The Difference Between Seeking Divine Love and Human Love

Someone asked whether seeking divine love is better than seeking human love. Here was my response. Although this is a simplistic explanation, there is a hormone of “connection” called oxytocin. When we are in love, we are, in part, high on oxytocin. Those of us who have nursed babies can remember the oxytocin high that comes with being so in love with and connected to our infants. New mothers are “drowning” in oxytocin. The moment of sexual union has a lot of oxytocin involved. Other hormones involved in this are endorphins. Research has shown that being held by their mother (but only their mother) causes babies to release a lot of endorphins. They are the hormones, the inner opiods, of pleasure. So….connection with spirit causes us to release both oxytocin and endorphins. In other words, it causes us to feel incredibly good. Being in love, ditto. However, the idea in Inner Bonding is to have our own way to get the oxytocin and endorphins, by connecting with spirit and by being that loving parent for our own inner child. Not having anyone to share all of this good stuff with is lonely, not as lonely as not having access to it at all by a lot for sure, but lonely. So we express this as human love and sharing this with someone who can create a positive feedback loop with us, as a young nursing baby automatically does, as someone who is generating their own hormones of connection does, takes it to the highest possibly intensity. When we connect to someone else to get this from them, the vibration is much lower and it fizzles out.

A Brief Definition of Loneliness Vs. Aloneness

Aloneness means there is no one there, no loving adult on the inside, no God, maybe only other closed-hearted parts of yourself and others. Loneliness means that there is no one around on the outside to share yourself with, but on the inner level there is a loving adult to hug your little girl or little boy inside and say “Yes, it does feel lonely right now. This person we want to share with has his heart closed. I hear you. But I am here with you and so is God.” So loneliness does not mean that there is NO ONE around with an open heart, but aloneness does. Loneliness from the wounded ego part of us might also include telling you inner child that she will always be lonely.

I’m Proud of You!

This evening, I was having a telephone conversation with my ex-husband, and now more recently Inner Bonding buddy/facilitator, Vally. As we were chatting, he said, “I can feel that you are stirred up. I could feel it too. Why don’t you tune in and see what is going on? What is the image of what you are feeling?” I was driving at the time, so it was kind of hard, but I managed to say “Water, water being stirred up.” “Go deeper” he suggested, what is the image you get of the feeling?” “A cylinder,” I said, “like a water glass.” “Go deeper,” he ordered, “does it remind you of anything?” “How old are you?” By then I was in my garage remebering an incident that happened when I was four, when I dropped a glass of water. I had already remembered (and I had gotten into this memory before Inner Bonding) that at that moment a kind of thought balloon had floated thru my head “Okay Mommy. I hate myself for breaking this glass, so I am just like you now. Now will you love me?” “I’ve already dealt with this,” I said.

By then I was out of the car and able to sit down and concentrate. He suggested I bring love to that little girl. “I have to take her out of there,” I said. So, I did, I took her to the safe place where there is nothing but love, but when I did, I realized that part of me was still back there. That nothing I was saying about how it was not about her, etc, etc was really going in. “I have to do something back there,” I said.

I went back to the scene and tried putting a shield around her to block her from the false belief that her worth depending on not breaking glasses, but then I realized that I needed to deal with the part of me, the wounded self, who had been created in that moment. So I looked at the little girl who had just had that terrible thought and as I opened my heart to her I said “I’m proud of you. It took a lot of courage to make the decision that you just did. You did a good job of doing what you had to do to survive.” And she melted completely and leapt into my arms like she had been waiting for this for a very, very long time.

I don’t know why it never occurred to me to say this to my own wounded kidsof the past before. I had gotten that they not wrong or bad (or thought I had), that they had good reasons, that it was the best they could do, etc., etc., but I guess I was still looking at them as problems to be solved. And that view was a subtle kind of judgment-there is something “wrong” with them which, without my realizing it, created a box that they could never escape. So I understand now that validation myself is not just about seeing who I really am. That is almost the easy part. On a deeper level, validation is really, really loving, accepting all of the kids inside, perhaps seeing them as having problems but NEVER seeing them as BEING problems. An important difference, don’t you agree?

The Energetic Conversation That Goes Unheard

I am a huge fan of Cesar Milan, The Dog Whisperer. One of the many reasons is the he consistently teaches about the energetic conversation that goes on between one dog and another or between dogs and humans. He can read these conversations completely and talks about the authenticity of that conversation, describing it in one recent show as “an emotional x-ray.” Every time I heard him speak about this, my little girl cheers because it is so important to her that people be told of the reality of this conversation.

Not surprising, one of the reasons for this excitement is that when I grew up, the energetic conversation was never acknowledged. Everything was taken literally and argued logically. Intense energy was exchanged but only at the head level. Most of the time, the only real reason to listen to what anyone else was saying was to use it to form a counterargument. I did not find out that any other kind of conversation existed until I was in my early 20’s and that remarkable experience set me on a journey to discover this other realm of human interactions.

