Gail, this does not mean that I have fully succeeded in really feeling everything that happened to my during my childhood. I am still learning to do this. To be honest, I still resist fully feeling everything, but I am trying to be more conscious of all my feelings. The family pattern in my case was that I was punished, hated, or completely ignored, when I dared to notice the abuse, and to feel and express my emotions. I now realize that these ‘forbidden’ emotions need to be felt if I want to be authentically empowered. But this is very difficult, because the fact these emotions were forbidden for so long, scares me, and almost automatically prevents me from feeling. Except when I choose to be courageous enough to feel them anyway. Plus, feeling my real emotions, and expressing them, has led to being ostracized in my family. I am being completely ignored now, because I had the audacity to becoming aware of the abuse in the past, and expressing my feelings of anger and pain. This was not accepted in my family, and I think it will never be, because I touched on a taboo-subject. It means I am very alone now, I have no contact with family members any more, except for a cousin. But I still feel I am on the right path, namely to become aware of the truth, and to accept and to express this.
I am often aware of a dull but persistent bad feeling in my body, near my stomach. Interestingly this is where my pancreas is, which stopped functioning about 10 years ago. My white blood cells have destroyed my pancreas, so now I am dependent of injecting insulin every day, otherwise I will die. I believe there may be a connection between my previously denied and blocked emotions and my present illness.
I want to thank you for your willingness to support me as a spiritual partner, and I hope I can support you likewise.

Thank you, Gail, for your comments. The reason I am here, the reason why I am became interested in Gary’s views in the first place, is to understand myself, and to find the real me. What I think is particularly valuable about Gary’s teachings, is that they provide a more structured, methodic way of becoming more aware of my feelings and intentions, and eventually to prevent my sub-consciousness from controlling me, owing to lack of understanding. Again, this is why acknowledging and feeling what happened to me during my childhood and adolescence is so important. I fully agree with you that “resistance to feeling is an indication to me that a frightened part of my personality is active.” What makes it all the more difficult to feel, is when certain feelings are taboo, when we are not supposed to feel them, for example feeling that our parents are not our biggest supporters, and that they are not the souls that are closest to us. And yet, this is what I am feeling, when I am honest to myself, and it is the complete opposite of what Gary is telling me to believe. It reminds of a discussion I saw on the Oprah Winfrey Show a couple of years ago, when a guest said: “All parents love their children,” to which Oprah replied: “This is simply not true.” I agree with Oprah, it is simply not true. This is why I distance myself from Gary’s view on this particular subject.
The souls that are closest to me are the souls that love me and accept me for who I am. That is a far cry from what my mother represented. To be my biggest supporter, I feel it would have been necessary for my mother to have loved me, to have helped me, and to have respected my integrity. None of which were the case. In fact my mother wanted me dead when I was very small, and at some deep level I have sensed that when I was very young. Obviously it damaged me, and it shaped my life.
I do believe however, that it is important to forgive, in the sense that it is destructive for yourself to keep on hating someone who hurt you in the past. One has to move on, which does not mean that you forget, or you downplay what the other person did to you. I can see now my mother is a very sick person with many unresolved issues in her childhood, which she projected on me as a child.
I agree with you that especially our family can trigger the most painful feelings in us that we can possibly experience. Being unwanted as a child is one such experience I am still trying to fully feel. You mention that your parents are the greatest teachers/supporters in your spiritual growth. Supporters? Not in my case. My parents were indifferent to my spiritual growth. I have been growing spiritually without their support. I agree with the view of the Dalai Lama, who said that we can learn a great deal about ourselves from our enemies. This is the most positive view I can take on my parent’s role in my personal and spiritual development. My mother was my greatest, not my greatest supporter.
I agree with you, that “uncomfortable and painful sensations in the body are messages from the soul as something that is significant for me to pay attention to, by feeling them as deeply and fully as I can.” I am learning to do this, but it is very difficult for me, because it is the exact opposite of what I have been taught by my parents: they basically taught me not to notice, not to feel. What would help me most is to talk to people who have had the same experiences as I had with my parents, so that we can support each other. I wonder if there is anyone in this community who regocnizes what I have discussed so far? Thank you again, Gail, your comments have been a great help to me.

