Positive Energy Guide

While one of my brightest and most loyal-hearted clients wrestled with an inner conflict about his marriage, I had an interesting window into our humanness. As we explored feelings, actions, and possibilities it stuck me that we were skimming the water line between the airy realm of the mind and the deeper waters of the heart.

I noticed in a new and immediate way that these two realms have quite different physics, laws, subtle structures, and sensations. I sensed almost physically the way these different “realities” touch–like the great expanse of sky kissing the sea, stirring together surface-to-surface during storms but never merging or become like one another.

I was tracking my client’s buffers—the residues of trauma; invisible walls that keep threatening feelings and memories apart from awareness like a sheet of one-way glass in a fish tank. His buffers were thin. Like pointing from a boat into the depth; at certain angles of light we could see in. From the realm of mind we watched the movement of emotion like fish beneath the surface. He had enough awareness to stay with his feelings while using his skills to go up to bat for his needs. He remained loyal.

On the heels of these observations I saw the way unprocessed trauma–with thicker and more numerous buffers—can make balancing thought and feeling nearly impossible. Buffers cause thought and feeling to alternate without awareness, so they cannot modify one another--different realms a mirror surface away. Our motivations can be invisible to us even while they take shape in action.

Conflicts build up inner pressure when parts of us do not have a voice. The actions that spring from these hidden parts are not consistent with our stated values. Frightening feelings and unthinkable motivations activate the buffers that make us unaware, turning these hidden parts into exiles. So unresolved trauma can make us emotionally and spiritually deaf to the effects of our own actions. Survival mechanisms have no principles.

Reclaiming the brighter legacy of our humanity by becoming self-aware results from courageous Inner Work. As we explored in my post series on this important topic, we can develop an unshakable habit of deep yet detached self-observation.

Yet even Inner Work does not guarantee that we integrate buffered material. I am thinking of someone who excels in self-observation yet fails to apply it when triggered. He has an allergy to psychology, denouncing it frequently in favor of spirituality as a superior practice.

The role of psychology is to assist us to approach and manage the trauma hidden beneath our buffers. Once we are able to feel, identify, and interact with the issues that trigger us, drive us to dissociate, or make us act against our values, Inner Work on its own may be enough. If we cannot approach buffered issues we need frank, experienced assistance to reflect us to ourselves and free our inner exiles.

We all know people who do what they think or fear is expected of them to hold on to relationships. They resent their weakness while blaming the other person and feeling controlled. When we lack the inner strength to remain loyal to our own needs, feelings, ethics, boundaries or beliefs, attempting to be loyal to others brings up traumatic inner conflicts. These conflicts usually originate in childhood and reside behind buffers.

We may experience the other person as interfering with our ability to take care of ourselves or get our needs met. What is usually going on here is a lack of self-honesty and awareness about real needs, and about who is responsible for our care. We can ask others to participate in meeting our needs, but not to read our minds or to step in without a direct request.

Even in actual situations that force us to choose between our own needs and those of another, we can be forthright, sincere, and loving.

What do YOU do when you feel like someone is stopping you from doing what you want to do? Can you take responsibility for your feelings and remain loving even as you free yourself?

When we are loyal to ourselves, we are able to be loyal to others. At a very basic level, betraying others occurs after first betraying one’s self. When we are out of touch with our real needs–especially if we sell ourselves out and do what we think others want us to do–we are much more likely to betray. Betrayal can be a skewed attempt at self-care, with a hostile twist.

Betrayal can be blatant, or diabolically subtle. Cheap and obvious betrayal like cheating on one’s spouse or misrepresentation in business may reflect low standards and values. More shocking are betrayals from those who believe themselves to be upholding positive values. Some go to great lengths to convince themselves they are taking care of themselves or doing something emotionally healthy while creating real life dramas in which they betray.

I recently watched an intelligent professional, able to manage and guide businesses, who appeared powerful and spiritually motivated, betray a dear friend when an honest conversation would have achieved her aims without causing pain.

