Shift Movement

Hi Danny!  Thanks for your kind words.  I am not always “over it” but I have learned to not “freak out” over it anymore!  That is progress!  I have also learned to apply lessons learned and to not blame myself anymore!  I guess that is something!  Even for those of us who mostly think we are healed….I have learned that it is like the onion….always more layers to peel!  And sometimes there are tears just like the onion!  I still work on my issues and reach out to my inner child to comfort it so, even with all the work done, it still affects my life….I just do better at it than I used to!  I pray the day comes soon when no child will have to do all this as it’s legacy!  So glad that you avoided all that trauma and kudos to your parents and to you and your wife for finding a better way!  Love and light to you always!  Namaste

I think another way of saying Lori’s truth would be to say that remembering who you are is, by definition, some sort of separation from the self you are, however small a separation.  As you become more pure, or as you become more DANNY, the need or drive to “remember” becomes less and less.  You are more and more into being the fullness of Danny, and the attachment to memory, or anything else, becomes less and less.  As we shed our attachments (or have them shorn from us), we  become more and more able to BE, or to love.  That is partly why, I am sure, in some of the early lessons in the Peace Ambassador Training, the need to focus and create space, both for one’s self and for the other, is seen as crucial for hearing, receiving, and understanding both the other AND one’s self, and only THEN can there be loving, responsive ACT.  To act, truly act (not REact), we have to be detached, or if you like it in a positive slant, we have to be attached to Truth and Spirit, with nothing in between.  Love, jim

LIFE GOES ON.

Yes, Professor Fani.  Life DOES go on…forever and ever and ever.  And we get to be…are…a wonderful part of LIFE.  That is so humbling, so sacred, so joyous…that we have been invited to the feast.  Have you (or anyone out there) read Shantaram, the great novel by Gregory David Roberts?  It has the same thesis (life goes on) throughout the entire book, and very specifically, in its last couple of pages, and it its final paragraph.  -jim healy

Hi again all, 

Just re-read this conversation.  Some understanding has been percolating in me since it started.  I am in appreciation of how different our personality make ups are.  I see my personality as the response of who I am, to the conditioning of childhood, and the changes that have taken place in me since, as a result of life itself and intentional learning and healing.  When I think of it this way, our differences are so understandable, even if who we are in the I Am is One.  

As I look back Danny, the hardships of childhood and my response to them, in some ways made it easier for me to separate my personality from who I am.  Danny, to me, whenever we say I did, or my growth or even my personality, who we are is the one who sees the personality, or the growth or what we’ve done.  We are the seer, not the thing.  A personality is a thing.  I am not a thing.  A mind is a thing.  I am not a thing.  Memories are a thing.  I am not a thing.  A person who has amnesia, does not lose who they are.  They lose what they remember.  Here I disagree with you.  You see, I had a severe form of amnesia, from the time that I was a very small toddler, till I was 33 years old.  Those who never recover from the amnesia, still are who they are.  Those who experience trauma later in life that causes amnesia are still who they are.  In fact are lucky in a way, as they are their essential selves.  They truly are who they are without the burden of conditioning and memory.  This is a very good link to a personal experience of this.  Jill Bolte Tayler suffered a stroke where she lost all of her left brain functions and experience a spiritual awakening.   This is her  story. 

http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

The way that my response to abuse made it easier to see that I am not my personality is in this way.  I responded to abuse by separating parts of my personality.  In a normal childhood we all do this somewhat.  Aspects of ourself that are not loved by parents are separated and denied in most people.  If anger or angry thoughts are not allowed, we will as children, try not to have them.  Since this is impossible, we end up only denying that aspect of our personalities.  We become a person who loses touch with our own angry thoughts and feelings to a certain extent.  In my home, all aspects of me were not allowed.  The only aspect of myself that was rewarded in any way was compliant listening and agreement.  My personality became very fragmented.  No one can walk around with no personality.  I had so much self hatred, that my personality aspects became what I call “One at a time”.  In this way I only had to hate the aspect that was functioning at the time, rather than hate them all at once.  If I did something while experiencing one aspect, I had a hard time remembering it when I was functioning from another aspect.  When I did have memory it  was like someone else was or did that.  At times the memories where very foggy.  I did not remember any of the worst abuse at all, until I was 33 and learned how to keep my  mind in the present moment.  When I started having flashbacks, I started being aware of how I was made up inside.  I started being aware of all the different aspects of my personality, fragmented as they were.  One therapist called this “co-conscious multiple personality disorder”.  Later in my healing the therapist types started calling it dissociative identity disorder.   I refused all the labels and refused to see a psychiatrist for help, as I did not want to be “officially diagnosed and stuck with the label” or pressured to take drugs.  I sought help from coach types.  

