READ THIS IT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE

Today is a new day. Make the best of it. Don´t fill it with complaints or regrets. Break the cycle and use today to accomplish something. <br /><br /><br />There will always be a good excuse not to, but excuses don´t bring any fulfilment to your life. Each moment is an opportunity to live and to give. Make it count. Dream big dreams, and follow your dreams with action and commitment. Appreciate, be thankful for, and make the best use of all that you have. You are a unique expression of life and love and creation. Let your life shine brightly. Delight in the obstacles that give you the gift of challenge. Let the beauty that is around you inspire you. Have faith in the ultimate triumph of truth. Break free from your past limitations and become the person you are to be. Look for ways to provide meaning and value to others, and you will soar ever higher. See every moment for the opportunity that it is. Put your life into action. The world is full of promise, and hope, and beauty when you have the courage to look for it, and to find it. Step confidently forward to greet each new day, secure in the knowledge that it is the best day of your life.

READ THIS IT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE

Today is a new day. Make the best of it. Don´t fill it with complaints or regrets. Break the cycle and use today to accomplish something. Th...

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rocketed into a

We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a <br /><br />fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed.

rocketed into a

We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed.

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Angels don’t worry about you.

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJLNTXVK9uhHBkEp_d7PKtcUI_a7xSNOjx2Kz-K56KjNhvohgkWO4yHYoK67Tf96fIr7ypB3zggQihfuE5isFX0dOVgyqNVkRhw7pq6a0EnfDfuJkFosD5Zffrk34vKl1qCR6Px2UO9VL7/s1600-h/image002.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" mt="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJLNTXVK9uhHBkEp_d7PKtcUI_a7xSNOjx2Kz-K56KjNhvohgkWO4yHYoK67Tf96fIr7ypB3zggQihfuE5isFX0dOVgyqNVkRhw7pq6a0EnfDfuJkFosD5Zffrk34vKl1qCR6Px2UO9VL7/s640/image002.gif" width="566" /></a><br /></div>Angels don’t worry about you.<br />They believe in you!<br /><blockquote>People sometimes ask me if I believe in angels. And yes, I certainly do!<br /><br /></blockquote>Sometimes they show themselves, sometimes a little white feather comes to you as an angel’s kiss, always leaving you with a warm feeling. Sometimes angel’s answers come through a song other times it is your best friend who starts to talk about something which is worrying you and at other times it is just the lady in front of you in the queue of the supermarket, who makes a comment.<br /><br />Where to look for angels? How to recognize them?<br /><br />The following poem says it all:<br /><br />What do Angels look like?<br /><br />Like the little old lady who returned<br /><br />Your wallet yesterday.<br /><br />Like the taxi driver who told you that your eyes<br /><br />Light up the world when you smile.<br /><br />Like the small child who showed you<br /><br />The wonder in simple things.<br /><br />Like the poor man who offered to<br /><br />Share his lunch with you.<br /><br />Like the rich man who showed you that it<br /><br />Really is all possible, if only you believe.<br /><br />Like the stranger who just happened to come along<br /><br />When you had lost your way.<br /><br />Like the friend who touched your heart<br /><br />When you didn’t think you had one to touch.<br /><br />Angels come in all sizes and shapes,<br /><br />All ages and skin types and colours.<br /><br />Some with freckles, some with dimples,<br /><br />Some with wrinkles, some without.<br /><br />They come disguised as friends, enemies,<br /><br />Nurses, teachers, students, lovers and fools.<br /><br />They don’t take life too seriously.<br /><br />They travel light.<br /><br />They leave no forwarding address. <br /><br />They ask nothing in return.<br /><br />They wear sneakers with gossamer wings.<br /><br />They get a deal on dry cleaning.<br /><br />They are hard to find when your eyes are closed,<br /><br />But they are everywhere you look,<br /><br />When you choose to open your eyes and see.<br /><br />Earth Angels come in all colour sizes and ages. They do not always arrive with a blast of trumpets, feathered wings or a blinding light, but they are angels just the same.<br /><br />Some mysteriously disappear, others whisper through the door ways of our minds. When this happens we suddenly feel the need to call someone, or do something. We might not always be aware that angels are guiding us, but anyone who raises your spirits and helps you to grow or love is an angel.<br /><br />Fraser sends you love and light to open your eyes to the angels around you, guiding you through your life, those heavenly messengers are a direct link to our heart and a shortcut to living our true purpose. Dare to listen to their whispers!

Angels don’t worry about you.

Angels don’t worry about you. They believe in you! People sometimes ask me if I believe in angels. And yes, I certainly do! Sometimes they s...

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God, help me relax and make myself at home in your bountiful world..

Sometimes, we get so busy and involved creating a "home" for ourselves that we create a structure that's too safe, limiting, and confined. We forget about our real home, the planet earth. It's good to sleep indoors. It's nice to make ourselves comfortable in our home. But don't let your cozy nest become a locked, confining box.Stretch your arms, Push the lid off the box. Get out into the world. Walk around. Move about. See the hills, the lakes, the forests, the mountains peaks, the valleys, the rivers.See how big your world can be. See how connected everything is. See how connected you are, too – to all that is. Make yourself comfortable, wherever you are. Make yourself a home and be at home in the world.God, help me relax and make myself at home in your bountiful world..

God, help me relax and make myself at home in your bountiful world..

Sometimes, we get so busy and involved creating a "home" for ourselves that we create a structure that's too safe, limiting, a...

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urinate-- Ozzy Osbourne

I can honestly say, all the bad things that ever happened to me were <br /> directly attributed to drugs and alcohol. I mean, I would never urinate <br /> at the Alamo at nine o'clock in the morning dressed in a woman's <br /> evening dress sober.

urinate-- Ozzy Osbourne

I can honestly say, all the bad things that ever happened to me were directly attributed to drugs and alcohol. I mean, I would never urinat...

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Vision is, I think, the ability to make good estimates

Vision is, I think, the ability to make good estimates. Some might feel <br />this sort of striving to be heresy against "One Day At A Time". But <br />that valuable principle really refers to our mental and emotional lives, <br />and means chiefly that we are not foolishly to repine over the past nor <br />wishfully daydream about the future.

Vision is, I think, the ability to make good estimates

Vision is, I think, the ability to make good estimates. Some might feel this sort of striving to be heresy against "One Day At A Time&q...

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Let Us, Therefore, Live But One Day At A Time

There are two days in every week about which we should not worry, two days which should be kept free from fear and apprehension. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br />One of these days is YESTERDAY with its mistakes and cares, its faults and blunders, its aches and pains. YESTERDAY has passed forever beyond our control. <br /><br /><br /><br />All the money in the world cannot bring back YESTERDAY, We cannot undo a single act we performed; we cannot erase a single word we said. YESTERDAY is gone. <br /><br /><br /><br />The other day we should not worry about is TOMORROW with its possible adversities, its burdens, its large promise and poor performance. TOMORROW is also beyond our immediate control. <br /><br /><br /><br />TOMORROW'S sun will rise, either in splendor or behind a mask of clouds - but it will rise. Until it does, we have no stake in TOMORROW, for it is as yet unborn.<br /><br /><br /><br />This leaves only one day - TODAY. Any man can fight the battles of just one day. It is only when you and I add the burdens of those two awful eternities - YESTERDAY and TOMORROW that we break down<br /><br /><br /><br />It is not the experience of TODAY that drives men mad - it is remorse or bitterness for something which happened YESTERDAY and the dread of what TOMORROW may bring.<br /><br /><br /><br />Let Us, Therefore, Live But One Day At A Time

Let Us, Therefore, Live But One Day At A Time

There are two days in every week about which we should not worry, two days which should be kept free from fear and apprehension. One of thes...

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In loving actual individual beings

In loving actual individual beings one can slip into a fanciful idea about how one thinks or could wish this being should be

In loving actual individual beings

In loving actual individual beings one can slip into a fanciful idea about how one thinks or could wish this being should be

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In loving actual individual beings one can slip into a fanciful idea about how

" In loving actual individual beings one can slip into a fanciful idea about how <br /> <br /> <br /> one thinks or could wish this being should be." -Kierkegaard

In loving actual individual beings one can slip into a fanciful idea about how

" In loving actual individual beings one can slip into a fanciful idea about how one thinks or could wish this being should be."...

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"OPENMlNDEDNESS"

In order to understand the multitudes of techniques and approaches we must be open minded. In order to see the techniques objectively, and that it just might be founded on something beyond our own personal skill level we must be open minded. Open mindedness keeps the learning process vital and alive. Open mindedness helps keep us from becoming stagnant and dogmatically stuck in one place. Through open mindedness we can learn more and because of its openness we can enjoy more.

"OPENMlNDEDNESS"

In order to understand the multitudes of techniques and approaches we must be open minded. In order to see the techniques objectively, and t...

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"HONESTY"

In accepting our weaknesses and strengths in practice we must confront honesty. Through our constant battle with discipline and personal capability we become intimate with our strengths and weaknesses and we are forced to face our self honestly in order to make inroads in our practice. Honesty sometimes requires courage and self-compassion. We must learn to accept who and what we are so that we can change and improve. Honesty is a path that can eventually lead to satisfaction, contentment, and serenity , if one is steadfast in its application.

"HONESTY"

In accepting our weaknesses and strengths in practice we must confront honesty. Through our constant battle with discipline and personal cap...

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What Is A Sponsor

What Is A Sponsor ~ A Sponsor is a more experienced member in the program who guides the newcomer through the process of recovery (should have 1 year or more in the program).<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> In 12 step circles, it is suggested that a sponsor should be of the same gender. The newcomer to the program is quite vulnerable; for some of us this is the first time we have expressed our true feelings, our secrets or our fears. Experience has shown that this new relationship with a member of the opposite gender could be misinterpreted and if acted upon could reduce chances for sustained recovery for both parties. It also will help to avoid gender based communication problems.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> A Good Sponsor ~ should have A working knowledge of the 12 steps and 12 traditions, Personal experiences dealing with life in recovery, A willingness to listen, A willingness to help others by sharing their experiences, strengths and hopes, To guide a newcomer through the 12 steps based on their own experiences, To make suggestions and refrain from giving advice.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> We should contact our sponsor when we need someone to talk to, or are unsure about decisions that have to be made. A sponsor helps with problems and questions not only when times are tough, but in the good times too. Or when something triggers a member to think about using again. A sponsor provides a listening ear and can act as a sounding board for major decisions to be made, but the sponsor does not make that decision, only guides the newcomer into making a sound decision<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Sponsors do not give advice, they only make suggestions and can share what their feelings are and how they handled similar situations using the tools of recovery. If a sponsor cannot help in a particular area, a good sponsor will direct them to another person who can. It is the newcomers choice whether to act upon that decision or not. It is nice to share good news and victories with your sponsor.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Some principles both the sponsor and newcomer practice through developing this relationship are unconditional love, selfless giving, patience, tolerance, honesty and trust. A sponsor is an objective person on the outside looking in. They are able to see problem areas and maybe point them out before a person gets into trouble. Sponsors see how much a person has changed and gives encouragement along the way and a sponsor can help you stay focused on your recovery<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Sponsors are equals on the road to recovery<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Sponsorship is a two-way street.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> You cannot keep what you have unless you give it away.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Sponsorship is like a Beacon in the Night, it is a vital tool to Recovery<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br /> <br /> SPONSORSHIP CHECKLIST<br /> <br /> 1. Am I sincerely interested in the suffering alcoholic?<br /> <br /> 2. Am I a good listener?<br /> <br /> 3. Do I look for opportunities to sincerely compliment <br /> <br /> others?<br /> <br /> 4. Is my speech free of sarcasm or prejudice?<br /> <br /> 5. Do I seek the opinions of others?<br /> <br /> 6. Am I earnestly enthusiast in my speech?<br /> <br /> 7. Am I a trustworthy confidant?<br /> <br /> 8. Do I interrupt others when they are talking?<br /> <br /> 9. Do I tend to argue?<br /> <br /> 10. Do I give unsolicited advice?<br /> <br /> 11. Do I criticize others openly?<br /> <br /> 12. Do I attempt to look good by making others look bad?<br /> <br /> 13. Do I have to force myself to appear positive?<br /> <br /> 14. Do I tend to exaggerate?<br /> <br /> 15. Does my voice sound threatening?<br /> <br /> 16. Do I attempt to impress others by using large or <br /> <br /> unusual words?<br /> <br /> 17. Do I use the pronoun I too much?<br /> <br /> 18. Do I tend to brag about my achievements?<br /> <br /> 19. Do I enjoy proving others wrong?

