Ch 18 - THE NETHERTON METHOD, PART 5: THE INTENSITY OF PAST TRAUMATIC EVENTS

CHAPTER 18: THE NETHERTON METHOD, PART 5:
THE INTENSITY OF PAST TRAUMATIC EVENTS

The patterns that embody our overpowering negative behaviors were created during scary, overwhelming and even life threatening events that had both physical and emotional content. And as I've said, besides our own feelings and thoughts from these experiences, also imbedded in our unconscious minds and bodies, are and the negative words and energies of the other people involved in the episodes. Remember the drunken father's angry beating? Lots of energy in that, as well as in our own three year old's pain and terror. This discovery of "other people's words" and the thorough way in which Netherton's technique can remove them from us, is one of the primary reasons his treatment does so much.

And because these past events were steeped in emotions like futility, hopelessness and the harshness of life, our unwanted patterns also have the same characteristics. To repeat, they are the very same thing; the recorded activities of past events repeatedly coming to life in the present, time after time after time. And they make "us" over react, negatively, to current situations.

Because traumatic energies are part of these stored experiences, we are usually unable to recognize that it is the words that were forced upon us by other people that now form the basis of our self-defeating behaviors. Remember I said that we don't differentiate between old tapes and our own volition very well? This is why. While in trauma, we were distracted from seeing the whole picture. Our consciousness was filled up with the pain and fear. So we weren't operating with our conceptual conscious minds. It wasn't interpreting. So the energies went directly into the subconscious recording, in the same manner that subliminal tapes work.

There's another aspect to these words. Different frames of reference, and different personal pronouns, are put into us at different times. A classic example is if the words are coming at us from someone else, it's "You" such and such. Whereas when the words were put in during the prenatal, it's mothers words saying "I" such and such. One's the exact words we say, the other's the words we feel about ourselves when punished by others, and that we might put out toward others. And in "previous lives," the same pairs of roles get recorded.

Again, the reason we don't remember the words getting recorded is because, at the times of the trauma, there was no conscious mind interpretation and understanding going on. It go written directly without our knowing about it. And that’s what makes the program.

Many of us remember having had morose thoughts in childhood that are similar to those written into us in pre-verbal times. As I said, the pronouns get switched. "You're bad!" becomes "I'm bad!" "I want to kill you!" becomes "He wants to kill me." Because we don't remember words that were said to us during the preverbal years, and because the words never went through the interpreting conscious mind, the negative commands from other people got written into our subconscious minds without our knowing it. We remember the "I'm bad!" because we thought that consciously.

But the programming that made us think that way came before. It was the deeper, more insidious and more controlling experiences which came earlier and the forceful words were those we received while undergoing physical pain that forced us into a deep alpha state. We were forced to behave in such self defeating manners, and we were also imprinted with commands and thoughts to continue behaving in this same way.

This is another important point. The reason the patterns repeat is because the underlying words say they will. The ability to pull these old patterns apart, and process out each set of words and experiences as they related to who was actually saying or doing them in the original episode, is another of the powerful aspects that makes the Netherton method so successful. When we remove the statements in the unconscious mind that say "You always," "It never." "I can't" and so on, then the patterns can stop.

So lets review and add some more nuances. Whenever we encounter similar, but less threatening circumstances in our current lives, a "link" between the current event and the past traumatic events gets activated. This link is our fear! And the activation of the past event always seems to make the current situation much worse than it really is to begin with. Whenever we make a decision, consciously or unconsciously, that a current circumstance seriously threatens the outcome of our whole lives, that's when the more devastating past material comes to life, takes over our thoughts, speech and action, and makes us act what is called neurotically. That is, we behave inappropriately in response to what is really happening.

Because we experienced these past events as serious and negative, when they take over our behavior, we act as if these current events are as serious, and as negative, as the related ones in the past, even when they're not. The current situation may be bad enough, but there's usually a way out even if it's unpleasant or painful. When we logically think about it, it isn't hopeless. However, the past events that get activated were indeed hopeless, or embody the feelings and words of hopelessness. They also embody terror instead of just plain fear, and often chaos, battles and repression. This is why our current situations often get blown way out of proportion. When the past experiences take over, they recreate themselves, in exactly the same way that a two-inch wide movie film becomes a 40 foot wide display in front of us when the projector out of sight is turned on.

The old tapes take us over simply because they are set in with very strong traumatic energies So the underlying propensity toward negativity is usually stronger than the energies we use to direct our more preferred behavior. This is the very reason why it is very important to strengthen the parts of ourselves that are not affected by the stuff that comes up. And later in this summary, I'll explain what some of them are.

The patterns are stacks of episodes. Every single person seems to accumulate a whole set of similar instances of the same kind of stored trauma in different subconscious memory locations. Each experience relates to a different time frame. This set of experiences ranges from recent times all the way back to infancy, birth, pre-natal and past lives or whatever you wish to call them.

This pattern, or stack, is part of the human condition. It's one thing to have a negative feeling and experience, and then let it go. But because these events created behavioral patterns that got fixed in a real physical way, they continue to limit our range of personality, our openness, and our attitudes about what life has in store for us. They also keep bringing into our lives the same kinds of negative people and situations and our own self-defeating way of relating with them.

Fortunately, by the use of Netherton's therapy and other techniques, the negative patterns can actually be removed and our natural, positive birthright will allow us to learn, retain and regularly apply more mature and satisfying ways of living. The overall transformation process takes a lot of dedication to oneself over a number of years. We can even say that our lives are meant to be a personal growth process and that our social experiences and career choices are actually tools and opportunities that can help us grow.

But in the short run, you'll be happy to know that noticeable change occurs in the first session with the release of part of our fixed physical form. This release continues and increases as it encompasses more and more of the whole body. As I explain next, this physical release removes the structural form that has seriously been limiting our flexibility with life on all levels.

Really significant improvement occurs after 10-20 hours of work. And with the wholistic combination, lasting psychological change occurs at the same time and gets even better after 40-50 hours of treatment and a self help program of special physical and meditative activities, of dietary change and of interpersonal communication practices. A large amount of transformation can occur in one to five years.

Ch 17 - THE NETHERTON METHOD, PART 4: UNDERSTANDING THE WORKINGS OF OUR CONSCIOUS & UNCONSCIOUS MINDS

CHAPTER 17
THE NETHERTON METHOD, PART 4:
UNDERSTANDING THE WORKINGS OF OUR CONSCIOUS
AND UNCONSCIOUS MINDS


This chapter should be of particular interest to people who've worked on themselves mentally because it begins the details of how and why they can do more for themselves.

To understand this therapy process, and also the way unconscious patterns are formed, it helps a lot to understand the features of our conscious and unconscious minds, and the differences between them.

Our conscious minds can conceive of past and future, and they allow us the ability to compare and judge current information in the context of what we've purposely learned and experienced (and "un"purposely learned and experienced). The information about these past experiences is in our memory, which means it's stored somewhere in the mind. The "address" of where it's stored is not available to the conscious mind, but the material itself can be accessed by the part of the mind I call the "comparator."

The comparator compares what's going on for us right now to what happened in a similar past event (if there was one), and then makes decisions about what we should do next. This all happens in the blink of an eye. Although millions of nerve cells are involved in such an activity, our computer brain operates at something like 400 miles per hour.

Comparison activity is one of the most common and routine things our brains do. You can very easily understand that we do this when we drive a car. We know which is the brake, which is the steering wheel, what a stop sign means and so forth. We also know to steer clear of a reckless driver because we can compare what we see to what we've learned can be dangerous to us. This is healthy and normal behavior.

Comparison also occurs in more fundamental actions that we rarely think about. It occurs, for instance, when we're sitting down and want to stand up. Our brains recognize that we're sitting down and do what's necessary with our muscles in order to get us to stand up. The brain keeps track of how long each and every muscle is in our legs as it keeps changing the neurological firing sequence to move the joints and check on the balance sensors in our heads. Just as commonly, your brain is right now comparing vision symbols and spatial orientation information to enable you to read this book. It even figured out that this was a book and that there was enough light for you to read it by.

Comparison activity has been discovered to be what is called "associative memory." It's done all over the brain, not just in a localized area. And the latest electronic computer design attempts to emulate, in a very primitive way, what our brains do fantastically.

As we shall see shortly, this comparing, or associative memory activity is also a key player in our neurotic behavior, although through no fault of it's own. Remember that current life situation that had similar characteristics to the stored event from age three? When "we" make a decision to act the way father or the three year old acted, then the associative activity takes place and all the rest of the stuff from that old experience is let loose in our bodies. This is one way people get out of control.

What makes any of these healthy or unhealthy behavior conscious is our mind's ability to be aware of it. The conscious mind is actually like a blank computer screen; we see whatever's "up" at the time . When you pay attention to your legs while you're in the process of standing up, you can monitor what's happening and even make a "mid course correction" to stabilize your balance when someone bumps into you halfway up, or sit right back down if you can't.

When you get angry that someone bumps into you and then you see it's a blind man, you can cut short your anger right in mid sentence. So not only can we see into what's happening with our observer minds, we can also input into the automatic processes and change what comes out. We're changing from an indignant, angry "I" to a compassionate, understanding "I." It's actually a computer interrupt. We change the program in a flash, at 400 miles per hour.