Healing was a lot about learning to love each aspect of myself.  As I did the co-consciousness increased and the memory problems decreased.  It still feels at times that I am many personalities in one body, but I see them all as parts of me, not who I am, and my memory is continuous now.  My personality will never feel like personalities feel to those who were not forced by circumstances to separate their aspects as much as I had to.  I have healed the splits enough now, to function in a healthier, more continuous, congruent way.

How did all this help in being easily able to see that who I am is not my personality?  Well it always felt that way.  There was a constant I, that I felt, through all of this.  It was not personality, as that was fragmented and each aspect never felt like “who I really was”.  It was not a great leap to understand that all of my personality wasn’t who I was.  Who I am is constant.  My personality was different all the time, in response to whatever was happening outside of me at the time.  When I was 33 and went through the difficult period of remembering abuse, which was stored in my cells as body memories and dissociated pictures in my brain, I also remembered completely leaving my body during abuse and riding sunbeams to a place of absolute unconditional love and white light.  The I am that I felt in that place is who I really am.  I knew it.  I had no body, no personality and no words were necessary.  There was just knowing.  There was knowing that I was not alone.  The memory of the abuse episode, the leaving my body and being in the white light did not remain when I re entered my body.  I had only memory gaps. I was given certain wisdoms in the light, that remained.   I did not as a child know, how I knew these wisdoms, I just knew them.  I told my mom when I was 6 years old that sometimes I feel like I’m up in the sky, looking down at Lori doing things, but that I was not Lori, I was up in the sky.  So you see, all the childhood stuff, and its impact on me ended up  being my greatest blessing.  Most people have to have a near death experience to go only once to where I went many, many times over.  They all say the same thing about unconditional love and oneness. I was gifted in childhood with going there very frequently, whenever the abuse got so much that remembering it would have endangered my sanity.  I know this place on a feeling level very well.  

For the past 7 years or so, I’ve been discovering different ways to go there in my daily life.  Meditation is one.  Singing is another.  Soul connection with other people is another.  My being goes to that same place, where all is love, there is no judgement, and all that has happened in the past, the hurtings and the healings have no import.  There is only now, and the love that is felt in my  body, now.  

I am most grateful, and really, I feel kind of uncomfortable when people feel sorry or bad for me for what I’ve been through.  It doesn’t matter in the slightest way.  I am so grateful for it.  I am blessed.  I know I chose this life, all of it.   I chose extremely abusive parents as the easiest way to get to the place, where I know I am not my personality.  I am not my past.  I am not my thoughts or emotions.  I am not what I do or what I have done in the past, good or bad.  I am not this body.  I am the consciousness that understands all of it, and loves all of it.  It sort of feels like my personality and experiences are my child.  My soul, wished for my experiences, to grow.  This is the only important part of any of it.  The goal was to see if I could bring the love that I am, into this life, into this 3d world of hardship.  My soul wanted to have the ability to be love under any circumstance.  

As a human I’m still working at it.  

Be the Love 

Lori Scott Kaiser

I want to scream “What she said!” as my response to what Lori has written.  It is so right on, Lori!  I won’t say exactly that, however, for fear it might make it look as if I myself have actually been through what Lori describes (I haven’t), and yet, I have to ask myself “Self, if you haven’t actually been there, then how do you understand it so fully and completely?”  I’m not sure yet what the answer to that is.  But I know that I know.