When betrayal seems out of character, what else is going on?

When someone betrays you it reflects on their ethics, maturity, level of spiritual development, and ability to sustain compassion. It is not a reflection on your worth, or even a matter of whether or not they love you. It is more a matter of whether they love themselves enough to face their own issues honestly.

There are psychological reasons why we betray. Issues mask feelings and motivations that the primary (conscious) personality feels a need to deny. “Triggers”—experiences that re-ignite these buried traumas—make us behave in irrational and unconscious ways. We are so much more complicated than our conscious experience.

Betrayal involves control. The betrayer keeps the betrayed person in the dark while s/he devises and starts to execute a plan, letting consequences shock or shatter as these acts set up a drama on the stage of life. This ploy is sought to ensure that the betrayed has no power. At some level of experience the person who betrays feels powerless, and may imagine that betrayal is a powerful act.

The false power of betrayal emotionally bankrupts those who rely on it. An emotionally healthy person with inner strength can and will discuss with close associates any decisions that could hurt or shock them, in advance of acting on these decisions. Out of respect they give the other person time and information, allowing them to prepare for changes.

Rational as I am, I ask myself why we do not import the skills polished in business into more intimate relations, to negotiate respectfully for what long to receive. Before risking damage to our connections with others and our self-respect, why do we not till the richest type of soil for what we’d love to grow, or woo those we love as we did initially to win intimacy? The careful, fruitful efforts we extended before we felt entitled to receive were so much more effective than acting out. But we may not be as intentional as that, or as aware of what drives us.

Betraying someone we love IS self-betrayal. We are connected. Hurting a loved one hurts our own heart.

Can you sense inside YOU the part of yourself that would betray under any possible set of circumstances? What does that part feel like in your body? How do you talk to yourself when that part rears its head?

Besides inviting joy to roost nearby, one of the most positive things we can do is to learn use difficult experiences to develop compassion and to transform ourselves. This challenging and advanced topic can deepen all-purpose insight and also support those who struggle with betrayal. Please stay with me.

Betrayal is one of the most difficult–and rewarding–emotional experiences to process positively. This makes it important to effectively resolve. My heart goes out to those who are going through betrayal. Inner experience can get so intense that even dear friends feel out of their depths and pull away, isolating those who need support. I offer this series from love.

What makes betrayal so hard to sort out?

Betrayal can be complex and confusing. Betrayal may involve spoken and unspoken issues of conduct, boundaries, belief, expectation, and entitlement.

Betrayal can be crushing and confusing. Disillusionment is usually part of the mix. (See Disillusionment as a Positive Process, Part 1 and 2) So is abandonment, literal or emotional.

Betrayal is a real opportunity to clean out our emotional closets and discover who we really are and how we really want to live.

Being betrayed increases your need for support while the doubts it breeds make you unbearably fragile. You may need help but fear advice and be too vulnerable to take it in. Advice may make you feel worse. You may have no idea who to trust, how to trust, and whether to trust. If you also wonder whether you are somehow to blame or feel shame you will be even more sensitive. Too much is triggered to sort it out alone, yet other people’s opinions can make you feel worse.

Betrayal can shake down deeply held beliefs, challenge our sense of self, and make us question our actions, principles, perception, values, relationships, and self-esteem. If we do the trench work of sorting ourselves out we can shed an old skin and come out renewed.

Sorting out betrayal requires that we distinguish between several different experiences. Betrayal can be:

• an incidental or accidental act someone takes due to lack of understanding or ethics
• a spiteful or vindictive act, intentionally unkind
• an unfortunate consequence of changing life paths when unexpressed needs have been handled without frankness and consideration

When you FEEL betrayed, what is happening? Allow your feelings to wash through you, feeling them in your body. Then aim to view the acts that occurred objectively, without allowing your emotions to color your interpretation. Alternate objective observation with pure feeling if you can.

