A Truth by any other name is still the truth

We're all seeking that special person who is right for us. But if you've been through enough relationships, you begin to suspect there's no right person, just different flavors of wrong.

Why is this?

Because you yourself are wrong in some way, and you seek out partners who are wrong in some complimentary way. But it takes a lot of living to grow fully into your own wrongness. And it isn't until you finally run up against your deepest demons, your unsolvable problems - the ones that make you truly who you are - that we're ready to find a lifelong mate. Only then do you finally know what you're looking for. You're looking for the wrong person. But not just any wrong person: the right wrong person, someone you lovingly gaze upon and think, This is the problem I want to have. I will find that special person who is wrong for me in just the right way. Let u'r scars fall in love...

You came to this world singularly and unclothed. That is your path. The others that you encounter are here on the path with you and are on the same journey but they can only serve as guideposts for you, and they can only provide you the opportunity to find your own blind spots, that's all.

There is a vast world of difference between solitude and loneliness and that is your discovery to make.

On Spiritual Path Finding

Once you have awakened from The Great Sleep Of Your Unawareness ...

Once you get past The Circumstances Of Your Best Imaginings ...

Once you’ve bumped into The Greater Way Of Things ...

There’s no turning back .

Your problem now is

You know.

And

This knowing cannot be undone.

Once you’re initiated

You’re done.

You’re an Initiate

And

Your life ... like it or lump it ... has changed.

I had a Traveller once who screamed at me

“Put It Back The Way It Was!”

Sorry—I don’t do that one ...

I am just a gate keeper,

“Shams al Din.”

It’s a one way passage.

Through,

But only after

... “You know!” ...

Understanding Me While Being We

The source of much of our unhappiness is the Failing or Failed relationships with those who are important to us: with our spouses, parents, children, friends and colleagues... their lack of conformity to how we imagine they should be.

Herein lay the problems most relationships will suffer during the course of their existence. It is not so much that the relationship is flawed; it is more that the individuals bring to the table a series of unmet needs and personality bruises that stand in the way. It’s not a couple’s problem. It is individual problems that were there long before the couple met that stands in the way... unfinished business from years ago.

The symptoms of unhappiness are widely variable and are often seen as mental illness. M Scott Peck makes the observation that most if not all human mental disorder is structured in an individual’s inability to face their legitimate suffering.

Most personality disorders are defence strategies gone sideways, but they become ways of dealing with life and they leave each of us wanting.

Zen and the Art of Lost and Found /Chapter 6

There is an absolute importance of sorting through the truth of our real experience and it is so essential to our well being (at all levels - mentally, emotionally and spiritually) that the loss of this truth to our mythical defensive delusions almost always is expressed sooner or later in some form of grave illness.

Have you ever noticed: Why You Are Afraid When You Are … it is different then when you notice: Why You Think You Are Afraid After The Fear Has Passed … when I really stopped and looked at this one while I was still in the midst of my fear … I noticed I Could Not Discern The Truth. The truth was out there … in the jumble of my reality but I had lost sight of it … somehow.

What I also had noticed as I sorted through certain variations on a theme on my life was I had lost sight of the truth of it for sometime … more importantly … I was really not too sure what it would look like if it came up and bit me. This observation I found fascinating … something akin to the look on the moose’s face just before the train hits.

Oh I knew it was there … some place … but I could not determine what it was or what had really happened to me, or for that matter … who really did it … there I was hung in this limbo land … not knowing and not being able to see clearly what it was that I was being told was the truth … I could not see ... I had no idea what I was looking at.

Oh I could see all the superficial things … houses and people and things … but I had senses that were running amuck trying to see between the lines … it simply did not make sense to me … and I had no one to turn to … because … I had also noticed that everyone else who was seemingly sharing this experience with me could not agree either … with me or each other … on what the hell it was that we were experiencing.

Trying to discuss this with people … be that family members or not … made for interesting discussions that often as not turned into flat out arguments and fights …

Answer More Of These in Your Journal … In Long Hand

• Have you accepted the full measure and affect of your affliction … the ones you have just awakened to?

• Do you actually think you can still associate with the people connected with your problems or your past?

• Can you still go to the places where you used to act out?