We call this free will. It's the conscious mind telling the unconscious mind what it wants to happen. We're selecting from a broad array of learned responses. What determines the response is our conscious evaluation of what we're experiencing.

Through psychotherapy, NLP, hypnosis and self-help workshops we can learn all kinds of new and improved behaviors, and then practice them in our daily lives so they can be accessible without thinking, like jamming on the brakes when we see a kid's ball shoot out into the street.

The ability to have free will and the ability to keep learning new programs of response are important features of the conscious mind. We can choose to interpret what's happening for us as either good or bad. Depending on the decision of how we interpret our life, we'll actually feel different ways emotionally, and our bodies will function in different ways, physically. This is commonly known. What is not as commonly known is that our opinions about the world are amplified, physically, with our bodies and energy fields, and create an energy environment in which our opinions will come true.

The energies of attraction and repulsion that we broadcast to the uni
verse are an extension of what the body's doing. This is scientifically proven and has to do with the fact that our cells actually generate electrical and magnetic fields in the same way that electrical power lines and electronic equipment do.

So what we broadcast to the world, and attract into our lives, is, at its source, determined by our mind's decision making process. This fact forms the basis for a lot of metaphysical and Science of Mind teaching. If we have control of our attitudes, we can directly create what we want in our lives.

However, when we are taken over by our patterns, they make negative thoughts in the brain, negative emotions in our bodies, and disruptive actions in our metabolism. Further, traumatic events and repetitive physical behavior literally shape our bodies into fixed forms that harden into a restricted shape. When the body is stuck in one of these kinds of distorted patterns, "we" are stuck in a pattern of always acting in that same fixed way. And we are also frustrated by the same negative things that keep happening to us, like repeatedly being with the same kind of spouse, with the same negative patterns. And this can happen no matter how much affirmation we have done because the negative patterns in our bodies are broadcasting an energy environment conducive to the negative behaviors we consciously don't want in our lives.

Parts of our bodies are always sending out the same pattern of vibrations, regardless of what we think. When we eat a lot of raw food and a little junk food, the vibrational frequencies and "cleanness" of the radiation are different than if we smoke, drink and subsist on red meat and taco shells. When we're stuck in the physical forms of our childhood, the radiation around us helps to reproduce the same experiences we had as a child, no matter what we've learned in therapy since then.

In addition, the forms greatly influence our own ability to really think differently. The predominant "I's" win. If those forms restrict positive and happy expression, they're going to limit our current efforts to express ourselves positively and happily. And what we'll experience back from the world will be less than the positveness and happiness we think we'd like.

Here is an example. It repeats what I said a few chapters ago about the limitations of verbal therapy alone. If we go to psychotherapy and understand the difficulties of our earlier times better, we can make decisions to try to change our current experience of life, for the better. This is what many people do and it's an important part of the therapeutic process. We're making new "I's." We can also use NLP and hypnosis to reprogram our subconscious minds directly, on a neurological level.

Yet because of the physical restrictions and the set "plays" in the outer layers of the aura that still remain, we still continue to behave and function, at least some of the time, the way we were conditioned in earlier negative events. As I've pointed out, these are physical formations, especially in the fascia, which are not accessible neurologically. Therefore they still come up even though we've changed our attitude and understanding mentally. We're unable to fully do what we'd like to do. In this way, past events really do sabotage what we want in the present.

When the body is still shaped in a restricted form, it also contains energy packets that embody the old, negative experiences. These are still going to get triggered and pop up. Further, even if the form is caused by only physical reasons, there will also be a restriction. This is where the Bodywork helps with "tune-ups" after the major part of the initial clearing has been completed. I'll explain more in the Chapters on the Bodywork details.

I have had a number of people come to me and say, "I know better now, but why do I still get depressed the way I used to?"

Maybe by now you, the reader, can answer their question. What's really going on is that the experiences in their unconscious mind and body are still there, they get activated, and the person's conscious mind becomes aware of the depressed feelings appearing on their internal TV screen. The mistake these people are making is in thinking that these depressive thoughts are "theirs." Again, it is one "I" thinking "it" has always been me, and no other I has ever existed.

Luckily, these people did have some degree of separation between the "stuff" and the part of themselves they worked with in therapy. So even though they were ignorant about where the depressions were really coming from, they knew they weren't part of their own conscious volition. The "I's" attempting therapy didn't yet understand about multiple "I's," but at least they were developed. With some Structural Integration Bodywork, insight awareness and some Netherton processing, these depressions got smaller and smaller in size and rarer and rarer in frequency.

Let's now look at the unconscious mind a little more. Unlike the conscious mind that can conceptualize and compare, the unconscious mind can only be "wired-up" to do things. This wiring-up is done both with genetic codes and from the recordings that are put into it starting from the time we're conceived.

One very important fact to remember is that the unconscious mind only records things in present tense. So it allows tape recordings and computer programs to be written on to it. When these recordings are played back, they always appear exactly as they were recorded, regardless of when they were recorded, and with absolutely no regard for the knowledge and experience we have gained since the original recording. Whatever went in then, is still there, just as it was some time ago.

Remember those videotapes? That's what we're talking about. You can't change them, no matter how much insight you've gained since you were a little kid. All you can do is erase them, or catch yourself in the middle of one and "let it go" by re-interpreting the meaning of what you see going on around you.

This is one of the things neuro-linguistic programming can help us with. But it cannot change the underlying tapes, and fails as a therapy when its intention is to do that. It often is a very helpful thing to do, especially when our predominant propensity is to move in that positive direction. When almost all of our "I's" are united in knowing this is the direction in which to get results, it is very easy and helpful to strengthen this resolve. But NLP is not a complete treatment in itself, a fact that shows itself when an "I" sabotages the attempted new behavior.

If you are indeed able to make a different value judgment about your situation, then your associative memory will drop it's connection to the childhood trauma and connect you up with your favorite day at the beach. This is what Dr. Peale's friend did every day. He was able to. Some people aren't so free yet to do that.
However, we all have the "ability" to do it. It's just that in the matter of our tapes, we're blocked from doing it, and I'll explain why in a bit. When we're not blocked we use the ability of the subconscious mind to record things, and of the conscious mind to use the recordings, to great advantage every day.

Once we've learned how to walk, drive a car, eat with a knife and fork and even master a professional sport, we no longer have to think about it. We just do it according to the way it was learned, and in the way we choose to modify and improve upon it today. Actors and actresses use it to memorize the lines in a stage play and singers and instrumentalists use it to memorize their songs and melodies. And as they say those lines and play those notes, they can add inflections and power to the presentation. In a similar memorizing process, we can do this with affirmations and in self-help workshops to improve our personality traits.

But sometimes, experiences, and our belief systems about life, are forcibly written into our unconscious minds, without our intent or permission. This is what happens in traumatic events when we're the victim. Then our subconscious minds are forced to embody patterns of behavior that we would not choose to have if the selection were up to us. And they create behaviors that consciously, we would not normally do.

So even after we've come to grips with our issues mentally, by using our comparators and new information we learn, we're often still run by our old negative patterns. Even after we learn self-help techniques that can change our actual behavior, some underlying negative patterns that were created in some past experiences can sabotage our attempts to behave differently in certain kinds of situations.

This is the crux of the problem for many of the people my explanations and methods are able to help. For those of us sincerely dedicated to "improving ourselves," it's not so much a matter of denial or not wanting to change. It's much more a matter of not being able to change even when we really want to. Here's more detail on why our efforts to change our behavior come up short of the results we're after.

As long as our set of belief systems about life are in line with what we're currently trying to do, we won't encounter any blocks we can't handle and we'll be successful. All the self-improvement techniques we learn will help us develop our efficiency and add to our feeling of satisfaction.

But when we have unconscious beliefs that we should not, or cannot develop or express ourselves in that particular direction, they prevent us from incorporating these "better" behaviors we attempt to learn into our own daily lifestyleIf we sincerely practice our new behaviors, we purposely create another program that can become one of our primary ways of relating. But when there's an "imbedded" unconscious belief system that says we should act and think differently, many times we aren't going to practice.

Many of us have taken time out from our daily lives, gone to a workshop, and learned skills we can use to make our lives work more the way we want them to. We even see the benefits right there in the workshop. We develop our abilities to "know better." But when we get back into a situation that really pushes our buttons, that "know better" seems to go out the window! It's important to learn the better skills. It's also important to remove the sabotaging tapes in the unconscious mind.

To be scientifically accurate, learning new behavioral techniques is not exactly a matter of changing old tapes. In reality, changing old tapes is impossible, because they were recorded as complete "entities" by the person we were sometime in the past, and by the other people in the scene. We're no longer that same person, we were never the other people to begin with and we're no longer having that same experience. It's like trying to change a scene that was recorded on a videotape we bought in the store. The only way to change what you see to is not play the tape. But if there's some automatic connection that keeps pushing the play button, you're going to see that scene even if another part of you doesn't want to.

