Which brings me to what I wanted to talk about. I am so incredibly grateful for this path I am on. The miracle of the Twelve Step Recovery Program Spiritual Principles first saved my life when I was trying to kill myself - then saved my life again when my Codependence was close to killing me. My Codependence Recovery then turned living from something which was miserable and unbearable for me into a Glorious Exciting Adventure. I am so glad to be alive today - and have a life work that I passionately believe in, Love doing, and which brings me great Joy. I am not sure how I am going to pay my rent next month, haven't had anything close to a Love relationship for several years, and have some health problems - but those don't matter today. I am free to be Happy and Joyous in the moment for the majority of the moments of every day.

What I can see now is that my response to my car breaking down last month (Newsletter 10-25-98) broke me through to a whole new dimension of existence. I have for years had a bumper sticker on my car that says Happy Joyous and Free - and I have had increasing tastes of what that means over the years - but now I am Truly living in a space where that is my reality most of the time. I am Free to be Happy and Joyous in the moment most of the time because I am also free to be angry or sad or scared or hurt in the moment. I am Free because I have let go of the "What ifs" and "If onlys" which are just my disease wanting me to feel deprived and victimized. I am Free because I know in my heart and in my gut that I am Unconditionally Loved and I don't have to earn it. I am Free because I know the future is not in my control - and I know that I am doing all of the seed planting and footwork that the Universe is prompting me to do. I am Free to relax and enjoy life because the Spirit is guiding me.

Years ago I ran across a saying that I really liked and wanted to set as a goal - "Serenity is not Freedom from the Storm - Serenity is Peace Amidst the Storm." I had always thought that I had to stop the storm. Now I can be serene and peaceful no matter what the storm brings - life events like car breakdowns, other peoples behavior which is just them dancing with their own wounds, apparent financial insecurity, that I am still doing some unhealthy behavior health wise, whatever - I don't have to be perfect, I don't have to have money, I don't have to be in a relationship, to be happy. I am Truly Free in this moment and in most of the moments of my life for these past weeks - this too will pass into something different at some point, but I know that once I have attained a new level, I will return to it often. There is still going to be pain and fear and anger and hurt sometimes (a part of me just got real scared because the last time I felt something close to this good for a long period of time I got into a relationship - which was wonderful and very, very painful and a incredible gift package full of opportunities for growth - I guess if I can face burning at the stake and Heidi that I must be ready to deal with the old fear of intimacy issues again.) Oh well, the adventure continues and keeps getting different. I LOVE IT SO MUCH!!!

I guess it is pretty weird to be processing here on my computer and then sending it out for the world to read - but that is what I do. The Truth is so powerful and wonderful and by doing the process work we get to start being allies with the Spirit where Love lives instead of with the disease where fear rules. Fuck the fear I say - full speed ahead in the direction of Love.

I am doing the service at a Metaphysical New Thought church tomorrow and my topic is going to be Happy Joyous and Free."

So, when the thought of getting involved in a romantic relationship hit me in the paragraph above - it seemed to come out of the blue. I wasn't at that point thinking of the "date" the next day or having a date for the wedding in 6 weeks - I was just processing.

We had our date the next day and I could see that though we came from very different backgrounds and had different types of Spiritual Paths, we were both very dedicated to our Paths and might have some Karmic business together. I left on my trip with an awareness that she and I might be getting involved in a relationship - and that it could be a very important powerful connection or it might be a painful lesson/opportunity for growth that could be preparation for a relationship to come. I sent her a card when I got to Phoenix and called her on Thanksgiving - she was waiting for my call. When I got back to Morro Bay is when the Adventure kicked into high gear.

Back to the e-mail of December 7th:

I have of course been led to do a ton of work in recent months to open up to receiving Love, success, abundance, etc. - and to Loving myself even though I am overweight, still smoking, and pretty financially poor. And once I reached the place where I could be happy and Joyous in the moment today despite all of those things - this new plateau of acceptance and letting go of all of my dreams and hopes and fantasies - then of course, they started to pour in (well the money isn't exactly pouring in yet but that will come soon). This new plateau is another paradigm shift that changes my relationship with everything again, and also involves reaching a deeper level of emotional honesty which will peal away another level of denial and expose some more of the deep core level grief to be released/terror of intimacy to be healed - more tears coming up - but there is so much more Joy now than pain.