• Do you think it's wise to keep the reminders of your earlier days around, just to remind yourself or to feel safe or to test your recovery?

• If so, why?

• Is there something that you need to do or someplace that you need to be that you think you can't get to or through without mood altering or acting out. Using your old best worst habit.

• Is there some event that might happen to you that will be so painful that you’ll have to resort to your old ways just to survive?

• What reservations do you have about making the changes that you need to make, and what are you still holding on to that prevents you from making the changes you know you need to make?

Zen and the Art of Lost and Found /Chapter 5

Everyone Sees Their Own World For Their Own Reasons. Their 'Own World' And 'Own Reasons' Are Steeped In Terms Of Self-Preservation Protection. Protecting The Self From The Self's Past Experience.

I noticed one interesting thing; I have always had "a notion" ... a belief ... that I knew "how things should be working" ... for me and oddly enough ... "for everyone else too."

This "knowingness" changes from time to time but I still hold the position that "I should know."


Sometimes "my knowingness" stretches me into a place of appreciating that "I ... 'in-fact' don't know" ... that place of 'in-fact' ... I have come to find out ... is a place in my consciousness of knowing ... actually, it is just the back door to attempting to understand something that I can not quite get my head around ...


When I stop and think about it for a moment ... the great spiritual leaders didn't necessarily have lives that I would want to emulate ... take Christ for instance...


 He never reached his earning potential ...


 He never really had steady work ...


 He wandered from town to town ... talking to people ... I have to wonder aloud ... were backpacks invented yet?


 He never really learned a trade ... and in particular ... never learned the trade his father wanted to pass on to him ...


 He was always living off the gifts and handouts from others ...always on Social Assistance ... so to speak ...


 He never really got the respect of his peers ... especially the insiders in his so-called chosen profession ... they despised him if the truth were to be known and were responsible for his undoing.


 He had difficulty choosing friends ...those he did choose ... weren't exactly loyal ... and they did this "not being loyal thing" at exactly the wrong point in time ... The Garden of Gethsemane ... Peter ... Judas ... etc ...


 He had difficultly ... from a certain perspective ... in having successful and meaningful relationships with women ... could not get a girlfriend to save his life.


 His mother never really got it ... what it was that he was up to for the longest time ...


 Yet here am I ... firmly believing that I need all these things and more ... just to be spiritual...

... I Think NOT...

Answer These in Your Journal ... In Long Hand


1) What does unmanageability mean to you?


2) Do you insist on having your-way regardless?


3) What effect has your insistence on having things your-way had on your relationships?


4) Are you able to carry out your daily responsibilities without becoming overwhelmed by your life and all its happenings?


5) How has this overwhelmed thing affected your life?


6) Do you seem to naturally maintain a crisis in your mind?


7) How has your hyper vigilance affected you and your life style?


8) Do you ignore signs that something may be seriously wrong with your life circumstance, health or with your family, or relationships ... thinking things will somehow magically work out?


9) Do you have temper tantrums or react to your feelings in other ways that lower your self-respect or sense of dignity?


10) Can you describe in detail.

Take a look at me now : Phil Collins

this is a powerful piece of poetry ... reflect on it and you will see
How can I just let you walk away, just let you leave without a trace

When I stand here taking every breath with you, ooh

You're the only one who really knew me at all

How can you just walk away from me,

when all I can do is watch you leave

Cos we've shared the laughter and the pain and even shared the tears

You're the only one who really knew me at all

So take a look at me now, oh there's just an empty space

And there's nothing left here to remind me,

just the memory of your face

Ooh take a look at me now, well there's just an empty space

And you coming back to me is against the odds and that's what I've got to face

I wish I could just make you turn around,

turn around and see me cry

There's so much I need to say to you,

so many reasons why

You're the only one who really knew me at all

So take a look at me now, well there's just an empty space

And there's nothing left here to remind me, just the memory of your face

Now take a look at me now, cos there's just an empty space

But to wait for you, is all I can do and that's what I've got to face

Take a good look at me now, cos I'll still be standing here

And you coming back to me is against all
It's the chance I've gotta take

Take a look at me now

Phil Collins

It Was St Paul Who Said

When I was a child, I spake as a child.  When I became an adult, I put away childish things ...St Paul

sometimes easier said than done ...ndt

From An Adult Point of View

available neiltubb@shaw.ca as PDF

The business of trying to achieve a sense of self/power in one's adult life can (but doesn't have to) become an obsessive/compulsive expression of childhood neediness and unmet needs that stems from deep core belief structures. In the more extreme circumstances, this is expressed as personality disorders that can be coupled with addictions, obsessions and compulsions.



