Archive for category Pitfalls I’ve Fallen Into
TftD: The Paradox of Joy and Hurt
Posted by Doctapaul in Healing, Life's Changes, Love, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Quirky Ideas, Relationships, Self Development, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Tip for the Day on March 20, 2013
“The person who hurts you is often the person you run to, in order to feel better.”
Image sourced from Moments Count
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Author of Learn to Love and Be Loved in Return, 2012: a twist in the tail and Defrag your Soul
May ‘La Force’ Be With You
Posted by Doctapaul in Business, Coaching, Healing, Leadership, Life's Changes, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Self Development, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Tarot, Tip for the Day, Training & Development on March 19, 2013
Willpower + Commitment + Self Trust = Faith in Yourself
Slightly revised extract from Defrag your Soul
Hu-man did not invent the wheel, the steam engine, the aeroplane or the nuclear bomb without the capacity to imagine each invention in the first place – along with willpower, commitment and trust in its own ability to create such inventions. The same holds true for the future you seek for yourself.
To invoke such ‘magic’ you need to perceive your ‘image-in-ions’ as highly desirable and have faith in yourself. You may find you need that faith in yourself for many other reasons:
The road can be long and hard.
I found thousands of ways how not to make a light bulb.
I only needed one way to make it work.
(Paraphrased from) Thomas Edison
You can meet many setbacks and stumbling blocks. Being a Leo, I’ve found affairs of the heart to be the biggest area of learning. The area, more than anywhere else, where in the past I have disowned facets about myself. Such setbacks and heartaches required a vast amount of patience with myself as well.
You may be ridiculed, ignored and isolated.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Revolutionaries: Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, Oscar Wilde and Pink Floyd were all ridiculed either by their peers or the media before the world accepted the beauty and wisdom of their works.
When truth attempts to usurp not-truth, those protectors of not-truth in power often do all they can to suppress it; without bringing it or the truth tellers to the public’s attention.
Although I am a typical loner in my daily life, my awareness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty and justice has prevented me from feelings of isolation.
Albert Einstein
In my early years when I first got into spirituality, I was prone to be outwardly enthusiastic about my journey within. Most of the people around me were not into ‘it’ at all.
When, for instance at a wine party, I started spouting off about “shining light into my inner darkness”, I would get different types of response. The minority would show interest but the silent majority would remain quiet and walk away to join another group who talked about ‘normal’ things. Some who objected strongly to what I was saying would let me know of their views in no uncertain terms. Others would ridicule me face to face or behind my back. It is often easier to ridicule something than to face it; especially when that something invokes fear in you.
There’s a paradox too. If I’m attracting ridicule, is it because I fear it? Probably yes. In the meantime, I do my best to avoid responding to ridicule with ridicule or any other animalistic response. Sometimes I fail.
You may choose to isolate or distance yourself.
I go to the occasional reunion where others see changes in me. I no longer take much interest in ‘normal’ day-to-day small talk, like who is going to win ‘the current Saturday night TV contest’ or get thrown out of some ‘reality’ show. Many of my interests have changed and, perhaps more significantly, my perspective has changed.
For example, I feel distanced when people complain about being the victims of an economic recession that we have collectively created. At the same time, I ask myself, “Why have I attracted this conversation? I wonder where I am not being accountable for what I receive in life; whom or what am I blaming?”
I do not consider myself superior in any way and do my best not to come across as an evangelist. It’s that I’ve moved on. If people ask my opinion about the latest TV game show, I probably don’t have one. If we’re discussing global events, I speak my views.
I prefer to distance myself from day-to-day chatter or ‘complaining about the system’ – both of which I might have engaged in once upon a time.
I still ‘rabbit on’ a lot about two of my passions though: football and music (probably more than I do about spirituality J) and, undoubtedly, I distance a few people from myself in the process as well.
You may be opposed violently.
When all other attempts at their suppression fail, truth tellers face their sternest test; to stand firm and risk physical harm from those who stand to fall by truth. I could cite religious, political and civil-rights leaders, pacifists and innocent people – all whom have been attacked, beaten and some murdered ignominiously to prevent truth from being revealed to, or sustained in, the world.
What others do not do to you, you may do to yourself.
Without willpower, you limit the depth of your learning; you only go so far and you only get so much in return. When you commit yourself 100% to a project, that’s what you can receive in return, 100%. On the other hand, if you commit less than 100%, you get at best what you put into it and sometimes you get nothing. Ask any seasoned salesperson.
________________________________________
Act as if you make a difference. Act as if you count. Act as if and you will…
Notice the focus is on your journey, more than the outcome.
From Warrior to Magician
By Paul C Burr
Toward the flower in full bloom,
Full Truth in the noonday sun.
Devoid of ego, it casts no shadow.
With no nooks and crannies to hold darkness,
All it can now do is give of itself.
Unafraid of being cut down (crucified) by those, in power, who fear Truth.
The Warrior stands bereft of armour, sword and shield,
Secure in what they know is Truth.
No words of explanation required.
No fear to control or manage.
The darkness embraced.
The fear dissolved.
Armed with only Truth and compassion,
The Warrior thus becomes the Magician.
This is the way of the Tarot.
This is the true definition of White Magic.
Tis called redemption.
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Author of Learn to Love and Be Loved in Return, 2012: a twist in the tail and Defrag your Soul
Follow @paulburr
Tip for the Day: Truth in a Relationship
Posted by Doctapaul in Business, Coaching, Healing, Leadership, Life's Changes, Love, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Relationships, Self Development, Selling, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Tip for the Day on March 15, 2013
Truth drives out falsity, the mother of lack-of-trust. When trust, the bedrock of a relationship, crumbles you have nothing to build on.