What Is A Sponsor

What Is A Sponsor ~ A Sponsor is a more experienced member in the program who guides the newcomer through the process of recovery (should ha...

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Trust in Miracles

1. An increased tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />2. Frequent attacks of smiling.<br /><br /><br /><br />3. Feelings of being connected with others and nature.<br /><br /><br /><br />4. Frequent overwhelming episodes of appreciation. <br /><br /><br /><br />5. A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than from fears based on past experience.<br /><br /><br /><br />6. An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.<br /><br /><br /><br />7. A loss of ability to worry.<br /><br /><br /><br />8. A loss of interest in conflict.<br /><br /><br /><br />9. A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.<br /><br /><br /><br />10. A loss of interest in judging others.<br /><br /><br /><br />11. A loss of interest in judging self.<br /><br /><br /><br />12. Gaining the ability to love without expecting anything in return.

Trust in Miracles

1. An increased tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen. 2. Frequent attacks of smiling. 3. Feelings of being connected w...

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Remember I am here for you,

Together We Are Strong <br /><br /><br /><br /><br />When life becomes a challenge, and each day becomes a chore <br /><br />Remember I am here for you, Like eagles we shall soar. <br /><br />An uphill battle every day, sometimes is how it seems <br /><br />Our hopes are often shattered, out of reach our simple dreams <br /><br />Just watch an eagle as he flies, straight and strong into the wind <br /><br />So take my hand, hold on to me, We'll do the same my friend. <br /><br />The current shall not beat us, for together we are strong, <br /><br />Like eagles coasting on the wind, this battle won't take long.

Remember I am here for you,

Together We Are Strong When life becomes a challenge, and each day becomes a chore Remember I am here for you, Like eagles we shall soar. An...

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Gentle Wishes for You

May the warm winds of Heaven <br /><br />Blow softly upon your house <br /><br />May the Great Spirit <br /><br />Bless all those who enter there <br /><br />May your moccasins <br /><br />Make happy tracks <br /><br />In many snows <br /><br />And may the rainbow <br /><br />Always touch your shoulder

Gentle Wishes for You

May the warm winds of Heaven Blow softly upon your house May the Great Spirit Bless all those who enter there May your moccasins Make happy ...

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Native American Serenity Prayer

Oh Great Spirit, whose voice I hear in the winds<br /><br />and whose breath gives life to all the world<br /><br />Hear me<br /><br />I come before you, one of your children<br /><br />I am small and weak, <br /><br />I need your strength and wisdom<br /><br />Let me walk in beauty and <br /><br />make my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset.<br /><br />Make my hands respect the things you have made<br /><br />my ears sharp to hear your voice<br /><br />Make me wise, so that I may know<br /><br />the things you have taught my People<br /><br />the lesson you have hidden in every leaf and rock<br /><br />I seek strength, not to be superior to my brothers<br /><br />but to be able to fight my greatest enemy, myself<br /><br />Make me ever ready to come to you<br /><br />with clean hands and straight eyes, <br /><br />so when life fades as a fading sunset<br /><br />My Spirit may come to you without shame.

Native American Serenity Prayer

Oh Great Spirit, whose voice I hear in the winds and whose breath gives life to all the world Hear me I come before you, one of your childre...

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16 Steps of Empowerment

RED ROAD ~ A Return To The Circle<br /> <br /> <br /> (16 Steps of Empowerment)<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 1. We affirm we have the power to take charge of our lives and<br /> <br /> stop being dependent on substances or other people for our<br /> <br /> self-esteem and security.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 2. We come to believe the Great Spirit awakens the healing wisdom<br /> <br /> within us when we open ourselves to that power.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 3. We make a decision to become our authentic selves and trust in<br /> <br /> the healing power of the truth.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 4. We examine our beliefs, addictions, and dependent behavior in<br /> <br /> the context of living in a hierarchal, patriarchal culture.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 5. We share with another person and the universe all those things<br /> <br /> inside of us for which we feel shame and guilt.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 6. We affirm and enjoy our strengths, talents, and creativity,<br /> <br /> striving not to hide these qualities to protect others' egos.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 7. We become willing to let go of shame, guilt, and any behavior<br /> <br /> that keeps us from loving ourselves and others.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 8. We make a list of people we have harmed and people who have<br /> <br /> harmed us and take steps to clear out negative energy by making<br /> <br /> amends and sharing our grievances in a respectful way.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 9. We express love and gratitude to others, and increasingly<br /> <br /> appreciate the wonder of life and the blessings we do have.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 10. We continue to trust our reality and daily affirm that we see<br /> <br /> what we see, we know what we know, and we feel what we feel.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 11. We promptly acknowledge our mistakes and make amends<br /> <br /> when appropriate, but we do not say we are sorry for things we have<br /> <br /> not done, and we do not cover up, analyze, or take responsibility for<br /> <br /> the shortcomings of others.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 12. We seek out situations, jobs, and people that affirm our<br /> <br /> intelligence, perceptions, and self-worth to avoid situations or people<br /> <br /> who are hurtful, harmful, or demeaning to us.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 13. We take steps to heal our physical bodies, organize our lives,<br /> <br /> reduce stress, and have fun.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 14. We seek to find our inward calling and develop the will and<br /> <br /> wisdom to follow it.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 15. We accept the ups and downs of life as natural events that can<br /> <br /> be used as lessons for our growth.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 16. We grow an awareness that we are inter-related with all living<br /> <br /> things and we contribute to restoring peace and balance on Mother<br /> <br /> Earth.

16 Steps of Empowerment

RED ROAD ~ A Return To The Circle (16 Steps of Empowerment) 1. We affirm we have the power to take charge of our lives and stop b...

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Humility. (Standing naked before God, with nothing to hide, and asking that our flaws—in His eyes—be removed.)

Principles of the 12 Steps:<br /> <br /> <br /> STEP: (The steps are printed on pages 59 & 60 of the Big Book.) <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 1. Surrender. (Capitulation to hopelessness.) <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 2. Hope. (Step 2 is the mirror image or opposite of step 1. In step 1 we admit that alcohol is our higher power, and that our lives are unmanageable. In step 2, we find a different Higher Power who we hope will bring about a return to sanity in management of our lives.) <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 3. Commitment. (The key word in step 3 is decision.) <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 4. Honesty. (An inventory of self.) <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 5. Truth. (Candid confession to God and another human being.) <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 6. Willingness. (Choosing to abandon defects of character.) <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 7. Humility. (Standing naked before God, with nothing to hide, and asking that our flaws—in His eyes—be removed.) <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 8. Reflection. (Who have we harmed? Are we ready to amend?) <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 9. Amendment. (Making direct amends/restitution/correction, etc..) <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 10. Vigilance. (Exercising self-discovery, honesty, abandonment, humility, reflection and amendment on a momentary, daily, and periodic basis.) <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 11. Attunement. (Becoming as one with our Father.) <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> 12. Service. (Awakening into sober usefulness.)

Humility. (Standing naked before God, with nothing to hide, and asking that our flaws—in His eyes—be removed.)

Principles of the 12 Steps: STEP: (The steps are printed on pages 59 & 60 of the Big Book.) 1. Surrender. (Capitulation to hopele...

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salvation of his own soul is the highest vocation that a man can have.

'A.A. is NOT <br /> <br /> <br /> A SELFISH program.'<br /> <br /> How Bill W. refuted that 'A.A. is a SELFISH program.'<br /> <br /> .... Another correspondent complained directly that he had been "disturbed to hear some A.A. speakers say, 'A.A. is a selfish program.'" The co-founder's response was eventually published in "The A.A. Way of Life": <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> I can see why you are disturbed.... The word "selfish" ordinarily implies that one is acquisitive, demanding, and thoughtless of the welfare of others. Of course, the A.A. way of life does not at all imply such undesirable traits. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> What do these speakers mean? Well, any theologian will tell you that the salvation of his own soul is the highest vocation that a man can have. Without salvation - however we may define this - he will have little or nothing. For us in A.A. there is even more urgency. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> If we cannot or will not achieve sobriety, then we become truly lost, right in the here and now. We are of no value to anyone, including ourselves, until we find salvation from alcohol. Therefore, our own recovery and spiritual growth have to come first - a right and necessary kind of self-concern. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> From "Not-God, A History of Alcoholics Anonymous", pp. 243-244, by Ernest Kurtz.

salvation of his own soul is the highest vocation that a man can have.

'A.A. is NOT A SELFISH program.' How Bill W. refuted that 'A.A. is a SELFISH program.' .... Another correspondent com...

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Freedom to Change

We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it .<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> We will comprehend the word serenity<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> We will know peace.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Self seeking will slip away <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves

Freedom to Change

We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it . We will compr...

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This is a great tool for working your steps. This is the workbook I used when I did my steps

NA 12 Steps Workbook<br /> <br /> <br /> This is a great tool for working your steps. This is the workbook I used when I did my steps. The format is setup for Addicts, but I believe it's a great tool for ANY addiction. Take what you need or can use and leave the rest.Fraser<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Step One - "We admitted we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable."<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Step Two - “We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Step Three - “We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.”<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Step Four - " We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves"<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Step Five - "We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs."<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Step Six - "We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character."<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Step Seven - "We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings."<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Step Eight - "We made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all."<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Step Nine - "We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others."<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Step Ten - "We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it."<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Step Eleven - "We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out."<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Step Twelve - "Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs."

This is a great tool for working your steps. This is the workbook I used when I did my steps

NA 12 Steps Workbook This is a great tool for working your steps. This is the workbook I used when I did my steps. The format is setup fo...

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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtvNspE-888zlSlS0oiR4hryh7YFzkgBw0fWWre9OVravH7elFG5gJ0AbxdFBHg8u98jrGbF8mVfHQgLqZhSDpI-MX_yJKeoLUT-lnGf81_G4D5b2PtAoddpWsSvjIMMWDA8OqETXXT-ek/s1600-h/irish.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" mt="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtvNspE-888zlSlS0oiR4hryh7YFzkgBw0fWWre9OVravH7elFG5gJ0AbxdFBHg8u98jrGbF8mVfHQgLqZhSDpI-MX_yJKeoLUT-lnGf81_G4D5b2PtAoddpWsSvjIMMWDA8OqETXXT-ek/s640/irish.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /></div>These workmen are installing bollards to stop nurses from parking on the pavement outside the Royal Hospital in Belfast.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />They are cleaning up at the end of the day. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />How long do you think it will be before they realise that they can't go home?<br /><br /><br /><br />This is a real photograph..!

These workmen are installing bollards to stop nurses from parking on the pavement outside the Royal Hospital in Belfast. They are cleaning u...

