Co-Independence

(This article is excerpted from a talk that I gave April 13, 2008, at CSLSR)

I was recently asked; What is the difference between compassion, and co-dependence?

Co-dependent has become a buzzword, used rather liberally, yet there is confusion as to what it means, and how, or if, it affects our lives. When does something that can feel and look like compassion, even have compassionate motivation, cross a line into being something unhealthy?

I think we can agree that compassion, as we generally define it, is a desirable quality. It speaks to kindness, acceptance and understanding, tolerance, and grace. In Religious Science we might go so far as to refer to qualities like this as qualities of God.

When, then, does something as good and as noble as compassion cross a line into being unhealthy? When do we begin to dis-empower someone by over-protecting, or rescuing, or fixing?

That may well be the point of demarcation to be aware of, the question to ask ourselves; Am I empowering someone, or dis-empowering them?

To empower is “to promote the self-actualization of”. This is ultimately what the mid to long-term goal of compassion is, or should be.

There is a pathology that has arisen in our culture in the last couple of decades, and that pathology is; I have drama, therefore I am. The news if full of it, soap operas and other television and media provide a steady diet of it, tabloids make a fortune at it. It has almost become desirable to be in drama of one kind or another. It can even feel like a drama competition; my drama is bigger than your drama.

As that pathology has emerged and matured, there has been another, sympathetic pathology that has followed it up the scale of awareness, and that one is; I rescue people in drama, therefore I am.

We seem to have forgotten, somewhere along the way, that we learn and conquer our fears by experience. Emerson reminds us, “Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little coarse, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice. Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.”

One thing that happens with this emerging pathology is that we overlay our squeamishness onto someone else, cleverly disguised as compassion. Based on how we see the world, or a situation, or a challenge, we impose those perceptions onto someone else’s life. The inner dialogue is, “I think this is a bad thing that is happening to you, it is causing me pain to watch you walk through it, therefore I am going to step in and short circuit your process.”

We have become afraid, somewhere along the way, to fail and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice, and we deal with that fear by rescuing someone else.

How then do we practice compassion and still maintain a healthy relationship? We do so by walking through another person’s version of hell with them, and not judging their situation as good or bad, or right or wrong. We refrain from overlaying our own fears onto another.

We trust that the Universal Consciousness knows what It is doing, that it may be doing just fine without our corrections.

None of us likes to see those we care about in distress. And, when is their distress really our own distress? When do we see something as distress when its actually someone learning life lessons, valuable life lessons, without which they may be less well equipped to flourish in the world? When do we begin to disempower someone by over-protecting, or rescuing, or fixing?

When are we saving someone from something that they don’t need to be saved from?

We all have to live our own lives. I cannot do it for you in the name of compassion, for to do so would be to cheat you of the satisfaction of coming to know just how powerful you really are.

You’ve heard the saying, “give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach him to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.“ That, I believe, is an accurate metaphor for what we are really trying to accomplish with compassion. Naturally, if you are starving, I will give you a fish. As soon as you are healthy enough, I will teach you to fish. If I continue to give you fish after you are healthy enough to begin to learn to fish for yourself, that is not compassion, and does not empower you. Rather, it dis-empowers. This is co-dependence.

Religious Science teaches us that our thoughts have tremendous power. With that kind of power comes responsibility, responsibility for ourselves, responsibility for our choices. This can be one of the most empowering and satisfying things we ever discover in life. This is the whole basis for the Science of Mind philosophy.

So what if, no matter what you thought or chose, someone came along and short-circuited that process by absorbing the consequences of your actions and choices? It does have a certain appeal, since it absolves us of responsibility. And, in the long run, we would never learn how truly powerful we are. We would never know that satisfaction.

Many years ago I was encouraged to take an inventory of my life to that point, to look at my relationships, my actions and my choices and see what I could learn from them.

It was hard, because I knew that I would see that I had made a colossal mess of my life. Yet for perhaps the first time in my life I was encouraged to take responsibility for my own choices, for my own power, to step out of the victim role, to take responsibility for my part of the mess. As a result of that process, I had one of the biggest realization of my life; if I could make that big of a mess of things, WHAT IF I were to apply that same power, the power of thought and of choice, and try to make something good of it? I began to do just that, and life has gotten very different. But here’s the caveat: I had to embrace what appeared to be failure, in order to realize my own power.

I want to propose to you a new word: CO-INDEPENDENCE. And here’s the working definition: I love you, and I will walk with you through hell. But I will not disempower you. I practice compassion by loving you so much that I will let you discover how truly powerful you are. I will not short-circuit that. I will not abandon you, but I will not rescue you if you choose to make the same choices over and over again. I will not overlay my fear onto you, but will trust that the path that you are walking is the right and perfect path for you to learn what it is you need to learn. I will let you learn your way, not my way. I trust completely in the Infinite Wisdom within you, knowing that you will find your own perfect alignment in the perfect time, in the perfect way. The power of the Universe lives within you, and I trust that above all else.

