January, 2012  will be the beginning of my 35th year of experiencing being captured by the God of my understanding. The first year, I didn’t have any labels for it. If you are a mystic, you generally have to be told by someone else that you are a mystic and find out for yourself what that means. It was only after I read William James’s book, The Varieties of Religious Experience that I had a label of “radical conversion”. Soon after this, someone asked me if I knew what mysticism was and I was able to add another label. I am a Christian but have gained much insight from studying all religions and incorporating other practices into my spiritual experiences.

Mystics are found in all faiths and/or religions. Beginning the mystic journey, each pilgrim has an individual journey yet all will have some common ground with other mystics. For my 35th-year journey, I have let go of most of my earthly ties to family and friends. I felt an extreme urgency to experience and study my inner experience. So, although God’s gift is free, it isn’t cheap. I have lived without most of my family for most of the 35 year experience. I have never made a lot of money or taken the time to climb the ladder. I have driven cheap cars and owned very little materially. But I did what I wanted to do–follow the God of my understanding as best I could. My reward has been Heaven on earth–the peace, love, joy, contentment, fun is amazing. And I look forward to life’s greatest adventure–giving up this bodily burden.

Some of the spiritual techniques that my help for your spiritual journey are:

(1) centering prepares us for the Presence of God;

(2) deep breathing helps us to quiet our mind because we can only think one thought at a time–when we are counting our breaths in and out, our mind is focused on one thought relieving our anxiety;

(3) meditation and prayer;

(4) mindfulness.

According to Carl McColman, who writes The Website of Unknowing, a soul friend is a friend who provides others with coaching, support and guidance as they progress along the path toward fulfilling their spiritual and mystical potential.

“Of Mystics and Activists”  by Peter J. Leithart

‘The Challenge of Understanding Mysticism” by Richard D. Engle

“Understanding Mysticism” by Matthew Bingley

Mysticism: General Information

Photo credit.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

One of my favorite, favorite writers in the field of addiction recovery is Syd whose blog I’m Just F.I.N.E.—Recovery in AlAnon, includes this excerpt from his entry entitled, “The view from the bridge”:

“It is warm today, nearly 75 F.  It still feels like fall to me.  But I will take it over the long days of cold weather that would permeate whatever I put on in Virginia.  Yesterday at the marina was picture perfect–blue sky, light winds, warm temperatures.  I watched the boats going past looking for the body of a young woman who jumped from the bridge over the weekend. Her body has not been found.”

”She was described as her room mates as cheerful, vivacious, beautiful, athletic, and from a loving family.  Yet, for some reason, she decided to scramble over the barricade that separates the walkers and runners from the precipitous edge of the bridge and jump over 160 feet into the water below.  A passerby said that she saw the young woman standing there, and she turned to smile.  A smile of resignation?  A smile of happiness at her decision?  I don’t know, but I wonder what can be so awful at 20 years of age that makes you end your life.”

”The view from the top of that bridge is spectacular.  The harbor is before you, the church steeples in the city,  the masts of sailboats at the marina–all of it makes a breath taking panorama.  Maybe she was so caught in pain that she didn’t really see.  But somehow I hope that she did ultimately see all of it rushing by as she took that plunge.  And maybe it made her feel peaceful for a split second.”

Photo credit.

By eye of einstein

In 1976, when I came to AA, there were few female members. In my 3^rd month of recovery, I had a profound spiritual experience which I have related in other posts. I quickly learned to shut up about God as many members wanted to talk about alcohol only. Being female and a God person almost insured that I wouldn’t have a lot of group acceptance.

The focus for my recovery took a profound change in direction when I discovered ACOA. I have never “forgot” that I am first and foremost an alcoholic and am deeply grateful to be in recovery. Nor have I ever considered myself as recovered. Why change something that works for me? But ACOA gave me permission to not only feel my feelings but also to talk about them.

ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) has gone through several name changes. In 1977, (one year after the beginning of my recovery in 1976), a group of Al-Anon members realized that they were all children of alcoholics. In later years, ACOA became ACA and/or COA.

Up until 1983, any Al-Anon meeting I attended was to help heal that child inside me who grew up in a very troubled family. But when I shared at Al-Anon meetings about my alcoholism, I felt a subtle change in the group of some members feeling that I didn’t belong in an Al-Anon meeting.

In ACOA or ACA meetings, I immediately knew that I belonged because they talked about feelings. I continued to be completely committed to my recovery with AA groups. But the AA groups were male-dominated groups whose members seemed to be proud of how far they had fallen to their bottoms. So I started attending ACOA and Codependents Anonymous as well as AA.I probably didn’t win any friends by reminding everyone in AA that you don’t have to be hit by a train to hear the whistle blowing.