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"If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no indifferent place."

"If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no indifferent place."

"If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no indifferent place."

"If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call fort...

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The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy

‘ The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty’

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy

‘ The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, n...

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You can use spirituality as your drug, as an avoidance, to deny your feelings, your reality.

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKfW3DzmTpLcMZZ1SIiZrH0yr6SqU5KdElRe9W-InylBYUxglzhO8B2Tb8x8p36i4tF7Qa9zyLWUUOnSLW2MeuR_afsSwvEb810kxKjewK2Zi9udRAKnNTtO6iHYG0UYHwzik-noidj60m/s1600/aa+book.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKfW3DzmTpLcMZZ1SIiZrH0yr6SqU5KdElRe9W-InylBYUxglzhO8B2Tb8x8p36i4tF7Qa9zyLWUUOnSLW2MeuR_afsSwvEb810kxKjewK2Zi9udRAKnNTtO6iHYG0UYHwzik-noidj60m/s1600/aa+book.jpeg" /></a></div> <span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Looking back, it becomes clear to me that ego, before and since I gave up the bottle, has been the chief architect of my problems in life. Though I've not often thought of myself as an egotist (what egotist ever really does?), I begin to see the many small but dangerous ways my ego has conspired against me, and does to this day. It has every bit the power to alter my perceptions of reality that alcohol ever did — and ultimately is just as deadly, perhaps more so. <br /></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">You use spirituality as your drug,</span></span><br /> <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><br />You can experience this pain as a longing for God, putting that God <br /><br />outside of yourself and giving him/her responsibility for your life. <br /><br />You can use spirituality as your drug, as an avoidance, to deny your <br /><br />feelings, your reality. You can space out on it.<br /><br />You can use spirituality as your drug, as an avoidance, to deny your <br /><br />feelings, your reality. You can space out on it.</span><div class="zemanta-related" style="clear: both; margin-top: 20px; overflow: hidden;"> <h4 class="zemanta-related-title"> Related articles</h4> <ul class="zemanta-article-ul zemanta-article-ul-image" style="margin: 0; overflow: hidden; padding: 0;"> <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li-image zemanta-article-ul-li" style="background: none; display: block; float: left; font-size: 11px; list-style: none; margin: 2px 10px 10px 2px; padding: 0; text-align: left; vertical-align: top; width: 84px;"><a href="http://intuitivevoices.blogspot.com/2015/05/our-sense-of-reality-and-who-we-are.html" style="border-radius: 2px; box-shadow: 0px 0px 4px #999; display: block; padding: 2px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img src="//i.zemanta.com/340504801_80_80.jpg" style="border: 0; display: block; margin: 0; max-width: 100%; padding: 0; width: 80px;" /></a><a href="http://intuitivevoices.blogspot.com/2015/05/our-sense-of-reality-and-who-we-are.html" style="background-image: none; display: block; height: 83px; line-height: 12pt; overflow: hidden; padding: 5px 2px 0 2px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Our sense of reality and who we are depend on our feelings, thoughts, sensations, perceptions and memories.</a></li> <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li-image zemanta-article-ul-li" style="background: none; display: block; float: left; font-size: 11px; list-style: none; margin: 2px 10px 10px 2px; padding: 0; text-align: left; vertical-align: top; width: 84px;"><a href="http://stagesevents.blogspot.com/2015/05/how-do-i-meditate-in-stages.html" style="border-radius: 2px; box-shadow: 0px 0px 4px #999; display: block; padding: 2px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img src="//i.zemanta.com/343975727_80_80.jpg" style="border: 0; display: block; margin: 0; max-width: 100%; padding: 0; width: 80px;" /></a><a href="http://stagesevents.blogspot.com/2015/05/how-do-i-meditate-in-stages.html" style="background-image: none; display: block; height: 83px; line-height: 12pt; overflow: hidden; padding: 5px 2px 0 2px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">How Do I Meditate in Stages?</a></li> <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li-image zemanta-article-ul-li" style="background: none; display: block; float: left; font-size: 11px; list-style: none; margin: 2px 10px 10px 2px; padding: 0; text-align: left; vertical-align: top; width: 84px;"><a href="http://recoverystage.blogspot.com/2015/05/we-passionately-recovered.html" style="border-radius: 2px; box-shadow: 0px 0px 4px #999; display: block; padding: 2px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img src="//i.zemanta.com/344103180_80_80.jpg" style="border: 0; display: block; margin: 0; max-width: 100%; padding: 0; width: 80px;" /></a><a href="http://recoverystage.blogspot.com/2015/05/we-passionately-recovered.html" style="background-image: none; display: block; height: 83px; line-height: 12pt; overflow: hidden; padding: 5px 2px 0 2px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">We the passionately recovered</a></li> <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li-image zemanta-article-ul-li" style="background: none; 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display: block; float: left; font-size: 11px; list-style: none; margin: 2px 10px 10px 2px; padding: 0; text-align: left; vertical-align: top; width: 84px;"><a href="http://childwithinus.blogspot.com/2015/04/as-long-as-we-are-not-in-contact-with.html" style="border-radius: 2px; box-shadow: 0px 0px 4px #999; display: block; padding: 2px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img src="//i.zemanta.com/338268897_80_80.jpg" style="border: 0; display: block; margin: 0; max-width: 100%; padding: 0; width: 80px;" /></a><a href="http://childwithinus.blogspot.com/2015/04/as-long-as-we-are-not-in-contact-with.html" style="background-image: none; display: block; height: 83px; line-height: 12pt; overflow: hidden; padding: 5px 2px 0 2px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">As long as we are not in contact with our child within we are not going to be happy, we are not going to be, and we are not going to have fun.</a></li> <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li-image zemanta-article-ul-li" style="background: none; 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You can use spirituality as your drug, as an avoidance, to deny your feelings, your reality.

Looking back, it becomes clear to me that ego, before and since I gave up the bottle, has been the chief architect of my problems in life....

