CHAPTER 5:
A REVIEW - WITH AN ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE
Which will show you sooo much.
Let's review for a moment. We've gone over the reasons for therapy, to remove the rigidified behaviors that lock us into dissatisfying experiences in our lives. These experiences are related to our past conditioning, and that conditioning actually lives inside our bodies and energy fields as unique, incompleted experiences, complete with emotional feelings, mental attitudes and verbal words of the other people in those experiences as well as ourselves.
We also reviewed the differences between a therapeutic clearing of the material and a past life regression for counseling. Finally, I touched on the relationship between behavioral therapy and old experience release therapy. These are the basics of how our minds work; how the sub-conscious mind relates with the conscious mind, and how patterns of behavior keep running themselves, and us, instead of us running ourselves. I have also, repeatedly mentioned how Morris Netherton's system and Structural Integration Bodywork can help us to align ourselves more with our positive and more soul-driven behaviors, than with the negative behaviors in these fear driven scenarios we've been stuck with.
In my discussions with many people, when I shared this knowledge with them, I noticed that they got a lot more out of it when they did an actual process. Then the words I said had meaning for them personally. So let me now give an example of a short, half hour process that will illustrate many of the points I've been explaining.
Here's an example that illustrates many of the points I've been making in the past few chapters.
Jane was a recovering alcoholic. Her marriage had broken up years ago, she'd started to drink, and she went into verbal therapy for a number of years, but never felt satisfied with it, and even changed therapists a few times.
She currently lived in a house with other recovering alcoholics. The house was claimed to be a recovery center but it really had no program. It was just a group of people living together, who all had in common the fact that they were trying to give up alcohol. Jane, and another member of the household, had recently discussed their frustrations about this lack of a real recovery program. In fact, she had first approached me on this occasion to talk about the alcoholic's backsliding into drink after a few months of sobriety. She was interested in adding a real spiritual practice for these people because she recognized it was missing in their lives and they backslid at the times of others' negative behaviors.
While being a middle of the road Christian, Jane was also into metaphysics and she belonged to a Christian Spiritualist Church that practiced psychic readings and had a loving, supportive fellowship. She lit candles and used incense. The rest of the people in the house were Christians in the conservative Midwest. Some of them were fundamentalist. But they didn't practice any strong faith nor spiritual devotion.
Jane had had a recent confrontation with her landlord. He labeled what she was doing as witchcraft, even though he had no idea what she was doing. He even entered her room when she was away, rubbed oil on her door jam, on her door, and on her altar, all to protect himself from her 'spell.'
Jane confronted him and told him never to go in her room again without her permission, and she invited him to meet with her and see what she did, ask her questions, and find out just what was really happening for herself. She also shared that one of the people in the house, who was no so rigid, would call her weird, but would let go and release somewhat when she would call him weird back. He was easier to confront. Quite naturally, Jane was tense and somewhat defensive as she re-experienced some of these confrontations while she told them to me.
Jane also said one of her heartfelt wishes was to have a center, out in the country, where people interested in spirituality could practice and grow together.
Jane and I discussed how these particular fundamentalist Christians were frightened and rigid and were stuck in their past conditioning. I explained to her that she could not change their opinions of what she did because that pattern, or behavior script, had a mind of its own and was a very predominant part of their everyday behavior. In a way, it had strong characteristics of dependency, just listening and blindly believing what they were told about black-and-white good and evil.
People relate to their religions, I said, with the same attitude they relate with other things in their lives. It is the underlying pattern that is dominant that determines the attitudes. In someone like Jane, the predominant attitude was to care for others and develop her spirituality, but that she was in a negative, controlling environment whose leader, the landlord, had set up an environment that was not conducive to these goals. This stress manifested itself, in Jane, with tension in her abdomen and a tense strain in her body muscles.
I also told Jane how these behavior patterns, or scripts, simply resided inside them in little storage places, and that they also had other patterns that arose when they became anxious. These patterns would have words in them to tell them to take a drink, in order to calm themselves down, and that would make them feel better. It was these patterns, developed a long time ago, in the frightening experiences of childhood, that were speaking to Jane, and not any flexible, aware, and open adult human beings. Jane understood what I was saying and could relate it to what she had already recognized about herself and people in general.
