John Steinbeck

“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

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 Child 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, SPIRITUALITY & SPIRITUAL GROWTH and FUN in people, we become more conscious of the need for our world to be a Quality World of our choosing.

Page 72 ... Into the Light

On Having and Finding Respect


Respect


This starts with the individual’s sense of self and that sense of self is a by-product of very early developmental experiences.


Its clearest defining qualities are related to time and how time and interaction with affective adults was spent … with those who reflect how that individual was viewed by them during the child’s first 30 to 60 months of life.


It Is True That:


It is a necessity that we must first have respect for ourselves … it then follows naturally … that we next have to have respect for the rules we chose by … which we agree to … and conduct our living accordingly and build our social order around.


On the other hand if we do not have this sense of respect instilled at a very early age then ... it is with great effort and difficulty that we will move through our lives.


Respect is something that is purely experiential … it can be obtained anytime … but first we must know what it is that we are looking for … and then … where it is we must search to find it. 12 Step programs help enormously here as do other self help programs. The book Iron John asks the question “Where is the Key hidden?”


One of life’s conundrums is that sooner or later we get ourselves involved in attempting to make something happen or a series of things happen … herein lies the problem; a necessary ingredient for those things to happen is we need to respect ourselves to accomplish or complete the tasks we have set out for ourselves to complete … now the complexity sets insomuch that for the most part most of us don’t carry the necessary tools to cause the respect to be there because it is not part of our working tool kit … it somehow got overlooked … thus the task at hand that should not have been all that difficult becomes a very difficult task.


The Basics of the concept is:


• A person cannot respect himself unless he knows the truth of himself.


For most the truth about us is lost back in the early beginnings … at times and places where we simply had to begin to pretend to be someone else just to be able to get along in our families of origin That Hurt(s).


It is also true that our every effort is to maintain the lid on this painful thing so that it does not get out and hurt us again. The problem is that (neurotic) defense strategies themselves become more painful than the pain they were masking but our only defense to pain is to build another neurotic structure … mask … false self … to protect us from our pain of our reality.


Finding our lost self-respect is a prerequisite to healing; something a kin to Peter Pan recovering his lost shadow from Wendy’s drawer. Now we have a place to look … and a direction to go in.

Daily Reflection

Made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God, as I understood Him and sought through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with God, praying only for the knowledge of God's will for me and the power to carry that out.

13 On Appreciating Deeper Processes - Past Made Present

EXPERIENCE has taught us that most of us are secretly reliving things that are no longer present in our lives. We are protecting ourselves from demons that are no longer there.

Psychic shadow boxing - again it appears.

It is true that life is a place filled with the weird, the wonderful, and the colorful, and we do have to consider using caution with some things. But we can do it from an adult perspective and see things as they are, not as they used to be.

The demons were real once; that much is true. It just may not be true now.

Being Open To The Fact That The Past Is Not The Present

Allows Room For The Soul To Come Out Of Hiding And

To Grow And Mature.