Category Archives: 3 Healing
Being a Mystic
“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, 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
How Did I Know That My Primary Addiction Was to My Family of Origin?
I realized that I was an alcoholic and went to AA on Nov. 24, 1976. I never drank again nor did I ever think that alcohol could help any problem I had. From that day, I knew that I was a pickle and could not go back to be a cucumber. Or, as I choose to interpret that change, that I was a butterfly with no desire to be a caterpillar again.
However, it wasn’t until June, 2009. when my husband left me for another woman that I hit my emotional bottom. Bill W., the cofounder of AA, wrote in a letter reprinted in the Grapevine dated July of 1956 that he believed the next frontier of AA would be emotional sobriety.
The main emotional support system I had in June, 2009, was my husband’s (now my ex) large extended family. The night he left, 60+ people left my life. I had no warning of this complete abandonment. Today I am grateful for this experience. I finally had to give up my “prideful self-sufficiency”. As Bill W. wrote about in his letter about emotional sobriety, I had become dependent on the family and gave up that complete surrender to the God of my understanding.
Bill W. writes in that letter:
The following excerpts from a letter of Bill Wilson’s was quoted in the memoirs of Tom Pike, and early California AA member. Tom did not use the name of the person addressed — perhaps because he was still living.
“Tom said:
Here in part is what Bill Wilson wrote in 1958 to a close friend who
shared his problem with depression, describing how Bill himself used St. Francis’s prayer as a steppingstone toward recovery:”
Dear …
”I think that many oldsters who have put our AA “booze cure” to severe but successful tests still find they often lack emotional sobriety. Perhaps they will be the spearhead for the next major development in AA … the development of much more real maturity and balance (which is to say, humility) in our relations with ourselves, with our fellows, and with God.”
“How to translate a right mental conviction into a right emotional result and so into easy, happy, and good living … well, that’s not only the neurotic’s problem, it’s the problem of life itself for all of us who have got to the point of real willingness to hew to right principles in all our affairs.”
“Even then, as we hew away, peace and joy may still elude us. That’s the place so many of us AA oldsters have come to. And it’s a hell of a spot, literally.”
“Last autumn, depression, having no really rational cause at all, almost took me to the cleaners. I began to be scared that I was in for another long chronic spell. Considering the grief I’ve had with depressions, it wasn’t a bright prospect.”
“I kept asking myself, “Why can’t the Twelve Steps work to release depression?” By the hour, I stared at the St. Francis prayer … “It is better to comfort than to be comforted.” Here was the formula, all right, but why didn’t it work?”
“Suddenly I realized what the matter was … My basic flaw had always been dependence, almost absolute dependence on people or circumstances to supply me with prestige, security, and the like. Failing to get these things according to my perfectionist dreams and specifications, I had fought for them. And when defeat came so did my depression.”
“There wasn’t a chance of making the outgoing love of St. Francis a workable and joyous way of life until these fatal and almost absolute dependencies were cut away. Reinforced by what grace I could secure in prayer, I found I had to exert every ounce of will and action to cut off these faulty emotional dependencies upon people, upon AA, indeed upon any set of circumstances whatsoever.”
“Then only could I be free to love as Francis had. Emotional and institutional satisfactions, I saw, were really the extra dividends of having love, offering love, and expressing a love appropriate to each relation of life.”
”Plainly, I could not avail myself of God’s love until I was able to offer it back to Him by loving others as He would have me. And I couldn’t possibly do that as long as I was victimized by false dependencies. For my dependency meant demand … a demand for the possession and control of the people and the conditions surrounding me.”
”This seems to be the primary healing circuit, an outgoing love of God’s creation and His people, by means of which we avail ourselves of His love for us. It is most clear that the real current can’t flow until our paralyzing dependencies are broken, and broken at depth. Only then can we possibly have a glimmer of what adult love really is.”
After I completed a 5th step about my part in creating the abusive marriage that I was in up to June, 2009, I realized that I still wasn’t getting to the source of the matter. I no longer feared abandonment—I had survived. But why didn’t I feel completely free?
The clue I found about myself was about always having been socially isolated. I found this out by reading about PTSD. A year later after this discovery and my study of the problem and the solution, I finally found ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics). I had gone to ACOA in the 1990′s and benefitted from it. BUT ACA and ACOA are completely different. Check out the Laundry List from ACA.
I ordered the Red Book from ACA.
And the rest, as they say, is history. I was finally home. The Red Book told me why.
“The Laundry List represents the fear and distorted thinking which result from being raised in a dysfunctional family. We are not at fault for developing these survival traits, but we are responsible for our recovery. Recognizing the link between our adult lives and our childhood years is clouded by our loyalty to the dysfunctional family system. Even if we seemingly have rejected our dysfunctional family’s lifestyle. We can still carry it with us wherever we go.”
“ACA believes there is a direct link between our childhood and our decisions and thoughts as an adult. A clue that we are affected by family dysfunction can be found in our problematic relationships, perfectionism, addictiveness, dependence, or compulsive and controlling behavior.”
I found the Red Book of ACA—the answer to my prayers for release from my addictive self—in my 34th year of recovery—at the age of 70. Praise God. I am finally free.
