74 On Seeing Clearly The Fantasy and the Reality

EXPERIENCE has taught us that deep inside each of us is a part of us that wants everything right now and a place for it to hide—something like Peter Pan and Never Never Land.  In combination, this place in us and that part of us are very insatiable and very demanding. Some call it the inner child, but I have to wonder at that.  I believe this to be a misnomer because it seems more complex than that.  I have come to believe that this is the soul wearing the cloak of the inner child, hiding from the world it has been born into.

This place seems to be a shadowy land of the phases of who and what we were meant to be and what we are to become¾hopefully; who we were last time around, and who we are right now, all rolled into one. 

It is like a staging area for life, and the soul is hiding there, too afraid to come out into the life it was supposed to be born into. 

Facing Your Destiny Is A Difficult Business,

Yet It Seems To Be The Only Business At Hand

If You Really Get Honest And Look.

73 On Seeing Clearly and Maybe Understanding for the First-Time

EXPERIENCE has taught us that sometimes there are things that we should not attempt.  Things that can’t be done, things that we shouldn’t touch.  Sometimes we just have to observe, and possibly be observed in the process.

Steinbeck put it thus:

“There are those who must live in rooms of experience that the rest of us can never enter – perhaps we should quit trying to intrude into these places, and simply learn to guard the door!” 

72 On Seeing Clearly Perhaps for the First Time

EXPERIENCE has taught us that people who identify themselves (willingly or not) as co-dependent will have to go through a process of unraveling and processing, if they want to free themselves.  This thought stems from Alice Miller’s benchmark work Drama of the Gifted Child.

“When we are in touch with our true feelings and can express them and not have to repress them, the energy to act them out at inappropriate times and places diminishes over time.”[1]

It is a given that if we lost our voices to speak about our pain, then we will act it out. Conversely, as we recover and regain our ability to speak and process our deep-seated feelings, then the need to act out in order to be heard will diminish.

"It Is Very Striking To See How ... Acting Out Ceases When The Patient Begins To Experience His Own Feelings."

 (Alice Miller)

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[1] Published by Harper Perennial