The "Witness"~ for Michael Posted by Sally on December 16, 1999 at 21:12:00:
I have been reading alot....sounds like "Mindfulness" to
me...the "Witness" perspective. What do you guys think? Sal;-)
Internal Boundaries - the Key to self-Love
“Codependence is an emotional and behavioral defense system which was
adopted by our egos in order to meet our need to survive as a child.
Because we had no tools for reprogramming our egos and healing our
emotional wounds (culturally approved grieving, training and initiation
rites, healthy role models, etc.), the effect is that as an adult we
keep reacting to the programming of our childhood and do not get our
needs met - our emotional, mental, Spiritual, or physical needs.
Codependence allows us to survive physically but causes us to feel
empty and dead inside. Codependence is a defense system that causes us
to wound ourselves.” Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls by Robert
Burney
Codependence is a dysfunctional defense system that developed in
reaction to feeling unlovable and unworthy - because our parents were
wounded codependents who didn’t know how to love themselves. We grew up
in environments that were emotionally dishonest, Spiritually hostile,
and shame based. Our relationship with ourselves (and all the different
parts of our self: emotions, gender, spirit, etc.) got twisted and
distorted in order to survive in our particular dysfunctional
environment. We got to an age where we were supposed to be an adult and
we started acting like we knew what we were doing. We went around
pretending to be adult at the same time we were reacting to the
programming that we got growing up. We tried to do everything “right”
or rebelled and went against what we had been taught was “right.”
Either way we weren’t living our life through choice, we were living it
in reaction. In order to start being loving to ourselves we need to
change our relationship with our self - and with all the wounded parts
of our self. The way which I have found works the best in starting to
love ourselves is through having internal boundaries. Learning to have
internal boundaries is a dynamic process that involves three distinctly
different, but intimately interconnected, spheres of work. The purpose
of the work is to change our ego-programming - to change our
relationship with ourselves by changing our emotional/behavioral
defense system into something that works to open us up to receive Love,
instead of sabotaging ourselves because of our deep belief that we
don’t deserve love. (I need to make the point here that Codependence
and recovery are both multi-leveled, multi-dimensional phenomena. What
we are trying to achieve is integration and balance on different
levels. In regard to our relationship with ourselves this involves two
major dimensions: the horizontal and the vertical. In this context the
horizontal is about being human and relating to other humans and our
environment. The vertical is Spiritual, about our relationship to a
Higher Power, to the Universal Source. If we cannot conceive of a
God/Goddess Force that Loves us then it makes it virtually impossible
to be Loving to ourselves. Changing our relationship with ourselves on
the horizontal level is both a necessary element in, and possible
because we are working on, integrating Spiritual Truth into our inner
process.) These three spheres are: 1. Detachment 2. Inner Child Healing
3. Grieving Because Codependence is a reactive phenomena it is vital to
start being able to detach from our own process in order to have some
choice in changing our reactions. We need to start observing our selves
from the witness perspective instead of from the perspective of the
judge. We all observe ourselves - have a place of watching ourselves as
if from outside, or perched somewhere inside, observing our own
behavior. Because of our childhoods we learned to judge ourselves from
that witness perspective, the “critical parent” voice. The emotionally
dishonest environments we were raised in taught us that it was not ok
to feel our emotions, or that only certain emotions were ok. So we had
to learn ways to control our emotions in order to survive. We adapted
the same tools that were used on us - guilt, shame, and fear (and saw
in the role modeling of our parents how they reacted to life from shame
and fear.) This is where the critical parent gets born. It’s purpose is
to try to keep our emotions and behavior under some sort of control so
that we can get our survival needs met. So the first boundary that we
need to start setting internally is with the wounded/dysfunctionally
programmed part of our own mind. We need to start saying no to the
inner voices that are shaming and judgmental. The disease comes from a
black and white, right and wrong, perspective. It speaks in
absolutes: “You always screw up!” “You will never be a success!” these
are lies. We don’t always screw up. We may never be a success according
to our parents or societies dysfunctional definition of success - but
that is because our heart and soul do not resonate with those
definitions, so that kind of success would be a betrayal of ourselves.
We need to consciously change our definitions so that we can stop
judging ourselves against someone else’s screwed up value system. We
need to own that we have the power to choose where to focus our mind.
We can consciously start viewing ourselves from the “witness”
perspective. It is time to fire the judge - our critical parent - and
choose to replace that judge with our Higher Self - who is a Loving
parent. We can then intervene in our own process to protect ourselves
from the perpetrator within the critical parent/disease voice. This is
what enlightenment and consciousness raising are all about. Owning our
power to be a co-creator of our lives by changing our relationship with
ourselves. We can change the way we think. We can change the way we
respond to our own emotions. We need to detach from our wounded self in
order to allow our Spiritual Self to guide us. By having internal
boundaries we can start to relate to our self in ways that are Loving
instead of being our own worst enemy.
(Copyright 1999 by Robert Burney)
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