What To Do When You Get in Your Own Way
As we grow in maturity and learn to look at how we are often sabotaging ourselves, we can learn to redirect our energy toward the positive.
1. From Shen writing at Reunited Selves: Only and Always:
Last night’s Journal:
It was such a hard day, and it was me that made it hard. I walked away from myself. I refused to even look at any of the tools I could have used to move out of the darkness.
I wallowed in it.
The longer I let it go, the uglier it seemed. Distraction became more and more difficult and more and more necessary. There was no way to look at what I needed – even basic needs like rest, exercise and food. Looking even at that shallow depth forced me to notice how sick I was of myself. I didn’t want to see what I was doing to myself.
Now, as I know I can’t put it off any longer, I have to try to look within, to connect. I have to. The temptation to take two or three xanax and wash it all away for the night, is strong. I couldn’t continue this hiding, this self-abandonment, without some kind of outside help, and that bottle of little white pills is only a few steps away. It would be so easy… so much easier that facing the night head on… but it would only make this worse, tomorrow.
I can’t go through another day like this. I can’t let this turn into a week in that dark pit. I never want to go back there again and I’ve been falling into it all day.
The only way out is to look at it, but I’m so afraid to truly connect with myself, much less God.
“Go to the Source.”
I know. I know that, but I am so afraid…
No, that’s a lie. This isn’t fear. It’s pure shame, or maybe the fear of seeing the shame.
Yes – that’s what I don’t want to face – the shame of who I allowed myself to be, today.
Shame feels like a boulder roped around my neck. It holds me in place, keeping me from moving forward or even looking up.
So, with my head hanging down, I contemplate the choice of trying to drag myself forward with this self-imposed burden, or giving in to ignoring it for a while longer. I always have a choice. I hate that I spent all day making the wrong one. I feel so angry with myself, so disappointed in myself. I don’t want to face it.
Choice.
Choice.
How far are you going to push this? How long are you going to allow yourself to be in this place that you never need to go to?
2. From Broken Brain—Brilliant Mind: “Back to Basic Breath”:
“I’ve been thinking back on the past few weeks, and all the upheaval that’s been going on. There have been a lot of money problems in my house, and it’s a real problem that’s been spiraling out of control – way past where I’m comfortable. I can’t keep on like this – something has got to give.”
“I feel like I’ve been making some good progress, lately, figuring things out, cutting myself a break, and so forth. But then the flashpoints come, and I feel like I’m back at Square One all over again. And just when I think I’m doing so well… It’s demoralizing, and I don’t care for the experience at all. I know I can do better. I need to do better.”
“So, I sat myself down last night and had a good think, and I pulled together a lot of the things I have learned (and a number of things I already knew) and renewed my resolve to use them all together to get myself of the funk I have fallen into.’
“What I came up with is an even stronger belief in a realization I had some time back — it’s that a lot (and I mean A LOT) of my state of mind is related to how I’m feeling physically. And the times when I am feeling most “down” on myself, mentally and emotionally, are often when I am feeling bad physically — and in my head, I interpret those feelings as mental or emotional. And I get into thinking that there’s something wrong with me, with my spirit, with my essential self.”
“Here’s an example, to help clarify — I sometimes have panic attacks. I didn’t realize it till within the past couple of years, but it’s been going on for a long time. I get “jammed up” … I get wired … and more and more adrenaline rushes through me, until I eventually melt down and feel like I’m falling into a black pit of helpless despair. It feels awful, and when it starts, it doesn’t feel like there’s anything I can do to stop my fall. After the “fall,” I feel sick on my stomach, exhausted, foggy – just wiped out. I need to sleep, but I’m so turned around and turned upside-down that I can’t relax, and I fall even farther into what feels like an emotional crevasse — a yawning, endless crack in the ice field of my life that I have slipped into… again.”
3. From the author writing at Through an Al-Anon Filter: “Recognizing Our Own Patterns of Behavior”:
“I had to be willing to say to that prideful self, that angry fearful self – “Enough. I’ve had enough of you being in control here – I want something different.” I thought that humility was humiliation, and that it was kind of nutty to be always wanting to be more humble. But the more I work this program, the more willing I am to be wrong, to be mistaken, to accept that I have screwed up one more time, and I’ve been “deceiving myself with evasions” – when I see that again, and am willing to accept it, make an amend, and work to free myself of that pride, that lack of humility, my daily life, each chance I am offered to become more loving, and to share that love with others, it’s impossible to describe the feeling – we have to take it on trust, when we’re new, because we can’t picture it at all.”
“I started out in Al-Anon, believing that I hated people – truly, I feared them, and my pride was propping up that shaky fearful self in an attempt to project something that other people would respect. I don’t fear people the way I once did. I want to be loving, to give love and compassion, give whatever comfort and support I can, to be a conduit of God’s love. That is truly the best way I can imagine living, and it’s so far removed from what I once would have considered success … not even on the same planet. The joy I have received from this, I can’t even describe to you. Joy, peace, and humility – that’s my serenity, and I have received it all through this wonderful program for living.
