a staging area for life, and the soul is hiding there, too afraid to come out into the life it was supposed to be born into.

Facing Your Destiny Is A Difficult Business,

Yet It Seems To Be The Only Business At Hand

If You Really Get Honest And Look.