Image sourced from Jeff Beck
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Author of Learn to Love and Be Loved in Return, 2012: a twist in the tail and Defrag your Soul
Follow @paulburr
Self-Coaching Tool about Relationships.
Posted by Doctapaul in Business, Coaching, Leadership, Marketing, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Relationships, Self Development, Selling, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Tip for the Day, Training & Development on March 14, 2013
Rather than seeing success as a specific outcome, change your focus to seeing it as a network of ’10 out of 10′ relationships. When everyone who can stop you achieving success is onside – there is no one and nothing to stop you.
Image sourced from Think Holistic, Act Personal
You cannot achieve success without forging equally successful relationships – starting with the relationship you have with yourself.
Think of a business or personal situation that’s important to you right now.
Who are all the people (include yourself) who can stop you from being successful (i.e. they have the power of veto)?
Give your relationship with each person a score out of 10, where 10 means ‘the relationship with this person is exactly where we both want it to be’.
To get the relationship to a 10, what does each person on the list want from you?
Are you willing to give it? (And what might you want in return?)
If so when?
Go give.
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Author of Learn to Love and Be Loved in Return, 2012: a twist in the tail and Defrag your Soul
Follow @paulburr
Tip for the Day: The Purpose of Duality
Posted by Doctapaul in Healing, Life's Changes, Love, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Relationships, Self Development, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Tip for the Day on March 13, 2013
α
/|\
Take a quiet moment to yourself. What’s the biggest issue you face? Now look at yourself in an imaginary mirror. Which part of you attracted that issue? For what purpose?
Remember the ‘wet and dry’ of life. You can’t know what love or joy is without knowing what not-love and not-joy is.
Wisdom
Life’s journey is about discerning that part of you that attracts love from that part that doesn’t – and putting that wisdom into practice.
\|/
α
(If you feel you can’t put your heart and soul into practice then ‘act as if’. Pretend, like an innocent child, with no ulterior motive other than the curiosity of seeing what happens.)
Picture sourced from Handwriting Analysis
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Author of Learn to Love and Be Loved in Return, 2012: a twist in the tail and Defrag your Soul
Follow @paulburr
The Psychic Vampire, Unseen in the Mirror
Posted by Doctapaul in Healing, Love, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Relationships, Self Development on February 20, 2013
They suck you in. You[1] don’t feel their fangs puncture your neck. One minute you are drawn to the creature’s alluring charm. The next, you are smitten by their mesmerising power that deceives and lulls you into submission. You allow them under your skin and your life-force starts to bleed out of you.
What was the attraction to someone so beautiful, in dire need of your help? Was it ‘noblesse-oblige?’ What reward did you seek for your chivalry and kindness? Did you hope that you would receive a thank you in the form of love – be it physical, emotional or spiritual? If not, did you seek the dependency of another to satisfy your own false-ego? Either way, you belong to them for now.
You feel an urge to rescue the creature from all its woes. You pay each ‘bill’ they send your way – in the form of time, money, physical and emotional energy. You submit to the creature’s will. You allow yourself to become psychically enslaved. You, the ‘rescuer’, become their ‘victim’. They, ‘the victim’ become your ‘persecutor’. The deeper you allow their ‘bite’; the greater the duress, intensity, frequency and duration of the energy that flows out from your life-force.
You chastise and remonstrate with them your frustrations but you still hold back – for fear of losing them completely. They tell you how wrong and misguided you are – but not for too long. They feign a weakening of spirit. They reveal their inner hurt to you and place themselves at your mercy. Duped, you feel worse for their suffering than you do your own – and so they ensnare you again. You give all your power to them once more and they take it, only more voraciously than ever.
They may not even be wholly aware of the powers they have over you and others like you. It’s as if they can’t help themselves. They possess an insatiable desire for all that you (and others) have to give and more. Yet they show no signs of giving you that one thing you want most from them, love. They show no willingness or capability to love you, the way you want them to love you.
For they can only love someone (or something) that they can’t have. They are doubly bound by not-love – as by now are you. Loveless, they feed on the life-energy of those like you so that they don’t face their biggest and most misguided fear… the fear of love itself.
They choose not the courage to love and be loved. They can only conjure an illusion of love-liness. Love, to them, is a game of smoke and mirrors. Unresolved issues from their childhood cast too dark a shadow in which for them to venture to find love. And so they live in a half light, capable of hypnotic power but incapable of love – not there, right now, with you.
And still you persist with the vision of light that you see inside the creature; wishing, hoping, or perhaps convinced, that they will share it with you one day. But no inner-beacon shines your way. You sicken and tire. You live from minute to minute in servility. You give when you have no more to give and still the blood-letting of your life energy continues until…
You sicken and tire of being sickened and tired by your addiction to this illusory hero/ine. The day comes when you bid “begone!” and hold nothing back. The creature leaves knowing that you truly have nothing more to give.
You both suffer. The habit is not broken yet – ‘cold-turkey has got you (both) on the run[2]’. Given the chance, the vampire returns to test your mettle. They try to ensnare you again but this time it’s different, you’re different. They realise that all you can share with them is your truth – the truth of your feelings (regardless of the correctness/incorrectness of your perceptions). And truth drives out all falsity, including theirs. You thus bid a farewell that is ‘final and definite’ – and so the task of grieving really starts.
Day by day, week by week, month by month, the hurt lessens; the clouds of anger, sadness, shame and fear dissipate. Slowly but steadily, you regain your power. You seek to learn from the devastation you allowed to be inflicted upon you. As you reflect in the ‘mirror that was you’, you begin to realise (real-eyes) the nature of a now-familiar dark energy within yourself.
You account for how it was you who attracted the creature. You recognise a like-for-like, psychic and vampiric part of their nature within yourself. You appreciate more fully the depth and nature of the pain you have caused, or been capable of causing, others.