I can’t find any CODEP meetings here in Ft. Lauderdale but I notice that several of the AA meetings include AFL (affliated with family) so maybe some CODEP went there. CODEP meetings were the most fun because the had many counselors who were there to lead the rest of us. They, of course, were well.

Right!

9-11 Lights by tony-the-misfit

Alcoholics Anonymous has revolutionized the way alcoholics are perceived by their peers. The shame of having a problem has been made much easier by the respect given to those who change their lives by giving up an addiction.

After I came to recovery in 1976, my daughter (who was five years old at the time) told me that she had been telling the neighbors that I was an alcoholic. I was somewhat surprised because I didn’t know my neighbors very well. So I sat down and asked her to tell me what an alcoholic is. She said, ” Oh, Mommy, you know. It is someone who doesn’t drink and smiles a lot.” The only alcoholics she knew were in AA.

In the early 1980′s, the adult child/codependency recovery solutions began to appear in many reading sources. The media figures who helped launch the recovery movement were Phil Donahue and Oprah Winfrey. Betty Ford brought a high level of acceptance to the recovery field as well as a treatment center that worked.

Codependency Anonymous was started in 1986. The field of addiction was learning that the early recovery is about giving up the main addiction. What follows is another addiction; then sometimes, another, and another. After giving up alcohol, I eventually had to give up all dating,and ,eventually I quit smoking.

In the middle of all that, I learned all I could about codependency as I was starting to believe three things.

(1) That quitting drinking alcohol meant giving up all that I was addicted to because I believed that any holding on to something that enabled me to not face reality would lead me back to drinking.

(2) I would not pursue romantic relationships among recovering people. I was so grateful for AA that I was afraid to lose it.

(3) I knew that I had a predisposition to alcoholism as I had seen my father advance in his drinking career. The only time in my life that I learned from someone else’s choices was when I saw that my father’s drinking never got better.

But I was also learning that living in a home with such a major problem and no one educated about the solution certainly contributed to my addiction. For much of my childhood, I had to parent my parents. This is often the role assigned to the eldest child in troubled families.

I went to AA after Thanksgiving 1976. Two months later, I checked into a home for alcoholic women in the town I lived in–Jacksonville, Fl. The home was not attached to anything like mental health but the founder believed in Jesus Christ. We prayed on our knees morning and evening. I had a radical conversion in that home. So there I was–2 months sober, born-again, female, high-bottom, and a “lady”.

But AA was my only choice. Needless to say, I didn’t have much support there. But I kept going back and eventually I took the 13th step–giving up support groups as the only way to live. That was years later after I had clinical depression for 2 years. When I had clinical depression, I was 10 years sober–sponsoring 13 people but no one in AA said why don’t you seek professional help. I guess I looked too well. But I did notice that persons with long-time sobriety were committing suicide. I didn’t want to do that anymore than I wanted to drink.

I deeply believe that there is no recovery without a spiritual experience. Many people have a gradual awakening which can take years. During that time, s/he becomes gentler, kinder, more thoughtful, more relaxed, etc. These qualities are the fruit of the Spirit. When I see these qualities, I know that God is working in that person. In fact, the fruits of the Spirit are the only indicators of someone’s recovery that I use. Recovery is an inside job that shows on the outside of a person.

Omega Sunrise II by lragerich

“The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms – this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religion.” – Albert Einstein

January, 2010 is the beginning of my 33rdd year of experiencing being captured by the God of my understanding. The first year, I didn’t have any labels for it. If you are a mystic, you generally have to be told by someone else that you are a mystic and find out for yourself what that means. It was only after I read William James’s book, The Varieties of Religious Experience that I had a label of “radical conversion”. Soon after this, someone asked me if I knew what mysticism was and I was able to add another label. I am a Christian but have gained much insight from studying all religions and incorporating other practices into my spiritual experiences.

Mystics are found in all faiths and/or religions. Beginning the mystic journey, each pilgrim has an individual journey yet all will have some common ground with other mystics. For my 32+-year journey, I have let go of most of my earthly ties to family and friends. I felt an extreme urgency to experience and study my inner experience. So, although God’s gift is free, it isn’t cheap. I have lived without most of my family for most of the 32+ year experience. I have never made a lot of money or taken the time to climb the ladder. I have driven cheap cars and owned very little materially. But I did what I wanted to do–follow the God of my understanding as best I could. My reward has been Heaven on earth–the peace, love, joy, contentment, fun is amazing. And I look forward to life’s greatest adventure–giving up this bodily burden.