Recently, a couple, friends, and their two children came to visit. The children, 4 and 8, were amazing. They were bright, open and present, yet there was a “bouncing off the walls” quality to them. Their parents, who clearly loved them and marveled at them and were trying hard not to squash their essences, were also aware that something was out of balance in their relationship. At one point, the mother told me that a therapist had once told her “These children get more attention than any children I know and yet they are not seen at all.”

Something clicked for me when she said that, and I tuned into the energetic conversation that was going on. I saw that the parents were responding out of anxiety and concern and that their responses were, somehow, out of rhythm. I could feel that their responses were coming BEFORE the energetic information that their children were sending was even received. No wonder it felt like the kids were bouncing off the walls. They were bouncing energetically off the energetic walls of their parents. No wonder there was a sense that no matter how much attention they got, it was never going to be enough. It was not the attention they needed.

I recognized myself in them. Seeing this interaction with my friends and their children drove home completely what it had looked like all of the times that I was not present energetically for my own little girl (and therefore not for anyone else). Indeed, my little girl said “See, see that is what it feels like when you do this.” I felt so sad about what she had missed all these years. Even though, just as my friends are, I was trying my best to listen, my little girl always felt completely unheard.

At the same time, despite the sadness, I am profoundly grateful, because the earthquake that is breaking up this old pattern had already dramatically shifted my inner landscape in ways that I could never have imagined. But my little girl is also very excited, because she knows that this image of the energetic interaction between my friends and their children will guide me back to her whenever the energetic conversation between us goes unheard.

So she wants me to remind you of one thing. The most profound part of step 1 of Inner Bonding, the thing your inner child needs the most, is for you to tune into the energetic conversation that he or she is trying to have with you. Just knowing that it is there, I think, so that we can look for it, is helpful. This is learning to listen and connect at the deepest level, the one at which your precious inner child can finally, at long last, feel “seen” and “heard.” And if you have no idea what I am talking about, you might check out “The Dog Whisperer” which is on the National Geographic channel. If you don’t have cable, prior seasons are on DVDs at your video rental place and even free to watch on www.hulu.com (a neat site to explore anyway). I know you do have internet:-)

Looking into the Mirror of How We See Others

After doing the 3-step anger process in Inner Bonding, we find out, often to our great surprise, that the anger we were sure was about something that someone else has done or said was actually a reflection of our own inner child’s anger at us for treating her the same way. Others, and our feelings about them, are just a mirror for us. Similarly, we are amazed to discover that what we don’t like about someone else reflects what a judgmental wounded part of us does not like about us. At some point, we come to realize that our reactions to other people are a powerful tool for growth, a mirror for our own inner life and we actually can become grateful for the gifts that they are. I remember, for example, when I was married being so focused on how disconnected my husband was from his little boy, how focused I was on trying to find a way to help him connect, clueless that this was a reflection of how I was treating my own little girl. The list goes on.
Last weekend, I had a revelation about the difference between validating myself for doing and validating myself for being. I was stunned to realize that although I am very good at validating myself for doing (really have made some progress there), I was not meeting my inner little girl’s deeper need to be actively validated for being. When I do something, in general, I am delighted in it. But validating my little girl for her qualities, for being who she is, something I was definitely not doing enough of.
I was sharing this with my ex-husband and he offered me this. When we look at other people, we not only see the things that we dislike but we also see qualities that we appreciate. What if the things that we appreciate are also mirrors for who we are, just as the things we do not appreciate are? I tried it on. There is a man who works for me who has a beautiful, caring heart, and I deeply appreciate his sweetness whenever I am with him. What if my appreciation of his sweetness was a reflection of my own? My little girl inside smiled.
I spend a lot of time appreciating the people around me. I delight in them. Thanks to Inner Bonding, loving people comes easily. I think now, using the mirror, I can complete the circle. Margaret recently wrote “The circle of giving and receiving love regenerates your energy. One without the other depletes your energy.” I know that this sounds like Inner Bonding 101, but now I understand in a much deeper way, that the circle of giving and receiving of love operates just as much on the inner level. That loving others for their essential qualities, seeing my qualities mirrored in them, can create a circle of love that comes straight back to my little girl, thru me, thru my loving adult. One of the translations of the word “Namaste” in Wikipedia is “All that is best and highest in me greets/salutes all that is best and highest in you.” It’s something like that.

The Amazing Power of Reframing Your Experiences

For a very long time, I was unable to connect with God’s love for me. I knew that it had to exist. I strongly believed that other people could have it, but I could not. There was a reason, but it took a long time to find it. Eventually, I realized that I had an old belief that there was a test and that I had failed it. The test was that you got hurt as a child and still kept your heart open. Then, I believed, you deserved God’s love. If you closed your heart, then clearly you were not good enough. What broke this awful spell was a reframing of the meaning of my experiences. I HAD closed my heart, but I was able to reframe it as something very difficult that I had done, something completely contrary to my true nature, out of deep OBEDIENCE to God. That is, I had agreed to do this so that I could have the experiences that I needed to have and provide what was needed at the time to other people in my life. It does not matter, really, whether this is objectively provable or not. This reframing of my old belief turned my perception of myself as being a complete failure into seeing myself as someone who not only deserved God’s love but was in fact an agent of it. The result was an immediate and enduring access to the energy of love.