BRING IT ON UNIVERSE, I SAY - A WHOLE NEW SET OF OPPORTUNITIES FOR GROWTH. I AM SO INCREDIBLY GRATEFUL FOR THIS SPIRITUAL PATH.

So like I say - Nothing much happening here - What's with you. Robert

Boy, reading that now - I had no idea. The part about "This new plateau . . . so much more Joy now than pain." - I didn't have a clue as to how much Joy was possible then - I was just entering a whole new world, a dimension of existence that I did not know was possible. And I also had no idea of relatively how little power the core level grief had in my life anymore.

Then on January 1 1999 I sent out the following follow up e-mail:

"To my friends in cyberspace,

On December 7 th I sent an e-mail to you proclaiming my Joy and Gratitude at the way my path was unfolding.

I am sending this message today, New Years Day 1999, to let you know that the Joy, Love, and gratitude that I was feeling that day now seems almost primitive compared to the levels I have accessed since then. Here is what I wrote in my snail mail mailing that I am sending out here in California.

"1998 has been a very interesting year for me. Lots of opportunities for growth and learning. Lots of chances to practice acceptance, patience, faith and all those other wonderful Spiritual Principles that have made it possible for me to have Peace and Joy in my life no matter what was happening on the outside. Early summer was especially painful as what seemed to be an opportunity to publish my next books evaporated in a slow painful way - but gave lots of opportunity to practice Letting Go. I moved back to the Central Coast (Morro Bay) in early fall and am very happy I did as this area feels much more like home to me. I am still going to Santa Barbara once a week to see clients - but am not sure at this point if that is going to be financially viable for much longer.

The past few months have seen some Truly amazing and wondrous changes in my life. In November I was feeling very blessed with the level of freedom I had attained to feel happy, Joyous, & peaceful in the moment no matter what the outer conditions. In December, years of work came to critical mass and I made a leap into hyperspace that opened my heart in a Truly amazing way. A paradigm shift occurred in my relationship with being in body on this physical plane that has unleashed an incredible flow of energy - either that or I am having a psychotic break. Whatever is happening, I LOVE being so ALIVE. 1999 is going to be an incredible, Magical, Joyfilled year. Catch me while you can - my life has just started soaring."

There are not words to express to you how incredible and amazing the process is that I experienced in this last month. I am passionately ALIVE in a way that I could never have imagined. And I am not involved in the romantic relationship that I thought was developing on December 7th. The woman who I stated in that e-mail might be my dream woman, my twin soul - maybe is not.

The way things unfolded was that she got scared that maybe she was repeating an old pattern and decided she needed to pull back. So now we are friends and may never be anything 'else' than that - (I first wrote 'more than that' and needed to change it because that seemed somehow to diminish the value of friendship as if there were something wrong with it not being 'more' - probably has to do with old tapes / dysfunctional cultural standards.) It is a really wonderful magical emotionally intimate relationship that I have gotten the gift of learning some absolutely magnificent lessons from - about letting go of what I wanted it to be for one thing.

There have been quite a few absolutely magnificent lessons that I have learned because of my interaction with this amazing being who I have been blessed to have come into my life as an angel and teacher and buddy - but probably the most important one has to do with Love - since Love and learning the True meaning of Love, is really what the path is all about.

I had the honor of being asked to write something to speak at a wedding yesterday (New Years Eve) which of course was a perfect part of my Spiritual adventure - this incredibly intricate and magnificent plan / process that is unfolding.

I got to speak there, in what I wrote, about the new level of understanding - gut level understanding instead of just theoretical - that my amazing friend has helped me to experience. Here are a few short excerpts from that wedding prayer that I wrote with the parts I am specifically referring to here in bold.

(I think that this wedding prayer may be one of the most beautiful things I have ever written - I am very pleased with it.)