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The Illusions of the Ego

<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><br />The Illusions of the Ego<br /><br /><br />Looking back, it becomes clear to me that ego, before and since I gave up the bottle, has been the chief architect of my problems in life. Though I've not often thought of myself as an egotist (what egotist ever really does?), I begin to see the many small but dangerous ways my ego has conspired against me, and does to this day. It has every bit the power to alter my perceptions of reality that alcohol ever did — and ultimately is just as deadly, perhaps more so. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />1. When you are truly devoted to extending God’s Love you are motivated because it is natural for you. To live from the Holy Spirit, then, is to be motivated. But it is not natural for you to live from the personal self so this tires you. To live only from the Holy Spirit is to be enlightened.<br /><br />2. In your perception that you are living a life in a world you can live from the Holy Spirit within you or from the personal self. To live from the Holy Spirit is to know that God is. When you live from the personal self you are denying God. The personal self embarks on many useless journeys through the world but the Holy Spirit’s only journey is to God.<br /><br />3. You can choose to put aside the personal self and remember your Oneness with God. Until then your perception of yourself living a life in a world is wasted reenacting the separation from God: loss of power, futile attempts to regain power, then death. This is the story that you will see replayed again and again in the world that you perceive by many seeming “selves” until you voluntarily let go of the world. Do not make your life in a world about suffering but rather about remembering that you are One with God. The Holy Spirit will take you on the journey to remembering God and if you study these lessons carefully they will prepare you for it.<br /><br />1. Right Teaching and Right Learning<br /><br />1. Ideas are clarified and strengthened in you by your extending, or teaching, them. You are both your own teacher and your own pupil. Your mind automatically extends what you believe. The Holy Spirit within you can only teach you that you are the Holy Spirit; the personal mind can only teach you that you are a personal self. To teach from the Holy Spirit you not only have to believe in the Holy Spirit you have to believe that the Holy Spirit is within you.<br /><br />2. Learning means change. The separation was the first change introduced into your mind and it was painful so you fear change because you are afraid that change will bring you further pain. You think that by guarding the personal mind’s thought system and allowing no change to come into it you will find Peace. But Peace is only possible from the Holy Spirit in your mind. The Holy Spirit and the personal mind are diametrically opposed and cannot join. The Holy Spirit cannot make the personal mind stronger or reduce its conflict. But your mind, which only seems separated from God and believes in the personal self, can learn either that it is a personal self or that it is One with God.<br /><br />3. It is your split mind not the Holy Spirit in your mind that needs to be taught and it is frightened because what it needs to learn is how to relinquish the personal self that it believes it is. It perceives this as destruction but the Holy Spirit does not attack. The Holy Spirit only shows you how your belief in the personal self arose so that you can let go of it. When the Holy Spirit reminds you of your Oneness with God your split mind cannot help but be frightened.<br /><br />4. Teaching that you are the Holy Spirit and therefore learning that you are the Holy Spirit is the only way that you are going to change your mind and undo your perception of separation from God. Merely accepting intellectually that the separation has not occurred is not going to undo it. The separation and the world it gave rise to in your mind are very real to you and you can only undo them by coming from the Holy Spirit in your mind. When you willingly give up the personal mind as guardian of your thought system and open your mind to the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit will gently correct your mind and lead you back to God.<br /><br />5. As God’s Teacher the Holy Spirit’s goal is to no longer be needed by you because you have fully remembered that you are One with God. It is impossible for the personal mind to understand this because in order to continue to exist for you it needs to teach you forever that separation from God is real. It is natural for the personal mind to do this for its own survival but it is not natural for you to learn this from the personal mind. The personal mind cannot choose to undo itself but you can choose to undo it because it is not you.<br /><br />6. The personal self that you think is you will conflict with other personal selves in any situation in the world that you perceive but the Holy Spirit overlooks all personal selves and sees only the Holy Spirit everywhere. In the world that you perceive you teach from the personal self to glorify the personal self so you see the Holy Spirit as a Teacher to be either rejected or exalted. If you think of the Holy Spirit as Something separate and superior you will be afraid of It. The Holy Spirit could not teach you that you are One with God if It were separate from you and you would not be able to teach yourself through the Holy Spirit if It were separate from you.<br /><br />7. You do not have to do anything to establish your Worth. As Part of God you are Inherently Worthy. Only in your delusions does the concept of your unworthiness have meaning. As long as you reject your Oneness with God you will be frightened by the concepts of inferiority and superiority. The Holy Spirit is a patient Teacher Which will remind you of your Worthiness as Part of God over and over until you learn It. God does not threaten the personal self because the personal self isn’t real; God does not threaten the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit is Part of God.<br /><br />8. The personal mind that you believe you are exploits every situation to glorify itself because it is insecure. It will exist for you as long as you believe in it and it will always be insecure because it is incomplete and unreal. On some level you know that it is not real and you do not trust it. The only way out of its insecurity for you is for you to let go of it and accept that only God is Real. When you are afraid remember that only God is Real and that you are One with God. The personal mind may dispute this but the personal mind cannot know you as you are in Truth.<br /><br />9. God did not make fear; you did when you chose to be separate from God. You are not at Peace when you are not aware that you are One with God. Your identifying with a personal self is your choice to be afraid instead of at Peace. When you know again that you are One with God you will not be able to understand this choice. You do not have to believe in it now. All of your efforts to make separation real to you only put off your remembering your Oneness with God. God is inevitable for you because you are One with God.<br /><br />10. The personal mind with which you identify is afraid of the Joy that the Holy Spirit inspires in you because when you experience Joy you withdraw from the personal mind and from fear. The personal mind likes you to be fearful because it attests to the reality of your separation from God. Let it go! You do not have to listen to the personal mind or to protect it. You can listen only to God through God’s Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit cannot deceive you because It is you. Let go of the personal self, which is a false picture of you and is unworthy of you. Do not look out at a false and unworthy world and believe it is your reality.<br /><br />11. The personal mind is not worthy of you and it cannot bring you Peace. Do not support it. Only God is worthy of you even though you have chosen to leave God. But God is Eternal and you are Eternally One with God and you can choose to return to This awareness. Your doing so is the only thing that is certain. What is not Eternal is not part of God and the personal self cannot make anything Eternal or certain.<br /><br />12. You cannot do anything real with a personal self but with the Holy Spirit you can save yourself from your perception of separation from God. You must put aside the personal self and extend God’s Love from the Holy Spirit within you in order to perceive yourself Truly. Only your perception of God’s Love is a worthy Gift to give yourself.<br /><br />13. You can give the personal self and the body to the Holy Spirit so that you can be free of concern for them and the Holy Spirit can teach you of their unreality. The Holy Spirit understands your temptation to believe in them as real and in order to heal your mind It needs you to teach yourself through the Holy Spirit that they are not. Jesus overcame the body and the personal self and you can use Him as an example. When you are tempted to suffer remember Him and be happy instead.<br /><br />2. The Ego and False Autonomy<br /><br />1. How could your mind ever have made the personal self? It seems as though this happened in the past but time isn’t real and it only seems as though it happened in the past because the error is occurring now. [In God there is only God. This cannot be understood by the personal mind, which perceives many separate, specific, concrete forms as real.]<br /><br />2. You make a personal self for yourself that is very changeable because it is not real. You also make a personal self for all of the bodies that you perceive and your perceptions of them can also change. Your interaction with other personal selves can change both you and them in your mind because they are not real. You don’t even have to be physically close to another to change your mind about them. You can change your mind about them just by thinking about them, which proves that personal selves are nothing but thoughts in your mind.<br /><br />3. The personal self with which you identify is made by your denial of God. This is happening now and this is how the personal self has happened all along. But your mind does not have to work this way.<br /><br />4. You love and protect the personal self because you believe it is you. In this your split mind resembles God, Which loves Itself. Your reactions to what you have made are not surprising but as long as your origins are open to belief you are looking at yourself from a split mind. God is beyond belief and can only be known. Teaching and learning are necessary for you until you remember God. The truest belief that you can have is that there is another way to look at yourself because with this belief you acknowledge that the personal self is not you.<br /><br />5. You perceive undoing the personal self’s thought system as painful even though it is not. In your identification with a personal self you do not know what is truly helpful to you and what is truly harmful to you. But though you may not recognize it you have agreed to cooperate with the Holy Spirit to undo the personal self. You may be conflicted about this, which only means that you are still identifying with a personal self. This will not last. Be patient with yourself and remember that it is inevitable that you remember God.<br /><br />6. You can only truly give Love from a place of knowing that you have Love. To the personal mind giving means sacrifice because to it giving means giving away. The personal self only willingly gives when it believes it will get something greater than what it is giving. This is the personal self’s law of “giving to get”, which it does as it evaluates itself in relation to other personal selves. The personal self is obsessed with the idea of lack because it was made by your perceived separation from God, which is lack. It perceives other personal selves as real only to validate its own reality. “Self-esteem” for the personal self means that it temporarily believes enough in its own reality to not need others to validate it. The personal self is always vulnerable to perceiving threats to its existence.<br /><br />7. The personal self is always comparing itself to others and is incapable of perceiving Oneness. It was made from lack and can only give from lack and this is how the idea of “getting” arose in your mind. The personal mind regards the body as its home and all appetites and needs, whether they are physical or emotional, originate in the personal mind and are the means of “getting” something to confirm the personal self’s existence to itself. But it is your mind that decides that this is possible and it is your mind that is confused about what is real.<br /><br />8. The personal self believes that it is its own source. This idea is meaningless and frightening and so it tries to unite with other personal selves to validate its own existence or to attack them to appear strong. It cannot, however, question its own origins because the belief that it is independent is its very foundation. The personal self is your split mind’s belief that it is isolated and alone. Your split mind tries to get the Holy Spirit to acknowledge the personal self to make it real but the Holy Spirit is unaware of the personal self because the Holy Spirit is Real and the personal self is not. The personal mind is also unaware of the Holy Spirit but it does perceive that within you it is being rejected by Something greater than itself. Self-esteem for the personal self can only be an illusion because it is never wholly certain of its own existence. As Part of God your illusion of the personal self is a myth and not part of you, though you can use the power of your mind to make myths seem real. But this does not make them real. [Mythical stories in the world that you perceive are not inspired by the Holy Spirit, are ambiguous, and tend to be good-and-evil in nature so that even the most benign myths have fearful connotations.]<br /><br />9. Your split mind comes up with many myths to explain the origin of the personal self just as it uses magical thinking to give power to the physical world that you perceive. Most of these myths are concerned with “the creation” - meaning the physical world - and have an associated form of magical thinking. Evolution is one myth that your split mind has come up with to explain the personal self’s origins. You associate the personal self with physical birth because in your identification with it, it is hard for you to believe that the personal self is an idea that existed before the physical world. Some of the split mind’s more “religious” myths teach that an individual spirit, or “soul”, existed before the world and that it will continue after it temporarily experiences a personal self in the world. Some myths may even teach that the “soul” will be punished for this lapse into a world separate from God. But it is not your Spirit that needs salvation.<br /><br />10. Salvation is really the correction of your perception of separation from God. It is necessary before you can be restored to full awareness of your Oneness with God. Your corrected perception, being in total alignment with God’s Love, undoes your split mind and your perception that the personal self is real and leads to your awareness of your Oneness with God automatically. <br /><br />11. It is important to understand that using the personal self to correct your perception of separation from God is only temporary. Your perceiving the personal self as real is a block to your awareness of your Oneness with God but using the personal self to extend God’s Love restores your Oneness with God to your awareness. Eventually your corrected perception will lead you to the awareness that the personal self is not necessary at all. You might wonder how this is possible while you seem to be living in a world but who is the “you” that seems to be living in a world? As Part of God your Holy Spirit is Immortal and Unchanging. It is not a continuum weaving in and out of mortality, nor does It need to experience a personal self to understand Itself in comparison. God is All and has no opposite to which It can be compared. That is how God is different from everything that your mind has made.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />3. Love Without Conflict<br /><br />1. The idea that you are One with God is not understandable to the personal mind because it sees God as Something separate from you. That you are One with God is the Whole Lesson of the plan of the Atonement, which, by correcting your perception of separation from God leads you beyond the plan itself to Oneness with God. Just as God extends only God, so do you. This has not stopped because of your split mind’s illusion of the personal self. Your Extension continues as God’s Extension continues because you are One. The personal self and the Holy Spirit will never be One but the Holy Spirit will always be One with God. Be certain that your Oneness with God is unchanged.<br /><br />God is untouched by the personal self and will not be undone by it. Amen.<br /><br />2. This is a prayer that you can use when you are tempted to believe in separation from God. You need guidance because you have denied the Truth in yourself. The Holy Spirit’s role is to make clear to you What is True and what is false so that you can overcome the obstacles to Truth that your split mind made. Unite your mind with the Holy Spirit within you and you can overcome your split mind.<br /><br />3. The personal mind regards the Holy Spirit as its enemy because the personal mind arose from the separation and its existence is dependent on the separation continuing. As a reward for believing in it the personal mind offers you a sense of temporary existence that is its own beginning and ending. When you identify with it you believe this existence is your own. In comparison the Holy Spirit offers you Eternal, Unchanging Being. When you experience a direct revelation of God you never wholly believe in the personal self again. How could its temporary, insecure “life” compare to God’s Eternal, Stable Being?<br /><br />4. God’s Love is Oneness. In your split mind you cannot believe that you are One with God and that God Loves you because you are not One with the personal self that you made and that you hate. Because it is the denial of Oneness the personal self has no allegiance to you, its maker, either. You “love” the personal self because you made it but you also hate it because you project your decision to be separate from God onto it. All “love” in the world that you perceive reflects this love/hate that you have for the personal self that you made and that’s why the Oneness of God’s Love cannot be understood by the personal mind. But when you wholly want to experience God’s Love It will immediately enter your mind. The personal mind is not capable of wholly wanting anything because of its perception that lack is real and wholeness is impossible.