You see more clearly the definition of love, innately incorrect, given to you by your parents. You bring to the surface unresolved issues with your parents that you’ve carried all your life. And now you can bid farewell to these issues from your past.
Now you have the chance to resolve the unresolved. Today you ‘throw those curtains wide’ and allow the light (the same light that you saw hidden inside the creature) of the sun within you to shine throughout your whole body and radiate beyond. Through willpower, patience and courage you release the psychic vampire inside. Once gone, it never needs to return.
You graduate from the Wisdom School to the Love School – and that’s another story.
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
Author of Learn to Love and Be Loved in Return, 2012: a twist in the tail and Defrag your Soul.
A Common Business Issue: Lack of Accountability Is a Symptom. The Problem is Fear
Posted by Doctapaul in Business, Coaching, Healing, Leadership, Life's Changes, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Relationships, Self Development, Selling, Training & Development on February 19, 2013
When we are over-performing, the stage of success is filled with major players and acolytes; all accountable for their right to stand in the blazing footlights. On the other hand, when we underperform; the stage is often deserted apart from the chosen few, caught in the beam of a single spotlight, being asked to account for themselves.
The idea of measuring people to improve ‘accountability’ is also a hierarchical myth. Over-performers apart, it results in form filling to meet the ‘numbers’ and dodge the truth if needed – be it in the private (e.g. sales forecasting) or public (e.g. centralization of schools/hospitals statistics) sectors. A corporate board member of the world’s largest IT company referred this phenomenon to me as “…‘management’s perfumed pig’. What we need instead is truth!”
You, I, we, tick the boxes with answers so that hopefully, in management’s eyes, we aren’t singled out from the crowd. So where is the truth found?
Image courtesy of the Nikki Thomas Network
The journey starts by a commitment to treat successes and setbacks, as opportunities to learn what to repeat and avoid, with equanimity. Secondly, we answer fundamental questions about our behaviour and its effect:
- What is it we do that aids/abets and what is the effect of this ‘helpful’ behaviour?
- What is it we do that inhibits/hinders and what is the effect of this ‘unhelpful’ behaviour?
- In the latter case, what could we do differently and what effect might that have?
- Overall, what do we do/don’t do; knowingly/unknowingly that creates or somehow contributes to the successes and setbacks of ourselves and others?
- And even if we were wise to all the answers to the above questions, do we choose the courage to act upon ‘the wisdom from failure’?
Lack of accountability is only the symptom. The problem is fear.
People are fearful of being perceived as failing or incompetent (by themselves as much as others). People thus fear being accountable.
If management were to have only one task, it’s not about measuring, it’s about releasing the fear in their organization and filling the subsequent void created with wisdom and courage.
An organization releases its fear and gets wise one person at a time, each of their own volition.
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
Taking Spir(itu)al Steps
Posted by Doctapaul in book, Healing, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Self Development, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Tarot on February 16, 2013
“When you achieve mastery at one level, you become a blithering idiot at the next level up, at the same time.”
Dr Thomas Maughan, Chief Druid, The Druid Order, London, 1964-76
Read more….. in Kindred Spirit magazine
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
Author of Learn to Love and Be Loved in Return, 2012: a twist in the tail and Defrag your Soul.
If you want a successful relationship you need to feel good about yourself.
Posted by Doctapaul in Love, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Relationships on February 4, 2013
The seed of a strong relationship, its foundation, must grow into a solid root(ed in truth). Otherwise, we create an unsustainable imbalance. The relationship will eventually topple or die on the vine because it lacks equilibrium.
Lack of equilibrium between two people, develops when:
- One partner destabilises the other by bringing them down (and keeping them there).
- The ‘stronger’ reinforces this and reminds the ‘weaker’ partner of the consequences of their actions
- The ‘stronger’ provides the ‘weaker’ with the solution to their ills. But this is the ‘stronger’ partner’s will and bidding, not the ‘weaker’ partner.
Like a seed, a relationship starts its life very much in the dark. We know not of what lies ahead – nor appreciate what it (the seed of the relationship) can become. After the flush of ecstasy during the first few days/weeks/months together, something unexpected happens. One or both partners find themselves getting upset.
People, who get upset easily, will not succeed in the onerous setbacks that most relationships (or challenging journeys) bring from time to time. The more upset we get, the more we do not feel good about ourselves and the more we often hide about ourselves.
We may bottle our feelings up at first. We keep quiet. We fear that we will upset (or not be seen as good enough by) our partner. Eventually, when we reach exasperation point, we can boil over and let our negative emotions fly. It’s not love that lets fly, it’s fear.
|
As real as it feels, fear is illusory. And illusion is only dispelled by truth. For a relationship to fulfill its potential wholly, it must pass through the stage in its development called ‘truth’, in which there are no hidden agendas. Feelings and intentions are shared openly and honestly.
We observe a spiral effect. As fear is dispelled, (and as) more truth is revealed, more fear is dispelled, and so on. Counter-wise, fear serves to hide the truth, which when hidden creates more fear, and so on. (Such a fear-based relationship thus cannot get past the hidden agendas that hold it back.)
We choose with every decision we make, which way the relationship travels the spiral, up or down, truth or fear, oneness or separateness, love or power (control).
Real love is borne inside out. We need to feel good about ourselves from the inside, and not solely because someone else (i.e. our partner) makes us feel good about ourselves. We thus free ourselves to stand in our truth without any shield behind which to hide our fears. It can appear that we are making ourselves defenceless. But truth drives out falsity. Our defencelessness is thus our strength, to share a relationship rooted in truth.