Even when you enter into experiences in your adult life in the most positive and self-constructive way, the roles in your tapes written by the other people will still recreate your sabotaged situation. At this stage of personal development, we recognize abusive behavior when we see it, but must resort to strain and upset when standing up for ourselves. And often we still lose. This occurs because the roles of the abusers are still recorded in our unconscious minds' original tapes.

When we're bothered by these kinds of things in our own lives, it's because the subconsciously directed behaviors are stronger than those we would prefer to have. Our attempted positive behavior modifications still exist side by side with the behaviors we want to "change." And for reasons which I'll soon explain, the physical amount of energy that makes us act in those unwanted ways is much larger than the amount of energy telling us to behave in the ways we understand are better for us. It's literally a contest between the stronger of the two attitudes, and the one that's bigger wins.

The only ways to stop this repetition are to remove the automatic connection that keeps replaying the scene, and to erase the scene from the tape. This is another way of saying what I said a few paragraphs up. In our own lives, the only way to stop the associative memory from bringing up the early life trauma is to do two things.

We must develop a way to interpret current events in a new, positive light. That means we have to have a different belief system about what the other people in our lives are doing, or about why we're going through the circumstances we're experiencing. In order to give us conviction, these new belief systems must be born out of new experience. They can't be just idealistic wishes; we have to be convinced! in order to believe it the next time it happens.

We must also eliminate from our bodies and energy fields the patterns that interpret and act out these events in the old, negative ways. If we have what are called Religious Enlightenment experiences, we will see the world in a much different way than we do now, and all these patterns will lose their grip on us. But short of this, in actual practice, this part of removing the old belief systems must come first, at least to a significant degree. If this behavior is not diminished in size, the new learned ones don't stand much of a chance in the decision making process of which way to go. Why? Because they aren't formed with the same amount of raw energy that that forms the negative ones.

Ch 16 - SURVIVAL, ABUSE AND HOPELESSNESS - PART 3,Hopelessness

CHAPTER 16
SURVIVAL, ABUSE AND HOPELESSNESS - PART 3
Hopelessness

I've mentioned that 'the words connect our adult life issues to unfinished experiences that happened in our childhoods, in infancy, and even to our births and the prenatal. And I've also said that these same 'words' are the link to similar kinds of experiences in our past lives. Let me explain this in more detail.

Here is an example:

Someone who always thinks, "There's no one who listens to me," and, "It's hopeless to try, so I won't even bother," may have died while imprisoned behind a wall, where no one could actually hear him or her. That's a 'forced' situation. Other lifetimes occur where people do hear us and we are saved. Or there are lifetimes where we choose aloneness rather than die or suffer severe emotional or physical pain. And all of these patterns make up the stack that we struggle against when we want to be free of our limitations.

The stack has to be unraveled, in general, from more recent times to the distant past. But often our unconscious mind goes to key past lives before going to birth or childhood.

Not all past experiences need to be processed. Many people will have experiences of natural disasters come up. But my understanding is that these are not original patterning lives. And the key episodes to remove are the ones that 'set it up.' In all cases, people have come up with instances where they were directly limited, abused and killed by others, against their will. Just as if they were in infancy, people are controlled beyond their physical powers to resist. My understanding of the natural disaster episodes is that the energy of the embedded pattern attracts us into the same kinds of things done to us by nature. The embedded pattern always seems to be initiated by a controlling, abusive person against whom we fight and for that we are killed. Usually, there are at least a few of these that need clearing.

Since my work has dealt primarily with people's relationships to other people, these human initiated circumstances are the source material. Fighting back not only became hopeless, the abuser even said the words, and that's how we got them to 'adopt.' Sometimes, others even said the hopeless words in sad retrospect over our graves. In the natural disaster lifetimes, who we were often said the hopeless words. But again, this appears to be subsequent to the original 'human forced pattern.'

The point of the therapy is to erase all the programming experiences in your unconscious mind that make you think that doing something in this lifetime is hopeless. Releasing the 'human forced pattern' of life and death, in both past lives and infancy almost always makes releasing childhood and teenage episodes much easier and more effective for the person.

This pattern of abuse always seems to be at the bottom of all issues. The abuser initiates the victimization. The victim resists. The ante is raised with more threats and abuse, and the victim resists further. Finally, the abuser, being much stronger or having many others to help, kills the victim.

An episode like this often appears in infancy as well. Although the person doing the processing obviously wasn't killed, he or she may have been knocked unconscious. It seems that even when people never remember being hit, in some cases, even good mothers lost control with their infants. Naturally, a good mother will never do it again and will even have great feelings of guilt and remorse. In fact, she always seems to be overworked and in many cases, is feeling frustrated with father.

All these thoughts and feelings went into the baby. Then, as an adult, the person has guilt feelings mixed in with the anger, fear and blockage. Another successful change that happens for people when they do this processing is that they unravel these kinds of patterns, seeing who said and felt what, and when. It has a very good affect on the personality by broadening and deepening the person's maturity, compassion and understanding.

Here is a simple example showing the past scenarios' relationship to one's present issues. In the example I gave about not being heard, physical walls may have blocked him. Or someone was holding her mouth shut or closed him or her away in a place where no one could hear. The victimizer would also say, "No one can hear you." This is a command put into the unconscious mind. In natural disasters, no one was within earshot.

In infancy, when the child cried for help, no one heard him.
These are typical past experiences of a person coming for therapy who may have had parents who "never have heard them," and some of the key early childhood and teenage experiences would be worked along with the birth and past lives. In the prenatal, one parent may feel the same way about the other. Or the mother may feel it about her mother. At birth, the delivery nurse may be thinking the same thing about the doctor.

When scenarios like this are "processed off" the person's inner self, he or she behaves less like those other people. In addition, the person is less drawn into relationships with people who "play the other part."


REASONS FOR PHYSICAL PAIN


Generally speaking, there are two similar patterns of physical pain. One is a karmic relation to a person's physical illness. The other is a relation to repeated injury of a specific type or a specific part of the body.

The simplest kinds of linking to understand are when you had something done to you in past lives that gets metabolically created in this life.

Headaches are a good example of this kind of physical pain linked to past experiences. Definitely, toxic digestive conditions and infections can cause headaches. Headaches during extreme emotional pressure are also caused by real behavior in the present. But what causes all of that behavior? The scenario for pain with emotions seems to have been set up when we were forced to experience the pain and had the emotional experience at the same time. Then, when we now have the emotional experience, the physical one re-occurs; and often, vice versa. The physical processes of the human body take care of the mechanics
In actuality, the past even was comprised of both physical and emotional experiences happening at the same time.

In one of my own scenarios I was under extreme emotional pressure while my head was being injured during torture. As a spy, I wouldn't sacrifice my family to save myself. Loyalty to others versus freedom for myself has been an issue for me. I had migraine headaches when I pushed myself in a "should" while my own body and motions were yearning for an "I want." Then, at this birth, my head was squeezed in the birth canal while my mother and those around her were dealing with the same kinds of issues. Until I had eliminated down to these layers, I had migraine headaches all my life. Since the release, I may have similar emotional pressures and food allergy reactions, but I rarely get the accompanying migraine. I also don't eat the food that causes them.

It is important to say that clearing the past physical issues is not sufficient to clear the person's current problem. It needs direct physical intervention of a medical or health type. It also needs a clearing of the psychological issues that cause the person to have the problem.

Another kind of headache pain is a bit more subtle. If a person has a block to expressing certain kinds of feelings, they can have headaches. Expressing oneself is located in what is called the fifth chakra, located at the neck, and shoulder area, and into the mouth and part of the nose. It also includes the lower back of the head. We speak with our mouths and do things with our hands and arms. When a person has anger that comes up and does not express it, a headache can result from the energy jamming up the tissues and vertebrae at the back of the neck where it joins the head. These people are not aware that the emotion is in there.

Here is a very good example. I had a client who had had a lot of body
work and done some processing. He also had been meditating for a few years and was a pretty nice person. This man also had had a long term back problem that was significantly better even though he had to see the chiropractor for neck adjustments periodically. One day, we released his chest and abdomen much deeper than before and continued processing old material. This bodywork release allowed much deeper feelings that had been held down to surface. The person also was in a job that brought up a lot of anger and dissatisfaction, and the boss acted a lot like the man's mother did when he was a child. So daily events could trigger old material that had not yet been released. He called the next day after the session complaining about a very bad headache that had thrown his neck vertebrae out again, and we both were aware that he had a lot of anger directed toward me. This anger was blaming me for doing something physically that threw the neck out. But he was aware enough to know something else was going on. He also had fear and did not want to do any more processing.

Here is what was going on. The old scenario we'd been working on was only partly completed. This happens regularly; major deep ones could take from four to eight hours to get it all. The anger of that trauma had come up and gotten stuck at the back of his neck because he did not yet have a clear channel for letting it out in a safe, acknowledging environment. This old anger was probably triggered by the events at work because the man felt quite good both physically and emotionally at the end of our session. Indeed, he was angry at his boss and frustrated in his work situation. But the large amount of energy from the old material jammed in the structure when he was unable to let it out. We did a lot of bodywork to clear all this jamming and to further release the head. And we combined it with a lot of caring, soft music and guided relaxation. Then we moved to logical adult to adult conversation and 'became friends again.' Then, his trauma was gone, he'd been cared about, and his frightened inner part opened up to process the words of the scenario which came out in a very calm and easy way.