<br /><br />5. You can have an experience of Wholeness that is very different from what the personal self offers and when you do you will never want to deny It again. The only reason God does not fill your entire mind is because of your belief in the personal mind. You must be open and willing for God to fill your awareness. This condition is set by your inherent Free Will as Part of God.<br /><br />6. No power other than your own True Will is strong and worthy enough to guide you. Your Will is as Free as God’s Will. Through the Holy Spirit within you, you can remember God’s Love for you and your Love for God. This remembering is God’s Will. When you call on the Holy Spirit you will always be answered. You cannot call on any other god because there is no other god.<br /><br />7. You must give up every thought that is an obstacle to God. You hold onto many little scraps of fear that prevent God from filling your mind. The Holy Spirit cannot destroy what you have made but the Holy Spirit can help you undo it. You must look for and find all the obstacles that you have to God so that you can ask the Holy Spirit to help you undo them. The Holy Spirit will respect what you have made but the Holy Spirit will not support it unless it is aligned with Truth. The Holy Spirit is always with you and will wait as long as it takes for you to turn to It. You must eventually turn to the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit is you. You need only wholly want the Holy Spirit for the Holy Spirit to respond to your call.<br /><br />8. Look at what you are really asking for and be honest with yourself and with the Holy Spirit. If you do this sincerely the Holy Spirit will prepare your mind for God. Once you have experienced God you will be ready to learn to extend God’s Love without limit. How long do you want to deny to God What is One with God?<br /><br />9. In God you have Everything. In this idea is your Freedom. It frightens the personal mind because it means it does not exist. In God, Where All is One, “to have” and “to be” are the same. In God you have Everything and you are Everything. But in the world that you perceive, which not only is separation but manifests separation, you can “have” things that are separate from what you “are”. In your identification with a personal self you lack so you constantly need to “get” things or people to “be” whole.<br /><br />10. The Calm Being of God, Which extends Forever in your Whole Mind, is banished from the personal mind. The personal mind is desperate because its undoing is inevitable. You exert a lot of effort to protect a personal identity and very little to remain aware of God. It is insane for you to believe what is not true and to protect it at the cost of Truth.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />4. This Need Not Be<br /><br />1. When you do not hear the Holy Spirit it is because you are not listening to It. That you do listen to the personal mind is demonstrated by your fearful attitudes, feelings, and behavior. But this is what you want and you fight to maintain and what you are desperate to save. In your identification with a personal self you struggle to save its image but you do not seek for Christ - your Oneness with God. In the world of separation that you perceive you see the dark mirror in which your split mind looks to maintain the illusion of the personal self’s reality. But it is up to you where you will look to find yourself.<br /><br />2. Remember it is your mind, not your behavior, that needs to change. Whenever you are not Joyous it is because you have looked at the world, seen separation, and believed it is real. Instead, look past the world and remember God’s Love, then extend It instead. This may seem hard but your mind is One with God’s Mind and it is actually much easier for you to think with God than for you to think against God. Your denying this supports the personal self but splits your mind. <br /><br />3. When you are depressed it is because you feel that you are deprived of something that you want and do not have. Remember that as Part of God you have Everything and if you are not aware of This it is because of your own choice. You can choose again.<br /><br />4. When you are anxious it is because of the personal self’s inherent insecurity. You can put as much effort into extending God’s Love in your awareness as you put into maintaining the personal self.<br /><br />5. When you feel guilty know that you have not violated God’s Laws and exchange the personal mind’s perception of “sins” for the Holy Spirit’s correction of your perception of separation from God. Only the personal mind can experience guilt and when you feel guilty it is because you believe that a personal self is you. You will be released from guilt when you are willing to accept that the world and the personal self are not real and that what you do in the world that you perceive has no effect on God.<br /><br />6. Watch your mind for all the ways that you believe that the personal self is you. The personal self offers you nothing and protecting it tires and depresses you. You must make an effort to detach yourself from your identification with it. When you voluntarily give up the personal self your mind will be healed. <br /><br />7. Staying aware of your Oneness with God and engaging with the Holy Spirit is easy when you think that you are worth the effort. Look to the Holy Spirit for your Real Worth and do not be deceived by the personal mind’s unworthy image of you. The Holy Spirit cannot reach you when you identify with a personal self.<br /><br />8. Every situation is an opportunity for you to be Happy but you have refused This. As Part of God your Power is Limitless but you can limit the expression of your Power. Through the Holy Spirit you can release yourself from the limits of the personal mind and extend God’s Love everywhere and always. Do not settle for less than this as your goal. Watch your mind for any obstacles to God and let them go. You can judge how well you are doing by how you feel. This is the correct use of judgment. The personal mind is lacking and it should be judged and found lacking. It cannot exist without your desire for it and your protection of it. When you judge it truly you will automatically withdraw your power from it.<br /><br />9. God is in your mind. You need only look at the personal mind and say and mean, “I know this is not true” and God will fill your entire mind again. Your identification with a personal self cannot keep God from your mind but it can keep God from extending Itself through your mind and making you aware of It.<br /><br />10. Christ is the part of your mind that is One with God. The “Second Coming of Christ” simply means the end of your perception of separation from God and the healing of your mind. Jesus is just like you and He calls you to join in the Second Coming. You may feel that you are unworthy but that is only the personal mind’s attempt to convince you that it is real and that you are not One with God. Your awareness that you are One with God is Christ and is the healing of your mind.<br /><br />11. Christ is One with the Holy Spirit in your mind. They are your Oneness with God just as the personal mind is your separation from God. They are with you even in your perception that you are separated from God. You will choose to let go of the personal mind and to join your mind with Them in extending God’s Love. This will heal your mind. Jesus raised the dead knowing that only God is Real and Jesus can serve as an inspiration for you because He knew there was nothing that an awareness of God’s Love cannot overcome. Because you are One Christ’s call to you and your answer are the same.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />5. The Ego-Body Illusion<br /><br />1. Everything in the world that you perceive can be used to help you to remember that you are One with God but the personal mind wants to keep this from your awareness. The personal mind is concerned with control not with wholeness. This makes sense from its perspective since it arose from your denial of Wholeness. You will inevitably recognize with your entire mind that the personal mind is not real but the personal mind must keep this hidden from you in order to preserve itself.<br /><br />2. The personal mind is threatened by both the body, which it sees as unworthy of it, and the Holy Spirit, Which will undo it. It cannot completely obliterate the Holy Spirit from your mind, though, so it distorts the Holy Spirit’s Loving Thoughts into an “unacceptable” physical impulse to “love” another.[1] Seeing physical “love” and the Holy Spirit’s Love as one threat makes it easier for you to repress them both and to preserve the personal mind because the Holy Spirit’s Love will undo the personal mind.<br /><br />3. It is insane for you to confuse God with the body but this confusion is essential to the personal mind, which needs you to repress both. It does make sense that the personal mind is threatened by God because your awareness of God does undo the personal mind. But it does not make sense for the personal mind to fear the body because it identifies with it.<br /><br />4. The body is the personal mind’s chosen home. It feels safe in this identification because when you identify with the personal mind the body’s vulnerability is “proof” that you cannot be One with God. But the personal mind also hates the body because the body is not good enough for it. This is very confusing to you because the personal mind simultaneously teaches you to look to the body for safety but that the body cannot protect you. So when you ask, “Where can I go to be safe?” the personal mind tells you to look to it for protection. But since the personal mind is identified with the body this answer does not make sense either. Having no real answer for you the personal mind suppresses your question. Though out of your awareness the question of where you can go to be safe does remain in your subconscious and it makes you uneasy. But you will not find an answer if you do not ask the question.<br /><br />5. So you must ask the question, “Where do I go to be safe?” To find the answer you must be consciously aware of the question and not be unconsciously driven by it. You must keep the goal in mind because you learn best when you value what you are seeking. But remember that the personal mind does not value a lasting answer.<br /><br />6. The personal mind cannot give you a lasting answer because the Eternal only comes from God. The personal mind, then, keeps you preoccupied, busy, and seeking for safety and comfort in the world that you perceive without letting rise to your conscious awareness that this is what you are seeking. The personal mind loves to present you with problems that you cannot solve. So in every situation you must learn to ask, “What am I really seeking?” When you clarify that you are seeking for Eternal Safety then the Means to find It will automatically come to you. When you decided that remembering God is your Purpose you set the course for the rest of your life and it will remain in effect unless you change your mind.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />6. The Rewards of God<br /><br />1. The personal mind cannot understand what threatens it and when you identify with the personal mind you do not understand what threatens you. Only your identification with the personal mind gives it any power over you. It is not a separate power but a belief about yourself. This belief does not affect the Truth in you, Which goes on Unchanged despite your attempts to separate from It.<br /><br />2. In learning to escape from the illusion of separation from God be grateful for the opportunities to extend God’s Love that the world that you perceive offers to you. It is the same gratitude that is appropriate for you to extend to the Holy Spirit because both are in your mind. Whenever you act from the personal mind you perceive that separation from God is real and you miss an opportunity to correct this misperception. You must overlook every perception of separation and extend God’s Love instead and then you will have come as far in your awareness of God as you can in your perception of a world. From there you return to God easily.<br /><br />3. You have little trust in the Holy Spirit but this will change as you turn to the Holy Spirit for guidance more and more. The rewards of Peace and Joy will convince you that the Holy Spirit is the only sensible choice because the personal mind brings chaos and misery. You learn better through rewards than through pain because pain is not real and it only seems to happen in your perception that you are in a world. But God’s Rewards are Eternal and since you recognize Them and the personal mind cannot it is obvious that you are not a personal self. As long as you feel that you must escape from the personal mind you still believe in it. So you cannot escape from it by humbling, controlling, or punishing it.<br /><br />4. The personal mind and the Holy Spirit cannot join in you. Your split mind maintains your perception of separation from God by dissociating your Christ Mind. It denies your natural impulse to extend God’s Love. The personal mind does not do this but your identification with the personal mind is the means that your split mind uses to maintain your belief that the separation is real. It is your decision to identify with the personal mind that allows this belief to continue.<br /><br />5. You threw away your awareness of your Oneness with God because you did not value It. You have taught yourself that the personal mind is joy and that God is misery. The Holy Spirit teaches you the Value of God by leading you to recognize how miserable you are without God through experiences that bring the Joy of God closer to your awareness. You have free will to choose but you will not value the “rewards” of the personal mind in the Presence of the Rewards of God.<br /><br />6. The Holy Spirit’s trust in you is greater than your trust in It but this is what you are learning to correct. Your mission is to learn to identify with the Holy Spirit instead of with the personal mind. The Holy Spirit is God within you and your identification with It is the correction of your perception of separation from God.<br /><br />7. Through the Holy Spirit your perception of separation from God is undone. Be grateful for the many opportunities to overlook a separate world filled with separate selves and to look on God’s Love instead. One experience of real recognition of the Presence of the Holy Spirit returns your mind to Wholeness for a moment. The Holy Spirit leads you back to your Oneness with God because What has been dissociated by your split mind is still in your mind.<br /><br />8. As you extend God’s Love you draw closer to the Holy Spirit; as you act from the personal mind you withdraw from the Holy Spirit. You must join with the Holy Spirit to extend only God’s Love because your mind is One. You will remember that you are One with God only by extending God’s Love. First you must extend God’s Love and then you will be ready for God because God’s Love is God’s Oneness.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />7. Creation and Communication<br /><br />1. The content of a personal self’s “life” in the world that you perceive does not matter. But correction of your perception of separation from God is only meaningful to you in the context of the individual “life” that you perceive as yours. Though God’s Mind is abstract and therefore everywhere the personal mind with which you identify, being the opposite of God, is very concrete and its illusions are very specific. Your split mind, which believes in a personal self as your reality, believes your existence is defined by separation.<br /><br />2. The personal mind perceives many separate things that are whole in themselves but never in One Being. It will join with other personal selves as long as their joining reinforces its separateness. If it perceives a threat to its separateness it will break off the connection. Its reactions are always to specifics and though it can generalize by noting similarities among others and among situations it is not capable of real abstract thinking, which perceives Oneness. The closest the personal mind comes to abstract thinking is responding to specific persons or situations as though they are other specific persons or situations which they resemble.<br /><br />3. The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, sees only Oneness. It does not try to establish a reality apart from God. It knows it is One with you and with God. God is in your mind and your Oneness with God is Everywhere and Always. It cannot be changed. Your Oneness with God is your only Purpose. You can distort This Purpose and you can choose to be unaware of It but you cannot change It.<br /><br />4. The personal self’s existence is dependent on relationships to define it but it is very specific about how, with what, and with whom it will relate. Your Being, however, is only One. It is Reality extending Everywhere Forever. You limit your own sense of reality when you cut yourself off from your Being. You can only correct this by giving over your entire mind to the Reality of God. Do not shrink from this. Your Whole Mind in God is your Home and your Real Identity.<br /><br />5. Even in your perceived separated state you have not stopped being One with God’s Being in Which you have Everything and in Which you extend God’s Being to increase your Joy. God extends God Everywhere and Always and this is how you are One with God. This is what Creation is. There is no “how” or “with what” or “to whom” in Oneness. Remember, in God there is no difference between having and being. In God you give God always.<br /><br />6. God does not need your worship because God does not have a separate personal self that needs to be uplifted. But when you do not accept your Oneness with God, God’s Oneness is blocked from extending Always and Everywhere. When you are cut off from your Joy God’s Joy is incomplete. If you were truly capable of separating from God, God would not be Whole.<br /><br />7. Your Oneness with God is unchanged by your perception of separation from God but you can only know God with your entire mind. Through revelation you can experience God directly for a moment but you must bring your entire mind to God for all time. Revelation cannot be brought into the world that you perceive but it can change your experience of that world’s reality. Your perception of a world must be replaced by your awareness of your Oneness with God.<br /><br />8. God’s Love is extended whenever you choose to follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance. You are secure when you follow the Holy Spirit because only a personal self is vulnerable. You are One with God and God is extended to you and through you and this is God’s Joy. Changing your mind about yourself is how you share in God’s Joy. By following the Holy Spirit you extend God’s Love in your awareness. The Holy Spirit will guide you until you have returned to full awareness of you Oneness with God.</span>