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
The S(piritual)-Curve of ‘Dragon Steps’
Posted by Doctapaul in Healing, Life's Changes, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Self Development, Tarot on January 22, 2013
Most us have to take many steps to find, open, become and express our true nature. In my book, Defrag your Soul, I refer to these as spiritual steps. According to ancient Chinese and Druidic wisdom, though we may take many spiritual steps in our lives, there are fundamentally 7 key levels of consciousness development, known by the Chinese as dragon steps. These are the major steps we take to increase our vibration to the highest level a human can attain – Level 7. (I ain’t there – yet!)
Towards the end of each of these dragon steps we meet the most resistance – in the form of shame, anger, sadness/hurt and most of all fear. The most negative of these emotions often dwell in our subconscious. In his insightful book, The Missing Secret, Joe Vitale calls such negative emotions, subconscious counter intentions. They form the lowest parts of the aggregate vibration we project out into the world.
We operate in an elastic bandwidth. What stops us increasing our consciousness (wisdom of truth) is the lowest part of our vibration. We can only climb as high as the lowest part of our vibration permits (or stretches).
(picture courtesy of Rogue Christianity)
Let us stay with the ‘elastic band’ metaphor. Counter intentions pull us down and enabling intentions pull us upwards. As the ‘elastic band’ stretches we meet resistance. Our lowest vibration stops us pulling ourselves upwards (and vice versa).
As we climb, resistance increases, we slow down. Our climb begins to level off as if we are approaching the end of an S-bend in our consciousness expansion. The levelling off means we really have to stretch ourselves to make the last ‘few yards’ to ‘step up’ from one ‘S’ to the next. When the ‘elastic-band’ (our pysche) is fully stretched – and we must be sure not to snap it – we can only pull ourselves upwards (raise our consciousness) by releasing pressure (negative emotions) from the downward pull.
Upon approaching the uppermost part of the S-bend in this leg of our journey we slow down, we cast out that which no longer serves a purpose. (Picture courtesy of X-Ray Delta.) Sometimes though we cling on – either through fear or ignorance. That which we don’t let go of drains our energy. We are now at the highest part of this leg of our climb – AND the air is thin. Our negative emotional baggage (which was always going to be the heaviest part to unload anyway) thus feels a lot heavier. If we are not careful, we can drain our very life force until we are on reserves and then running on empty. Yet somehow we keep going and THEN…
We let go. We may panic. BUT we also realise there’s no useful reason for going back – we have passed the step up point of no return. We can allow ourselves to slow down, take a breather. Take baby steps as we make our way forward.
We’ve achieved self mastery of the last dragon step. We are both Magician (self master) at the last level and Fool (as in the Tarot) at the next. So we put trust in ourselves – listen carefully to our intuition and start the next step.
Like the fool, who is naive as to what they are about to face, we trundle along gaily until we start the next stretch of our climb.
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
You Will Walk Alone, One Day
Posted by Doctapaul in Healing, Life's Changes, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Relationships, Self Development on January 18, 2013
At some stage you isolate or distance yourself from others.
I have been accused recently of becoming too isolated. The accusations were well meant because my accusers missed my regular company.
Photograph copyright tinavandenbongardt
Just last week I read some words of Lord Buddha which, in modern day speak, went along the lines of….
Hermits/ascetics do not isolate themselves from the world outside in order to pay penance. They do so to become happier. External things, that at one time they used to enjoy, no longer stimulate or fulfill their desires. They thus seek happiness within.
I’m no ascetic. I enjoy my creature comforts. I love eating out in posh restaurants, staying in 5-star hotels and travelling first class. But maybe I have become a hermit in certain ways.
I go to the occasional reunion where others see a superficial change in me. These days my hair is long as is my wispy goatee, unlike the corporate clean cut image I used to portray years ago. My appearance often places me ‘outside the flock’. Conversations have, on occasion, become slightly stilted.
I no longer take much interest in ‘normal’ day-to-day small talk, like who is going to win ‘the current Saturday night TV contest’ or get thrown out of some ‘reality’ show. Many of my interests have changed and perhaps more significantly, my perspective has changed.
For example, I feel distanced when people complain about being the victims of an economic recession that we have collectively created. At the same time, I ask myself, “Why have I attracted this conversation? I wonder where I am not being accountable for what I receive in life; whom or what am I blaming?”
I do not consider myself superior in any way and do my best not to come across as an evangelist. It’s that I’ve moved on. If people ask my opinion about the latest TV game show, I probably don’t have one. If we’re discussing global events, I speak my views.
I prefer to distance myself from day-to-day chatter or ‘complaining about the system’ – both of which I might have engaged in once upon a time.
I still ‘rabbit on’ a lot about two of my passions though: football and music (probably more than I do about humankind’s return to oneness) and, undoubtedly, I distance a few people from myself in the process as well. Furthermore, I don’t yet attract that many people who want to talk about things ethereal. And I’m ok with that, for now.
Eventually, at some stage in our journey within, we come to a cross roads. We discern the habits, people and situations that no longer serve to make us happy.
If we don’t discern, we become bored. If we don’t switch out those habits, we become irritated. We can become ‘not-fun-to-be-around-anymore’. We get annoyed at ourselves for taking the well trodden road that’s no longer fun for ourselves to be on. We go back to the crossroads where we give ourselves the option to take a different route, a road ‘less travelled’.
There are people at the crossroads who offer us drinks, holidays, nights out on the town, parties and the like. There are others: advisors, suitors, groups, authority figures…. all trying to ‘sell’ a system, a solution or a ‘way to do it’. Both camps offer you a way to avoid hard (emotional) work and pain. They promise you a path, a ‘golden road’. They will want to be with you, every step of the yellow-brick way, success or failure, for a fee.
You may be offered maps, charts even a lighthouse that points the way. But the onward and inward journey must be trodden alone. No-one can bestow intelligence on you. Every question you have is already within you. You just need the external world to reflect it back to you.