When one reaches out into life for adult relationships, the relationships so formed become a sounding board for buried pain and the repressed core issues. That is when all hell will break loose.


So it follows that if one only tries to resolve the relationship problem(s) in the present moment and the core belief issues are never dealt with ... that is, they remain quietly in the deeper and darker recesses of the mind, they will rise again at another inopportune time to keep the individual from having the very thing they want ... a loving relationship with another human being.


What one has to do is: take hold of what they are doing in the present ... have a really good long look at it ... then come to understand that they are being driven by parts and places of their own past ... then come to terms with knowing they can act differently ... and finally, understanding there are deep forces at work here when our basic needs are not being met ... far more powerful than anyone of us would care to admit. Then begin the process of meeting those needs from the adult perspective and not the child's.

There Is No One Need

Available from neiltubb@shaw.ca

There Is No One Need

That Is Greater Than Another Need

There are times when an individual may feel a greater need from one aspect or another ... just so they can recover a sense of balance in their personal world.

We are all driven to fill these needs one way or another. It is the undercurrent of all our behaviours. These needs will be met by either a positive approach or negative approach ... When I use a negative approach it will be to my detriment ... and often at someone else’s expense ... When I approach this from a positive place it causes me to invest in me and thus causing a growth. It then follows that I am invested in me ... and this investment in me creates growth from within ... socially, psychologically, spiritually, emotionally ...

• From the front door ... positive ... the only expense here is to me ... this is my investment into me.

• From the back door ... negative ... I do this at the expense of others ... I invest in me by a negative approach.

Research asserts that 95% of all relationship problems are the misguided efforts of people trying to achieve a sense of self/power. The business of not having a sense of power is a learned phenomena and usually experienced initially early on in life. Now the classic aspect is that once learned, this misguided effort transfers into our Deep Core Belief Structure. That behaviour claims its place in Our Way of Doing Things. It then quietly moves forward with the individual into their adult life and slowly and deliberately wreaks havoc in their life ... (called the Adult Children Syndrome) ...

The business of trying to achieve a sense of self/power in one's adult life can (but doesn't have to) become an obsessive/compulsive expression of childhood neediness and unmet needs that stems from deep core belief structures. In the more extreme circumstances, this is expressed as personality disorders that can be coupled with addictions, obsessions and compulsions.

When one reaches out into life for adult relationships, the relationships so formed become a sounding board for buried pain and the repressed core issues. That is when all hell will break loose. So it follows that if one only tries to resolve the relationship problem(s) and the core belief issues are never dealt with ...that is, they remain quietly in the deeper and darker recesses of the mind, they will rise again at another inopportune time to keep the individual from having the very thing they want ... a loving relationship with another human being.

What one has to do is: take hold of what they are doing in the present ... then come to understand that they are being driven by parts of their past ... then come to terms with knowing they can act differently ... and finally, understanding there are deep forces at work here when our basic needs are not being met ... then begin the process of meeting those needs from the adult perspective and not the child's.

Note: In negative approaches to finding needs satisfaction, one of the most common indicators is that it is being done at someone else's expense ... “if he would only” or “if she could just” ... someone else is the brunt of my pain ... the reason why I can’t ... the hurt and pain is about transfer and counter transfer. This one is very important to understand.

If a child can't find the sense of power to identify themselves as an individual, then they will be on a life long journey of attempting to establish that Sense of Self as an adult. One of the inherent problems in this is that it is the child's needs that are in question not the adult ... Hence the Adult Children Syndrome. It can and usually does become a very ugly tread mill to be on.

By understanding the drives for SURVIVAL, POWER, LOVE, BELONGING, FREEDOM and FUN in people, we become more conscious of the need for our world to be a Quality World of our choosing.

Know This

Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try