Jeffrey R. Anderson, RScP

SpiritPathCounseling.com

SpiritAsJeff.com

April 14, 2008

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Are You a Prisoner to Your Story?

We all have a story. This story may or may not accurately reflect our life path, but it is our story none the less. It is how we have come to think of ourselves, and how we choose to present ourselves to the world around us.

Our stories are our beliefs about our lives, about life in general. They are compilations of what we have learned along the way, the experiences that have shaped our minds, how we think, act and present ourselves to the world.

Many people firmly believe that they are their stories. We can become so attached to it that it defines us, and limits our experience of life. We forget that it is our past, not our present. This does not necessarily have to be so. We need not be bound by our past, or defined by our story. We are what we believe ourselves to be. And we are free to be anything we choose.

I invite you to think about liberation from the story, the possibility that many of the beliefs that we have accumulate along the way are not in fact The Truth. Not our Truth and not God‘s Truth. I believe this to be so, and I have spent more time unlearning than I have in accumulating new information. I have stepped out of my story, and into my present.

We each have the power to change our story at any time we choose. We have the choice to release our story completely, to free ourselves from our accumulated ideas of who and what we are, and what we can and cannot do with our lives. The fact is that the present moment represents our Truth much more accurately than our stories ever did, ever could, or ever will.

We are as free as we give ourselves permission to be.

I invite you to look at your story. I ask you to be more honest with yourself than you have ever been in your life. I ask you if your story is your Truth. I invite you to consider letting go of what you were, in order to step into what you are.

What if you were to release old thoughts and beliefs, old patterns and anxieties and fears that have limited your experience of life, indeed that continue to limit your experience of life today? What would it feel like to wake each day with a blank canvas before us, upon which we could create anything we choose? Can you even imagine the possibility?

Our ego likes things just the way they are. Even if we are miserable, there is a certain comfort in the familiar. We know how to be when we are how we have always been.

I invite you to step out of the familiar, to trust yourself and your God, so that you might come to know the real you as you are today, in the present moment, to see yourself apart from your story. This may bring up feelings of fear and resistance. Ego may even now be standing firm in your mind saying, "Of course I know who I am." I invite you to have the courage to look again.

You are, quite probably, different than you have come to believe. Perhaps it is your time to come to know who and what you truly are today. Perhaps it is your time to become liberated, free to be authentic, to embody your Truth, regardless of your story.

We all have a story. There may, however, be a significant difference between our story and our Truth. If you can get past the fear, past the sureness, if you can just for a few minutes ask yourselves if your story, and the old beliefs that go along with it is in any way limiting your experience of life today, the answers you find may surprise you.

We are what we believe ourselves to be. And we are free to be anything we choose.

Jeffrey R. Anderson, RScP

SpiritPathCounseling.com

SpiritAsJeff.com

March, 2006

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Transcending the Status Quo

Einstein said, “ We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking we used when we created them.”

Why is it then that we wake up day after and think the same thoughts and feel the same feelings and do the same things that we did the day before, yet somehow expect the results to be different?

It has become very clear that the models that we have been working with, as individuals and as a society – hell, as a planet – are not working particularly well. But we seem to be so busy blaming each other – the oil companies, Dubya, our parents, whoever – that we expend all of our energies pointing out what’s wrong, rather than opening to new models, new levels of addressing our problems.

It’s not like we don’t know what we’re doing. Sure, there is a significant percentage of the population that, due to lack of education and opportunity, or just plain old fear, remains stranded in the mire of the status quo, but we cannot fall back on that default position any longer. It’s an excuse, plain and simple, and nothing more.

Too many people on this planet are now conscious to claim ignorance any longer.

We are in a period of cultural awareness unparalleled in modern times. Even science, via theoretical quantum physics, is now telling us that what we choose, how we think and what we look for determines what we experience in life.

We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking we used when we created them.

The challenge to this point has been lack of models for implementing a different level of thinking. Religion has tried, and some have actually presented viable tools with which to begin. But religion has accumulated so much baggage along the way – or more accurately, our perception of religion has accumulated the baggage – that many have closed to the door to that area of exploration. Worshiping instead The God of Materialism, we have opted to confine our experience of life to what we can see and touch and accumulate. We have become a nation of Stuff Worshipers. But hey, that’s the model we had to work with, the American Dream; the house, the cars, 2.2 kids, the dog and the picket fence.