These questions may be useful. (The answers can be “both”):

• Have you interpreted someone’s acts as betrayal, or are their acts betrayal by their origin, energy, and nature?
• Did you perceive the dark, shifty energy associated with betrayal, or do you feel betrayed due to unresolved issues?
• Was there any point in your circumstances when you might have known and stopped the betrayal before it happened? Without blame, ask yourself what was happening inside you when you did not or could not act.

The question, “Did I cause this,” can arise. Soul searching–stimulated by betrayal–can develop truthful self-observation and personal clarity. Self-blame is useless. Taking responsibility is not the same as blame.

Processing the complexities of betrayal can require a lot of thinking. Thinking too much can interfere with feeling and expressing the grief, shock, loss, sadness, anger and other feelings that betrayal evokes. Recovery takes time and compassion. Make room for both thought and feeling.

If you get stuck on “Did I cause this,” try substituting these more-useful questions:
“What role have I played that may have contributed to this situation?”
“Have I been loyal to myself in this relationship?”
“Is there something in my life that this experience can motivate me to change for the better?”

The last post will contain rubber-hits-the-road ways to get through serious and shattering betrayal. The next few explore what is going on inside that leads us to betray or be betrayed.

What have YOU discovered about betrayal? Have you been able to find any benefit in going through it?

Please share this text series with those who will find it useful.

The purpose of this post series is to learn how to become loyal to yourself—the cornerstone of a positive life. Like the mythic journeys of heros, the prize of genuine loyalty is won by journeying into your inner underworld and returning with the self-awareness to carry real virtue into daily life.

Genuine Loyalty is the first post of a detailed exploration of betrayal. Betrayal is one of the most intense of common human experiences. This makes it useful as a vehicle for transformation. Whether or not you encounter betrayal, the observations, principles, and exercises in this series will stimulate insight and Inner Work. We will approach betrayal from a number of different angles. The last post is a series of practical tips for managing life when you feel shattered.

Let’s begin with loyalty—the end of a successful journey for those who use betrayal to transform rather than wasting suffering or going numb:

Loyalty can bring peace and joy to life by sustaining close relationships and expressing personal honor.

What is loyalty? Let’s make a distinction between loyalty as a rigid practice, based on an external sense of honor, and loyalty based on authentic feeling.

Basing loyalty on externals means you behave in ways that fit with the requirements of your contracts. You do what you think is right– based on how others will interpret your actions. Following rigid codes of behavior based on external approval feels binding. It can lead you to suppress the thoughts and feelings that conflict with these codes. You may feel bound by this sort of loyalty even as you choose to maintain it. When internal feelings and external rules collide you may feel tense and restricted.

Authentic loyalty is less about doing what it takes to protect or maintain your investment in a relationship and more about honoring the loving connection you feel inside–to yourself as well as toward someone you respect. This expression of loyalty is not about the letter of a law or contract but about extending heartfelt consideration, respecting the feelings, reputation, and integrity of someone you choose to honor. Honoring them makes you feel good, not stuck.

Loyalty based on real feeling is rooted in Sincerity. (See previous post.) It is not about attempting to be blameless in the eyes of others. Rather, it seeks to protect the hearts and peace of mind of those we are loyal to, as an act of solidarity or love. This is an expression of inner beauty, not an obligation.

Like commitment that springs from choosing and valuing solidarity with a close friend or loved one, true loyalty depends on clarity about our own needs and values. When we are able to be loyal to ourselves, we can be loyal to others.

Have you explored YOUR inner experience of loyalty? What does it feel like inside when you are committed or loyal? Can you find the part of yourself which experiences loyalty as a powerful and free choice?

Inner Work is not mental, not emotional, not physical, not energy work. It synthesizes them all.

