Word
Gems
What is a
man but the sum of his thoughts?
Person
John
Ruskan:
Emotional
Clearing (2000)
excerpts:
I understand that my love for
myself is the greatest possession I will ever have. Love for myself comes into
being only when I accept and experience my feelings as they are, at this very moment, both
pleasant and unpleasant. As I welcome my painful self, it heals.
Loving myself provides the
power for transformation...
A successful outcome to therapy is achieved when the
client no longer needs the supportive energy of the therapist but can provide support
through self-acceptance. The client ... is now self-sustaining,
able to provide nurturing and healing from within...
When I accept myself and my feelings as they are, I
become whole. I am no longer split -- fighting or condemning part of myself. The power of
self-acceptance and self-love builds within me. I acquire the ability to heal myself... I
awaken the power for transformation...
Feelings are painful and become problems only because
they are not accepted, or integrated..
During therapy, blocks are uncovered [negative thinking,
painful feelings] ... and the client becomes aware of self-limiting tendencies...
Acceptance does not mean automatic approval of
any event... [it] means rather that we are open to the experience of the event... We may [prefer] that something be different ... but we do not allow our
preference to interfere with the experience. This is possible because experience
takes place on a feeling level, not an intellectual level... Self-blocking occurs
on the feeling level... The feeling level is where we are most unconscious.
People who have achieved self-acceptance have developed
the capacity for feeling deeply, without resistance, whatever is happening in their inner
life...
When we interact with a person who is self-accepting, we
sense that this relationship differs from most.
- A self-accepting person has the
ability to accept others, to be open to others...
We can feel that we are being accepted on a
deep energy level. We are disarmed. There is no reason to resist back. We sense love.
Unconditional love is nothing more than unconditional acceptance... healing occurs...
blocks dissolve; there is no need to fight them...
- The real purpose of the therapeutic
relationship is the ultimate awakening of self-acceptance in the client... The result is
what has been called self-actualization... what has been awakened is the ability to love
oneself. One gains the ability to evoke healing power from within, through self-love.
- There is no longer any craving or searching for love
outside oneself; one is complete as one is, feeling love from within.
Relationships are approached as a vehicle through which
the love within is expressed rather than as a context in which one seeks to be loved...
Life is evolutionary, and we are all "works in
progress."
- The purpose of life is to awaken and expand our dormant
capacities for love, creativity, and intelligence...
When you get in sync with this ... you will immediately feel
more at peace with yourself -- you are no longer purposeless.
- The joy that comes from growth itself is enough to keep you
interested in life...
Working on yourself is not primarily analyzing yourself ... or trying to control
yourself and do better, or trying to be something you are not... [this] merely makes them
absorbed in themselves...
Integrative Processing is the name I have given to the system of
self-therapy that has evolved from my own work...
Integration is the condition of accepting and including, of not resisting, parts
of yourself or your experience. When something is not integrated, it forms the basis of
conflict. We resist something -- a feeling, for example -- because we believe the feeling
is bad for us... In fighting the feeling, we further the split between ourselves and the
feeling, and thus we increase the sense of conflict.
- The conflict that is created through resistance causes pain.
This is a key concept. What causes most of our pain is our resistance to a feeling, not
the actual feeling itself...
Many of our "needs" are the result of social conditioning. They are
artificial -- programmed into us by society. We assign the same urgency and feel the same
anxiety about the attainment of artificial needs as we do with more genuine needs. This
mistake is the result of our level of consciousness, our lack of vision... We are all at
our own individual and proper level of growth.
- Needs result from beliefs. Beliefs are the filters through
which we perceive reality...
Many beliefs are irrational, limiting, and destructive ... deliberate change is
difficult.
- Beliefs are conditioned states of mind, occurring
mostly on the unconscious level... it is held in place by suppressed energy formations;
the suppressed energy supports and maintains the belief.
In our work we do not attempt directly to uncover or change unconscious beliefs. I
consider such action to be invasive and disvalidating. Instead, in accepting ourselves, we
accept our beliefs as they are.
- Processing of feelings will release the energy that is behind
the belief and maintains it.
The limiting or destructive belief is outgrown naturally, instead of in a forced
manner.
- Much of what we consider important is important only because
we consider it so.