Let me ask you this; How well is that working for you?

Here’s what happened; the American dream picked up it’s own baggage along the way, and has now become so cumbersome as to be archaic. The model doesn’t work anymore.

Madison Avenue has convinced us that we must have stuff to be happy. It doesn’t even matter what kind of stuff any more. Almost any stuff will do. But in the process we have become so focused on materialism that we have seriously depleted the resources of the planet. Indeed, in our own shortsightedness we have sickened our own environment to the point where there are ecosystems on this planet that cannot even sustain life.

We have confused success with acquisition, joy with how much we spend in the pursuit of it, awe with dominance and oppression, even love we have confused with over-dependence, power, control, ownership. We have become isolated from each other. We have picked up quite a load of our own baggage along the way.

So how then do we begin to change it? I mean really change it, how do we jump the tracks and re-define our models, how do we let go of what is no longer working and begin to nourish and nurture better models to create a world that works for everyone?

Perhaps an even better question is not how, but rather, do we have the courage to do it. Are we really, honestly willing to begin to step out of our own self-serving little worlds into a place of bigger awareness?

Honestly I’m not convinced we’re ready to do that yet. Even those of us who profess to be conscious and progressive and open at the top still hang on to our separation from the whole of humanity. Why? Because it still serves us. Why, really?

Erica Jong hit the nail the head some years ago when she said, “Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.”

The problem is, we still need someone to blame. That is the root of the problem here, individually, societally, and globally. We need someone to blame, because if we let go of that, we would have to truly step into a place of responsibility for our own actions, our own thoughts, our own experience of life, our own planet. And for all of our talk and bluster, I don’t know that we have yet reached a point of maturity where we are truly ready and willing to take responsibility for ourselves.

We could though, if we really, really wanted to. We have “new” models emerging, and ancient ones re-emerging that we could apply right now, today, that would radically change our world in a very short period of time. And there is something within us, individually and collectively, that is starting to re-awaken to this truth.

Movies like What the Bleep Do We Know and The Secret are bringing into the mainstream a new level of thinking with which we can transcend our problems. Every single one of them.

Science is now reinforcing what may of us have known since our species first stood upright; that consciousness, not matter, is the ground of all being. This means, simply put, that what we think and feel and believe, what we focus our attention on, what we expect, all factors in to what our world looks like, and our experience of it.

It means that we can change our minds, and in so doing, change our life, and our planet.

There are countless places to look, where a new level of thinking is taking hold, where change is starting to happen. 12-step recovery has a wonderfully simple model with which a personal inventory can be taken. Do you even know what you think, really? Maybe it’s time to find out. Take an inventory. Look at how you think about every single thing in your world. You may be surprised. You may even be shocked at what you find. But before we can begin to operate on a new level of thinking we must be familiar, intimately familiar, with the old level. We cannot set out on a journey to a new place if we have no idea where we are to begin with.

Psychologists tell us that every one of us thinks an average of between 65,000 and 70,000 thoughts a day and 90 to 95% of those thoughts are repetitive. We have become numb to our own thought, yet we wonder why the same thing keeps happening. I’ll tell you why; it’s because we don’t know what we’re thinking. Literally.

There are the teachers of our day that are spreading the word of modern day transcendence. People like Deepak Chopra, M.D., and Marianne Williamson, Eckhart Tolle and Mary Manin Morrissey, Dr. Wayne Dyer and Iyanla Vanzant, Amit Goswami, Ph.D., and Dr. Albert Einstein and Dr. Ernest Holmes and the Reverend Dr. Michael Beckwith are putting together the pieces and presenting them again for our consideration. They are articulating a different level of thinking that they will be the first to admit is nothing new, but rather has been known since the earliest of times.

The Buddah is quoted as saying, "All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become."

These are smart people, yet they recognize that we share something essential; we share our humanity, and all that that entails.

We are beginning to experience a resonance again that we recognize is perhaps even the sound of creation itself. It is something we have in common. It is, perhaps, life, perhaps that drive for survival that is calling us together as never before.

There is a place within each person that transcends the status quo and our current models and judgments and labels and fear and beliefs, that cuts through baggage and dogma and greed and fear. It is the place that is recognizing and admitting that the way we have been doing things for the past few hundred years isn’t working so well anymore. Something has to change. And we cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking we used when we created them.

Jeff Anderson, RScP, is a licensed spiritual practitioner/counselor in private practice in Northern California. Visit his website at www.SpiritPathCounseling.com.

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Gender Shame

My earliest vivid memory of childhood is what I refer to as ‘The Last Fight’, the one where Mom finally left my father.