Inner Work is not the same as psychological work. It is not the same as working with systems like EFT, that release stored emotional impressions from the body. It is not the same as soul-retrieval work where we pull back chunks of our energy that have become exiled through trauma. All of these modalities have their place in healing. Inner Work is a more comprehensive process.

What is Inner Work?

Inner Work is the special effort it takes to become aware of exactly what is running us in any given moment. Inner Work rests on self-observation. It has to do with sensing—intimately and specifically, exactly what is going on in ourselves in the moment. Inner Work has to do with Being.

Inner Work has to do with learning exactly how to Wake Up the parts of ourselves that hide out, blank out, or simply do not show up while we are going about life. These are the parts that run us unconsciously. These are the parts that have agendas that cause self-sabotage. These parts may be busily working against whatever you are affirming. They work against what you want to attract with the Law of Attraction, doing some heavy-duty attracting on their own.

No amount of thought and Will overcome buried and exiled parts of ourselves. No amount of denial and focusing on positives brings them into step with an awake and aware wholeness.

What Works?

• A firm and unflinching habit of neutral self-observation
• Sensing deeply into direct experience
• Open-minded exploration
• Genuine acceptance
• Curiosity and wonder
• Courage see your blind spots and to challenge assumptions

These stances and practices permit us to use all of our life experience, including pain, to participate more fully in the miracle of life.

How has Inner Work improved the quality of your life?

Share your comments below, and please pass this post to people who will benefit.

Social trends that involve acting ultra-positive cast grim shadows. I said “acting,” not “Being.” Many of us work very hard to “be positive”–by busily judging others and ourselves when one of us expresses distress.

Distress generally indicates unmet needs, including the need for expression. Disregarding distress is the opposite of being in touch; Being Present. Distress, when we carefully heed it and make an intelligent response, can keep us from developing illness, allowing problems to build up, overlooking life purpose, or becoming emotionally isolated.

I am not suggesting that we indulge a habit of constant complaint instead of taking action. I am suggesting compassionate presence, authenticity, and constructive action.

When pain comes knocking and we ignore it, it tends to knock more loudly. Don’t make pain break down your door.

Do not waste pain. What does this mean?

Pain is an awakener. Pain can bear gifts. We can discover or create advantages through pain when it is present. I am not talking about trying to convince yourself with your mind, but actually using unavoidable pain for positive processes.

Here are some examples of how to use pain:

• Notice what is going on so we can intervene while issues are still small
• To awaken compassion and open your heart
• To discover who we are deep inside and more about life
• To learn what we resist and what we want
• To inspire new responses to situations
• To create opportunities for positive change
• To direct our attention to issues we have been ignoring

These examples are abstract. I will address possibilities concretely in “Part Two, Using Pain to Improve Your Life”

If you bring forth what is within you,
What you bring forth will save you.
If you do not bring forth what is within you,
What you do not bring forth will destroy you.
—Jesus, from The Gospel According to Thomas

How do YOU use pain to your advantage, without courting more?

I love symptoms. Why? Because they are direct guidance from the body.

Symptoms tell us where to dig to identify the exact issue to address to support health and personal growth.

Symptoms are doorways to deeper self-awareness.

You may well ask, Do we have to be sick to grow? Heavens no. The more intimate we become with subtle variations in sensation, emotion, expression, and motivation, the less we depend on symptoms to let us know. Meanwhile, they serve us.

Avoid falling into the perfection trap of thinking that being symptom-free makes one somehow better than those who have symptoms. I have never seen anyone without symptoms. I have only seen people who were not able to identify any themselves.

Having known many at close range, I have observed that even the most advanced spiritual teachers, doctors, and healers have symptoms. Our symptoms may relate to excessive sensitivity to energy, compassion unbalanced by detachment, or issues taken on from clients or followers, accidentally, or in a spirit of sacrifice.

As long as we have bodies to learn with we will have symptoms to learn from.

Symptoms, intense feelings, or inner experiences do not mean that something is “wrong.” Wrong means it should not be there; that it is bad. Symptoms are information.