Those people at the crossroads, and I include me, have not travelled your journey. Because that’s what it is; it’s your journey and no-one else’s. Your journey will require that you demonstrate similar characteristics to those teachers/pioneers who have gone before you. It will require courage, patience, self trust, curiosity and many other enabling inner qualities BUT the journey itself is yours to take alone. Even the crossroads you stand at is your crossroads – no-one else has ever stood precisely at the same point in time, space and dimension – as where you stand now. And so…
There comes a point when you put aside: the advice of experts, the norms of acceptable behaviour, the protection of staying inside the flock, the expectations of those nearest and dearest to you…………. and you realise that no-one can teach you truth, you can only know it by experiencing it for yourself.
You allow the feeling of good to become your guide. You listen to the voice that speaks between thoughts – that you, perhaps, have been drowning out but has never gone away. You trust and act upon your intuition, the words of spirit.
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
The Early Years, 0-14: Kidding Is No Joke (extract from Defrag your Soul)
Posted by Doctapaul in Healing, Life's Changes, Love, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Relationships, Self Development on January 13, 2013
Courtesy of Social Literacy Today
Kids take in everything. Only recently have I discovered the extent to which parents influence their children’s whole lives, way beyond the age they leave home. Kids accept and live the Law of Attraction with full accountability and responsibility.
A child seeks love, security, warmth and touch. When a child receives not love, not security, not warmth or not touch, that child accepts full responsibility for not receiving what they want. Furthermore, it blames itself for having neither the physical nor the intellectual strength to deal with untoward behaviour in a mature adult fashion. It doesn’t know how to channel the negative emotions (shame, anger, sadness or fear) that arise within. How could it?
The child feels helpless about how to cope and so locks away the negative emotions in a shield or ‘bubble-wrap’ of etheric energy. The child develops compensatory behaviours (e.g. remaining silent, denying/blocking negative thoughts about others, blaming self) that shield its conscious mind from the negative emotions hidden within its shadows.
This is not a mature decision and it’s not exclusive to children. How well do we adults react in such situations? Ask yourself, “How often do I…
- …hide my hurt or sadness to avoid confrontation?”
- …resort to anger to get what I want?”
- …manipulate someone emotionally to get what I want?”
- …use brute force to get my way?”
- …harbour ill feeling?”
None of the five strategies are mature acts, I suggest. Let us look at Strategy 1 because that is how many people I know deal with confrontation to begin with. Many adults, including me, when faced with controversy, let things be and say nothing. We either do not have, or choose not to employ, an effective strategy to deal with unwanted or inappropriate behaviour. Instead, we remain silent. We hope the issue will die down, go away and all will be forgotten in time. Let us not confuse weak with meek.
- When weak, you put yourself second, you subsume yourself to someone else with disregard for your own feelings. You place their feelings above your own and you hide behind a veil but the negativity lingers. You feel shame from not speaking or being your truth. You feel shame because you choose not the courage to be meek.
Meek, I suggest, is putting your honour on an equal status with those around you. You do not need to use brute force to get your point of view across. You do not resort to conflict, anger or threatening behaviour. You do not manipulate or seek to instil anger, sadness, fear or shame in others either. Instead you seek to put your point across constructively, positively and truthfully – so that others understand the impression they make on you. Your seek parity, not to win outright. You speak or act according to your truth. You choose courage to be meek.
Picture courtesy of Doves and Serpents.
If we act ‘not-meekly’, i.e. weakly, how can we expect children, to whom we set an example, to choose courage? Furthermore, kids not only take in every conscious thing that’s going on around them, they take in all the untold, unsaid things as well. They absorb, at a subliminal level, all the endemic family moods, trouble and strife. They register the negative vibrations from their environment and store the information in their Etheric Body (a blog about the Etheric Body will follow). They/we develop compensatory behaviours; one or more of the five strategies cited earlier to cope.
Kids blame themselves for all the feelings of insecurity they endure. They make themselves fully accountable and responsible for the untoward behaviour of their parents, for instance. They convince themselves that they caused it and therefore they blame themselves accordingly. (The very morning of writing this paragraph, a lady who had suffered child abuse appeared on the BBC1 TV morning show. She described the complexity and paradox of how a child can still love a parent who abuses them.)
In her wonderful and insightful book, Your Secret Self,[1] Tracy Marks explains the subtle logic of this childhood dynamic. If the child were to blame their parents for untoward behaviour and place themselves as completely innocent (which they are) without the intellectual or physical ability (which they do not have) to change their environment; they, in effect, relinquish all power (to change things) and hope for their lives.
On the other hand, if they consider their untoward parents or carers to be normal loving people and blame themselves for everything that happens – then at least they give themselves hope. They give themselves the ability to ‘rectify’ themselves in the hope that their parents will show the love and security they seek.
Faced with a no -win situation, the child blames themself, wraps away the negative emotions in their subconscious mind and develops compensatory behaviours. They hide their feelings away. In denial, they pretend that all is okay with their parents. But they can withdraw from wanting or expecting love. Their self worth plummets.
A damaging behavioural subroutine sets in. It can stay with the unloved, insecure child into their adult lives. In their adolescent years they may well seek escape. Their susceptibility to drug addiction and, in extreme cases, self harming increases.
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
[1] Ref: Your Secret Self, by Tracy Marks, Part Three, The Psychodynamics of Twelfth House Conflicts and Part Four, The Process of Integration: Twelfth House Liberation.
The Jigsaw Puzzle of Life
Posted by Doctapaul in book, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Self Development on January 10, 2013
Photo puzzle showing Patrauti church, UNESCO World Heritage Site, Suceava, Bucovina, Romania
I remember my (Great-) Aunty Rita from my young childhood days. She loved gargantuan jigsaw puzzles. Aunty Rita taught my Cousin Mike and I how to start by sifting out and connecting together all the pieces that had straight edges, to establish the boundary of some 1000+ piece puzzle. It would typically be a huge landscape with many decorative features and often a lot of blue sky.
