REFLECTIONS ON LOVE

I fondly remember my beginning years in recovery.  First was God's love.  It reached me through the goodness of recovering addicts, those strangers who understood me, accepted me and nurtured me back to sanity.  My fellow addicts who needed me  saying: "Keep coming back, we need you."  That was a time in my life when no one needed me, wanted to be around me, and I certainly could not stand my own company.  God's love and wisdom touched my heart.  As I kept coming back, I started to love the recovering addicts.  The joy and gratitude were contagious.  They appreciated the second chance and the new life they had.  They were expressing their gratitude openly and freely.  That was a time in my life when I was filled with expectations, disappointments, regrets, shame, a lot of blame and self-pity.  Their love expressed as humility, as selfless service, as generosity and courage to start over served as a new model for life.

God's gift of love through my fellow addicts was a new vision of life, of recovery and of behavior. LOVE = SERVICE and SERVICE = BEGINNING OF SELF-LOVE.  From the self-absorbed view of life, I was learning to make space for others.  At the beginning, in a traditionally codependent fashion, I replaced "life: with recovery and I immersed myself in recovery, wanting to transform my life.

God's love acting in the rooms of recovery taught me balance, discipline, and the ability to give and receive.  Recovery became my graduate school of living where I acquire relational skills to live life on life's terms.  It taught me to go practice these skills in my family and society,  and  as I learned and practiced these new skills, I started to repair the mistakes of the past.  As I took responsibilities and became trustworthy and dependable, self-esteem and self-love emerged and they blended with my growing love of God and others.

Carl Young, who greatly influenced the recovery movement and process, worked with archetypes.  He said that at the beginning we go through the phase of the athlete - we are pre- occupied with our bodies, our looks and appeal we have to others.  He described the next phase of development as the archetype of the warrior; the time of running after accomplishments, success and power.  Both of these phases are quite self-centered resulting in a self-centered and egotistical type of love. Young described the next developmental stage as the phase of the statesman - one who is capable of decentralization --capable of agape love,  the love of others in an interdependent fashion.  This means loving others, not as an escape from one's empty life, but as a free expression of one's true self.

Erich Fromm says: " Infantile love follows the principle I love you because I am loved

                                   Mature love follows the principle: I am loved because I love

                                   Immature love says: I love you because I need you

                                  Mature love says: I need you because I love you

Motherhood and marriage have been my "practice ground", stretching, healing, validating, and rewarding.  They have required a type of love based on principles of recovery: Honesty, Humility, Purity of intent, Forgiveness, Generosity and Trust, not with strangers, but with people who were part of the pain of the past and who on daily basis have helped me rewrite the script of dysfunctional family into recovering family.  It takes a committed God-centered love to do this and I have enormous gratitude for my husband, my children and grandchildren for their generosity and willingness to continue to rewrite the script of our lives.

For the past 12 years I have been the primary caretaker of two elderly and ill parents.  My Dad made his transition in 2003 but my Step Mom still lives with us.  She's 92 years old.  This has been a brand new exercise of love.  I have learned more about powerlessness, surrender, trust and God's Will through this process than ever before.  I have learned and I am still learning what it means to be a grown-up and mature person.  The roles have been reversed.  I have no parents I am the parent and the custodian.  A new chapter of partnership has been added to my marriage.  A new understanding of vulnerability of life and true values has been acquired.  The entire chapter on intimacy has been rewritten.  Mostly caring for my parents has given me the conviction that the only thing we can acquire in our lifetimes and the only thing that we take with us at the end of the journey called life is our consciousness and ability to love.

This phase of my life has taught me that my essence, my spiritual imprint and DNA is love, and that the purpose of my life is to be and manifest that love on a daily basis in ever-greater quantity and quality.  This at one time was an intellectual concept, a spiritual belief and recovery words with a great sound!  Now, witnessing my parent's final stages has brought this into my feeling nature and has given me a difeferent intuitive understanding of love and life.  It is the unfavorable circumstances, the difficult people, and painful events that develop our spiritual muscles, such as resilience, endurance, courage, strength and compassion.  The deposits we make into our emotional and spiritual bank accounts are the only investments with a true guaranteed return.  Enron and a few other greedy corporations are the living proof of that.

