Healing the heart filled with daggers, letting in the good: chapter 6

1. Healing the heart filled with daggers, letting in the good: chapter 6 • When we are born, our hearts are 100% open. • With each dagger or insult: physical, verbal, and or sexual abuse, neglect etc. our hearts become less and less open. • Each place that has a dagger is shut down, and closed up.

2. If your heart is shut down: • It keeps you from letting in the good, positive life-sustaining energy of love. • Your heart unconsciously becomes a magnet to those that can give you the amount of love that your heart is open to receive. • Therefore, if your heart is shut down, you attract a person who is miserly or incapable of giving or receiving love.

3. The most painful and deeply embedded daggers are the most difficult to remove: • These are the most essential to remove to gain 100% capacity to love. • A person that really “hears” with their heart can assist in removing daggers: corrective emotional experience. • Once removed, and you are able to give love to yourself, you will attract healthier, loving people into your life.

4. What if you are still deficient in self-esteem, self confidence and/ self-love: • You will attract the energies that frustrate these deficiencies unless: • * you fill up the holes by validating and loving yourself or • * leave unfulfilling relationships • What do unfulfilling relationships feel like?

5. Attraction to the bad:Chapter 7 • Burning stoves-(usually “no” people who are manipulative, controlling and abusive) touch them and they burn you. * You tell yourself, next time this will not happen, however, they burn you again. * Hopefully, after a blistered hand, you decide that you cannot change the nature of the stove and you decide not to touch it anymore or wear a glove. Something that protects you.

6. Nice people (“yes” or “maybe” people) who are incapable of giving you what you need: • “dry wells” people who cannot give you what you need in the physical, spiritual and emotional and other realms. • You go to the “dry well” hoping it will quench your thirst, but it does not offer water, you feel frustrated, disappointed, angry and hurt. • You hope to be understood, mirrored or accepted but this does not happen.

7. Are there “dry wells or burning stoves” in your life? Please describe: • Is one of your parents, or significant other one of these?

8. Why are people attracted to “dry wells”? Chapter 8 • Low self-esteem, due to early non-mirroring experiences as a child: mother does not reflect back child’s feelings of frustration and joy. You know what you are feeling because of what is mirrored or reflected back to you. • If the mother is not “in tune” or is distracted, then you imprint feelings of emptiness or feel unloved and this becomes “normal”. • Everything you do has an opportunity for feedback.

9. Father’s role: • As you grow, if your father is truly mature and sensitive, you will feel seen, heard and understood. • If your father is self-centered (not present, emotionally and physically) and needs to be idealized to make him feel good and powerful, you will be susceptible to attract people into your life that need this and will not see you clearly.

10. Children respond to narcissistic parents by: • Becoming numb to their own needs. • Put their feeling aside in order to take care of their parents. • Children have no or little sense of self and consequently attract “dry wells” into their lives. • Become depressed, and learn to be helpless. • Repeated empathetic failure, harsh judgments, rejections erode self-confidence.

11. Low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence can lead to self-consciousness: • Constantly wondering what other people think and feel about you, ruminating thoughts. • Need to change thinking from “What do they think about me?” to “What do I think about them?”. • The less self-love you have the more you will be pointing a finger at others and three fingers at yourself.

12. Dealing with your own feelings of emptiness: • Validate and self-sooth yourself (without drugs, alcohol or other destructive activities). Repeat affirmations, journal writing, meditating in order to find your center. • One must use their inner eye or 6th chakra to “see” clearly. • Find “old souls” so that you will be seen more fully and will feel more fulfilled.

13. The 6th chakra: • Is an energy center between your eyes that helps you to see crystal clear. • On page 80-81, there is an outline of how a person can only see the part of you that resonates with them. • If the other person is as evolved as you then they can see all of you, if not they only see a part of you.

14. Difficult to rid yourself of all “no” category people: • Learn what you can from them, gain some skills from each experience to help you in your future. • You maybe in the “no” category, you maybe so injured that you cannot make an accurate assessment of another and so you make judgments based on a “cloudy lense”.