Having completed the edge, we knew that every remaining piece fitted inside its boundary. We weren’t allowed to step outside. With the rules established, we’d next tackle any large feature, say a building, which stood out from the background. If it was a grey building, for example, we’d hunt for pieces that had what looked like the outline of the building running through them – a straight edge with grey one side and background the other. We’d piece them together and then search for and insert further grey pieces, some with bits of a door or window in them. Eventually, when the building was complete, we’d feel proud that we had a discernible part of the jigsaw to show for our work.
Slowly, we’d work through all the features of the jigsaw; piecing togther their outlines first and then filling them in. This strategy, by and large, seemed to work fine until…
Picture courtesy of Roberson, Small Business Consulting.
Blue Sky, Nothing but Blue Sky (extract from my 3rd book, Defrag your Soul)
When faced with blue sky, our ‘fill-in-the-outline-first’ strategy, to complete the picture, no longer worked. We had to revert to visual trial and error. We didn’t have the nous to get a ‘feel’ for where each piece slotted correctly, the first time around. We’d pick up a piece that looked the right shape and test it one way then the other. Sometimes we’d see if the piece in our hand fitted in a number of vacant slots.
On occasion, we’d try and force a piece, which looked very nearly right, into place. When we realised the error of our ways we’d extract it. We needed to be careful because if we removed the offending piece quickly, out of frustration, we would drag up some neighbouring jigsaw pieces with it. We would then have to reconnect the pieces we’d torn from their sockets. We learned to stay cool when things didn’t fit into place the way we wanted them to.
Fitting ‘blue sky’ jigsaw pieces together, proved a good analogy for my trial and error approach to getting my own way as a child. If I gave out a howl when I didn’t get my own way, I soon got to know about it. (I immediately felt the discomfort of trying to insert an ill-fitting jigsaw piece to my ‘blue sky’.) If I tried to force the issue (i.e. the wrong piece in the wrong place), I’d ‘rip out’ any ‘credits for good behaviour’ that I carried at the time.
Hissy fits were not tolerated. I found out at a very young age how to discern between acceptable, polite behaviour and the opposite. I found out what being a ‘good boy’ meant partly through the responses I got when I was ‘naughty’ – and how being a ‘very naughty boy’ could result in a very unpleasant reprimand.
Like many kids I tested the boundaries. How far could I go with ‘naughtiness’? What could I get away with? Where would I find the line not to cross? Where and when did I need to temper my behaviour to get what I want and avoid punishment?
Howling and carping on about things I wanted to happen didn’t work but neither did keeping quiet. How could I let people know what I wanted if I didn’t speak out? So I instinctively learned how to temper my approach to influence others. I learned about temperance.
What about other ‘blue sky’ feelings such as love and security (never mind the shame, anger, sadness and fear that can ensue when we don’t get love and security)?
We hopefully provide our children with love and security. I can think of no happier sight than seeing an innocent child, smiling and living life to the full, knowing that they themself feel completely safe and secure.
This begs questions, When do we set them free to stand on their own feet? How will the child learn about insecurity (not security) and not-love? When do (or could) they start to learn about shame, anger, sadness, fear? How will they cope with trauma?
The answer is, “Do what feels right. They will call these experiences for themselves when the time is right regardless”.
It’s only recently that I’ve realised the dualistic metaphorical jigsaw nature of how you learn about life. For example, to appreciate love, you need to learn what not-love is. Otherwise how could you discern when you love (or are loved by) someone? And to fully understand the term ‘unconditional love’ you need to learn what ‘conditional love’ is.
Furthermore, the picture in the metaphorical jigsaw is not static. It’s a movie that changes with life’s ebb and flow of breath, days, years, relationships and so on. What creates success one day can create a setback another and vice versa.
Times change. People change. Contexts change. Nature demands change. You evolve, if nothing else, to survive. You learn from successes and setbacks. For example, if you consistently show the same anger to different people, you probably won’t get the same response or outcome. You can also find yourself continually fitting a piece of anger to a situation where only patience will fit. There’s ‘a right fitting piece’ to every situation you attract in life but it might require great subtlety, instinct or sensitivity to find it – for there are many pieces to choose from.
Life’s Jigsaw has an infinite number of pieces. It evolves into a lifelong movie that you get to act in and direct (sometimes partly and sometimes wholly) for yourself. And the most challenging parts to act and direct tend to be the ‘blue sky’ pieces.
So the art or perhaps science of life is how to reduce the trials and errors that can cause upset and piece together its ‘blue sky’ pieces more efficiently. How do you respond to those situations that happen to us all and only a few know how to handle effectively – the ‘blue sky’ pieces – the known unknowns?
Knowing you don’t know is learning in itself. It is the first step up from not knowing what you don’t know or unconscious incompetence, life’s starting place. Training professionals call this first step, conscious (of) incompetence. Through practice, experience and ideally having a role model to copy, you can become consciously competent, i.e. you know what to do but you have to think about it. For example, when I was learning to drive I was told to change gear every 10mph. So I used to know which gear I should be in by reading the speed gauge consciously.
Eventually, you get a feel for what needs to be done. You attend to what’s needed intuitively. This state is called unconscious competence. You do what’s needed without thinking about it.
Through experience and maturity you hopefully learn how to piece together ‘blue sky’ pieces to Life’s Jigsaw – such as love, decision making, patience or coping with trauma. What about when you attempt to go beyond the puzzle’s edge? Here you find the unknown unknowns – for example, buried emotions or childhood pacts you made with yourself that you didn’t know you carried around with you. Here you find yourself back where you started life, unconscious incompetence.