Some of the spiritual techniques that may help for your spiritual journey are:

(1) centering prepares us for the Presence of God;

(2) deep breathing helps us to quiet our mind because we can only think one thought at a time–when we are counting our breaths in and out, our mind is focused on one thought relieving our anxiety;

(3) meditation and prayer;

(4) mindfulness.

According to Carl McColman, who writes The Website of Unknowing, a soul friend is a friend who provides others with coaching, support and guidance as they progress along the path toward fulfilling their spiritual and mystical potential.

Cave by Greg Hayter

Main blogs: (see description under Changemaker Blogs)

kathyberman.com; original blog about my spiritual journey that I call recovery. It was named changemaker because we are each the changemaker in our own lives. I started this blog Thanksgiving, 2004.

answersbyemail.com; has the Changemaker Test I wrote 20 years ago to teach anyone 10 of his/her personality labels and what each means. Anyone can give it to anyone else and share the results with each other.

changemakergroups.com; I believe that the best personal growth happens in small groups. Because I believe that mental health is a fluid state and not a fixed state, I trust the group conscience. I’ve always wanted to start a small group using the Changemaker Test as a way to get to know each other. So I created this blog to teach about small groups.

cmlibraryonline.com; I read 90 books in the 3rd grade. How do I know this? Because my teacher made me stay after school to report on the. Si I’ve taken 10 topics from my blogs and created Amazon lists for each. And, yes, I am an Amazon Associate so I will collect a small percent for each sale.

healingforyouonline.com; The main message of my blogs is about healing—mind, body, soul and emotions. I believe addiction is an emotional disease  so the inner child has to be healed from our childhood wouns to really grow.

highenergygoals.com; I created the High Energy Diet three years ago which is on this blog. But I believe that our whole food experience has to be changed to stay healthy. So this site includes fitness. I believe everyone needs to physically exercise everyday because exercise is the only antidote to flush out stress from our ‘fight or flee” reactions to stress. I think stress is a good thing because it teaches me about myself.

Google Reader: I follow 512 blogs under 89 topics.

Twitter (kberman): Following, 2679; Followers, 2,613; Updates, 1,152. I have set up a RSS feed to Twitter which lists my post for the day. This goes to all in Twitter that follow me.

My Facebook profile: Kathy Berman

My WordPress.com blogs created to teach others about blogs:

coralcayblogs.wordpress.com I created this blog to teach about blogs to the community I live in.

blogempire.wordpress.com Started to encourage blog growth

coralcay.wordpress.com Created to demonstrate sales blog

My Squidoo Lenses: www.squidoo.com/cmlens. Also a short sampler of my life. My favorite Squidoo lens of mine is ACOA, Codependency and My Inner Child.

My bookmarks are at Delicious: changemaker. I have 2561 bookmarks there which anyone can access.

After the Storm by Iragerich

The narcissist is a person who either because of childhood neglect or abuse never learned to grow beyond that stage in childhood where the ego needs constant and continual praise and/or attention. The narcissist may or may not be anti-social.

The anti-social personality has these symptoms from the age of 15 years (from Wikipedia):

“There is a pervasive pattern of disregard for and the rights of others occurring since the age of 15, as indicated by three (or more) of the following:^[1]

1. failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest;

2. deceitfulness, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure;

3. impulsivity or failure to plan ahead;

4. irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults;

5. reckless disregard for safety of self or others;

6. consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations;

7. lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.”

Although I have been interested and reading about personality development since college (1958-1962), I never had consciously studied personality disorders. Imagine my surprise to find that I had been married to one for 15 years. The way I discovered this was doing the 5th step about my marriage during my 32nd year of recovery (2009).

The 5th step is from AA and all 12 step groups. It is:

“Admitted to God, to myself, and to another person the exact nature of my wrongs.”

The key words for me about my marriage and my taking the 5th step are “my wrongs”.

So, I was married to an anti-social person who drank alcohol everyday, and I was completely blindsided By his choosing to find a new  audience. I shouldn’t have been because for narcissists and anti-social personalities the only important emotion you must have to be with them is admiration. I had stopped admiring.

What did I do to maintain this relationship? I was dishonest about my “admiration” of him. I had quit admiring him years ago. I am amazed that we lasted this long. What did I get out of this union? Security—not really. Appreciation—not often. Affection—almost never. Friendship—no. But I did get the one thing I needed—rejection.