One thing that it might be helpful (for me, at least) for you to address, Lori, is how, in your present state of being, do you do acts of love, peace, understanding, and friendship, while at the same time watching, and remembering, the personality and experiences that constitute your “child”?  Do you experience yourself as integrated with, but not limited to, what you have been and “suffered” thus far, when you act, and “who” is the more of you that is living, acting, and loving today?  I’m thinking along the lines of something like “We are never just the sum of all our experiences; we are so much more; and yet we also embrace all that has happened to us — and wouldn’t change even one thing, because it is all those things (good, bad, and ugly) that have  brought us to where we are, and that, while not the whole of what we are, are nonetheless still essential to who and what we now are.”  Love to all, jim  (And Lori, please tell me more sometime about you, me, and your father.)

Wow, Jim, what a question.  First off, let me tell you the joy I feel that you expressed so emphatically that you understand so fully and completely.  I feel seen by you and that is pure joy.  I believe you understand, because we all come from the place I went back to as a child.  Everyone has been there, before we were born into this 3D world, under the veil of forgetfulness.  That place is where we are who we truly are, with none of the distractions of humanness.  I believe that for some time as children we live in both worlds.  Our left brains have not developed then.  This is why children under extreme stress can go back.  It is harder for adults, and the more we see our left brains as who we are, the harder it is.  I believe this is why creative types who identify more with their right brains have an easier time with meditation and spiritual knowledge.  All the knowing without proof stuff.

As for how my day to day life is today, well, most people around me see me as eccentric.  The either love me and see in me something that they want more of, or hate me out of fear and get off on gossiping about me.  There is a lot of this as I am a singer and have developed a small bit of fame for this in my city.  I am seen by all as someone who dares to be who I am, however different.  I really don’t know how to answer your question.  I think that the most accurate answer to “how, in your present state of being, do you do acts of love, peace, understanding, and friendship, while at the same time watching, and remembering, the personality and experiences that constitute your “child”?  Do you experience yourself as integrated with, but not limited to, what you have been and “suffered” thus far, when you act, and “who” is the more of you that is living, acting, and loving today?” is forgiveness.  Universal forgiveness.  Undeserved forgiveness.  In the place I went to, it is a given.  We need not fear “the wrath of God”.  There is no punishment there, only unconditional love and understanding, even for my father.  

The forgiveness part was sort of automatic for me, because what I brought back with me from that place.  The hard part for me was dealing with all my human parts.  I had to own and feel my anger, difficult because this felt contrary to forgiveness.  I had to own and experience all the dissociated human emotions that would be considered “normal” response to abuse.  I had to understand so much.  I cannot describe 19 years of healing.  It is impossible, but ultimately true forgiveness is what healed me.  We cannot forgive anything that we do not experience fully with our human way of being.  It is the human parts that need to forgive.  My I am part already does.  Does this make sense?   You can read about my latest leap in forgiveness in my blog about my mother and father on my profile.  To me forgiveness means, feeling all that is in me, the beautiful and the ugly, then letting go of the desire for the past to be any different than it was.  It does not mean that what happened was ok, or that I need to have a present day relationship with those who hurt me so deeply.  It means that I understand that hurt people, hurt people.  Period.  I do not understand why some people who are abused as children become pedofiles and some do not.  I think that all pedofiles where abused as children whether they remember it or not.  This helps with the intellectual aspects of forgiveness, but true forgiveness cannot happen only from the mind.  The emotions need to be felt.  When forgiveness is deep, the emotional ties to the abuse fall away.  When I tell the story of my childhood now, it is just a story.  I know it happened to me, but there is no emotional attachment to it, the way there was as I was healing.  

I am not completely healed.  I don’t worry about that.  I have learned that life will always trigger whatever is left to heal.  I have trained my mind to constantly come back to the present moment.  I have full emotional awareness.  I am no longer split up inside.  If something happens in life, similar emotionally to any unhealed part of me, very strong emotions roar up.  I feel younger.  I experience the emotions as if I was a child feeling them.  Hard to describe.  Immediately I know that the something unhealed from the past has been triggered for healing.  I allow my body to feel the emotion fully.  Sometimes a specific memory comes but most time not.  Usually it is a theme of behaviour in the present, that triggers a theme of my child response.  The details and specifics aren’t important.  After I allow myself to feel it, usually and insight comes, such as “Ahhh, this is how I got through that as a child.  I denied this emotion I’m feeling so that I could be compliant under this type of manipulation and control.”  Then, I am able as an adult to respond to the present situation in any way I choose, without acting out the enormous strength of the emotion on other people.  The new ways of responding become automatic over time, healing my child ways of forced response.  I am becoming a person who loves on purpose.