Our outlook will change as time goes by and as growth occurs... the teenager
buying his first car agonizes over what model to get; the scientist agonizes over the
results of his work. They are at different levels of growth concerning their goals ...
[but both believe] that their self-worth depends on the approval of
their peers. In this respect, they are at psychologically similar levels of growth.
... the individual has an extensive, intensive, self-projected belief system which
is considered primary in attaining happiness. The belief system creates needs. Through
subjective pain when these needs are not realized, the individual learns to strive for
conditions to satisfy the needs. The habitual orientation of evaluating which elements of
experience will be allowed or resisted to satisfy needs carries over into the inner life:
feelings, emotions, and attitudes. A strong judgmentalism develops toward inner experience
as well as toward outer experience.
We have fallen into a trap.
- We must resist certain conditions to survive, but unwittingly
we extend this logic to areas where resistance is inappropriate, leading to unresolved
energies...
Resistance of experience occurs on a subtle but powerful level and is the
beginning of what is called suppression...
What we don't realize is that when the energy of a feeling is not released, it
does not go away by stays with us, in latent form, as part of the psychic energy body...
When we suppress an unpleasant feeling, we interrupt the natural flow of energies...
- The energy becomes trapped, held in storage in a static condition. Where does the
energy get stored? It is held in what has come to be called "the subconscious"
... [which is] nothing more than a buildup of energies...
- They leave us in the position of being ruled by hidden forces
-- forces that at times can seem uncontrollable, like a separate entity with an
independent intelligence and will. [Editor's
note: In A Course In Miracles this seemingly separate entity is called the
"ego."]
We become guided by neurotic, unconscious urges that lead to irrational,
self-destructive behavior...
... when we suppress, it is energy that is being put into storage...
Long-term avoidance of feelings ... can build to the extent that a person's whole
life is shaped by internal forces of which there is no conscious knowledge...
I believe that Karma [these stored energies] is carried over from previous
existences. Life's events are then formed by subconscious forces, to be played out...
understanding the cause [of suppressed energies] is not required to release feelings...
Accepting the possibility of a previous existence also implies
the continuity of life after "death." This idea greatly helps me ... in
the working with the fear of death, which is really the primal fear. Psychics have brought
back much documentation of life on the "other side." I personally find their
reports, taken as a whole, to be adequate evidence of something beyond the earthly shell.
Projection results from the accumulation of energy generated by suppression ...
which assigns value and identity to persons or events in the "outside" world.
Feelings that are suppressed are experienced indirectly through the other persons or
events -- it appears as if the feelings are caused by or coming from others... In
projection we try to avoid responsibility for certain feelings... there is no outside
force ... we project our subconscious energies onto what appears to be the outside world,
creating our entire experience... We never see what is. We
see only what we have projected... positive events are also suppressed... Your most
cherished times, someone you thought really loved you, was just the love already within
you...
Your impression of the external world comes to you through your filters of
suppressed energy, and your suppressed energy draws corresponding events to you... When we
project, the world becomes a mirror, reflecting our own qualities back to us... we load
our perception of [others] with our own energy... Whenever you react strongly to the
stimulus that another person provides, it is safe to assume that suppressed energies
within you are surfacing...
- Clearing of suppressed material takes place only when you
finally allow yourself the experience that you have been avoiding. The energy, the
feeling, must be allowed into consciousness without resistance in order to be
integrated... the pain must be accepted and experienced...
... once something is faced, it can be cleared in a surprisingly short interval.
The problem is that our unconscious self-rejection prevents us from really facing
our feelings, even when we want to -- we have lost the capacity for feeling...
As you go through life, you will have various encounters that bring up your
subconscious energies into conscious awareness. These energies surface when conditions are
appropriate for them to be released. If you can learn to integrate these energies as they
come up, you will be meeting life most creatively.
- You will be using your circumstances instead of
being abused by them. It is for this opportunity that we incarnate on the Earth plane...
- ... each individual's life is designed to provide just the
right circumstances for the clearing of hidden negative forces within... Your
circumstances at this very moment are the ones you need...
You will not "buy into" thinking that the other is responsible for your
experience; you will "own" your experience ... In so doing,
- you achieve the control over your life that you seek.
- "Make a careful exploration of who you are
and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don't be impressed
with yourself. Don't compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the
creative best you can with your own life."
-
Galatians 6.4-5 (The Message)
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