Hilo Bay Serenity by eye-of-einstein

In yesterday’s post about taking my inventory during my divorce, I mentioned that I have used procrastination to rob me of any clear victory from writing my blogs. Because I am retired with no pension, I have a need to make some income from my blogs. As I have reported before, although the count of blogs is at 80,000,000, only 200,000 to 500,000 bloggers make an income from their writing. That translates to about 2-6%—not a big crowd. Most bloggers make his/her income from ads whose income is dictated by the number of readers each blog has through various RSS readers (that orange button seen on most blogs).

I want to make my income from email counseling. I hope to be able to increase my readership from 30-60 daily to a much larger group. I plan to start a Twitter campaign in the next few weeks. Twitter is an amazing tool but the Twitter population is being inundated by spam Twitter users. As of today, it is estimated that 20%+ of users are created by spam software. I don’t use any accelerated software to increase my following because I can personally add or delete each new user based on what I find on his.her Twitter homepage. It is time-consuming. I also filter my followers through a program that deletes all people I follow who don’t follow me back. I am working on a plan to add free information about self-help or personal development in my Twits.

I read an article about procrastination written by Dr. Timothy Pychyl, Associate professor at Carleton University in Ottawa. He specializes in the study of procrastination. In the article he writes that the emotion most strongly associated with procrastination is guilt. Wow! I know that is what I have been doing when procrastination is seen as punishment. How could I allow this terrible person—me—to succeed? Surely, she deserves to live in the basement of rejection and torment. Believe me, I am been a master at denying myself much pleasure. No one else can punish us as severely as we punish ourselves.

So my 6th and 7th step work is beginning to be very successful. One of the procrastination tricks that I’ve found is my love of organizing. Although being logical gives me much clear direction in life, I’ve found that I duplicate many times over the same information in an effort to “organize” it. What it really does really is give me endless hours of activity with little progress. Procrastination is about spinning your own wheels.

Now that I know how I misuse my gift of organizing, it will be hard to continue that. Thank goodness—I can move on to helping others—my favorite activity in all the world.

I started my main blog (this one) in 2004. Then in 2008, I created 6 separate blogs each with one topic from the topics in the main blog. I don’t know if that was wise. I am currently trying to get some work from odesk or other sites. I hired a couple to give me an audit of what is needed. The audit showed the following needs.

Audit–

- -Remove /blog subdirectory from kathyberman site

- -Install the Redirection plugin and create global forwarding rules to remove 404 errors

- -Ensure that the home, posts, and pages all show the correct header

– Review any pathing errors and update

–Update permalinks to more friendly URLs

-Install / configure the following plugins to assist with SEO

- Google XML Sitemaps 3.1.2 (make sure it is working)

- All in One SEO 1.4.7

Update WordPress– WordPress 2.62 –> go up to 2.7.1

-Update these plugins

- Akismet 2.1.8 –> go up to 2.2.3

- Broken Link Checker 0.4.8 (does not work with 2.7.1)

- Reveal IDs for WP Admin 1.0.1 –> go up to 1.1.1

- Theme Test Drive 2.6.1 –> go up to 2.7.2

Add these plugins

- Google Analytics for WordPress 2.7

- Viper’s Video Quicktags 6.1.16

- Simple Trackback Validation 2.1

- WP-DB-Backup 2.2.2

Delete Unused Plugins

Upgrade all blogs to WordPress 2.7.1

Update the URLs to SEO friendly ones, and install Redirection

Add, update, and delete plugins

I was promised that my financial position would be taken into account so I guess the price quoted for this work is a discount. The price quoted is for $1650.00 which I can’t afford. I don’t know what absolutely has to be done and what would be nice to have done

I have been trying to get a sitemap approved. No luck. It always comes up with errors. With wordpress.tv, I wonder if I can do any of it.

Please advise me. If you can, point me to some help that I may be able to barter some work for by doing some work for the persons helping me. I have been writing about my life since Nov. 2004 so I am not misrepresenting anything. Thank you for your kind help.

When I got up and walked outside, everything was different—trees, cars, the street—I saw everything with new eyes. It took me much searching to find out what had happened to me. In a book by William James entitled The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), I found that I had had a radical conversion.

Did I answer a calling? I don’t know what happened to me except I knew that God had given me that compassion and love that I felt that day. I know that someone with an experience is never at the mercy of someone with an argument.

From that day until today, I have tried to accept the guidance that God gives me and it has been the most amazing journey. I don’t believe that God does more for me now than He did before that day. The difference is that I now can see the daily miracles. “Once I was blind and now I see.”