At times, if I am not present in the moment, and my mind is busy with the interpretation of the past and future, I am caught of guard.  Someone will trigger the emotion of the past and I will react from it.  This has become more and more unusual for me, and people around me get quite upset.  Believe me, no one wants to experience me projecting the weight of the emotions of all that abuse on them.  I do not have abusive people in my life today, but I do have human people capable of hurting me.  If I am not on guard I can turn into quite an over reactive crazy lady lol.  I use other peoples reactions to let me know when this has happened as I am in my child self, and their reactions are my only clue that I am over reacting.  When I see the shock and pain on their faces, I know, uh oh, time to take some space, deal with the emotion, and come back to apologize for my behaviour and deal with what really happen as an adult, connected to my spirit.    Thankfully as I’ve healed this happens less and less, but that only makes it more shocking for the people in my life, who are used to me being open and loving.  They all know my history, and I’ve shared how this works with them, so their forgiveness is usually immediate.  I am speaking of my lover and my children and some close friends.  I think this is usually for most people.  It’s why they say we always hurt those we love the most.  They are the ones with the power to trigger us.

I don’t know if this helps Jim.  I will private message you if you would like to hear more about my relationship with my father.  The details would be far too triggering for some people to share them publicly.  For me the details are now unimportant.

Be the Love

Lori

Heyyyyyyy, Ms. Lori:  Five things:   1)  Enjoy that joy; I do see, and hear you, clearly; 2)  I will (or at least, may) need some help from you re carrying out the part about needing to experience the natural, human parts of feeling in response to abuse before there can be a full (not just intellectual), loving, and integrated response of forgiveness for the abusers — not sure, though, because somehow I’ve stumbled onto a real understanding of what it means to love intentionally (a redundant expession, of course); 3) I will message you privately, in the near future, with more of what I want to say; 4) Revel, and continue on, in being a singer with “a small bit of fame…in my city”; and (you probably know this one, and have seen it coming, already) 5)  I LOVE YOU.   -jim

Lori, I am so deeply grateful that you have the courage and the love to so fully and wonderfully describe the life and experience of abused children.  You know my story and you know I know what you are referring to.  I agree that the details become unimportant and that the past becomes stories we can remember but our emotional connection to it is no longer necessary.  Thank you for being who you are and for being willing to share and remind abuse survivors and thrivers that life can be so filled with love in spite of and, perhaps, even because of.  Hugs and love and light always coming your way from me!  Namaste

- It sort of feels like my personality and experiences are my child. My soul, wished for my experiences, to grow.

Thank you for your wisdom, clarity and openness, Lori!!! Much love and respect to you!!!

Thank you Jim, Melody and Andrea, I am overwhelmed.  I feel you all as strongly as if you were physically sitting with me.  This feeling is of I am.  If I was my body this could not happen.  This is what Jesus  meant about I am always with you.  I have felt this way before with others, but never this strong.  I am having to become aware of my breath and me feet on the floor, a silken cord from my soles through the floor into the heart of Mother Earth.  She absorbs the energy my body cannot as of yet, and I am left in bliss.  If I do not in this moment make that image in order to help me feel my connection with the Mother and so through it ground myself, I would either instinctively for self preservation purposes…shut down, or I would burn up, become psychotic or some such sad fate.  This is the strength of our combined energy when focused on a loving…healing…thirsty for understanding… intention.  I have had times in my life when I felt this and instinctively shut down.  There have been times when I went a little nutty lol, though never full blown psychosis.  Most often I shut down.  A psychiatrist would call this bi polar or manic depressive.  I describe it as not having been taught how to experience and ground and enjoy, the energy that I’ve for some reason always been able to feel so intensely from others.  Not knowing how to connect with it.  Know how to do this is one of the many gifts I’ve received along the way.  I still forget sometimes, and experience shutting down, the depressive side of the phenomenon.  I am enjoying more and more, the bliss that comes from allowing it, grounding it and then fading into the bliss of it.  

Thank you.  The blessing of your loving witnessing of my truth has caused this amazing energy surge.  I am in bliss.  This is truly how the shift is happening. 

Be the Love

Lori