The Illusions of the Ego

The Illusions of the Ego Looking back, it becomes clear to me that ego, before and since I gave up the bottle, has been the chief architect ...

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This is a course in miracles and is the first working document

<div class="zemanta-img" style="text-align: left;"> <a href="http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jesus_statue_in_the_cloister_garden_and_walkway.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="English: A view of the cloister garden and sta..." border="0" class="zemanta-img-inserted zemanta-img-configured" height="132" src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dd/Jesus_statue_in_the_cloister_garden_and_walkway.jpg/350px-Jesus_statue_in_the_cloister_garden_and_walkway.jpg" style="border: none; font-size: 0.8em;" width="200" /></a></div> <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><br /><br />Introduction<br /><br />This is a course in miracles. You must learn the lessons in it but you choose when you want to learn them. Free will does not mean that you choose what it is you need to learn but that you choose what you want to learn at any given time. This course does not teach the meaning of God’s Love because that is beyond what can be taught. But it does teach you how to remove your obstacles to God’s Love, Which is your natural State of Being. Fear appears to be the opposite of God’s Love but God’s Love is all that there is and It has no opposite.<br /><br />This course can be summed up in this way:<br /><br />God cannot be changed.<br /><br />Only God exists.<br /><br />To know this is to have the Peace of God.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Chapter 1: The Meaning of Miracles<br /><br />1: Principles of Miracles[1]<br /><br />1. Miracles are extensions of God’s Love in your awareness. They are always whole and complete, no matter their seeming form or size. Your every extension of God’s Love is a miracle. Miracles do not always produce results that are visible to the body’s eyes and they may affect situations of which you are not aware.<br /><br />2. Miracles are not spectacles to make others believe in God or in your own power. They are the result of your true prayer, or communion, with God. Through prayer you receive God’s Love; through the miracle you extend your experience of God’s Love. The real miracle is God’s Love; Its expression in the world that you perceive is not important. Your True Mind and Holy Spirit, Which are God’s Love, are miracles.<br /><br />3. Experiencing miracles is necessary for you as the means for you to remember that you are One with God. By extending God’s Love you become aware that God’s Love is within you. You receive the Love that you give because you strengthen the awareness of God in your mind as you extend Love. All the miracles you experience join in the plan of the Atonement, which is the complete correction of your perception of separation from God.<br /><br />4. All of your fear and your sense of lack and limitation come from your belief that you are separate from God. Your experience of the miracle atones for, or corrects, your misperception by reminding you that you are One with God. By overcoming your fear, your experience of the miracle prepares you for direct revelation of God, in Which you experience no fear.<br /><br />5. Your experience of miracles comes from the Holy Spirit, the Voice for God in your mind. The Holy Spirit inspires and is in charge of miracles. It is the Holy Spirit in your mind that is really important, not the expression of the miracle. You cannot experience miracles in the personal mind, which is separate from God. Attempts by you to manifest “miracles” with the personal mind will lead you to a further sense of separation from God. Inspired by your Spiritual Mind, your experience of the miracle reminds you that you are One with God and releases you from your belief that you are a personal self.<br /><br />6. God’s Love is natural to you because you are One with God. When you do not experience miracles it is because you are not open to God. You can always, without exception, experience miracles but you must overcome your obstacles to God first. <br /><br />7. When you believe that what the body’s eyes show you is reality you fear God’s Love, Which is Reality. You can have only one identity: the Holy Spirit or the personal self. Your experience of the miracle unifies your mind because it overlooks the appearance of separate personal selves and looks only on God’s Love.<br /><br />8. Because it comes from the Holy Spirit within you, your experience of the miracle reminds you that you are Spirit, not a body, healing your mind of its misidentification with a body. All forms of illness are the result of your identifying with a personal self in a body.<br /><br />9. As an expression of your Oneness with God the miracle heals your guilt for perceiving that you separated yourself from God in the past and it frees you from fear of future punishment for this. Your experience of a miracle comes to you from the Oneness of Eternity and it overlooks separation and time. Your experiencing miracles is the only real purpose time has for you. <br /><br />10. Gratitude is due to the miracle as an expression of your Real Identity. You can deny that you are One with God but you cannot alter this Fact. You need to experience miracles as a means to remind you that you are One with God. When you return to full awareness of God you will no longer need the miracle.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />2: Revelation, Time and Miracles<br /><br />1. A revelation is an experience of Oneness with God in Which you experience no doubt and no fear. In the world that you perceive you often seek for this Oneness in physical relationships but they cannot achieve It. A revelation unites you directly with God; a miracle extends your awareness of God in your perception. You experience both the revelation and the miracle in the individual mind but they do not originate there. The individual mind induces action but it does not inspire it. You are free to believe what you choose, and your actions attest to what you believe.<br /><br />2. The experience of the revelation cannot be described. It is pure experience that is beyond words. Your experience of the miracle inspires you to action in the world that you perceive and is more important in the early phase of your learning because you must first learn to overcome your sense of separation from God in your mind’s perception. God’s Love as you experience it directly in revelation transcends all perception.<br /><br />3. Because God is the Perfect Whole of Which you are a Perfect Part it is appropriate for you to view God as greater than you and therefore to look on the revelation with wonder. Wonder is not an appropriate response to your experience of the miracle, which extends God’s Love outward in your perception from the Holy Spirit in your mind. Wonderment is inappropriate toward Jesus, Who is not greater than you, but Who modeled the Christ Mind, Which is also in your mind. Jesus is due your love, respect, obedience and devotion because He is a model for your complete awareness of God, which is still only a potential in you.<br /><br />4. Time is the only thing that seems to separates you from your Christ Mind, Which was modeled by Jesus. As you rise in your awareness of your Oneness with God you will shift in your identification from the personal mind to the Christ Mind. It is necessary for you to attain the Christ Mind to prepare you for God. Christ is the Whole Truth in your mind. It is the part of you that is One with God.<br /><br />5. A direct revelation of God comes to you through your Christ Mind when you are open to it. A revelation reminds you that you are One with God, Which God has not forgotten but you have.<br /><br />6. In time it seems as though it will take forever for you to recognize the Oneness of your Mind. Your experience of the miracle saves you time by bringing Oneness to your mind now. It does not bring you to a full awareness of God but each miracle you experience is a step toward your full awareness of God.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />3. Atonement and Miracles<br /><br />1. Your Christ Mind is in charge of the plan of the Atonement, which is the full correction of your perception of separation from God. When you extend God’s Love you increase your own awareness of God’s Love within you. By following only your Christ Mind you will correct all of your perceptions of separation from God. This is your only purpose in the world that you perceive. When you have accepted complete correction you will be Christ, Which is the correction.<br /><br />2. Your split mind will become united again. The personal mind will give way to your Christ Mind because your Christ Mind is Eternal. As a Part of God you are Love and you must remember to think of yourself this way.<br /><br />3. By accepting your Christ Mind as your Identity you let go of, or forgive, your perceptions of personal selves in a world separate from God. This is the plan of the Atonement. Your experience of miracles, which are inspired by your Christ Mind, unite your mind and its perceptions in Oneness and release you from your perception of separation from God.<br /><br />4. Your Christ Mind is the awareness that you are One with God and therefore your Christ Mind is the Atonement. Only the Christ in you can inspire your experience of miracles, which are extensions of God’s Love. Your purpose is the Atonement and you must put aside the personal mind and be open to the guidance of your Christ Mind to fulfill It. Experiencing miracles will lead you to be open to direct revelation of God.<br /><br />5. Your error in perceiving yourself as separate from God does not threaten God but God does threaten your error. You are free to see yourself as a personal self separate from God or to see the Truth that you are Spirit, Eternally loved by God in Oneness with God. The Atonement recognizes the latter and undoes all fear. So when you are frightened by God it is because you are defending a personal self as yourself. When you project the source of your fear onto the world of separation that you perceive you reinforce fear in your mind. But if you choose instead to extend God’s Love in place of the world of separation that you perceive you undo fear in your mind.<br /><br />6. Your behavior follows from your interpretations of the world that you perceive. To behave appropriately you must learn to look out from the Holy Spirit in you to the Holy Spirit in all that your mind perceives.<br /><br />7. Your Christ Mind extends God’s Love even when you are not aware of It. You will experience the miracle when you are open to it, overlooking the personal mind and its perceptions, and uniting with Christ in your perception. Your experience of the miracle reminds you that you are One with God and extends Oneness to be all that you perceive.<br /><br />8. Your experience of miracles always bless you, even if you cannot see a manifestation of them in the world. God’s Love is always present and your Christ Mind, not the personal mind, is in charge of any action that should be taken. Only your Christ Mind is aware of what is needed to correct your perception of separation from God.<br /><br />9. You will experience miracles when you are ready for them. You accept as much of God’s Love as you can at any given time but your experience of the miracle does not really have a “size” since God’s Love is always Whole. When you accept God’s Love for yourself it is inevitable that you will extend It in your awareness.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />4. The Escape from Darkness<br /><br />1. Denying that you are One with God does not change the fact that you are One with God. Recognizing that you are in denial will threaten your identification with a personal self and make you fearful but accepting that you are One with God will dispel all fear since denying the Truth is the actual source of your fear. When you are no longer in denial and you are willing to remember that you are One with God you will naturally experience Peace and Joy.<br /><br />2. Denying the Truth frightens you because on some level you are aware that you are deceiving yourself. This deception takes a lot of effort and it results in a personal self that you work hard to make real to you. As an extension of God’s Love, your experience of the miracle reminds you that only God is Reality and it corrects your perception of yourself as a personal self. Accepting this correction is your only real purpose and it abolishes your fear by abolishing your denial of Truth that is the source of your fear.<br /><br />3. Denying that you are One with God leads to your sense of lack and to your making of a personal self to seek for the Wholeness that you gave away. In God you have Everything and the purpose of the Atonement is to correct your perception of separation from God to remind you of this.<br /><br />4. You overcome your fear and sense of lack, which are inspired by your denial of your Oneness with God, by forgiving, or overlooking, your error of perceiving yourself as a personal self. By extending God’s Love the miracle reminds you that Christ is your Reality and it undoes all of your fear and lack. Jesus taught forgiveness by demonstrating the unreality of the personal self and the Reality of Christ by overcoming death. The idea that you should be punished for separating from God fails to acknowledge that your perception of separation from God is only an error. By allowing God’s Love to be extended through you, you correct this error.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />5. Wholeness and Spirit<br /><br />1. Both the miracle and the body are temporary learning aids that you will put aside when you return to full awareness of your Oneness with God. The body is neutral and it can be used by your mind to extend God’s Love or to perpetuate your sense of separation from God. You can put off your awareness of your Oneness with God but you can never make your separation from God real. You can destroy the body but you cannot destroy What you really are. You are One with God.<br /><br />2. For you to be miracle-minded is for you to be open to the awareness that you are One with God now. Every miracle that you extend reduces the time that you need to fully remember that you are One with God. When you have remembered this you will no longer need an individual self.<br /><br />3. When you have extended correction of your perception of separation from God to all that your mind perceives you will be aware only of Oneness. If you perceive yourself as a personal self separate from God you deny God’s Oneness. You must accept that you are One with God to know yourself.<br /><br />4. Your mind will be healed of your sense of separation from God. Your experience of the miracle calls you to remember that you are One with God even if you choose to deny this. God is One and Whole and this is What Holiness is. God cannot be made un-whole. Your experiences of miracles affirm the Oneness of God.<br /><br />5. God is the Eternal Truth and cannot change or be changed. God’s Holy Spirit within you is Perfect and cannot be changed. But you are free to choose if your mind will serve the Holy Spirit or the personal self. In your perception of separation from God these are the only choices available to you. If you choose to have your mind serve the Holy Spirit you will become aware of your Oneness with God again and you will be Limitless in your awareness. If you choose to have your mind serve the personal self you will still be One with God but denying This will limit you and introduce you to the perception of lack. To truly change your mind you must open it to Truth.<br /><br />6. Your experience of the miracle is a sign that you are following your Christ Mind. This heals your sense of lack and limitation. Your identification with a personal self will not satisfy you and the means that you have employed to make yourself feel whole again have not worked. As you let go of your identification with a personal self you will be disoriented for a while but the means that you have employed to feel whole have only increased your sense of lack and limitation.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />6. The Illusion of Needs<br /><br />1. You can only be at Peace by completely forgiving, or releasing, your perception of separation from God. You will only learn how to do this when you accept that you need to do this and when you want to do this. In God there is no lack and therefore no needs. But by perceiving yourself as separate from God you deprive yourself of your sense of Wholeness and you make lack and needs. You act according to the needs that you perceive and this depends on how you perceive yourself.<br /><br />2. The only lack that you need to correct is your sense of separation from God. By making a personal self you seem to split your mind in two and this leads to your sense of lack. Your sense of lack manifests as the personal self’s many needs. Believing these needs are real the personal mind orders them according to perceived importance, distracting you from recognizing that you really have only one need. Only by recognizing that you have only one need can you act in a way to truly correct it.<br /><br />3. Your mind seems to be split into two levels: God and the personal self. Before you can recognize that your mind is not really split and that only God is your Real Mind you have to acknowledge that it is a mistake to believe in a split mind. Until you do no real correction can occur. An error must be corrected on the level where it seems to occur.<br /><br />4. Your perception of a world is the level of your mind where the error seems to occur. The personal mind is like God’s Mind in that it believes in what is in it. You cannot find your own way out of a fearful world because you made it and your belief in it makes it your “reality”. But from the Holy Spirit’s point of view the purpose of the world that you perceive is to correct your perception of separation from God.<br /><br />5. All forms of fear are not real because they do not come from God. Your perception of separation from God is corrected by questioning whether what you believe in is One with God. This is how your experience of the miracle helps you sort out the false from the true:<br /><br />God’s Love undoes fear.<br /><br />If you experience fear<br /><br />Then you are not experiencing God’s Love.<br /><br />And:<br /><br />Only God’s Love is Real.<br /><br />If you experience fear<br /><br />Then you are experiencing an illusion.<br /><br />You only need to accept this to be free of fear, lack, and limitation. Only God’s Love can undo fear.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />7. Distortions of Miracle Impulses<br /><br />1. Your perception of yourself as a body makes it hard for you to be aware of God’s Love within you. Your desire to physically “love” another is a distortion of your desire to experience God’s Oneness. Real pleasure can come only from extending God’s Love. When you don’t extend God’s Love you deny that you are One with God and you validate your illusion of a personal self that is separate from God. But extending God’s Love corrects this misperception. You will never be at Peace using a body to try to be whole.<br /><br />2. Do not forget that you are One with God and that only God can satisfy you. For a while you must extend God’s Love through a body because you are not yet aware enough of your Oneness with God to see beyond it. The only real use the body has is as a learning device through which you learn to remember that you are One with God.<br /><br />3. Your perception of yourself as separate from God - a personal self in a body within a world - is a distortion of your mind; a fantasy. Your reactions and actions in the world that you perceive stem from your unawareness that it is a fantasy. This fantasy, which includes the fantasies that you have in the world and recognize as such, are attempts to satisfy the false needs that have arisen from your sense of separation from God. They are destructive in nature because they are an attempt to undo Reality but they are real only to you who make them and believe in them. If you extend God’s Love instead of the fantasy of separation the experience of the miracle will be real to you because you will believe in it. Your belief in it will strengthen God’s Love in your total awareness. Your fantasies will fall away as the satisfying nature of God’s Love will make fantasies unnecessary. God is lost to you as you try to make another reality and defend it. As long as you believe in personal selves and bodies you will think that you are lost to God. Your only real goal is to extend God everywhere.<br /><br />(Here, at the end of this first chapter, the Text diverges from its above topic to discuss the importance of these early concepts)[2].<br /><br />4. This is a course in mind training and it requires attention and study. It is important to carefully study the concepts in these earlier parts because later parts will rest on them. These early concepts will imply things to you that will be expanded on later but first you need an awareness of God’s Love to undo your fear of what is to come.<br /><br />5. You have a tendency to fear God as something separate from you rather than to know God as the Whole of Which you are Part. So it is important to lay down a solid foundation of trust so that you do not fear God. Your experience of God’s Love undoes fear because the miracle reminds you that you are One with God. Some later steps of this course will involve your direct approach to God and you need the experience of miracles to prepare you for this. It is your awareness of your Oneness with God that heals your mind. This is what this course explains. You might occasionally experience this Oneness through direct revelation with God but to bring your Oneness with God into your full awareness you need to experience the miracle.</span>