What made releasing the old material actual 'fun' for him was the way we role modeled him into a very strong, stand-up-for-yourself person. Previously, all of it was him being on the short end of the stick, so to speak. We had finally reached below the tightness in his body that had locked his self-esteem under all the repression. I call it punching a hole into the barrier. In this case, it was a very large opening.

The physical component of pain is, by far, the very major cause. I myself once had a migraine that was food oriented. I had appropriate deep bodywork to release the physical manifestation. Then I discovered a subtler involvement which points out that pain is, indeed, a wholistic issue. Immediately after the bodywork the pain went away and I then also became aware of some anger I had had toward some people a day before. I also felt inwardly satisfied that the bodyworker had listened to me and did what I told him to do to clear it up. After some 'battling,' I had gotten someone to listen to me and acknowledge me. This standing up for what I believe in, for acknowledging my own path has been a lifelong issue that I am only now understanding. So the pattern has been there. I have become much more aware of it through much recent trauma, a lot of previous Netherton processing, and a lot of spiritual work. So when an astrologer explained the issue to me, I could hear it and understand it much more fully than before.

Migraines are related to liver and colon problems. The liver stores anger and the colon is associated with our nervous system. They are both organs whose function is to clean the body of unwanted material and recycle what we do want. Angry feelings are a subtle energy kind of thing we don't want.

Some people call this 'body-symbology.' I think it is more accurate to say it is wholistically oriented. In Traditional Chinese Medicine they describe the body as having twelve organ 'systems,' which include some of our actual organs, some energy flows in the body, certain other physical functions and our emotional makeup. Each system is thus involved with both physical and emotional conditions. And as I have been explaining, trauma always includes emotional as well as physical experience.

Abdominal pain is another common issue. It can have a background of stabbings, bullet wounds, poisonings and lots of mother's pain at birth. Abdominal issues can be perpetuated by improper eating. Emotional emptiness is widely recognized as a cause for eating, and eating and eating. Life not being sweet brings up an urge for sweet foods. Stress will also do it as stress is directly linked to the pancreas. I have found that mother's stress in dealing with us as babies could have led her quite naturally to eat something. And when we have the same kind of issue, we gravitate toward the same thing. And it is usually carbohydrate because that satisfies the physiological part of us that is linked to the emotion in the limbic nervous system. So we can perpetuate diabetes or candidiasis simply because we eat improperly when we have anxieties.

The same is true in alcoholism. I have read that a potassium mineral deficiency in alcoholics generates the craving for alcohol. Giving them potassium handles the physical imbalance. But when anxiety again comes up, the old patterns pull the person back toward drink. Because we understand the way we get these patterns from our parents, it is not surprising that some alcoholics have one or both alcoholic parents. Conversely, some people with alcoholic parents do not, and refuse to, go to drink during anxiety.

There is a subtlety involved with the psychological pattern. Sometimes the behavior is family oriented, and one person, the responsible one, drinks to drown his feelings of not knowing what to do for others, or with others. Coffee and cake, and other eating patterns can also be used in this way. That is why O.A., Overeaters Anonymous was formed along the lines of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Ch 15 - SURVIVAL, ABUSE AND HOPELESSNESS – PART 2, Processing out Victimization

CHAPTER 15
SURVIVAL, ABUSE AND HOPELESSNESS – PART 2
Processing out Victimization

In the root experiences for all issues, we find death or threat of death, fear, physical tension, survival problems, hopelessness and the control issue of abuse. Victim-Victimizer roles played by people are the method by which this pattern is set up and carried forward into other, less violent experiences.

In past lives it's some organized or disorganized individual or group. In early childhood it is mother, father or someone else playing the victimizer and the child playing the victim. Later on the siblings or peers may play the victimizer role. At birth it is often the thoughts of doctor and nurse combined with the feelings of Mother. In the prenatal it is Mommy and Daddy or Mommy and some other adult accosting her. Sometimes it is Mommy and the doctor who isn't acknowledging her.

To process out victimization, we release the words of the victimizer as well as the words of the victim. Almost always, the person who comes for therapy is experiencing a part of life as the victim. We can release this role by processing our own side of past encounters. In the same sessions, we can release the victimizer part by processing out what mother, father or someone else did in this life, along with what others did to us in other lives.

The victimizer role stays alive in the victims and 'surrounds' what they feel is their own role. Many 'nice' people are totally unaware that it still resides in their unconscious minds. It then becomes transferred onto other people who play the victimizer to us. You may now be seeing that this is all like a stage play. When we clear enough of the two roles, we are no longer pulled into playing out the abusive dramas. We don't gravitate toward abusers; we aren't 'hooked' into playing their games.

As I said, these are control issues. Even though they involve getting our needs met, we are controlled out of it. Mother gets into a fight for control of the infant being 'good' and quiet, etc. Because she is unable to handle the situation in a capable manner, 'upset control' becomes the 'theme' of the episode.
There are three significant components of victim/victimizer dramas that are not so obvious. They form a large part of all issues.

The first has to do with the 'trips' laid upon the child, or the adult in past life, and even in this one. In my experiences with clients, as well as myself, a mother abuses her child when she is overworked and/or overwhelmed. Most of the time, part of her is also feeling upset about father, while another part recognizes his overwork and overwhelm. Yet she loses her control, does something physically traumatic to the child, and outwardly blames the child for being the extra burden.

Thus, we become the victims for someone else's difficulties; and we are improperly told we are the cause. This is a major link in what we call a guilt complex. In addition, mother also blames the child for screaming and causing her to hit or shake it. The innocent little infant is then 'imprinted' with 'blame.' Blame and guilt are part of every abusive pattern.

Typically it goes like this. A person is hit, or yelled at. Having self esteem they fight back. The abuser hits or yells harder. The person fights back even more, until he or she is physically overwhelmed, or even killed. Sometimes during the fight, and often when the person is defeated, the abuser adds verbal words of repression and hopelessness.

A second part of the issue lies deeper. It involves all of mother's feelings of frustration, guilt and inadequacy; and these are built into the layers received by the child. When the scenarios come out in processing, we find the child's terror and physical pain are interwoven with all of mother's words directed at the kid and all of mother's inner feelings of inadequacy. What mother is feeling inwardly at the time has a lot to do with what we feel later on in life. Our underlying feeling will be the fear we had in infancy, but we may not in touch with it. The pattern of what we do in the situation will be a copy of what mother felt and did at the time.

These 'control issue losing battles' also include a number of other kinds of situations that occur later on in childhood that need to be released. There are also some later on when people were involved in abusive relationships. However, I have always found the cornerstones of the pattern to be the episodes of forced physical blockages, combined with the words of blame and guilt that occurred at very early times. Release them and not only are the later episodes easier to process, but the person quite quickly gets in touch with his or her own power to stand up for themselves.

In infancy, we were totally overpowered, and we had no conceptual ideas of the circumstances nor ways to analytically discuss the matter with our adversary. As children, we often do understand the situation, but we are still unable to overcome what is happening to us, simply because of the situation we are in. But part of us does know we've been wronged. After the earlier blockage is undone, these later episodes can be worked with to bring a person's self esteem and power to the surface.

Structural Integration Bodywork and some dramatic expression coaching can help tremendously here. It has the ability to remove embedded past experiences from the muscular tissues. It is especially effective, all by itself, at erasing episodes that happened later in life. I once did Bodywork only on a woman who had been raped, who was also doing some good psychotherapy. During the session in which we talked about what had happened, I was able to do deep Bodywork in her pelvis and legs. This seemed to clear that experience out of her. But this specialized Bodywork does not clear the patterns from early life. That requires a combination with Netherton, Reichian or some other kind of release work.

As I said, infancy abuse episodes are more common than we think. Even good mothers lose their cool. And many of us don't think too much of it if we slap our own kid and it does no real physical harm. Sometimes it was the only way some mothers had of handling the situation. If it was a terrible experience, good mothers do pick up the kid, kiss and hold it, and make it feel better. But many episodes end instead with the mother leaving either to get away and relax, or to get back to the rest of her responsibilities. Some leave in disgust and upset, just like we do in adult-to-adult situations. All these patterns are imprinted on the children. I have seen them come out from many people. And if you believe in reincarnation, you might understand it's because of karma.

As I described, infancy episodes relate directly to those in past life, where we were repressed. And while those of infancy involved only mother and her feelings about us and her own difficulties, the past lives involved much heavier things like capture, imprisonment, torture and death. The words of blame and guilt are imbedded there, too. And it is almost always a straightforward matter to process these either before or after the infancy experiences, using one to link to the other.

The second not so obvious feature of abusive episodes involves a third party who watches what happens. In past lives, there is always some good-hearted person who feels sadness and caring about the victim, but is unable to do anything to help because the controlling powers are too strong. There is just no way they can help, especially once the person is dying in front of them. In earlier episodes, perhaps during the imprisonment or torture, they may be afraid of being harmed themselves.