As Gary Zukav said:"Eventually we come to understand that love heals everything and love is all there is."

AFFIRMATION FOR THANKFULNESS

God is not a giant Pez dispenser popping out one candy after another.  It is not a distant deity sitting on high witing for requests so that they may be either granted or denied.  God's presence encompasses you and responda to your consciousness by attracting into your life that which mirrors your beliefs.

I am grateful and worthy of every good thing life has to offer.

Science of Mind www.scienceofmind.com

REFLECTIONS ON TIME AND EMOTIONAL UNAVAILABILITY

In my book "The Imprint Journey" I talked about a profound Imprint and deep seated belief regarding time and emotional availability.  It was a generational and familial imprint.  In my family of origin time was perceived as something that comes in limited quantities.  The demands on one's time always exceeded the supply and availability.

The predominant belief system in my family of origin was lack, scarcity and not "enough ness".  That applied to time as well.  Time was seen as easily and rapidly consumed or wasted.  There was never enough time and time was irreplaceable.

Time dictated activities and behaviors:  expectations, productivity, business, taking care of others were high on the list of priorities.  Life seemed to be a permanent race for time, resulting in people's unavailability.  Time in my family was measured in two categories:  the past and the future with unavailability for the Now moment.

The past was rooted in the hardship, struggles, lack, and poverty my parents experienced in their childhoods; and these were projected into the future creating their unavailability in the NOW moment.

I was an only child.  My mother was always busy and had no time for me.  My father was busy and absent and had no time for me.  With my adult intellect I fully understand the reasons for their unavailability.  However as a small child, emotionally I have internalized their lack of time and emotional unavailability as follows:

I am not good enough

People don't want to be with me

I am not worthy of their time

Time is presence; Presence is Love

As I don't have it I must not be lovable

Later these imprints became my value system:

To be busy and productive is more important than to be intimate

If it is to be it's all up to me, if I don't do it who will

For years these imprints determined many of my choices, reactions and behaviors.  My self esteem was tied to other people's time management.  I repeated my parents patterns with my own unavailability.  I compensated by becoming over available to others (no boundaries) and I neglected my  own needs.  I attracted more people who were physically, emotionally, sexually, financially and spiritually unavailable to me, thus validating the subconscious belief that I am not lovable and I do not deserve their time.  I continued the family's race against time.

By becoming aware of my imprints and working my transformational program I have changed these imprints.  This year with the launching of the book, the workshops and talks, the interviews etc., time became once again an issue to revisit.  In April my husband and me attended my granddaughter's wedding in Montreal and in May our youngest granddaughter's graduation from NYU in New York.  My 92 year old step-mom who lives with us, currently requires more of my time, attention and care.  Than there's my regular life, my marriage, my work, my family in other words Life.  It is very easy to become priority number 25 in one's life.

The great thing about awareness, consciousness and working a spiritual program is the ability to snap out of the illusion quickly.  I was called to revisit and clarify daily in which time I live: past, future or present.  Now is the only time that I am connected to God/Higher Power/Universe/Light, call it as you wish.  The Now Moment is the only moment where I am aware of who I truly am.  Now is the only time where I have the ability to trust, hope, decide, choose, delegate, be empowered, aligned and surrendered.

In the now I am connected to the Abundance in my life instead of the lack of my past.  In the now I am connected to God's guidance and empowerment giving me manageability versus the fear of the future and the craving for control.  In the now moment I am aware that I am enough and I surrender the fears and anxieties instead of medicating them with self limiting or destructive thinking and behaviors.  In the now I have the choice to be creative and expressive versus overwhelmed and depressing.

I used to view time as linear and now time is vertical right here, right now, and I experience synergy, synchronicity and serendipity.  The awareness of the now moment allows my true Integrity: what I think, what I feel, what I say and what I do are One and congruent I am no more pulled in four different directions.  Result less stress, more energy, Divine Order and everything gets done with time to enjoy it.  For me this is a major Paradigm Shift. My head knew it now my feelings believe it and for that I am truly grateful.

TODAY'S AFFIRMATION

I will not be held hostage by fearful thinking.  I celebrate the goodness of life. I can see past my current conditions into my future.  I envision a life blessed with love, joy, ease, prosperity, and health.  I am grateful and blessed.