This is a course in miracles and is the first working document

Introduction This is a course in miracles. You must learn the lessons in it but you choose when you want to learn them. Free will does not...

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Affirmations are small but key positive messages to the self

Affirmations are small but key positive messages to the self. They are used as reminders, helping to keep positive messages at the forefront of our consciousness. Not only is it important to regularly think these affirmations, it is a great idea to leave them lying around the place, where you will occasionally notice them. Some are very powerfully reinforced by looking at yourself in the mirror as you speak them <br /> <br /> Affirmations are a very powerful tool in supporting positive thinking and are very effective in changing life patterns and perspectives

Affirmations are small but key positive messages to the self

Affirmations are small but key positive messages to the self. They are used as reminders, helping to keep positive messages at the forefront...

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John Bradshaw has been called "America's leading personal growth expert."

John Bradshaw has been called "America's leading personal growth expert." The author of five New York Times bestsellers, Bradshaw On: The Family, Healing the Shame That Binds You, Homecoming, Creating Love, and Family Secrets, John's books have sold over four million copies in North America. He created and hosted four nationally broadcast PBS television series based on his best-selling books. John pioneered the concept of the "Inner Child" and brought the term "dysfunctional family" into the mainstream. He has touched and changed millions of lives through his books, television series, and his lectures and workshops around the country.<br /> <br /> John has lived everything he writes about. Born in Houston, Texas, into a troubled family, abandoned by his alcoholic father, he became a high academic achiever who was also an out-of-control teenager. He completed his education in Canada, where he studied for the Roman Catholic priesthood, earning three degrees from the University of Toronto.<br /> <br /> During the past twenty-five years he has worked as a counselor, theologian, management consultant, and public speaker, becoming one of the primary figures in the contemporary self-help movement. <br /> <br /> For more information about John's background, go to his website and take a look at his curriculum vitae.<br /> <br /> <br /> John Bradshaw's Books, CDs, and DVDs<br /> <br /> Go to John Bradshaw's website to purchase his books, cds, and dvds or see a catalog.<br /> <br /> John Bradsaw's books and tapes are also available for purchase at Amazon.com. Click here to view what products are available.<br /> <br /> John Bradshaw's Schedule of Lectures and Workshops<br /> John Bradshaw offers lectures and workshops throughout the year in different locations around the country. To view his current schedule of events, which includes contact phone numbers, please click here.<br /> <br /> Articles of Interest About John Bradshaw<br /> John Bradshaw: A Teacher for Our Times Written by our Center's Co-Director, Jason Saffer, this is an inspiring personal reflection on John's effect on millions of people and his influence as an agent of consciousness change world-wide.

John Bradshaw has been called "America's leading personal growth expert."

John Bradshaw has been called "America's leading personal growth expert." The author of five New York Times bestsellers, Brads...

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Inner Child Workshop DVD-BRADSHAW ON: HOMECOMING - PBS - 10 Hour ...

<a href="http://www.johnbradshaw.com/bradshawonhomecomingreclaimingand.aspx">Inner Child Workshop DVD-BRADSHAW ON: HOMECOMING - PBS - 10 Hour ...</a>

Inner Child Workshop DVD-BRADSHAW ON: HOMECOMING - PBS - 10 Hour ...

Inner Child Workshop DVD-BRADSHAW ON: HOMECOMING - PBS - 10 Hour ...