But hopelessness combined with pity or sadness is the strongest force I've seen come up regularly. The person doing the processing can actually see these people standing off to the side in their mind's eye as they are clearing out the material.
In cases of childhood abuse by the father, the mother may have to stand by and be unable to help because of real fear of reprisal toward her.

In cases of mother's abuse, father may both be available or not believe the child's plea for help when it is old enough to speak. In infancy, the words of these third parties are usually thought and felt by mother herself when it is only she and the baby who are present.
The third issue regarding abuse and control I want to mention requires looking a little deeper at our own behavior as adults, especially if and when we carry revengeful grudges. Understanding the victim/victimizer 'entity' is very helpful so I will digress a little here, from my main theme.

A lot of people who were regularly abused find it hard to want to release their feelings of hateful revenge. Much is there to be processed out from scenarios in late childhood and the teens. Some of it actually resides in the tissues our livers, as well as in the structural muscles.

Somehow, we need to see that having and replaying the tapes of this anger is bad for us. Literally, it causes physiological damage and creates negative patterns in our energy fields which then sets up further situations we don't want to have happen. But the power of revenge is very strong. So sometimes we need to release the times in other lives when we felt so good with a lot of that evil, controlling power. We have to release a life where our own prominent role was the victimizer. Some people might have trouble doing this if they are still very identified with their own trauma. But if it is a link to releasing material in this lifetime, it can help a lot, and may be easier to handle than what they specifically identify with.

Here is a very important point. You see, from one lifetime to the next, the roles have lives of their own. They re-create themselves by getting the programmed input from mother and others, starting right from conception. This is true even if you want to consider a soul having direction over the process, as Netherton and others espouse. Remember that in our bodies, they are located in specific physical locations of our brains, structures, organs and energy fields. They are not always who we are.

There's a victimizer and a victim inside each person simply because the old scenarios include the words and actions of both. In certain situations, the victimizer comes out of us. In others, the victim comes out.

Here's an example. You may know some people who criticize others and put them down. This role lives inside those people. Their mothers might have treated them that way. And instead of it being directed at this person, inside themselves, the energy goes out, toward other people. They are like those of us who react to the pressure situations I described regarding the birth process. These people, too, are unconsciously acting out both sides of a scenario involving fear.

When the fear is triggered by some outside event that is considered 'bad,' or 'gone wrong,' an attempt at control comes out lightening quick. This controller points itself at whatever triggers it; whomever made the statement or did the thing that resonates with its fears. The criticizer is a totally different 'person' than the man or woman we know otherwise. When he or she becomes aware of this information, can help them release this pattern.

Energically, both fear and control are issues associated with what is called the third chakra, or measurable energy center in the body, located in the area of the solar plexus. They are, as we see psychologically, two sides of the same coin. By neutralizing both roles during the processing of a scenario, the entire drama is lessened. The person who yells and criticizes is actually trying to help stop what is, to that part of them, a very dangerous situation. This is how that part of them was programmed to do it. And we all have issues in the third chakra.

Another kind of controlling personality involves demands. Processing a past life where we are the all-controlling victimizer is also appropriate when a person is unconsciously stuck to being demanding. This kind of lifetime might be different from that of the pattern just described. In regular verbal therapy a demanding part of a person might respond with hostility when first approached. This is a place where it helps when people meditate. It develops a part of them that is deeper than the issue, and this gives the person that 'state' from which he or she can observe the demanding behavior. From a spiritual and energetic sense, demand is just a stuck place of inner dissatisfaction. For those interested in the technicalities, it often involves blockages and dissatisfaction in the first chakra, and a big hole in the second. It also includes hardened frustration around the heart. For the rest of us, this all means that the person just isn't fulfilled.

So, for all of us, seeing the kinds of ways we acted in past lives can help bring us to greater self-awareness. This will also help us process out similar patterns in this life. If we can look at our own negative behavior that was not previously seen, we can then do some spiritual work and behavioral modification to change the way we deal with other people.

Now, that you see these issues a bit more, I'll return to my central theme of processing out the material. Past lives go back way in time. Whether they really happened or not, people have processed out experiences in ancient Atlantis and even on spaceships from other worlds. Psychotherapists can tell us that people may adapt a controlling behavior to compensate for being controlled. And that can happen lifetime to lifetime as well as in the space of only one lifetime. So the victim/victimizer pattern can switch back and forth any number of times.

Chronologically, we have to start somewhere, so we can postulate that at first we were the victimizer, and others were the victims. In order to correct that behavior, among other things, we then become the victim. The way this sometimes happens is that people rise up and defeat us, and when we are then imprisoned and when we are dying, people around us make statements like, "He should know what it feels like," "He should suffer for all he did," and so forth. In the earliest victim scenario we died. In other episodes, others died under our care and we felt responsible. We might even have been blamed by others for circumstances we had no control over. So here, again, are the words and situations involving guilt, blame and a feeling of inadequacy and hopelessness to stop the inevitable from happening.

Now, in this adult life, the patterns are set in place. The problems we have to work through are not necessarily life threatening, but have life limiting emotional and physical blocks. Some psychologists label the life and death issue as a metaphor for what is occurring with their adult clients.

In a way, they are right; there is no life and death situation currently happening. But they are unaware of body-mind linkups I am explaining here. So, while it is not exactly the same situation, the energy blocks to the person's ability to function in a certain way are affected by these old experiences. In fact, it is in these old experiences that the energy blocks were created. This is a very clear explanation why the Structural Integration Bodywork is so helpful; it removes the physical block.

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Ch 14 - SURVIVAL, ABUSE AND HOPELESSNESS - PART 1, Connections into Infancy

CHAPTER 14
SURVIVAL, ABUSE AND HOPELESSNESS - PART 1
Connections into Infancy

To repeat: The three basic kinds of experiences that overwhelm us are old age, sickness and death. These also involve the issue of survival, or at least the fear that we won't survive. We feel hopeless and helpless when we're up against things that are overpowering; when nothing we can do can change what we see is happening. These involve real physical circumstances such as death and near death experiences, serious illness, imprisonment, long-term isolation and major loss. They all cause us to feel a total lack of power. Sometimes, they threaten our very lives.

A number of overpowering episodes involving survival occur in childhood. As infants and children we're forced to experience circumstances during which we encounter various kinds of rejection, denial, manipulation or control. They may be sudden major traumas, or they may be long-term stressful living situations. These kinds of experiences always cause us to feel helpless and hopeless about certain ways of living. Even in good families, children meet up with difficulties. Everyone has them. And while they're unavoidable they help to create "blocks."

Most of us can remember some of these episodes that happened after about age four and many people can give a summary of what childhood was like. We think we understand what went on for us. But to remove the issues, we have to get to specific episodes. During the processes, some of my clients have found that pertinent episodes from late childhood were still located in their unconscious minds that they'd consciously forgotten years ago.

For example, someone might remember that father was always going away on business, or mother was always yelling, or "They never acknowledged me." Someone else might remember how Mother was always worried, or how she was always overworked, or how Mom and Dad were always fighting. In order to release the effects these circumstances have been having on us, we have to experience-out the specific experiences that made a lasting impact.

In the latter part of childhood and into the teenage years, our episodes usually involve physical struggle, sexual abuse, muggings, and major decisions we made about ourselves and our relationships. Typical decisions are: "I've had it. She's threatened me and tried to push me around too many times. No one's ever going to do that to me again." "They're not my parents anymore," and "I hate him. I'll always hate him."

However, even though some of these episodes can be significant and must be released for the person to feel OK, they are not the formative ones. Those always seem to occur in infancy and the pre-verbal. As I've said in other sections, the later experiences are repeats of what happened earlier. Unless someone is pointing a gun or knife at us, or doing something similar, later experiences are about 'concepts' and not about physical survival. Even when they do involve physical harm, there are similar experiences at ages 0-2 that exist inside us, even if we've never known about them. These must be processed along with those in later times because it is the physically overwhelming experiences that lock-in the blocks. This can be seen by examining these early childhood experiences. It's important to understand how this works.

A good example of a significant infancy experience involves a person saying he or she feels "smothered" by a narcissistic mother who always wants her child to achieve what she wants it to achieve, in the way she wants it to evolve. This word "smothering" is even used by adults to describe how their mother still tries to control them. It will also often describe how Father behaves, too. We normally associate this pattern starting around three years old with Mother manipulating the child into 'good' behavior. This is one part of the pattern and affects a certain level of our development. Clearing it helps.

Investigation can also reveal that an infancy experience involved the child smothering as a frustrated Mother pressed a pillow over its face to shut it up. The Mother may very well have been saying words like, "When are you going to listen to me? Do as I say. I wish you'd shut up. I don't understand what you want." The unspoken words of this normally kind Mother's rage are transmitted into the child through her hands and the closeness of their energy fields. These words might be, "I want to kill this kid if it doesn't shut up," or even, "I can't stand this any more. Shut up or I'll kill you."

