Becoming the Bridge

The one who is willing to take a risk and try the unknown, becomes a living bridge for others who may be looking for a way to grow.


As in much of my work I bring in sources that validate and verify the truth, sometimes simply because it is already written in a way that I cannot improve upon, sometimes because the spirit and energy of the author’s words are too perfect to change.


I tend to use a lot of Dancing analogies, mainly because I love ballroom dancing, and recently in working with a client, I was sharing with her that learning how to grow spiritually, is much like learning or teaching ballroom dancing. We can "TRY" to teach ourselves, which takes a long time, or we can take lessons from someone who has had the training and allow them to teach us. With a teacher your growth and dancing abilities are accelerated and the process takes much less time and effort, (and in most cases you are a better dancer).

As no one person perfected ballroom dancing, it is the result of many ideas, processes and the culmination of a number of dancers each contributing his or her part to the overall program. As each new move or dance evolves, the teachers that are up on current dancing, learn and integrate those elements, and in turn teach their students.

I have applied this process to spiritual development, no one person has all the answers or all of the truth, as we work together, the WHOLE Truth evolves. As we integrate the ideas, elements and processes from a variety of teachers the whole of humanity benefits. This also prevents cases like the Mormons in Texas where they have been conditioned and brain washed in to believing that one mans Truth is the only Truth.


With that said here is today’s lesson -


Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls by Robert Burney

I spent most of my life doing the Serenity prayer backwards, that is, trying to change the external things over which I had no control - other people and life events mostly - and taking no responsibility (except shaming and blaming myself) for my own internal process - over which I can have some degree of control. Having some control is not a bad thing; trying to control something or somebody over which I have no control is what is dysfunctional.

What is so valuable, what I believe is unique, about the approach to inner child healing that I have been guided to develop and refine, is that it provides a formula for integrating Spiritual Truth and intellectual knowledge of healthy behavior into one's emotional relationship with life.
It does not matter how much Spiritual Truth, how many mystical experiences of oneness, how in tune with Love, you can feel in certain moments - if you cannot integrate it into your life in a way which changes your emotional experience of life on a moment to moment, day to day basis. You can go to therapy for many years, read all the Spiritual and self help books, go to workshops and seminars and lectures - compile encyclopedic intellectual knowledge of what healthy behavior is - and still be reacting to old wounds in the relationships that mean the most to you.
The missing ingredient for so many people who have been seeking for many years, is how to integrate what you know into how you feel about your experience life. That is what I teach people - because it is what I have spent many years learning. It is what I am still learning.


We need to start observing ourselves and stop judging ourselves. Any time we judge and shame ourselves, we are feeding back into the disease, we are jumping back into the squirrel cage.
What I see clearly now, is that detachment was the first step in my recovery - and is the key to consciousness raising. As long as we are reacting out of a polarized belief system to the feeling of toxic shame in our core relationship with ourselves, we are powerless to be co-creators of our lives in anything but a negative way. It is only by detaching from our inner process enough to start seeing reality from a new healthier perspective, that we can start to gain some freedom from our old wounds and old tapes.
Observing ourselves without shame and judgment allows us to see reality with more clarity. It creates the space that allows us to own our power to make choices. It creates the space for us to start to understand our own internal conflict so that we can choose to start paying attention to the "small quiet voice" of our Spirit, of our intuition, instead of giving power to the loud abusive messages coming from our wounded ego programming. It is the key to starting to stop the war within and create some inner peace.

Observing ourselves without shame and judgment allows us to see reality with more clarity. It creates the space that allows us to own our power to make choices. It creates the space for us to start to understand our own internal conflict so that we can choose to start paying attention to the "small quiet voice" of our Spirit, of our intuition, instead of giving power to the loud abusive messages coming from our wounded ego programming. It is the key to starting to stop the war within and create some inner peace.
Developing a level of consciousness in which we are self aware, and turning that space into a proactive force in changing our relationship with self and life, is the key to learning to relax and enJoy life in the moment some of the time. The percentage of the time we are be-ing and enjoying life will increase gradually as we transform our relationship with self and life.
Probably even more important than the ability to relax and enjoy life, is developing the observer consciousness that helps us to start developing some compassion for ourselves when we are not enjoying life. It helps us to allow - and align with - the emotional healing so that we can release the repressed grief energy we are carrying. It helps us to stop judging and shaming ourselves when we feel "bad." That in turn means we spend less time in negative feeling emotional spaces - and move back into positive feeling emotional spaces sooner. It allows us to open up to receive so that we don't sabotage feeling good.
Detachment allows us to start taking some Loving control of our own internal process. It allows us to start taking control over, and responsibility for, our thoughts and our feelings to the extent that is possible. It allows us to create a space in our lives to start learning how to be Loving to ourselves instead of feeling like a victim of self and life.
Detachment - learning to observe our selves so that we can become more conscious - is an act of Love.
additional level of consciousness
I realized after posting this page that I wasn't sure if I had been clear that I was not talking about detachment as a way to avoid feeling the feelings. I am referring to developing an additional level of consciousness where we can be watching ourselves at the same time we are feeling the feelings. A level of consciousness from the adult on a Spiritual path, the recovery control center, that can help us align with the grieving process and release the emotional energy. We can be the recovering adult who is observing from a nurturing and Loving place at the same time we are experiencing the feelings of the 5 year old, or 9 year old, or 23 year old, or whatever. We can be in the feelings and observing ourselves grieving at the same time.
This level of consciousness is from a higher perspective. It is an additional level of consciousness that we cultivate and develop by more clearly tuning in to, concentrating our attention on, our intuition - the "small quiet voice" - and consciously choosing to give power to the Spiritual Truth we resonate with instead of our emotional truth and mental programming from childhood. By cultivating this detached perspective - detached from our ego experience of being human - we can observe both the mental and emotional levels of our being from a more discerning perspective. It facilitates changing the intellectual programming and taking some of the terror out of healing the emotional wounds. It allows us to set internal boundaries within, and between, the mental and emotional levels of our being.
When I speak of a detached observer perspective, I am not talking about the kind of observation that is taught in some spiritual meditation practices. Many people use that type of observation as a way to avoid feeling the feelings. That type of detachment from emotions is what some people experience on anti-depressants. Some people use chanting and meditation as anti-depressants. Chanting and meditation can be invaluable tools but applied in an imbalanced manner can, like positive affirmations, be used as tools to deny feelings.
Just observing the feelings does not heal them; does not fundamentally change our relationship patterns; does not make our fear of intimacy go away. We need to feel, experience, and release the emotional energy in order to heal the wounds and take power away from them.
We need to feel the feelings but learn how not to be the victim of them / of our reactions. I am talking about a detached observer consciousness that gives us the power to choose how to respond when one of our grief / rage buttons has been pushed. An emotional wound can be triggered and we can make a conscious choice that it is not safe to feel and release those feelings in that moment. Then, we have a choice about how we are going to respond in the now, and later we can do the grief work when it is safe and appropriate to do it.
We do not avoid feeling the feelings. We gain some power over when and where we feel the feelings. Detachment, as it applies to the inner child healing process in my approach, is a technique that fosters empowerment and response-ability, not emotional denial. Detachment is a dynamic technique, a method of consciously relating to our internal process, that is an integral and invaluable step in consciousness raising / enlightenment / awakening / recovery / healing / empowerment. - RB