Thank you, Lori, for your comments, I can feel it took considerable courage for you to share your thoughts and experiences. I understand and recognize what you say about the deep fear of feeling the enormous pain that underlies the physical sensations that you are now aware of. Indeed, this touches on my greatest problem as well, that is that feeling our traumas may not be without risk if we have to face it alone. In the words of Alice Miller: ”The result of any traumatic experience, such as abuse, can only be resolved by experiencing, articulating and judging every facet of the original experience within a process of careful therapeutic disclosure.” In other words, one has to treat one’s traumas very carefully, preferably with a therapist. In my experience however, therapists tend not to be open to reliving the abuse we suffered as a child, rather, they tend to want to medicate and cover up these feelings, which we need to feel if we want to recover from the trauma.
I could not agree more with what you write about the Boston bombing: the violence and destruction within the family is the same as in the middle of a city, though different in its manifestation. Many people do not understand how a nice, intelligent boy can be can capable of such a heinous and terrible crime. But this becomes clear when we look closely at what happened during the early childhood of any terrorist or criminal. The bombing in Boston is the last chapter of a book that started at the beginning of his life. If we study his life carefully, we will find that great pain was inflicted on him, but he was not allowed to feel, even notice this. But subconsciously, the knowledge of what happened is still there, and if it does not become conscious knowledge, by means of feeling, tragedies like the bombing in Boston will happen again and again.
I am very thankful that you took the effort to respond to my message, Lori, and am impressed by your courage to want to feel what comes up and to respond from the healtiest, most loving parts of you.

Hi Joanne, I will try to answer your question. Yes, in my opinion the teenager who was arrested for the bombings in Boston chose not to feel the pain he had been subjected to during his early childhood, or at least chose not to seek help when he noticed he had a violent impulse. No matter how terrible our childhood may have been, nothing can take away the guilt if someone chooses to act on his/her violent fantasies and hurt other people as a result. Once a person notices the strong impulse to want to be violent or to use violence against others, no matter for what reason or justification , this should be a warning that he/she needs to find help. But this prospect is terrifying for some, when there is no awareness that they have been subject to great cruelty during their childhood. It can seem completely justified to these people to hurt or even kill people for a ‘just’ cause if childhood injuries remain unnoticed when they are adults. It is difficult to not give in to the temptation to act out, if people are not aware of the real cause of our own violent impulse. The temptation to act destructively is hard to resist for those people, until they succeed in making the connection between their violent thoughts and real events in their own past. This is why I think it is so important to really feel, to become aware of the reality of our childhood experiences. It is a great shame, in my opinion, that our mental health care system does not provide sufficient help in this respect.

Hi Eric, thank you very much for your contribution. I am shocked and very sorry for you that you suffered sexual abuse as a child, this is a terrible experience. I agree that this was an act of violence that was inflicted on you, when you were a defenseless child. It is absolutely inexcusable. I am not sure what you mean by ‘FP’, but I take it you mean the opposite of authentic power. You say: “But the energy between my abuser and me is only Love”, and “The abuser chose to act from fear but that does not make his soul less loving.” The reality, in my opinion, is that first and foremost you were confronted with the abuser’s personality, which was not aligned with his soul. This non-aligned personality did a great deal of damage to you, and it would, in my opinion, be the most appropriate and healthy response on your part to be very angry and very hurt because of his irresponsible, selfish and criminal acts. I believe this is more important than putting the horrible acts of your abuser into perspective. If your strong emotions as a result of the abuse you suffered have not been fully felt, then there will be the risk that your trauma is not fully resolved. I hope for you that you have been able to, or will get, professional help to feel the pain and the justified anger for what was done to you, so that you will not have to act it out on other people and make more victims in the future.
You are right in saying that Gary does not ask people to believe anything. I feel the responsibility to take a critical view on his beliefs. As I have said, I oppose Gary’s opinion that, as a rule, our parents are our greatest supporters and that they are the souls being closest to us. In my opinion, this is not a general rule, but an ideal situation.

Thank you, Eric, I recognize what you say about intimicy. For me this has also always been an issue, as is the issue of trust, especially trusting authority. This may be connected to my making a point of the disagreement I have with Gary over the position of parents in my life. Why do I want Gary to agree with me? I think it is because I want my experiences to be validated by him, and I want to be able to trust him. It is difficult for me to feel safe when his view on such a major issue as the role of parents seems flawed. I have been looking again at the spiritual partnership guidelines, and it has occurred to me that throughout the discussion my physical sensations were painful, especially in the chest area. On the telephone the other day, one of the members suggested I put my hand on the area where it hurt, and that helped a lot. So thank you for this suggestion. I feel I am still full of fear, because I am discussing a forbidden subject. I must admit that I have difficulty adhering to all the guidelines at the same time, they almost seem like a straightjacket within which I have to express myself, and I feel it can block me from speaking freely. So making my contribution s partly feels like I am transgressing the rules that Gary defined. Love to all, Jeroen