So the most physically controlling episode occurred in infancy, and included the frustrating experience of nobody understanding nor acknowledging the communication of either mother and child, the lack of either one getting its needs met, the terror and physical experience of the infant, and the trauma of the decent mother realizing what she'd just done. It will also include what the mother says and thinks as she cools herself down and apologizes to the baby.

This experience will embody a lot of how this person feels in certain situations as an adult. These situations will neither be physically abusive nor terrorizingly traumatic. They will, however, involve a fear of not being acknowledged and not getting one's needs met. Even the physical sensations can occur when the adult thinks about reaching out in the way he or she got hurt early on.

I have found that people usually process out a three year old manipulation experience before the infancy one. But interestingly enough, even the three-year-old experience involves terror and/or physical control. Later, when the infancy, birth or prenatal physical experience is released, people have an easier time of releasing related, psychological episodes that occurred later in their life.

Other experiences of smothering at the hands of a woman will have occurred at or around birth and will be found in the prenatal where there is some kind of physical breathing problem with the fetus and maybe also with Mother at the same time. Mother will also have a flash of worry about her and/or the baby right then. Mother may or may not also be thinking that she feels smothered by her mother or even by her husband.

Another common infancy experience occurs regarding the issue of a father who dies or abandons the family when the child is five or six. While this can be the most emotionally traumatic and pivotal episode in the person's life, another experience in the first couple years of life will also be there. This will usually involve Mother leaving the baby unsatisfied in its crib and include Mother's thoughts of dissatisfaction about Father leaving her. Here, too, the same kind of words and experiences will occur around birth and in the prenatal.

I have found the same pattern in sexual abuse. Although the father is the seducer, manipulator and forcer when the girl is four years or older, another experience, with Mother, occurred for one person before the age of one. This was much more physically traumatic at the time and involved mother unknowingly feeding her child some spoiled food. When the kid spit it out, the Mother tried to seduce it, manipulate it and finally control it into taking more into its mouth. While this didn't work, it did make the mother more frustrated and the child more upset. Stating threats, the mother put the child into the crib and a more violent confrontation occurred. You can see the parallels between what happened here and forced oral copulation at a later age.

Interestingly, this episode was on top of the stack when we asked the person's unconcious mind for the most significant early childhood episode that was influencing her low blood sugar problems. When it was partially cleared, the person found a doctor that eliminated a bacterial infection in her gut that was supposed to have been causing the low blood sugar condition.

This client had already spoken at length about her sexual abuse and even processed out a later significant episode involving Father's seduction using a lollipop. But removing the experience of that lollipop had done nothing for the blood sugar issue even though the woman processed out the episode without any problems. Yet when the infancy episode came out, the amount of trauma that was built into this, hidden, yet overwhelming episode, was so strong that it was the only time this knowledgeable woman got hooked into heavy transference.

This is more evidence that the earlier episodes are more controlling on the organism. When they happened, they affected a greater amount of the individual than those that occurred a few years later.

Infants and Children can also be programmed as they sleep, even if the words are spoken about someone else. I've mentioned this kind of programming in other chapters. The unconscious mind doesn't know who it is; it just records the words. This is what happens for adults when they use cassette tapes for subliminal programming while the sleep of watch TV. What children's minds receive when they're sleeping also programs them, whether it's one adult saying something directly to the child, or two parents making comments about the child in its room, or even when the parents or the neighbors have a violent argument. This will also happen when their TV or radio is played while they sleep.

This kind of programming becomes part of the stack when the words involved connect in with the rest of the person's issues. It will effect them no matter what the words are, but if it's one more episode on top of the others, it will add to the matrix and should be cleared. This is where Netherton's therapy is very different from others. While there are usually underlying foundational traumas also involved, these words help to program the child. So even if Mother never inter-acted with these particular words and violence, if the neighbors did with each other, and the child got it subconsciously, it will be there.

As I mention elsewhere, this same phenomena occurs at deaths, especially on battlefields and in hospitals where people are talking about other individuals who are hopeless and dying. It also occurs from the delivery room staff at birth, with Mother and her friends in the pre-natal, and during any operation when you're under general anesthesia. It's been found that you can't just play any music during an operation; the words and the beat have to be positive and energically healing.

So as I've said, there is a theme running through the episodes of all these time periods. When we start from the present circumstance, we can connect back through each time period to earlier and earlier events. Teenage experiences always have their roots earlier in childhood and the pre-natal, and these have exact parallels in past lives.

In all situations, our awareness, or objective minds, are not doing it. What we observe happening to us in these kinds of situations is the product of an energy pattern that was set up a long time ago. This pattern keeps repeating itself in different, but similar kinds of circumstances. Those we are immediately concerned with as adults do not threaten our very survival, but they are linked to the ones that do through the theme. It is the pattern that must be eliminated, and we use the episodes to do it. As I've said, each episode contains both the trauma and the words that were stated at the time, and these program our future events. By removing the words, as well as the traumas, the plugs are pulled that have been connecting the past to our present and future. The key episodes of past lives are those in which we did not survive. The key episodes in this life are when we did, of course, vive, but in which we were terrorized and felt that we might not.

In adult situations, our problems occur because we're caught up in them. Not only don't we know they aren't 'us.' but their energies and feelings are so strong we find them hard to resist. The pattern uses our current life situation and our own bodies to recreate the characters and scenes in its script. We get so caught up in the interactions that we don't recognize there is an underlying 'power force' making it hard or impossible for us to get out of it.

The strongest force is one of abusive death or near death experiences, where survival was, or seemed, hopeless. The key episodes are those where that threat was performed by another person. In infancy, a child is at the physical mercy of the much larger and more developed adults. When terrorized, it physically contracts and senses only fear and pain.

All the foundational situations that set up our negative patterns involve some sort of forced overwhelm, by another human being. We could say we are victimized. And that's exactly the feeling many people have when they go into therapy. They feel victimized by other people or even by life itself. These experiences stem directly out of infancy, and later childhood, and have exact matching experiences in past lives. When the trauma and words from these experiences are eliminated from the body and aura, most of the pattern is eliminated.

There are other lifetimes that result from conditioned behavior patterns that relate directly to what we recognize, and are working on, in our adult life. It's rare that we get all the way back to the source immediately and cure all our problems in a few sessions. More often, we have to move back through stages of releasing the blocks to our development. So what we process out are not always the ultimate bottom lines, because this is, in a way, not the point. What we do is process out the bottom line for the 'place' we're at in our development (or therapy).

The past lives on the top of the stack are almost always parallels to what we're currently working on in this life. They'll also be parallels to the childhood and pre-natal experiences we've been processing and to the levels of the birth experience we've been able to reach. So in the course of therapy we move from the branches down the trunk of the tree to the roots. One of the jobs of the Netherton therapist is to make sure we keep moving along this path from session to session and not repeat the same kinds of episodes we've just processed. This requires our own deeper introspection about what's been happening in our lives and how we feel.

These lifetimes are 'intermediate' ones between the original foundational episodes and our current situation. But they have significant command statements and often need to be released. They often involve deaths where we were beset by natural or man-made disasters, such as being trapped in an avalanche or being blown up by a bomb. Here, we were killed after confrontations on our issues occurred with other people. Often, we got killed because 'we gave away our power' and took a course of action that got us killed.

Significant aspects at these levels also include hopelessness, and futility in being unable to persuade other people to do what we sense is best. The people we confronted didn't directly kill us, but doing what we gave in to doing got us killed. The pattern is there but it occurred because we gave into it, or were intellectually manipulated into it, not because we were forced into it. We may even have gotten killed by other people. You can see these kinds of experiences have a lot of similarities to what we do as adults in this lifetime.

What's important to recognize is that we get 'attracted' into these lives because the patterned way of behaving is set up by the earlier energies in of the abusive person. These forced us to give in and implanted the words of doing so along with the action. One the forced behavior is set in, it repeats and competes with our better judgment for our course of action. What was said in terms of hopelessness in the avalanche was also said, and forced upon us, in the earlier situations with the controlling abusers.

Since we were terrorized and killed, these 'intermediate' lives can set up phobias and other issues. In fact, the experiences around those deaths are directly related to other blocks we're currently working on. Since we have elements of the problems at each stage of development, one episode will often touch upon a number of issues we're familiar with. As the processes continue, what's left becomes more specific. We are working an interwoven matrix.

The arrangement of the past life patterns in the stack are the same as what chronologically happens in this lifetime. We are first forced into a behavior and the words that keep it perpetuating are said by other people as we are forced into pain, hopelessness, fear and death. Initially we resist, and keep resisting, until we are beaten into submission and killed. In subsequent lives, we give in a little sooner and take the words of hopelessness as our own. This is the pattern of abuse.
In infancy we aren't killed but it gets close, or Mother thinks it got close.

Mother forced us to shut up or do something else she wanted. In these episodes the physical aspects to energy expression are blocked and the words are embedded in the child. From this point on, our patterns have the experience that we are no longer able to stand up for ourselves in those circumstances. And indeed the energies in our bodies are blocked. By the time we reach childhood, we must always give in. Even Mothers' words of hopelessness are thought, and considered our own. As we grow up, we regularly give away our power. The blocks force us to behave in those directions.