15. The more you get to know yourself, by spending time alone, or getting accurate feedback from others. The more you will know when you are “regressed” because emotions will be more intense and amplified. Describe the case study on page 82-83 and relate it to something in your life.

16. Keeping out the bad: what have you learned about emotional daggers? Chapter 9-10 • Can criticism and judgment be more than verbal? • What happens when you do not call someone on their criticism or judgment?

17. Asserting your needs with a“yes or no” person: • With a “no” person it may not be the most effective to show your vulnerability. • With a “yes” person it may be more effective. • One can utilize non-violent communication: • DEAR: Describe, Express feelings, Assert needs and Request something. • Like any language it takes practice, practice Practice.

18. Other techniques that work with a “no” person: • Stay neutral • Do not bite when they put out the “bait”- to get into an argument. • Agree to disagree • Use statements like “are you aware when you say statements such as…..you come across as being very judgmental?”

19. Continued: • “Are you aware that when you have such hostile energy, I feel a sense of violence between us ?”. • If they are creating an emotional tornado, it is important not to get swept away in the turmoil. • How can you stay strong, centered and grounded?

20. When people are pushy or energy draining and ask you to do something: • If you are caught off guard, say that you “will get back to them”. • Space visits with them, leave lots of time in-between. • Give yourself time to think about what you really want.

21. If you find it difficult to say “no thank-you” to a genuinely sweet person, say that you are “feeling over-extended and unable to get together right now”. • If you over-ride your true feelings, if you go out even though you really do not wish to, you do so at the cost at maintaining a healthy boundary.

22. Remember maintaining healthy boundaries and being totally honest will help you in being spiritually free. * If you consistently sweep your true feelings under the carpet, the insidious energy of resentment will build in you!!!! • Resentment builds walls within yourself and between you and others. • Resentment can also be turned inward, where you stuff the emotions down with food, cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, and other anesthetics.

23. Tools for achieving a space of neutrality: Chapter 11. • The pre-requisite for healthy communication is to be in a space of neutrality. • You do not feel the intensity of emotions from the past that gets triggered from interacting with people.

24. Two pathways exist to enable you not to feel the intensity of emotions from the past: • First, is to feel the past pain and bleed the emotional charge: * e.g. crying about the past with someone who truly listens with their heart. • Second, “backburner” the regressed feelings, so you are able to stay neutral and in the present time.

25. The more grounded and centered you are, the stronger your core will be: • Then you will not be thrown off by negative energies. • You stay centered by imagining you are in a bubble shield, with your focus behind your eyes. • You can also imagine a grounding cord that attaches from the base of your spine to the center of the earth. • You can also imagine a cord from the heavens above through your body center and focus behind your eyes.

26. Remember, to try to achieve balance: • You want to feel your feelings but not be a “prisoner” of them. • You also do not want to be disassociated or disconnected from your feelings and be like a Spock. • Either way you may act inappropriately in a situation and make it worse.

27. Healthy, effective communication: • Does not mean you have to agree or sway the person’s feelings or opinions to your point of view (tennis court and weather report). • It means that each person understands the other person’s reality. • You will know you are dealing with a “no” category person because they are defensive, negative or reactive.

28. Energy Cords: • Imagine that there are energy cords between people. • When understanding occurs, no static is created. • When misunderstanding occurs, static is created-if this is not cleared, a barrier of anxiety and tension is present.

29. In dysfunctional families: • Feelings are swept “under the rug”, and static accumulate over and over until it becomes huge. • If you come from this type of family structure, you will have to retrain yourself to endure feeling the anxiety of confronting static. • When you do so, your connections will be clear and you will no longer feel isolated behind a barrier of stagnant energy.

30. Boundaries that are too brittle,Chapter 12): • If someone is generally in the “yes” or “maybe” category and hurts or insults you and you find yourself shutting down and shutting that person out, your boundary may be too brittle. • If you shut down before attempting to clear your 50% then you create blocks in your energy field.