So Jane would never be able to change these old programs in these people, any more than she could change the scripts of a play or movie she was watching from the audience. The programs written into the sub-conscious mind have particular character roles, and a lot of mandatory dialogue. If she fell into her own fears and defensiveness, she'd be playing into their dramas, as well as her own. She wouldn't be solving this adult difficulty with her aware, adult mind.
I explained that if she used her judgment and confronted them, by turning the focus back on their issue, she might be able to get them into the observer part of themselves and out of their identification with their frightened, rigid pattern. She would be forcing a different part of them to respond to her different line of questioning. And because she would not play the victim role in their attacks, their attacking roles would have no one to play against and those scenarios of theirs would go back into storage, replaced by a more humble 'child' that wouldn't attack her. But she'd have to do this each time they acted in this manner, whenever those patterns inside them got triggered by fear or anxiety.
We did a short Netherton process. I explained that some scenarios in her own stack were triggered in these confrontations, especially with the landlord, because it brought up fears. Among these fears, in her immediate situation, was that she wouldn't be able to live in that house, and therefore be unable to pursue her lifestyle of keeping her expenses low so she had sufficient time to pursue her spiritual growth practices. However, there were stronger emotional fears under the surface including the fact that she was afraid she wouldn't get well in that situation. This was also the conscious, and unconscious fear that caused the other householders to return to drink.
We started the process by asking Jane what words and phrases best typified her adult feelings, about being in the current house, about her dealings with these people, and about her frustrations with the urge to drink. By speaking her own words, Jane was able to become aware of the emotional feelings in her body; where they were and what they felt like. Jane got in touch with was connected to a childhood episode when she was six. It came up immediately, and very clearly. Mother was confronting her, the two were standing, facing each other in the house. And Mother was very angry while little Jane was all tensed up and frightened. In fact, Jane then related to me that she'd been tense all, or most, of the time as a child. And both her parents were alcoholic.
In this episode, Mother was saying things like, "You're a mean child. You're bad." I asked how the little Jane felt emotionally at the time, and what she was feeling physically in her body. Jane said the emotions were anger, in her belly, hurt and disappointment in her chest, and fear in her solar plexus. She felt the physical sensations as tightness in her solar plexus and, interesting, in her upper arms. I said, "If there was something physically causing these sensations in your upper arms, what would it be?" Jane replied that it was Mother holding her tightly. In fact, Mother had done that a lot.
I asked Jane what emotions and words were coming at her through Mother's speech, thoughts, and the emotional energy coming through the physical grabbing. I also asked what her own tension was saying. As Jane focused on the physical feelings in her adult body, the words from the childhood event came to her mind and she was able to speak them out loud as if the actual event was happening right then instead of decades earlier.
As is typical for these kinds of episodes, all the logical thought patterns with adult interpersonal reasoning had originally been said by Mother, while little Jane was pre-occupied with fear and physical defensiveness and tension. Her feelings translated into "I want to run away, but I can't." Obviously she was feeling these things physically. This is also typical for these kinds of childhood experiences. At the same time, underneath Mother's angry scolding, were the same feelings, only expressed as the adult mother would have felt them: "I want to leave, but I can't." Further, Mother was feeling. "I feel guilty about what I just did." "It's not right of me to blame you for my own upset." "I hate the way your Father treats us." "I'm really frustrated with him." "I wish we could all go away to a nice, safe place where I could raise you kids better, in peace."
Sounds a lot like what Jane, the adult, said she wished for, as well as the kind of battle she was having with the landlord and other people in her house. And while we did not work into past lives, it is also typical for someone who is in a controlled situation and accused unjustly of practicing witchcraft to actually been falsely accused of the same thing in past lives and then been executed. I'll explain about this in great detail in later chapters.
We went through the episode when Jane was six a few times, just to make sure all the words were removed. When that was accomplished, the sensation went away in Jane's arms and the tension went away from her belly. I then instructed any unprocessed material in her unconscious mind to go back into storage and I asked Jane to 'come back' into this room and open her eyes when she was ready.
We then discussed how these exact words, the pattern of blame and the urge to leave but not being able to related to Jane's adult life. She was quite amazed, especially with the fact that she could feel her Mother's grasp on her arms, and that it went away after she said all the words that expressed the emotional and physical feelings that were going on.