Thus old lifetimes exactly parallel the development of what happens in this life.
As women's rights activists and law enforcement officials say, abuse is a control issue And all our patterns stem from these experiences in which we were overwhelmingly controlled by others, against our will. It is a case of victim and victimizer. In past lives the identification is clear; there are some really bad guys.

In this life, it's not how we usually think of it unless you remember having very abusive parents. For most of us, Mom and Dad may have been quite supportive and loving, even if there was a generation gap or there were difficult times. Infancy experiences are rarely recognized, even in Reichian and Bioenergetic therapies. And they are rarely repetitive. But only one is enough to set in the block, and then later experiences add to it. I've found that these kinds of event happen regularly in our society but not in premeditated malicious ways. Overloaded and/or frustrated mothers just 'lose it' and the baby gets hurt. Judging from the fact that there are now TV ads I've seen aimed at young mothers, other people also recognize how prevalent this kind of thing can be.

Ch 13 - THE ISSUE OF DEATH ITSELF AND THE LAYERS OF ITS RELEASE

CHAPTER 13
THE ISSUE OF DEATH ITSELF AND THE LAYERS OF ITS RELEASE
How processing these experiences relates to our childhood,
and what affect it has on our lives.


Anything we cannot handle seems overwhelming. When we attach to a certain state of existence, any threat to that state is stressful. The three kinds of things that control us, that none of us can escape, are old age, sickness and death. Regardless of how smart or how good a person we are, these things happen.

Researchers like Elizabeth Kubler Ross have found that people go through psychological stages when they find out they're dying: denial, anger, sorrow and acceptance. In past life therapy, these phases are also experienced as the layers of incompleted past deaths are processed out of our auras through our bodies. We also find that fear is there, too. It usually comes out after the battling and/or anger. When it comes to the real thing, most people do not want to die before their time. I haven't found many words come up about whether it's good or bad 'on the other side.' All the words in dying scenarios seem to be about dying from this life. The emotional experiences people have when they're dying seem to be related to what happened during their lifetime, or how they feel about people they're with. This is what the people around them usually talk about, too.

When a client has completely processed a particular lifetime and its death, all the emotions are gone. Pictures can still be there if the person looks, but the charge is gone. Then we know the plug has been pulled on that piece of the stack.

In reality, we understand that everyone dies, but our minds cling to survival more than anything else. In our limited view, we think this body and these thoughts are all we are. We also sometimes tend to think of ourselves as immortal. So it's enormous and overwhelming to think we will not exist, and in some ways we deny the idea that we will die.

Further, the fear and remorse that occurs when a death is forced upon a fairly young person is quite significant. Many religious people say they feel OK about dying and meeting God. But I have helped a number of clients process out past deaths in which they were Christian monks or nuns, and in those lifetime roles, these monks and nuns had a hard time of about leaving this life, in some parts of their psyche. Some of this processing even included words about God forsaking them. Rarely if ever were words mentioned about what God had in store for them on the other side. There is often a capture involved, and an attempt to elude or resist capture as well. This has proven true for death experiences of young people no matter what their religious involvement. The people in these past lives seem much more interested in their relations with this life and its people and results than in the hereafter. Since we were processing our foundational issue lifetimes, all these deaths were violently caused, either in battle or through imprisonment or torture. And that may be why they are like this. But it explains my point.

In our minds we attach our existence to any ideas of how our lives ought to be. These become a part of who we think we are. And when these kinds of arrangements are threatened, we use all our creativity and effort to keep them from ending. In many situations, this is a very valuable asset. However, in therapy, analyzing the pattern will point toward our issues.

In the lives that were 'foundational' in setting up the pattern, the people always lose.+; they are killed. That's why it's futile to try to intellectually 'beat' your pattern. The pattern will always end in loss. The only way you can beat it is not be involved with it; don't play its game. You have to remove it with therapy or develop a strong enough concentration power to let go of it.

Figuring out how to beat it is actually another part of the episode that's coming out of the person's old tapes. Trying to beat it in this present lifetime is transference; the person is transferring the old pattern onto a current object. The circumstances are different; the theme is the same. You can move to another location, or change you job, or get a divorce. But if these changes are just avoidance actions, the issue will pop up in the new circumstances, too. Astrologers can read this from a chart very easily.

Netherton therapy is such a great tool because it has techniques to remove the incompleted experiences that keep perpetuating the threat of loss, the attempt to throw off the threat, and then the final death blow.

Even in non-abusive and non-combative situations there are some circumstances, such as our own death or the death of loved ones, which are unavoidable. So we have great sadness over these losses. We also may have anger or frustration, as for instance, when we're unable to stop someone from dying of a disease. This can also appear in the form of guilt: "I should have done more. If only I had done such and such. I shouldn't have been so selfish." And then there will be remorse: "I'd give anything to get that back again, so I can do it right this time." Amazing as it may seem, all these are other people's words in prenatal and at birth, and our own words and those of others in our past lives.

Some people also have denial, if they ignore the whole situation because they can't deal with it emotionally. Sometimes there is confusion, too.

All these feelings and thoughts are sincere. But it's important to remember for therapy purposes that the way we deal with other people's deaths is how we have been conditioned in the past. Just like learning how to use a tool a certain way, we learn to handle different experiences in our lives in certain ways. We just don't remember that learning experience.

When the emotional trauma and conflicting voices of these old experiences are processed out, we feel freer and less confused. For each pertinent scenario in the stack, we release the "fighting" trauma of anger and denial that's been existing in our bodies as deep tension. We release the black hardness surrounding our hearts, the tight fear deep in our guts, and the sorrow stuck our chests. Finally, the energies of love, forgiveness and acceptance come out and we relax deeply as our spirits leave the flesh during complete processing. After a session, even if it's a childhood one, many people say, "I feel like I released a lot out of me."

A similar pattern exists as we process through prenatal, birth and childhood. We are able to make contact with the love, acceptance and understanding that underlies the problems we're usually caught up in. And we gain a lot of empathy toward our parents, having just lived through their emotions and experiences. With the needs of a child no longer driving our attitudes, we see them as real people as well as our parents. And most people can see that the parents did love them even though their outward behaviors might not have shown it. My clients can better appreciate the difficulties their parents went through even though it was also tough on them. This is because they are no longer stuck only in the place of having the tough time. They can see deeper.

The result carries over into our daily life. When the old negative emotions are literally removed from our bodies, this forgiveness so many people talk about becomes a reality. When they are not processed out, people have a hard time being in the present as they are told to do in the forgiveness procedures. Underneath are still the old energies moving around by themselves and they affect what we think, say and do. In a manner of speaking, some of this includes the denial of what else is going on, and that can create problems for ourselves and especially for other people. The error of the forgiveness system lies in its believing that all these negative feelings are part of our own conscious adult minds. In reality, they are elements of the old painful experiences themselves. When these words are processed out, we don't have them in our minds. Then our thoughts, speech and actions will be more accurately in line with our current reality.

The process of releasing emotional trauma in any therapy has therefore been called "riding the rapids." When we get through all that "body energy" that comes out as we process, our minds have the calm and clarity to see more of the whole picture, like seeing deeply into that calm pool of water at the bottom of the rapids.

Ch 12 - THE CONNECTIONS FROM PAST LIVES TO THIS ONE,How this therapy works by linking up to and aligning the lifetimes

CHAPTER 12:

THE CONNECTIONS FROM PAST LIVES TO THIS ONE,
How this therapy works by linking up to and aligning the lifetimes


Death as an issue is discussed in the next section. But, for the purpose of understanding the Netherton Method, here is a 'technical,' karmic reason why this death information is part of the scenario. While I have mentioned various elements of this aspect of the therapy, the following explanation will tell you a lot more.
All the many episodes of the patterns are linked in a chain. This is a key factor in knowing how to clear issues from people's unconscious minds. There is a system to this processing.

The first factor: By processing many people, Netherton found out that the way people die in one lifetime is "connected" to programming, or violent trauma, or deep sadness earlier in that same lifetime. So when he works with a client, he makes sure the person erases the time he or she died in a lifetime as well as the fights, or battles, or hopeless events that occurred earlier in that same lifetime. Sometimes, our minds are connected to experiences that did end in our deaths, so both are taken care of in that situation.

The second factor: Netherton also found out that the events, and trauma, as well as the words of the death are related to events, words and attitudes in the next birth, and even in non-life threatening circumstances in that next life. So a continuum from one life to another actually seems to exist, at least in the therapy.

Let me explain this. When people die, they go through a stage of unconsciousness where their soul, or mind, leaves the body. Their spirits even hang around the location for a while. This has been confirmed by reports from many people who have 'died' on the operating table or in car crashes, and then come back. It is also a very clear part of every past life death my clients and I have ever done.
During the unconscious period as we are dying, we are in an alpha state. So what is said around us goes right into our unconscious minds and is brought, via spirit, to the next life. As I also mention in other sections, people can see others talking about them in their minds eye as they process out these kinds of scenarios. Before this view is clear to the conscious mind of the person doing the processing, he or she thinks their own adult minds are having these opinions about that life, or that they, in that other life, were thinking it as they left the body.