(To be continued…)
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
Temperance
Posted by Doctapaul in Healing, Life's Changes, Love, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Self Development, Soundbytes of Wisdom on December 19, 2012
…does not mean ‘do without or prohibit’.
It means balance.
Temperance: Major Arcana card no 14, from the Ancient Tarot Deck of Marseilles by Jean Dodal, 1718.
Remove balance in life and you limit your perspective. The workaholic might not give themselves the time to enjoy a healthy personal life. The addict can’t see outside the control of their habit. The drunkard inebriates themselves from sobriety. In all three cases, the protagonist lives their life in denial.
Should you avoid temperance, not only do you limit your learning, you can do yourself harm – physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. As such, you harm the environment you live in and those nearest and dearest to you. Lack of temperance, by definition, means an excess of, or gluttony for, one thing over another. Be it work, alcohol, drugs, mindless TV or computer games – the excess means that you deny yourself health, which has consequences.
Have you ever watched downhill tobogganing on TV? The more often a sleigh hits the wall, the more it slows down through friction. And when it bounces off sideways the team are using their energy laterally to get back on track. Whilst it’s traversing it has to travel farther than a direct descent down the middle of the run. The middle way is the fastest and smoothest.
Study the Temperance card, from the 18th Century, Ancient Tarot Deck of Marseilles, by Jean Dodal. You observe a grounded female angel clad evenly in red (fire, hot, male) and blue (water, cool, female). Her arms are dressed in red, to signify strength and power of Mars. Her blue covered torso signifies the love and beauty of Venus. Water from the higher cup flows into and cleanses that of the lower. Not a drop is spilt or wasted; the flow is steady and harmonious. Her wings reveal she is an angel who may advise, guide and protect us. Her work embraces the harmony of opposites.
The Angel of Temperance teaches us that life’s direction leads eventually to the middle path. We do not need to swing extremely and continually between feast and famine, peace and war, love and hate, mercy and severity, prosperity and poverty, abundance and scarcity, riches and debt, victory and defeat, mine and yours, property and theft. When we embrace both aspects of duality as one, we create oneness. Something is only good for one, when it is good for all. There is no us and them, there is no me without not me. There is only us, together we become oneness.
When we bring temperance into our lives, we exemplify oneness.
(extract from my forthcoming book, from Defrag your Soul, due out next week.)
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
2012 – The Return to Oneness
Posted by Doctapaul in Astrology, Current Affairs & The Economy, Healing, Life's Changes, Love, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Poetry, Quirky Ideas, Relationships, Self Development, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Visions and Dreams on December 1, 2012
The Return
“Enough! I’ve had enough of winning and losing.
I can only exert a limited amount of power.
I can only spend a limited amount of money.
I can only create so much suffering before I kill off those over whom I am victorious.
I can only suffer so much when I lose.
I have exhausted all the possibilities of winning and losing in the material world.
I now choose temperance.
I return to the harmony of opposites, the yin and yang, the will and imagination, to return to oneness.”
Defrag your Soul: audio recording of talk about parts of the this forthcoming book, due for publication Summer 2012
Posted by Doctapaul in book, Healing, Life's Changes, Love, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Self Development, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Training & Development, Visions and Dreams on May 14, 2012
Click here: DEFRAG YOUR SOUL
Transform your Consciousness:
a practical guide for the beginner and seasoned traveller within…
Illustration by Andrea Kurucz, selected as part of a gallery of drawings for Defrag your Soul.
Extended extract from a talk I gave to the National Federation of Spiritual Healers, on Saturday 12 May 2012, in central London. The talk contains some topics from my book, Defrag your Soul, due for publication in Summer of 2012.
Parts of the talk include:
- Beyond NLP
- What is your purpose in life?
- Duality
- How do you take spiritual steps on your journey within? How do you know you’ve taken them?
- The Etheric Body aka The Vital Body
- The links between the Etheric Body and Health
- The path to magic
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
Your Inner Child Has a Message…..
Posted by Doctapaul in book, Healing, Life's Changes, Love, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Poetry, Relationships, Self Development, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Visions and Dreams on April 11, 2012
By listening carefully to the voice of your inner child, you develop your intuition. You tune into its messages. Call it “intunition.” At the same time, you become aware of the feeling when you veer away from the child’s advice. You detune. You cease to trust yourself.
Self trust is the “engine oil” to give and receive the very best, to and from the world around you. Not-self trust means you give and receive second best at best. You undervalue yourself and your immense power.
Extract from my forthcoming book, 2012: A Twist in the Tale, that I intend to serialise on its own blogsite. Watch this space.
Image sourced from Abused Empowered Survive Thrive
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
The Alchemy of Life: from Low Self Worth to Self Worth
Posted by Doctapaul in Healing, Life's Changes, Love, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Relationships, Self Development, Soundbytes of Wisdom on March 13, 2012
When you filter out, ignore or deny feelings of low self worth, you filter out self worth as well. Remember, the “wet and dry” of life. You can’t know one without the other. So life is about knowing self worth and its shadow, low-self worth. When you understand both and how to transmute the shadow into light, then you understand the alchemy of life.
Image sourced from Spagyric Arts
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
Love your Bubble of Fear
Posted by Doctapaul in book, Healing, Life's Changes, Love, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Poetry, Relationships, Self Development, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Visions and Dreams on March 1, 2012
Allow your fear into your consciousness. Place it in a bubble. Neither attempt to hold the bubble nor prod it. Let the bubble float freely. Surround the bubble skin with love. Be patient. Wait for love’s miraculous power of osmosis to weave its magic. The fear will wave farewell.
