Friday, April 02, 2010

A Compassionate Mind

by Paul Gilbert Excellent read and one that is expanding horizons. More on those in a minute. This book is lovely for me right now, as I simply cannot cope with the concept of karma and rebirth. Yes I believe they are probably true, but the thought of my foulness towards my kids having repercussions beyond this life time is horrendous. Plus a very judgemental view of Buddhist practice and one lacking in compassion and overloaded in guilt. So not a useful debate to have right now, when I am needing to get to the bare bones of it all and got on with it. The it is deliberately vague here.
Working on the exercises form the book atm, not too hard as not surprisingly my meditation practice encompasses them anyway. I am being terrified of my parental archetypes at the moment, so the book is useful as I can kind of sidetrack all of that briefly whilst empowering myself to deal with it. This fear of parental archetypes is pretty big with me. The following is from one of the mirroring exercises.

1. Fear of failure/fear of succeeding - or why I mustn't succeed with my kids as my mum didn't
If I fail I let everyone down, and the world will probably explode and no one will love me and they will all bugger off and leave me. Plus of course I will fail as I can never do anything good, because if I could, no one would have abandoned me right? If I succeed, well that's even harder. In the first place I quite simply won't succeed, thus confirming the fact that I always WILL FAIL, whilst causing acute embarrassment that I was stupid enough to have even tried in the first place - I should have known better and not wasted anyone's time. Oh and by the way I can't even keep the rock I live under clean, what's the bloody point? Plus my mother's needs are far more important than my own, she only had PND after I was born, so it's all my fault she was ill, all my fault she abandoned me, all my fault my dad abandoned me when she came home - so how dare I want anything good? I do not deserve it.

2. I don't know how to deal with a screaming toddler and my self defence is to be foul.
I do not allow Deborah to be a child. A beautiful, sweet, child with a child's grasp of emotions. I expect her to be as neurotically "clued up" on reading human emotions as I am and to display no anger, or frustration. I simply cannot allow her to have feelings. It frightens me so much when does that I feel criticised and shamed all over again, and I want to hurt her for making me hurt. Plus I love her so much for being perfect and herself on her little pedastool that when she falls I have failed her and that makes me hurt and I simply cannot be a grown up about it.

3. My father dieing was actually the first time I was able to say goodbye properly, as an adult and see how good bye is sad but not personal and not abandonment.
When dad died 5 years ago, I suddenly realised how much I wanted children. I didn't understand at the time, but knew it was something to do with the status quo being broken. When he died, we said goodbye properly, it was not the abandonment of a child to a mother weighed down with psychosis, bi-polar and PND. It was sad, but it was good-bye.

Today I realised how powerful that goodbye was. My dad was the sole permanent figure in my childhood, as my mum came and went depending on stays in the local mental hospital. I am realising now those stays were - nothing to do with me. My dad was emotionally detached and although I now know he loved me (his sister used to say so and my mum did also), never once said so in his life. He cried in his unconscious stupor on his deathbed - at the time I hoped it was a side effect of the narcotics, but thought it was really about mum, now I realise he was sad to say goodbye to me too. He died when we all left him, at the time I thought it was because he wished to die without mum because she would have been too distraught, but it was also just after I had said goodbye to him on my own. Who knows, it's impossible to tell and not totally necessary.
My beautiful kids. So much mental change is necessary on my behalf to nurture them, and yet it is all already there. I know it, but do not fully realise it because of the blocks above. It's useful to list them so I can recognise them and befriend them.

3 comments:

Ailbhe said...

Gosh. Big stuff.

Patricia said...

Hi Rachel,
Your name and pic came up on my Facebook page under the suggestions title. I clicked on it out of curiosity and saw you wrote this blog.

I understand your reluctance to accept karma and reincarnation. I hated myself for the way I treated my own children when they were little. I was a single parent with 2 girls 16 months apart.

It's been a long road for me and I would like to pass onto you some of the tools I've come across over the years that have really turned my life around. Please feel free to take of leave whatever I write here. If something doesn't sit right with you, then please ignore it without feeling bad. I don't want to add to your burden. :-)

My path out of hell started when I discovered how sugar affected my moods and emotions, and that of my children. I don't usually ingest any sugar now and I've noticed that my moods are now stable - no more depressive states. I also discovered that I now have control over my emotions and don't fly off the handle at all. My children also changed dramatically and became calmer and easier to be with when they didn't eat sugar.

My next discovery was the book 'You can Heal your Life' by Louise Hay. She talks about how our thoughts and emotions affect us, and gives affirmations to help lift us out.

The next thing I learned about, and this is the most profound and life changing of all, was the violet flame. Quantum physics has confirmed that the universe is made of just energy, and that depending on the rate of vibration of that energy, the more solid the form appears to be. The violet flame vibrates at a very high vibration. You cannot see it but when it's invoked by the power of the spoken word and visualised, it transmutes mis-qualified energy. Thus changing the effects that the past had on us. It transmutes bad karma to good. It also makes you joyful, really. For more of an explanation on it go to
http://www.spiritual-encyclopedia.com/violet-flame.html
and if you want to explore using it go to http://www.transformnet.org/

The next tool came to me many years after all this in the form of meridian tapping techniques like EFT. This is emotional acupuncture without the needles. It helps to calm, de-stress, and so much more. Check it out here.
http://www.eftfree.net/discover-eft/
This is easy to learn and practice and will calm both yourself and your children and helps to take away pain (both physical and emotional) and even bring down a temperature.

Sugar is the most addictive substance on the earth but it is possible to break free of it, especially with the help of EFT. I wish I had known about it when my children were little but it wasn't invented then.

I know I've given you loads here but if any of these things resonate with you and you want to ask any questions please feel free to ask me.
patricia.m.hope (at) gmail.com
blessings
Patricia

Looking at your FB wall posts I notice a funny thing - Your link about the play area in Whitley, Reading - I used to work at Whitley Park Junior School.

(The Spiritual Encyclopedia site is my eldest daughter's and I think you may be interested in my youngest daughter's site.
http://www.clever-toddler-activities.com/)

Happydogface said...

Hi Patricia,
thanks for your comments. So much comment deserves a long answer, but I'm prioritising sleep right now :) To be brief, I used a form of affirmations from Reverse Therapy for ME a few years back, and some of that is still in use. I am VERY pleased cutting out sugar helped you, I have cut out most high GI stuff a while back, it helped, but I needed more. Violet energy is interesting, but as I have a good relationship with my Lama, I need to stiock to that path and not really cherry pick, as I will only end up confusing myself.

Your daughter's website looks mazing, thank you for that, most helpful, and I'm we will benefit from it. Thanks so much for taking the time to comment so kindly.