This is, in fact, one of the investigations used to see if there is additional material from the life left to process. We don't always see everything that's in there on our own because sometimes we were unconscious and we don't remember what happened around us at those times, in past lives as well as this one. Sometimes these words at death also link us to unfinished material in the earlier episodes of that life, such as military battles, fights, or imprisonment and escape, that we've been clearing. This is one reason why we need a therapist to help. Even though I, myself, know how to process out material on my own, and have done so hours at a time with good results, I am not able to detect nor release material said by others when I've been asleep or unconscious, unless the 'door' has been opened in a session with a practitioner.

When the block of unconsciousness is processed off, see that it is, indeed, other people saying it in that old life. When these words and their energies are released, it helps to correct a person's problem.

In the prenatal, we have no conscious mind the way we think of it at ages five or six. While some of my metaphysical friends tell me there is awareness and volition there, they are talking about what the overall 'soul' is doing. On the physical, incarnate level, a fetus does sense and act, in a direct way with its immediate environment. We can even communicate to it with feelings and words, just as we can to plants, animals and insects. It has consciousness, but it does not have referencing knowledge about where it is and why it's there. In addition, in the way we think of having a conscious mind with intellect, we are short changed, because we have to learn in each lifetime how to speak and use language all over again. And that takes a few years.

Yet there are words that come out when a person processes conception, pre-natal events, birth, and things that happened in infancy. These words are mothers, or someone else’s. It is true that the infant has emotional feelings. And we must clear those experiences. But it does not yet have reasoning ability. The reasoning statements always turn out to be made by the adults in the room. Almost all of these are coming from Mother or the other predominant adult in the situation. I have found that underneath Mother's lambasting the child is a feeling of her frustration, remorse and sadness. Much of it has to do with her life situation, and may include difficulties in her relationship with Father. The words of fear and frustration that come out of these feelings are accurate to describe the emotional feelings of the infant at the time. Both can be expressed in the way that each individual would do it, for their age and educational background. Adults use words, infants cry and tense up or shake.

This same kind of pairing, or identity of feeling, also exists in past lives when we are dying or traumatized with fear and/or pain.

When someone has difficulty seeing who certain words are coming from, and it isn't coming from Mother, they often get the impression they are one's own. But it almost always turns out to be a bystander who was not seen before in the person's mind's eye because the process had been focused on the interaction between Baby and the primary adult involved in its experience. This bystander phenomenon also occurs in past lives, especially around the deaths. This is another key element to process; the bystander's words, which are usually related to pity, helplessness, and reflections about someone's life. At birth, these bystander words are often thought by a nurse.

In childhood, when you have a difficult encounter with mother, some of the words that are in your subconscious will now come out as your role, and others will come out as mother's role. This is especially important to recognize when a baby is knocked unconscious, either as the result of a mother's blow or shake, or because it fell. Whatever is said around the baby while it is unconscious goes directly into the sub-conscious programming locations.

In almost all cases, there's fear about whether the baby is still alive, or will live. If the unconsciousness is caused by Mother, she will usually feel great guilt and remorse. She may also have self-doubting thoughts about controlling her own anger. These words, thoughts and feelings go directly into the infant. And when the child gets older, it becomes aware of these very same thoughts, and thinks it's his or her own. Some clients have said they have thoughts about being bad, about being stupid, and especially about being unable to control their anger and rage. When asked how long they've had these thoughts, some of my clients say, "For as long as I can remember."

The same pattern exists in the past life, where words have been placed in someone's subconscious mind when they were asleep or unconscious. In general, whatever happened in infancy happened almost the same way in the past life. If you know of one because it came out, you can look for the other by using the words and special verbal instructions to the sub-conscious stack.

Some people I've met insist that their souls are thinking these words in the prenatal, birth and infancy time periods. But that is an incorrect view of the psychotherapeutic clearing. We are using a Gestalt therapy kind of technique to correct negative experiences that got stuck in people's bodies during their childhood development stages from conception through about age seven. While I, personally, believe souls do have intentions; the stuck energy we are releasing in this kind of process was created by the conscious and unconscious mind of the child and the people around him or her. While a soul may incarnate on the physical plane for all sorts of karmic reasons, once it is in this plane, the speech, thoughts and feelings are done through the physical body, including the physical brain and the physical/energic energy field.

To make all this clearer, I will repeat it in summary. The emotions and physical sensations that were 'imprinted' upon you along with other people's words and feelings at this birth, are the same as the words that you or other people felt or expressed while you were dying in a previous life. And the experiences parallel the events surrounding your most traumatic event in that life, whether it led to your death or was at an earlier time. The circumstances won't be exactly the same, but the kind of traumas and programming will. And the same words will be there.

The words are the link. They embody the sub-conscious belief statements that keep you believing, and acting out, a limited view of life. All the pertinent words from your past life experiences are repeated in the pre-natal, at birth and in infancy, even if they are there as part of your mother's (or someone else's) unconscious feelings, rather than enunciated thoughts or speech. These words connect us to all the pertinent lifetimes forming the matrix of our karmic issues we have come to handle. 'This time around' we've chosen to work out a subset of all we have. In the course of the therapy, we discover which lives are the pertinent ones.
Netherton says that these 'imprintings' link us up to our unfinished karma, to traumas and behaviors we actually had when we lived as other people in past lives. I described this in some previous chapters.

Here is how they link to this fear of death. During many of those pertinent lifetimes, we actually did die, or were hurt very badly, while we were engaged in behavior that directly relates to the kinds of circumstances we have the most trouble with in this lifetime. Logically speaking, we can understand that our unconscious mind is saying, "I don't want to do that because I died doing it before."

But it's even more direct than that. Since the unconscious records everything in present tense, the replay, no matter when it occurs, will also be in present tense. Your unconscious mind doesn't know those deaths occurred centuries ago. It can only give out the information that it's all going on right now. The real message is, 'I'm doing this and I'm going to die!" The unconscious mind is just like a tape recorder.

Add to this gut wrenching feeling your mother's fears and severe abdominal pain during your birth, or her worries for you in the prenatal when something felt 'wrong,' and you can see why you have such strong upsets when those events are triggered. In addition, as I said, there always seem to be at least one severe trauma in infancy and at least one in childhood that also adds a lot of energy to the pattern. And at this time, the great fears were yours as well as others in the episodes. People who were repeatedly threatened in childhood and were never wanted in the prenatal usually have a few significant episodes. Even people who were wanted might have underlying episodes where mother felt she couldn't go on with it, or felt something life threatening was happening to the baby. Although these might seem minor or incidental, they often come out as part of a person's stack.

Here is how we know what's linked up. As I've described, the words, emotional feelings and sensations are the connections to our earlier, formative experiences, the ones that put those words in the unconscious mind. The pattern or issue in our current life will be connected to a number of experiences, each from a different time frame. Some Netherton therapists prefer to work birth and pre-natal first. I prefer to work childhood first and go back into infancy. But sometimes I'll work birth, or start with adult or teenage incidents and then go into similar events in the prenatal. It all depends on what it sounds like, how much the person is committed to the long term therapy, how far they've gone into releasing, how open they are to begin with, and so forth.

And in all cases we remove the words. To get at them, we must necessarily clear the trauma because the words are intertwined with the physical and emotional experiences. So they all get erased together. And the therapist keeps a sentence-by-sentence 'log' of each session to make sure everything is covered.

To review: The words and phrases that were said by us, or around us, at the time of past deaths, are the very same words and phrases said around us at this birth. They are also the same as the words and phrases said by us, or around us, in additional traumatic events in our past lives and in this life. And they are also the words said or thought by our mothers and those around her in the significant events from conception through birth.

The words at birth and death, and even in some other traumatic events, are usually said 'around us' by other people, not by us as the newborn nor by the person we were in another life. But since the physical processes of dying and being born put us in a deep alpha state, the words and feelings around us are absorbed.

So the way to clear our psychological issues as adults in this present time, by using the Netherton method, is to make sure you erase the words, as well as the feelings, from the past experiences we are still stuck with. It's a very simple concept, and a very effective thing to do. This is why this therapy works so well as compared to regressions, rebirthing and other release methods. By erasing the words, which have become 'command statements' on how life should be, we pull the plugs on the old linkups. The events can still be seen in one's mind's eye, but after complete processing, there will be no more emotion involved.

One technique that is used to make sure a person gets the whole thing is as follows. After processing out a number of layers of emotion and physical feeling, by going through the scenario a number of times, the client is asked to scan the whole experience and share if there is any feeling, thought, idea or picture that pulls them back into that lifetime or early life event. If there is, more is processed. There are other techniques employed as well, to make sure it's all gone.

This pattern always exists in people's subconscious minds, whether they have opinions or beliefs about reincarnation or not. It is just there. And conscious dialogue about ideas does not affect it since it is located in another part of the body. All that is necessary for processing is a willingness to do it, no matter what we call it. Very good results can even be obtained by just working events from conception on.

The important feature of our minds that makes the therapy work, is that it doesn't matter what a person calls these time periods, nor even if the events really existed, even in childhood. If it comes out of somebody, because their mind connected their current experience with it, then it's appropriate to clear it.