Image sourced from Fine Art America
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
The Law of Reversibility – the What and How – more Powerful than the Law of Attraction
Posted by Doctapaul in Healing, Life's Changes, Love, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Relationships, Self Development, Soundbytes of Wisdom on February 28, 2012
An extract from
Defrag your Soul
- Image from http://exper.3drecursions.com/
The Law of Reversibility
If situations (events and people) can affect your emotional state, then inducing that same emotional state will manifest the same events and people into your life. Manifesting is not attracting. It’s creating something that’s already there, should you really want it. It requires focus, imagination and faith – in yourself.
(But you also need to know clearly what you are manifesting.)
About the Law of Duality
To know love, for example, you need to know not-love. So learning not-love serves a purpose. You are indirectly learning about love. And you won’t experience love wholly until you complete your learning. Here lies the rub of duality. This is how life works.
So…
Be clear that what you imagine will bring you what your soul seeks. And know that all the things that you experience – that you don’t want – serve a purpose.
The Law of Reversibility is far more powerful than the Law of Attraction. Rather than attract what you don’t have, you know you can have exactly what you want. It already exists in the field of unlimited possibilities. Manifesting requires practice, faith and imagination. Try it.
Imagination – takes place in your mind. It means place an image-in-ions (atoms). Your conscious mind passes the information (your emotional state) pertaining to that image to your unconscious mind. The unconscious mind then signals your DNA to send out the corresponding vibe to the universe.
DNA – is your transmitter to the universe. It transmits your signal of how you are feeling in the moment – your vibe. Its signal is governed by your unconscious mind.
Unconscious mind – passes the decisions made by the conscious mind to each and every body cell in your body. It also collects the vibes you pick up unknowingly and stores that information away too. It protects you from information that it feels you cannot cope with. All the information, good and bad, is stored away in your holographic Etheric Body. Each and every body cell is a fractal (the whole is contained in each fractal) of your Etheric Body’s hologram.
Body cell – Each and every body cell contains your whole life history, your memories, feelings, reactions and actions, everything that’s happened to you knowingly and unknowingly. It is placed in cellular memory.
Vibe – is the vibration that your DNA sends out to the universe. You can increase the power of this vibe by acting as if you already have what you seek.
Act as if – The brain executes the same neural pathways in the same way, whether you’re viewing real life situations or dreaming about them. The mind cannot tell the difference between the real world and an imaginary world. By acting as if you already have what you want in your imagination – you fool the mind into thinking the same. The conscious mind thus directs the unconscious mind to inform your DNA to send out a corresponding vibe. Over time, you attract what you want, as long as you keep faith in yourself and live your dream.
Soul – The body cells that constitute your physical body, inform your soul of the direction you seek to take. The soul cross references your intentions and behaviours with its quest – your life purpose. Soul then signals, via the mind, spirit to inform it of the new experiences it seeks to attract.
Spirit – is the force which manifests form: people things and events, to take you down your chosen life’s path, to your true self, your soul’s quest. But spirit can only manifest via the mind. The decision as to what to manifest is taken by the mind. The mind contains four things that sully spirit’s power to attract what your soul wants: guilt, anger, sadness and fear – the four seeds of karma.
Karma – you invoke a karmic response when you veer from the path of your chosen life’s journey. Karma tells you that you are allowing guilt, anger, sadness and fear to cloud your decisions; that you have gone astray.
False ego – is the keeper of guilt, anger, sadness and fear. It’s has a dual edged sword type of existence. It holds on to these negative emotions and attempts to control your mind with them. But also, it knows full and well that its purpose is to reveal the source of these negative emotions to you when the time is right – so that you can release them. In a paradoxical way, your false ego beckons your light. It knows when to submit to your light to shine within in its dark shadows. Each time you shine more light into your false ego’s shadows, you take a spiritual step on your chosen life’s journey – toward your true self.
Spiritual steps – are what you take when you allow and release all the guilt, anger, sadness and fear in your life that stops you from taking that step. Each step takes you closer to your true self.
True self – the purpose of your life is to find, open, become and express your true self. If you don’t know it already, you find the purpose of your life by following your passions. Once you find out what your purpose is, you open up it up to understand the implications it holds for you. Becoming your true self takes time. You have to find and open each spiritual step on the way. As you take each step, you become closer to your true self. You gain wisdom. You complete that step when you apply that wisdom to serve humankind. You shine. You express more of your true self – a deathless solar star.
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
-
You are currently browsing the archives for the Pitfalls I’ve Fallen Into category.
Share this page
How to Be a Friend of the Devil Within
Available from Amazon and major bookstores:
Quick Guide VII – A Top-notch, Sales-Relationships, Account Management Template
Available from Amazon and major bookstores:
Quick Guide VI – How to Sell Coaching
Available from Amazon and major bookstores:
For The Love of Lilith & How to Put Love into Practice (and Non-attach Yourself to It)
Available from Amazon and major bookstores:
Quick Guide V – How to Apply Mindfulness to Business Relationships
Available from Amazon and major bookstores:
The Mystique to the Game of Life (and Unrequited Love)
Available from Amazon and major bookstores:
Quick Guide IV – A Scorecard that Accounts for Mindfulness in Business
Available from Amazon and major bookstores:
Quick Guide III – How to Bridge the Pillars of Successful Business Relationships
Available from Amazon and major bookstores:
Quick Guide II: How to Spot, Mimic and Become a Top Salesperson
Available from Amazon and major bookstores:
Quick Guide: How Top Salespeople Sell
Available from Amazon and major bookstores:
Defrag your Soul
2012: a twist in the tail
Available from Amazon and major bookstores:
Learn to Love and Be Loved in Return
Available in USA and UK, in paperback and Kindle format
, 
, 
& 
& 
,
&
also
, 
also
,
also
, 
Paul C Burr 