"You are together because you resonate on the same wave lengths, you fit together vibrationally, in such a way that together you form a powerful energy field that helps both of you access the Higher Vibrational Energy of Love, Joy, Light, and Truth - in a way that would be very difficult for either one of you to do by yourself. You are coming together to touch the face of God. You are uniting your energies to help you access the Love of the Holy Mother Source Energy.

You are not the source of each other's Love. You are helping each other to access the LOVE that is the Source.

The Love that you see when you see your soul in the others eyes is a reflection of the LOVE that you are. Of the Unconditional Love that the Great Spirit feels for you.

It is very important to remember that the other person is helping you to access God's LOVE within you - not giving you something that you have never had before."

"The Abundance of Love and Joy that you can help each other to feel by coming together - are vibrational levels that you then each will be able to access within yourself. You are helping each other to remember how to access that Love - helping each other to remember what it feels like and that Yes you do deserve it.

It is very important to remember that so that you can Let Go. Let Go of believing that the other person has to be in your life . . . ."

"The more you do your healing and follow your Spiritual path the more moments of each day you will have the choice to Truly be present in the moment.

And in the moment you can make a choice to embrace and feel the Joy fully and completely and with Gusto.

In any specific moment you will have the power to make a choice to feel the Love in that moment as if you have never been hurt and as if the Love will never go away.

Completely absolutely unconditionally with fearless abandon you can embrace the Love and Joy in the moment.

Glory in it!"

I now - in my moment to moment daily life - "can embrace the Love and Joy in the moment" for the majority of the moments that I am awake during the day. Of course, one of the reasons that is possible is that I am keeping my inner channel clear by releasing the grief, pain, fear, and anger as soon as I become aware of it - I am getting to do some deep grief work every day. This relationship is gouging all of my deepest wounds of abandonment, not being lovable/good enough, etc. - and amazingly they have hardly any power anymore. I am able to communicate to and nurture my inner child wounds and deal with the shame, insecurity, terror, heart-break, etc. attacks almost immediately - or at least within a matter of hours. The freedom that I am experiencing from the old wounds is at a level that I had never imagined possible.

So I think you can see why I am so grateful for this amazingly wise and wonderful woman being who has come into my life to help me reach these new levels.

Of course that amazingly wise and wonderful woman is also very wounded . As with all of us, her relationship with herself is shattered and fractured. She has an amazing, powerful wise woman teacher within her who has taught me so much. She has a wild wolf woman in her that would howl and dance naked in the full moon if she hadn't been so wounded by the Catholic Church and all the other physical/sexual imbalance of this sexist, sexually abusive, patriarchal society. She has a wondrous Loving heart with so much to give - and I got to experience how sublime it can feel to Truly feel Loved by her for a short time - but she also has the Romantic in her who has caused her to be wounded greatly and when she got scared she threw that Romantic into an inner dungeon and slammed the vault closed on her heart. I think it was the physical connection that really terrified her. It was excruciating, exquisite ecstasy to touch each other and when this musician affirmed to me that I was playing her body like a musical instrument it really set off her alarms.

All her fears about losing herself in a relationship surfaced. Her fear:

of being a victim of the Romantic yearning within her - 'I don't believe that stuff anymore';

of the power of the animal sensuality that would be unleashed because of her own sexual deprivation due to the relationship phobia that had kept her isolated most of her life;

really terror, of being emotionally needy and vulnerable - growing up in her family being vulnerable was not a safe place to be so she got tough; <

her absolute lack of any permission to be dependent on, or ask for help from, anyone, anytime;

of a man who could cry and be emotionally vulnerable with her, who allowed her to be afraid and was willing to listen as she talked her way through it;

of a man who maybe was too nice, too Loving, too vulnerable, too happy to be with her;

of her fear of being smothered and taken hostage.

So the part of her that has been her defender came out. The raging counterdependent who set boundaries with a harshness bordering on cruelty. The Loving friend disappeared and was replaced by someone who was always on guard, always defensive.

Here is something that I wrote on January 24, 1999 the day after I saw her last:

It looks like my friendship with what I originally thought was my twin soul may be over. I have had to set a boundary and remove myself from her life. She was stuck feeling like a victim of her issues with men and victimizing me out of her fear and hurt - so I got to tell her that I deserved to be treated better than that and that until she was ready to work through instead of run away from the issues I was exiting. Sad really - also really good that I am so clear now that I deserve better and will not allow such treatment. Very big deal for me to not sacrifice myself in the now for the potential of the future - doesn't work to hang on to the dream when reality is not working.