Symptoms can be cleansing, awakening, balancing, or deepening. They reflect to us and help us to own parts of ourselves we have been cut off from, so we can become whole.

Distress is a guideline. Distress, carefully heeded, can keep us from developing unnecessary symptoms.

Ellen Hayakawa (author and spiritual leader) and I were discussing the modern trend toward believing that being positive means not having unpleasant feelings. Ellen laughed hard and said, “How do they think we can be so positive!? It’s because we go deeply into our suffering and do our inner work! The reason we HAVE positive energy is because we do all our work on the shadow/sh*t side of things.”

Life is a full spectrum deal. Being positive is not about fearing and avoiding feelings. Shutting off parts of ourselves is not a positive process, but speaks to the kind of defense against life that fragments us in the first place.

It is positive to use any discomfort we feel to learn to address our real needs. Self-knowledge and openness to life free us to feel authentic joy, love, and peace.

Symptoms invite us to look at how we care for ourselves, what we feel inside, and how we manage our energy. They serve us in owning our whole, radiant selves through thick and thin.

Has a symptom improved your life by giving you the chance to discover things about who you are and what you need?

Please share your story in the comment box.

How to Avoid Being Vampire Bait

Recognizing “vampire” behavior patterns and “victim” patterns that invite being drained will help keep you out of a relationship that sucks. You deserve to thrive in a loving relationship. This text addresses predisposing issues that attract people who draw energy.

Let’s address the internal social isolation and alienation that lead to being susceptible to vampires.

If you feel that almost no one understands you:

• Develop more skill in communicating who you are
• Give people time to learn
• Allow others to learn through their mistakes, just as you do
• Assume good will while talking to iron out misunderstandings
• Let others know what they need to know about you for you to feel understood
• Seek out friends who have had similar experiences
• Quit taking what people do personally
• Cherish and focus on the friends who CAN understand you
• Hold an open place in your heart for more excellent friends and seek to recognize them when they show up in your life

Relaxing Your Needs:

• Be authentic and vulnerable in your friendships, knowing that you will lose the ones that don’t fit for you while finding deep and loving friendships.
• Develop a support network.
• Contemplate the differences between love and dependency.
• Get perspective by imaging about what would be left in your relationship if sex wasn’t a part of it.
• Contemplate the impact of flattery
• Make intentional decisions about your relationship choices based on solid criteria
• Learn to recognize the feeling in your body when someone begins to draw your energy.
• Consider the effects of your relationship on your life goals over time.
• Study the criteria for personality disorders if you are in a relationship with someone who may have one. (See links in Part 5)

On needing to feel special and different:
Relax that! Everybody is.
Practice valuing your authenticity and allowing yourself to be loved by those who are naturally compatible with you. Concern yourself less about how you are seen by strangers.

On needing to be protected:
Learn how to feel safe in your body. Learning to feel safe may take assistance from skilled healers or therapists. The experience of safety depends on our how we hold our energy.

On being loving:
Ditch the belief that it is spiritual to endure pain and abuse and remain loving. Yes, it is spiritual to love all of life, but that doesn’t mean you have to stick around. Love from farther away! You’re responsible to love yourself first.

Do you know anyone in a relationship that drains their vital forces? Please comment.

Share this Vampire Series with those who need the information.

Moving from Calling People Energy Vampires into Self-Care

People with certain personality disorders do suck energy.
They are wounded.
This type of deep, core wound is not easy to heal.

Calling people vampires if they seduce us into giving them energy is becoming popular. I am not suggesting calling these people vampires: We all have wounds. We are all much more than our wounds. The term “energy vampires” is useful to wake us up to what is going on. I am suggesting keeping your eyes wide open for how people impact you, so you can choose wisely how you use your vital force. Once we can do this we can lose the need to label and simply take care of ourselves.