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JOHN BRADSHAW Interview

DR: Do you believe that all families are dysfunctional, and that all people are addictive personalities?<br /> <br /> JOHN BRADSHAW: I believe that all families have some level of dysfunction, in the sense that everybody is carrying the same kind of parenting rules, especially patriarchal parenting rules. Repression of the emotions, blind obedience, corporal punishment. I can't imagine anyone born in this culture who doesn't have some measurement on them which is not accurate.<br /> <br /> DR: Do both women and men carry the patriarchal rules equally and similarly?<br /> <br /> JOHN BRADSHAW: I don't really know, but I certainly think that both are impacted by them. In the book I'm writing now, I talk about two types of confusion that come out of them. One is the confusion where you get it that "I'm most lovable when I'm not being myself." In other words, what you do is not okay, what you feel is not okay, what you want is not okay, and what you feel is not okay. The other kind of confusion is one in which you just don't develop an identity at all, where the violation is so severe that the victim becomes the offender.<br /> <br /> I think it's possible that men and women can be violated equally. Men are taught power more, are taught to repress more, and are expected to repress more. So my feeling would be that men probably carry it more, but women also continue the wounding with it.<br /> <br /> DR: Is it your sense that this is true across cultural boundaries throughout the world and throughout history, or are there exceptions you are aware of, either now or historically?<br /> <br /> JOHN BRADSHAW: Recorded history shows the dominance of patriarchy. I know there was an anthropologist at Rice who argued for a matrilineal culture, but recorded history is dominated by the patriarchal system, where the legal rights go through the male - the kings and their slaves, the kings and their provinces.<br /> <br /> My understanding is that this is universal. We've had Russian scientists do our workshop and say we desperately need this in Russia. We've had Japanese, Iranians. Iran and Iraq are perfect patriarchal societies, and all Moslem countries are all highly authoritarian and patriarchal. Communist China is patriarchal in the sense that people are subjugated and measured. So I think it's universal.<br /> <br /> I look to Nuremberg as the end of the patriarchal era, even though historically it isn't completely changed yet. Since Nuremberg and Hiroshima, we've had the civil rights movement, the women's rights movement, and now the adult-child movement, which is fighting the social oppression of the child. There's been a men's movement, a gay and lesbian movement. A whole vulnerability movement has taken place since the end of the Second World War. So I think we're in a very powerful historical change of consciousness.<br /> <br /> DR: Do you think someone has to hit rock-bottom before they can heal themselves?<br /> <br /> JOHN BRADSHAW: No. I think bottom is a relative state. I quit drinking December 11, 1965. I was 31 years old, and I certainly had a lot more drinking in me. I'm very grateful that I stopped when I did. I sometimes may describe the end of my drinking a little more dramatically than what really occurred, but the truth is I still could have gone on a long time.<br /> <br /> I'm grateful I saw at that moment that if I continued, it was just downhill from there. It was a breakthrough moment, which I would consider a moment of grace as well as a moment of decision. So no, I don't think you have to hit bottom.<br /> <br /> A lot of people get sick and tired of being sick and tired. Some change out of life cycle, or trauma. The death of someone can be a very powerful instrument of change. I'm looking to other kinds of things to help effect change.<br /> <br /> DR: After an inspiring talk or workshop, it's not uncommon for people to feel a letdown. There's a sense that the high brought on by the personality of the presenter, the content of their message, or the interaction among the participants, is hard to sustain when we return to our homes, jobs and families. It's a serious problem. What do you think is the solution?<br /> <br /> JOHN BRADSHAW: At workshops I hand out lists of support groups, or 12-Step Groups. We put people in groups in the workshops. I encourage people to make contact with each other. We do not do any workshops without a treatment center sponsoring us, and we ask them, if they can, and if it's not artificial, to create 10- to 20-week after-programs, where people can sign up to continue doing the work. <br /> <br /> There is a sense, with what I do, that people can get high on feelings. Addicts can get addicted to feeling-work. So when you go out of the workshop there's a big letdown. I think what you said earlier is true--there's a natural letdown. Support groups are the answer to that. We need that all our lives, I think. Ultimately a support group becomes a network of true friends.<br /> <br /> DR: Regarding alcoholism, if someone was once addicted to alcohol, and hasn't had a drink for many, many years, do you feel it's accurate to call them an alcoholic? Should that be the way they define themselves forever?<br /> <br /> JOHN BRADSHAW: No. My own therapist has helped me with that. You know, I go to my "I'm a recovering alcoholic" when I'm scared. It's sort of a way to take refuge. What I believe is that any time you define yourself completely and rigidly in any way, you limit yourself.<br /> <br /> Now, I am strongly steeped in the belief that once an alcoholic, I can't go back to social drinking, at least until some new knowledge emerges about the chemistry of alcoholism. But I certainly think there's a danger in keeping on labeling ourselves, and labeling ourselves as sick. It's been a strong tradition in the 12-Step Program for alcoholism to say you're recovering, but not say you're recovered. That's because there have been so many people who, after 15 or 20 years, went back to drinking because they quit going to meetings and got cocky and smug.<br /> <br /> But my basic position is to stop calling ourselves names, to stop labeling ourselves past a certain point. But in the beginning, it's good to have a definition of something that's been confusing you your whole life. It's like naming a demon.<br /> <br /> DR: Do you feel that the best therapists are people who have personal experience with the problems their patients are having? For example, should drug counselors be former drug users?<br /> <br /> JOHN BRADSHAW: That's an interesting question. I have mixed views on that. Someone who has no experience of the problem can be coming out of a book, and missing the connection. Also, when you have people who have had the same problem, it tends to resolve the toxic shame much more quickly.<br /> <br /> If I go in and I know you've had the same problem I have, I feel more comfortable. I mean, I've made a conscious decision to talk about myself and my problems, and that allows other people to come out of hiding. On the other hand, I think that there can be a blind spot in being a recovered alcoholic.<br /> <br /> Let's just take the issue you brought up earlier. So I'm a recovered alcoholic, and I'm talking to a client who continues to call themselves an alcoholic. My own therapist, who is not an alcoholic, confronted the hell out of me on that at a certain point. You know, "How long are you going to hold onto labeling yourself that way, putting yourself down and limiting yourself?" So it may be easier for someone who doesn't have the problem, after a point, to be more objective.<br /> <br /> DR: You mentioned the concept of "toxic shame." Would you define it?<br /> <br /> JOHN BRADSHAW: It's a feeling that has become internalized as an identity. The sense of the identity is that "I'm flawed and defective as a human being." It's not something I did; it's about my very being, that deep down I feel there's something wrong with me. So it has the feeling of hopelessness about it. It's like being born short. There's not much you can do about that.<br /> <br /> DR: How would our society be different if our toxic shame were healed and our inner child were allowed to flourish? If we were real and authentic, what would that look like? Have you seen glimpses of it?<br /> <br /> JOHN BRADSHAW: I have seen glimpses of it. You know, I see glimpses of what functionality can be. Functionality doesn't exclude problems from life, but it means there's more of a co-creation, a synergy, people working more together. I know in my own relationship that's true, and in my relationship with my brother and sister. We're all in our processes of growth. In the past, we'd have fights and then not talk to each other for a year, or six months or two weeks or whatever. Now we hang in there. We get through it, and we function really well together.<br /> <br /> I get glimpses of people being much more in community, and really handling differences without it getting polarized. We need polarity and difference, but we don't need polarization, where it's all or nothing.<br /> <br /> DR: I want to ask you more about what you mean by "polarity." Am I understanding you correctly that this would include an ability to see an issue from more than one vantage point?<br /> <br /> JOHN BRADSHAW: Yes, to see it from more than one vantage point, and to see the shadow side. It's like polarity is me getting it that I am a very good man and really committed to being good, but also capable of evil. And that I have been evil at times, I have been crazy at times, and I have run over people. I have screamed at my wife and children. That there's a Mother Theresa in me and there's a Hitler, possibly, in me.<br /> <br /> I don't ever want to forget that, because then I'll become polarized as a righteous person, judging everybody else as unrighteous because they don't measure up to my standards. I think there's a sense of fate and mystery about every human being that will not allow them, ultimately, to be in a category.<br /> <br /> But our theories are very helpful to us. They allow us to get some kind of definition out of chaos, and lead a person to a point where then we're on our own, you might say. Where each one of us is called, like Maslow [Abraham Maslow, the founder of humanistic psychology] said, to that point where you move into "being needs" and higher consciousness and self-actualization.<br /> <br /> He found that people who were on those high plateaus of their being needs were not affected by what other people thought, or by common opinion. They listened to disagreements, and to other people's opinions, but they didn't immediately run and change everything because of the other person's opinion. That's the person's sense of integrity, what Erikson called ego integrity. At that point you do become, as the spiritual masters say, a law unto yourself. Now it's very dangerous, the fine line on that, and people need a community, to always be checking out that fine line. <br /> <br /> DR: Your books and talks show a tremendous willingness to reveal yourself, which strikes me as something that is very healthy, and of real service to others. Do you ever find, in yourself or others, that there is such a thing as too much self-revelation?<br /> <br /> JOHN BRADSHAW: Yes. I was certainly guilty of that, and I'm sure I could do it again. I was taught in the 12-Step Program to be rigorously honest, and because of my boundary problems, I've sometimes gone into areas that I don't think need to be revealed. Also, I have on occasion violated people close to my boundaries. A couple of times my children have gotten angry, my ex-wife got angry, and my mother of course gets very angry . . .<br /> <br /> I think there's an appropriate place for self-disclosure, but you can certainly go too far. We need privacy in our lives, and that's about having a good boundary. In my own journey to wholeness, I have come to understand that better and better. I disclose where I think it's appropriate, and where it will help other people to reduce their shame and come out of hiding. Those are my criteria.<br /> <br /> DR: Your work appears to focus largely on mind and spirit. What about the body? Do you see bodywork as part of your healing process, and do you see a physical component in the healing changes that take place when the process is working?<br /> <br /> JOHN BRADSHAW: Yes. I've been sort of weak on presenting that. I personally have been Rolfed. I worked with Alexander Lowen for a week in New York and have been very much into bioenergetics, I've been into Feldenkreis, Ilana Rubenfeld, Betty Fuller, Al Huang.<br /> <br /> I'm still having some trouble with food. I haven't gotten my body where I want it. So in some ways it's a blind spot. But I certainly would like to see more and more stress on the idea that therapy needs to be accompanied by work on the body . . .<br /> <br /> DR: What is the John Bradshaw Center at Ingleside Hospital?<br /> <br /> JOHN BRADSHAW: It's a 40-bed unit for treating shame-based syndromes. We're using the new model that Gershom Kaufman first described in The Psychology of Shame, in which we understand shame as an affect [emotion] that goes with other affect. It's based on the primacy of emotion, on the theory that the emotional brain develops before the thinking brain. So we do a lot of deep emotional work.<br /> <br /> We have four therapists there who have been with us from the beginning, who are highly skilled in gestalt and psychodrama, and getting people into safe places where they can really do that deep discharge work.<br /> <br /> The biggest thing we concentrate on at the center is creating a non-shaming environment. Everybody there is in their own process, and we're willing to say to a patient or client that "we screwed up" or "I'm confused right now." We are willing to really own our own stuff, while once again having some boundaries with that. We avoid therapeutic mystification, in which we create a model so rigid that we start shaming people with it if they don't measure up to our model.<br /> <br /> So that's the idea. Milton Erikson [a physician best known for his work with hypnosis] is the greatest example of a non-shaming model that I know, because he had no theory. "I don't have a theory, I meet people at their map of the world." That's what we try to do.<br /> <br /> Obviously, no one can do that without some contamination, but we really work hard to do that. I've got a gifted clinician there who's the head of my program, Kip Flock, the guy I had on television. He's done years of gestalt work, and he's the most non-shaming person I've ever seen. He can find the strength in a person faster than anyone I've ever seen, and we work on that. Seeing what the person did right rather than what they did wrong, and affirming and reinforcing people's strengths. That's what we go for.<br /> <br /> DR: You mentioned something about theories becoming rigid, and cited Erikson who, without a theory, was very admirable. Do you feel that theories inevitably become rigid? How do you guard against your own theories becoming rigid?<br /> <br /> JOHN BRADSHAW: I don't think they inevitably become rigid. I think the more we live in polarity, the more we don't polarize our theories, making them into absolutes. In other words, I see in my own recovery process that I could polarize recovery. Suddenly, "recovery" would be a standard and a measure, with a right way to do it, and it's "my way or the highway."<br /> <br /> I don't think theory inevitably becomes rigid at all. I think it's valuable to name something, and call it co-dependency for the first five years if you want to, because it gives the person something clear to look at and to work on.<br /> <br /> But there is a place where we probably need to let that label go, and help that person to expand beyond the limits of that label, or even beyond the limits of that theory. I believe in flexibility. If something doesn't work, try something else. I'm not anti-theoretical. I don't think anyone can do what Erikson did. Everybody keeps trying. They even wear purple ties and bolos, and purple shirts and hats. People have tried to use some of his stories, and probably hurt people doing it. Erikson had some kind of powerful intuitive genius. He was an unbelievable therapist.<br /> <br /> DR: I read that you have spoken of becoming more involved politically in recent years. How has that manifested?<br /> <br /> JOHN BRADSHAW: It's only manifested at this point in contributions, and of being more socially responsible, and of course voting. And wherever possible, making clear a position I'm taking, the things I'm concerned about. I'd like to do a lot more. I'd like at some point to actively get into somebody's campaign, and really work for them.<br /> <br /> I have no thoughts of running politically myself, because I just wouldn't want what went with that. It's almost the diminishment of oneself. If you have a truly good man or woman who wants to do that, it's a beautiful thing, a calling. Whereas, I doubt a lot of politicians have a calling. I see them as just very needy, narcissistic, with all that need to be in the center, to be admired, to be looked at. I have some of that myself. I understand that.<br /> <br /> DR: Are there issues or approaches which you are troubled to see omitted from political campaigns?<br /> <br /> JOHN BRADSHAW: Yes. I would like to see a lot more emphasis on schoolteachers, the importance of schoolteachers in a country where we pay a second baseman five million dollars a year, and a first grade teacher next to nothing. We pay somebody a hundred thousand dollars to sing at a Vegas lounge, and we pay schoolteachers nothing. There's something radically wrong with the whole value system. I'm a teacher myself, at least that's what I think of myself as. I was in the system. I've taught high school. I taught Sunday school, and in universities. So I'm very supportive of teachers.<br /> <br /> I'm also troubled that there is not more stress on the etiology of addiction. While I believe that I may have a genetic predisposition to alcoholism, it's also true that you have to learn to be an alcoholic or an addict, and you learn through the ideology of abuse, through abandonment, neglect and enmeshment. You get this emptiness, a hole in your soul, and you've got to keep filling it up. You numb out emotionally, so the only way you can mood alter is with your addiction. I would like to see a lot more emphasis on that.<br /> <br /> I'd also like to see somebody come along and start talking about soul, restoring the soul of our culture, because I think we've lost our soul in a lot of ways. I'm more of the prophetic voice, which is easier than being the practical one, who knows how to put that into action. But I guess you need prophets, or at least prophetic voices.<br /> <br /> Daniel Redwood is a chiropractor, writer and musician who lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He is the author of A Time to Heal: How to Reap the Benefits of Holistic Health (A.R.E. Press), and is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. He can be reached by e-mail at redwoods@infi.net.

JOHN BRADSHAW Interview

DR: Do you believe that all families are dysfunctional, and that all people are addictive personalities? JOHN BRADSHAW: I believe that all...

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