Jane said that in her previous therapy, she'd been trying to open up her conscious mind so the sub-conscious memories of childhood would come to the surface and she could deal with them. But it never happened for her. I asked her why she thought it happened now, but never did in the past. She said that she was now more open to listening to the thoughts that came into her mind, as things associated with these past experiences. And she was more willing to let all these things go.
I explained that these were important pre-requisites for accomplishing the Netherton process, but that the nature of the process is what caused them to come out. Rather than relaxing and trying to allow these old 'memories' to surface, Netherton, and others, discovered that the experiences of childhood were already on the surface. This process gives her a way of actively looking into it, and then actively pulling out all the material of the pattern stored inside specific parts of her body. It isn't a matter of allowing them to surface and be remembered.
What Jane kept re-experiencing in her life was this episode with her Mother. Throughout Jane's different life situations, this experience would re-play, like a tape. She would live out its scenario; she would experience its emotional and physical trauma; and she would express, and hear from others, its actual words. Jane has been 'lived' by her tape. After she processed out the physical and emotional energy that had been stored inside her, Jane could clearly remember the episode by looking at it in her mind's eye. But she had no emotional charge or physical tension related to it. She also felt calmer about her current situation and seemed more capable of carrying out the objective behavioral suggestions I made.
Notice also, that while Jane did her best to find a good residence to help her get well, the environment she picked was of the same type that she was raised in. Jane played her mother's role. The landlord played her father's. This is why 'coping' therapy, and even affirmations and behavioral therapy, are not adequate long-term solutions. As you saw from my summary, Jane was more objective and consciously alert after processing out her emotional upset, that still had been 'alive,' inside her, for days since the confrontation. She'd handled the confrontation with her landlord fairly well, she thought, but she was still experiencing a feeling of 'successfully defending herself' in a battle like way, and there was fear underneath that.
More subtly, Jane's best intentions still led her into this situation. Her inner energies to do something really good for herself pushed out into the world, with the desire to get help. But the outer shell is the part of her that made contact with the world and brought up this particular house and situation. This insured she would have to experience being blamed, and verbally frightened, simply because the other person was taking his own fears and negativity out on her. Even when we run across people who blame us like this, out of the blue, the key question to ask is, "How does it affect me inside my body? How long do those emotions and tensions last inside me? Do I keep repeating the story to others in a blaming way myself?"
Since Jane had done a lot of work on herself and was already psychically in tune and a member of a church community that practiced support and unconditional love, she was not an outwardly blaming person. And the entire gist of our session together was toward her personal growth. But still, the material inside was controlling her behavior to some degree and she had to further tense up to maintain control of the situation.
Learning how to change conscious behavior is an important start. And my suggestions were very well received as she could see the merit in them. But if Jane doesn't understand it's the pattern that's doing all this, she'll become very frustrated with her inability to get rid of it. Fortunately, she recognized very quickly that this old behavior keeps forcing her into its pattern instead of the new one she's trying to learn. In fact, she already had become frustrated before she met me, just like the dozens of other people I to whom explain this information. The reason they all feel frustrated is because they can't do it. The reason they can't do it, is that they can't alter these scripts. They can only eliminate them, or learn how to disconnect them each time they come up.
In the next chapter, I'll explain how you can do the disconnecting. Remember that the experiences Jane had in her current life were frustration, fear and battle. Coming from a true, and deep, spiritual state of being, she could have had a very different experience, even in the midst of telling the landlord to leave her belongings alone. It is these frustrated, fearful and defensive battling experiences that were so deeply imbedded in Jane's past experiences. Because she has still been stuck to them, she has the kinds of present life experiences she does. It is not a matter of her wanting punishment. It is a matter of her getting more and more in touch with herself in ways that transform and evolve her. Fortunately for all of us, Jane is interested in doing this.
Now that you know the basics of the 'context,' I'll next describe some of the most important contents. I'll discuss some of the most significant kinds of situations that influence us and affect us in our lives. The first of these is fear. The next is fear of death. The third is hopelessness. And the fourth is pain. These all relate to survival, and it's corollary, annihilation. Then I'll explain in more detail how the words link up the different episodes in our 'stack' of incompleted experiences. After that I'll discuss the very large subject of abuse and investigate the processing of victimizer and victim. Abuse is the experience that creates these patterns and blocks.
Throughout the following chapters, I'll be repeating a lot of what I've already talked about, but in the context of the specific new material. This will help you remember the key points about how our minds work, and allow you to understand this new material better.