Persons with character disorders resist treatment for the following reasons:

• Seeking treatment may conflict with the need to be seen as special, perfect, and intact. Resistance to self-awareness (denial) is part and parcel.
• Issues about care may be projected onto the therapist, making treatment challenging for all but the most skilled and knowledgeable professionals.
• The consummate acting skills that can accompany the disorder may make it possible to fool the professional.
• The individual may fire the professional if treatment approaches the real issues.
• Initial wounding usually occurred before the person could talk, making it harder to process.
• Facing wounds can bring up intense pain, fear, and self-loathing in the process of healing.
• Even gentle and loving support to get professional help can be interpreted as character assassination.

Learning not to take the person’s symptoms personally is crucial to emotional survival.

Do not blame yourself for getting involved with someone with a character disorder, or for not knowing. How would you know before being exposed to it? The best psychotherapist I know of told me once that she “dated all of the different character disorders” as she learned to recognize healthy relationships.

Do not blame yourself for “attracting” the relationship.
Seek to discover what you can learn about yourself to make yourself strong and compassionate, with good boundaries. This will improve your life!

Look less to the cause and more for the purpose in your experiences.

Everyone has needs and may be needy from time to time. Needing energy, attention, and support sometimes does not make someone a vampire. Being constantly consumed with one’s own needs to the exclusion of the needs of others sucks.

I have observed people who fear others’ needs accusing those who are willing and able to give with love of being draining. These accusers were confused about needs. Ironically, the way they handled their concerns was draining. Be a person who looks to your own issues as well when seeking to understand others, and use information responsibly.

What have you learned about caring for yourself compassionately around draining people?

Vampire Mystique and Character Disorders, Two

Please understand that in comparing those with character disorders to vampires, I am not without compassion for their suffering. They, like vampires, may be quite loveable—but dangerously so. These parallels are for the purpose of recognizing these issues to keep yourself safe, not for looking down on people. I will say more about this in Post 7.

Let’s look at some of the parallels between vampires and people who have character disorders:

Need to feed on the energy of others to survive

• Intense craving to be loved and bonded
• Unrealistic and impossible demands on loved ones, draining those they love
• Seductive behavior based on emotional needs
• Intense compelling or glowing eyes when beginning to draw energy
• Being the only one who can understand
• The need to possess those they love body and soul
• Eternal youth

Vampires do not age. Persons with character disorders are emotionally stuck at the stage of development when their wound occurred. In fiction, the besotted human worries about growing old and no longer meeting the vampire’s standards for perfection. Perfectionists make easy prey for vampires because of the tendency to accept blame. In real life—after the sexual infatuation wears off—what happens is that the partner gradually becomes aware of the immaturity of the person in the vampire role.

Warning signs of character disorders:

• Their feelings matter and yours do not even register when stated clearly
• Their actions and words are grossly out of synch
• Feeling drained after interacting
• Their idea of you loving them requires every ounce of you and it’s not enough
• They do anything to be seen well by others and are totally different in private
• Casual emotional cruelty and an inability to acknowledge it
• Lack of conscience about impact on others
• Uncharacteristic loss of goals or life direction around the partner
• Needless conflict—may be a way to get your energy out so they can slurp it up
• Expect you to read their mind and anticipate every need and upset if you don’t
• Feeling that you have to walk on eggshells to keep from setting them off

Be sure to see the links in Post 7 for specific criteria if you think you may be dealing with a character disorder—someone else’s or your own.

It’s natural to love people with character disorders, but mandatory to love yourself as much or more, or you are likely to be drained and derailed from your purposes. These disorders are resistant to treatment, which is sad, because some wonderful people have them, making them difficult to impossible to live them with and remain healthy. If someone you love has one, learn all you can about the disorder so you can recognize behavior patterns and don’t get sucked in to thinking it’s all you. You will probably need professional support to stay emotionally healthy.

What do you do to stay in touch with yourself when you are around someone who is out of balance?