My father was an alcoholic, and a rage-a-holic, which made for an interesting early childhood. The time period I am referring to being the early 60’s, things were not as they are now. A hard working man was not discouraged from being a hard drinking man. It was almost expected. Domestic violence too was a well kept secret, a ‘family issue’ if it was looked at as an issue at all.

I vividly remember that night, 4 or 5 years old, watching and listening as my father, drunk, abused my mother. This night was different though. Mom fought back. I can still hear the yelling, ‘Sit down and shut up!’ my father bellowed, pushing my mom into a kitchen chair. I didn’t understand at the time really what was going on, but I remember pots and pans flying, the phone ripped out of the wall, blood, lots it seemed like, on both of them, neighbors outside, police. And as mom finally got us kids into the car, neighbors looking on, the man in the house bellowing like a wounded bull, I now know what it is I felt; shame.

I was the only male child, with two sisters, and always felt different. Perhaps it was just gender, perhaps shame, perhaps the fact that I inherited the alcoholic gene from dear old dad, but it was always the women, and me.

From the house that night we drove a block over to my grandparent’s house, where my grandfather, the story goes, told my mother to ‘get back home to her husband where she belonged’. I loved my grandfather, but again I felt shame that The Man of the family, the patriarch, could be so cold and insensitive and locked into the male role that he would tell his own daughter to go back to a situation that was obviously unsafe, for all of us, simply because she should ‘stand by her man’.

That experience set the tone for a good portion of my life, until just a handful of years ago.

As I matured (such as it was) I found most of the men that I experienced to be users, bullies, insecure, so overcompensating with a macho façade that it hindered them from being human. We were not supposed to feel or display emotion, and most of the men that I saw followed these societal dictates well. They hid their emotion, except for anger, which was accepted. They were men after all.

And now I begin to understand the underlying reason for so much of that anger, realizing at long last that when emotion is suppressed, it will, like anything else in this universe that has a natural, normal flow that is blocked, find an outlet, somewhere.

I was ‘sensitive’, more so than I was ‘supposed’ to be, which is probably why I participated so fully in my disease of alcoholism for so many years. I was led to believe by family example and by our society that I was not supposed to be experiencing what I felt, so I deadened it for a long time.

But even in my numbed state I watched as men raped and pillaged, ‘led’ our government into turmoil and chaos, war, death, mismanaged families and seemingly every affair that they were assigned or chose to lead. I watched them spit, fight and intimidate, seemingly emotionless. Role models that reflected The Truth of what a man really is and should be were, and still are, few and far between.

I have discovered that early on I took upon my shoulders the sins of my gender, and have been slowly bending under the accumulating weight for many years.

I have tried to compensate for the wrongs that I saw and continue to see, extending kindness and gentleness and safety to the best of my ability and limited experience wherever I saw men lacking to do so, which is everywhere. It has led to dysfunction, through overcompensation on my part, in my life.

A friend told me recently that I can not change the world. I responded that maybe I can. While I certainly cannot balance the scales myself, perhaps by stepping out with articles such as this I can affect the awareness of men, and the perception of men. Perhaps I, and people like my classmates Brad and Bill and others that I have been blessed to meet lately, who have begun to shift my perception of ‘all men as insensitive pigs’, can indeed begin to shift the bigger consciousness. In doing so perhaps we can give men permission to be human, feel emotion, drop the macho veneer and experience the natural normal flow of feelings that come as a part of the human design. And maybe, just maybe, though certainly far from perfect and with many lessons yet to learn, we can begin to regain the respect of women and others, just by being who and what we truly are.

Jeffrey R. Anderson, RScP

SpiritPathCounseling.com

SpiritAsJeff.com

May, 2001

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NON-BALLERINA

It has not always been
with the utmost of grace and coordination
that I have performed on this stage we call life.
The critics have often been harsh,
the reviews unfavorable,
I, naturally, my own worst critic.
But I am committed to the dance,
for I have realized
that ultimately it is not the final performance that we live
but the unending hours, days, years, lifetimes of practice
that make us what we are.
So all I ask is that you not judge too harshly
as I practice my dance of life.
I will stumble, I will fall, I have, and will again.
I ask you to look beyond the practice, to the commitment,
to the intention, to the man, the soul beneath the performer,
for that is where my truth lies.
The dance has taught me many many lessons,
and I continue to learn,
because my heart is open, I am willing to try,
I am willing to fail.
I have come to know the truth,
I have come to believe in myself,
and if I never receive a standing ovation,
if I never receive the acceptance and approval
of those I seek to please with my dance,
those things will be reward enough,
for I am a seeker, dancing on an uneven stage...
a nonballerina...

Jeffrey R. Anderson, RScP

SpiritPathCounseling.com

SpiritAsJeff.com

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