31. Continued: • You need to express your feelings, and need to move the negative energy of hurt, resentment, or anger outside of • yourself and space. • If the other person does not apologize, it is up to you to self-sooth in a very healthy way.

32. Partnerships, chapter 13: • Everything you learned about communication and boundaries gets tested when you are in a partnership that is close to your heart. • Old issues are susceptible to getting triggered. • As we let in intimacy, our vulnerability to abandonment, rejection, loss of identity and self-esteem is heightened and “on-the-line”. • We are not able to understand the pain we are experiencing.

33. Modes of personalities: • Each person wants their emotional wound healed. • We each have three modes of personalities: • Adult, child and parent • The “child” is the place that we regress to when our pain is triggered-it does not matter how old you are, you can be 80 years old.

34. The parent persona: • is “rule oriented” sometimes the critical perspective. • Makes us feel like authorities or how we viewed our parents, teachers or police while we were growing up.

35. The adult persona: • Is mature. • In the present time. • Aware and grounded. • Feels more at peace. • Rational • Does not bring in past-time baggage. • Unlike the child or parent which are regressed states.

36. Various combinations of these “personas” can occur: • Parent-child • Parent-adult • Parent-parent • Child-child • Child-adult • Adult-adult

37. Healthy communication: • If one person is in the “adult” mode there is more hope that clearer, healthier communication will occur. • If a person stays in the adult mode and a space of neutrality and does not respond in a defensive manner, nor do they let their boundaries get trampled upon, then the negative behavior will get bounced back to the regressed person.

38. Parent-parent communication: • Creates a real power struggle, both partners try to control and coerce the other into submission. • These interactions feel ill-intentioned, abusive, manipulative, critical and condescending. • Both partners “lock horns”.

39. Parent-child interactions: • The “parent” is harsh, controlling, authoritative, tries to project a sense of power, being “one up or above”. • The “child” is hurt, not knowing how to assert self and feeling ineffectual.

40. Negotiating space and boundaries in relationships: • Common challenge for most couples, negotiating time alone and time together. • Usually one person wants more of one or the other. • Of course the more “adult” you are the easier it is to deal with all the feelings that come up. • Issues of abandonment and engulfment come up.

41. Being “left alone vs. being so close and losing your sense of self”: • Of course the roots of which come from childhood and the individuation process. • In relationships, usually one person becomes the distancer and aloof and the other clingy and/or needy. • Both are considered “drama” and not acting from a healthy-whole and centered space.

42. Forgiveness, chapter 14: • It is important to understand that being too understanding (sweeping your feelings under the carpet) can be a defense mechanism and keeps you from feeling anger-the dignity emotion when boundaries are damaged.

43. Forgiveness, continued: • Yet, forgiveness is a very powerful healing activity and it begins with you and forgiving yourself, acknowledging those you have hurt, intentionally and unintentionally. • Sometimes you need to summon your inner nurturer and , if you find yourself unable to forgive a “yes” person, even though they have apologized you may need to go to a “well of pain” and heal a very deep wound.

44. Coming full circle: the semi-permeable membrane, chapter 15: • The truly centered person: is always in the observing mode. • The regressed “jabs” boomerang back to the offender. • They are warm and open and let in love.

45. It takes a lot of: • Love and compassion for yourself to nurture your inner child. • Surrounding yourself with “yes” people, before you can let go of resentments from the past. • Love, which is heart felt and is the greatest healer of pain.

46. You can also: • See “jabs” clearly, and process your own pain internally, thus letting jabs bounce off your “bubble”. • When you see jabs clearly, or they may penetrate your bubble and throw you off center and into a regression.

47. Tools for feeling solid and centered:Chapter 16 • The act of visualizing energy keeps you consciously observing yourself and the outer world. • You cannot be aware of energies if you are disconnected from yourself, “numbed out” to your feelings and outer world. • Meditation-being “present” in your body. • Assignment: do the meditations on pages145-151