So I am feeling very sad about her being out of my life - but feeling great Joy about all the wonderful gifts I received from knowing her. This was the first time that I have entered into a relationship - and exited also - without my self-esteem being involved. What freedom!!! I knew who I was going in and the events that unfolded only made me stronger and better - there was never any threat to me, to my self worth - really cool. This is truly a new and different way to do relationship - I might even try it again sometime soon.

We opened our hearts to each other and had a magnificent connection - then she got scared and started running away - but I didn't have to close my heart down because of her leaving. It was obvious to the people at the workshops I just did the new heart level that I am at - several had been to 3 or 4 of my workshops before and they kept going for the Kleenex because my openness and vulnerability was touching them so deeply. I am very grateful for this person and the experience of Love that I had with her - it was an incredible opportunity for growth. It is also very sad and I cry every day for the loss of that connection. I see this incredibly powerful wise woman that she is - unfortunately she can't own that because she is in her disease reacting to fear, right and wrong thinking ('maybe it was a mistake!!!' - such bull shit), guilt and shame, pain from old wounds, and really just a terror of making another mistake - instead of accepting that it is all perfect and being able to let go completely in the moment.

And of course it was a perfect part of her process that she did what she thought she needed to to take care of herself, to "not lose herself." And it was perfect for my process that she pulled away - if she had not I would never have experienced that it was possible to retain the level of Love even when my worst fear came true and she did go away.

I learned so much from my interaction with her - the "relationship" as in romantic part of it basically lasted about 2 weeks from the first time she told me she Loved me (10 days from 1st passionate kiss to last passionate kiss - no actually sex per se, but much of what felt to me like making Love [making Love, to me, not being about a destination but rather about the quality of the Touching]) - and that 2 weeks was the most incredible, most successful, most wonderful relationship of my life. I felt more Love & Loved in those 2 weeks than in the entire first 50 years of my life.

So, there is pain but there is much more Joy and gratitude. It Truly is a completely different experience to have a relationship where my self-worth is not at risk - that is the pay off for the Spiritual belief system that says we can't screw it up and there is no shame - if my self-worth is not at risk then another person can only add to me, they have no power to diminish me. What a gift.

Now, I need to just go on with my life and if she decides to open up to me then she will call. It is pretty strange because the Universe actually lead me to do a couple of things (a visit and phone call) that I am sure appeared to her to be her fears about me needing her too much coming true. It is so ironic and sad too - but at the time in my life when I am the most free and healthy - when I am being less codependent than I even knew it was possible to be in a relationship - she thinks I am giving her too much power. Never have I been so clear that I don't need someone in my life - though I sure want her to be a part of my life. Never have I felt so strong and powerful and centered in myself - and what she thinks she sees is someone who might be too dependent and needy, clingy, which is a reflection of the part of herself that she is most terrified of surrendering to owning. She loves and hates that I can be vulnerable - and she is too terrified to surrender to being vulnerable now because she doesn't trust herself.

So I get to Let Go, and Let Go and Let Go again.

I wrote e-mail to a friend a few days ago;

What is so infuriating about this disease of codependence is that it is so insidious and powerful and it folds back in on us. When we discover we have a pattern then we want to avoid that pattern at all costs - but in effect we are letting the disease rule us because we are reacting to our reaction. As long as we are reacting - and trying to figure out what is right and wrong - we are in the disease. It is the fear once removed that is paralyzing - the fear of being hurt, the fear of how afraid we feel, the fear of our anger, etc.

What is frustrating with my friend is that when she was trusting her gut she opened her heart to me - when she got into her head is when she started giving all the power to the fear, and started reacting out of fear of her reactions to old wounds. She is terrified of making a mistake, doing it wrong, etc - which is the disease at work. There are no mistakes only lessons - which are painful but not that painful if we are not judging and shaming ourselves.

What makes lessons so painful is the shame the disease lays on us - in other words - the disease creates all of this fear about getting hurt until we are terrified of being hurt - but what is so painful about being hurt is the shame that the disease beats us up with after we get hurt.

The hurt itself passes - the shame and judgment the disease abuses us with is what is so painful.

In the situation you describe it sounds as if your gut was telling you "no" all along and you let your head talk you into it - which is the disease at work. Our intuition/gut/heart tells us the Truth - it's our head that screws things up.

I understand perfectly why my friend is in reaction the way she is - I am just very sad that it means she can't be in my life. She and I both come from a place of having so much terror of intimacy that we were relationship phobic - sometimes what is necessary for someone with a relationship phobia is to jump right in, that may be the only way past the fear.

I am happy to say that I don't have a relationship phobia anymore - I welcome another chance to explore a relationship now that I know that my worst fear can come true and it can make me stronger and better and happier. The reason for that is that I did not give power to the shame - what a miracle! What a gift! I am so grateful ."

So, now it has been over a month since I have seen her and it hurts.

The hurt has actually been present more of the time the last couple of weeks than it was before. I believe this has to do with healing that is taking place on subconscious and superconscious (having to do with the accelerated process and Karmic settlement) levels that are causing me discomfort but don't have a clearly identifiable cause.

I know that much of it has to do with letting go of the dream of having a partner - of not having to walk the path alone anymore. I know some of it has to do with my Twin Soul and some of it has to do with my recent friend - and I don't know if they are one and the same. She - my recent friend - is the type of counterdependent who can kill people off in her mind and move on with hardly a glance back (at least they can practice that level of denial until they are so full of pain it doesn't work anymore.) So, if we are not Twin Souls - or have some other powerful Karmic connection - then she has probably been successful in blocking me out of her mind. If however we do have some strong connection that requires us to be together than she must be pretty miserable. More will be revealed.

I will be seeing her in a week or so - and that will be an interesting adventure - or not. But this chapter needs to be brought to a close. If there is to be another chapter, it will be in a different way - from a wiser perspective on my part. This chapter was a marvelous, wonderful adventure which unfolded perfectly and taught me so much. I am very grateful - but I will do the next chapter differently.

I have learned:

That when I know who I am and have my self-esteem rooted in my Spiritual connection then I have nothing to fear from intimacy. I can be hurt for certain because I will be choosing to give some power away over my feelings - but hurt is part of life and well worth the adventure of Loving and Losing.

That it is Truly possible to do enough healing to be able to open my heart to someone and then not take it personally when the other person "rejects" me - because I Truly know in my gut that she is just reacting to her wounds not to some inherent flaw in my being.

That I can have my worst fear of abandonment and rejection appear to come true and not give it any power because I do not have to buy into the disease telling me that it is my fault - that I did something/said something/am something that is wrong/a loser/a mistake/unlovable/unworthy. This is such a gift - to know that I can keep the critical parent shut up and out of the game is Truly an Amazing Miraculous reward for being willing to do my healing.

So, my friend, you can see that it has been an exciting time for me. And there is more excitement to come. I was at a place where I had given up on having a relationship in this lifetime. I had truly accepted that I could be happy and fulfilled without it. Now I have been pointed in another direction. The Universe has shown me that taking the risk is very much worth while. I have seen how little power the shame has in my process any more and I rejoice in the gift of having been willing to do my healing. There are new horizons to explore and new dimensions to experience. I am so very grateful to be so passionately ALIVE. I am going to be exploring more of the issues around my Twin Soul and the Karma that remains to be settled there - especially around the Atlantis lifetime that I will be talking about in my Trilogy books - but that is another chapter. I will just end this chapter with a goodbye to her:

I am very grateful to God/Goddess/Great Spirit - to The Holy Mother Source Energy for the gift of having this Amazing Women Being come into my life and I wish for her all blessings and the Highest possible good - Love Joy prosperity success happiness - may all of her dreams come true - and in the process may she find out what an Amazing Being she Truly is.

I release you, my Love, with a Great and Tender Love - May we meet again at the "River where the Son comes down".

and for me I will repeat and reaffirm the words that I was moved to write months ago:

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