Recently, my ex-husband shared something with me and gave me permission to incorporate it into a column. It is another wonderful example of the power of this reframing of an old belief to free us from our old programs. Here is what he wrote.
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I have been struggling with how to proceed with my problem of the dysfunction of the spiritual group I am involved in. As I was meditating last night, I suddenly became aware of me saying “I just do not want to hurt Jane” (the leader of the group). I suddenly realized that I have been saying “I do not want to hurt anyone” a lot, but this time I became aware of it at a deeper level. I realized, how much I have lived with that mantra, and that it started with me as a little child not wanting to hurt Mom and how everything I did (well, not everything but a lot of things) seemed to hurt her.

Then I asked myself, can I really hurt Jane or anyone for that matter? Even though I had answered that question many, many times as “No, I cannot hurt her, she alone is responsible for her feelings”, the answer seems to have come from my head rather than my being. It did not shift my old belief. This time it seemed to have gone in deeply. Most of the other times, it always went back to, “Alright, I cannot hurt her but I can trigger her and I do not want to trigger her” This time when I went there, God said “Why not? If I want you to trigger her, would you not want to do it for me and if I do not want her to be triggered, then do you think you can?” God then said, “Yes, it is a good thing to not want to trigger or hurt others, but now, that part is over and you need to live your life without the fear of hurting or triggering anyone. You are a gentle person and you will not intentionally hurt anyone and when anyone does get triggered, it is because that is what I want for them. I need you live your life free of this fear of triggering others”.

I then realized that this old belief that it was wrong to trigger others had resulted in my feeling completely betrayed every time someone else triggered me.

I got up around 6:30, had my coffee and then got on my treadmill. As I began to exercise, I realized my breathing was much deeper (still is) and I could feel the air go deep into my lungs. I realized that the low grade asthma that I have been carrying seemed to have gone away. At a recent spiritual retreat, I was deeply struck by Jane’s saying “Asthma is definitely a psychosomatic problem,” and I kept wondering at that time about that “psychosomatic” thing was that was getting me and nothing had come to me yet. Struggling with asthma had made me aware of how God’s love is like air, it is everywhere but if I cannot breathe it in, it is of no use to me. I need to let God’s love in and try to remove obstacles that keep me from breathing that love into my being”. I had shared this at the retreat.

It suddenly occurred to me that not wanting to hurt others was the obstacle that was keeping me from breathing in God’s love for me. Then my memory went back to the time when I was about a year old and I could not breathe. The village doctor thought I had pneumonia and later it was diagnosed as eosinophilia. That was the first time I remember having trouble breathing. Later when I was about six years old, we went to a hill station for a family function, I remember I had caught a chill and could not stop shivering. I realized that when I get an asthma attack, I have similar sensations. I realized that all those times, it was probably me stuffing down the feeling of not wanting to hurt Mom that brought about those sensations. I could now feel real compassion for that little kid who simply did not want to hurt his mother.

Maybe my asthma will simply come back at an appropriate time for another lesson, but the lessons I got today are quite valuable no matter what happens in the future.
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I was deeply touched by this huge healing, by the reframing of the old belief of being responsible for others feelings and expecting them to be responsible for ours into accepting that we are not and they are not, because that is not what God wants for us. Since the only thing we can choose is the meaning that we give things, perhaps you too can use reframing to let go of some of the old beliefs that result in guilt and shame. Maybe you too can try reframing your actions as playing your role, as part of working with God, as having the experiences that your soul needs to have and providing what is needed to other people in your life.

The Sweetness of Being Received

Recently, because his significant other was out of town, I spent some time with my ex-husband. It was an experience of unbelievable sweetness, unlike any I had ever had. It left my filled and happy, but ultimately craving more and then feeling very sad because I could not have it more. The intense sadness I was feeling told me that I was getting something from him that I was not giving myself but probably could.

As I tuned into what it was, I realized that during most of the time that I was with him, I felt completely received. His heart was open to me and mine to him. He was interested in everything I shared and I was interesting in everything he shared. Nothing happened to interrupt that. It was so easy to stay in the moment. What a contrast to when we were married and each of us struggled to be received by the other!

Staying in the moment. That was key. I suddenly saw how completely devoted I am to trying to have control of being received. That rather than receiving myself or others, I have been living just a fraction of the second in the future focused on whether I am being received by others. I have confused being entertaining and capturing others’ interest with getting what I really need, and when I could not pull this off, I have not really understood why it felt so horrible. I had an image of a heart with a jagged crack so that part of it was always shifted out of line.

When my feelings come up strongly, I don’t have any trouble showing up for them. I don’t say overtly horrible things to myself. I have healed many of my false beliefs. I believe in being kind and compassionate to myself, but suddenly I had a moment of clarity where I saw how I am not staying with myself in real time. I could see that trying to have control over being received by others was the same thing as not receiving myself. That I stay slightly ahead of myself by going into my head. That having an incredibly fast mind, a blessing in so many ways, is also my greatest challenge. I saw how by staying slightly ahead of myself, I was telling my little girl that I am not really interested in what she says because it is not important enough and that trying to have control over being received was far more important. No wonder she is so sad.

I checked with God. When I imagined God as a being outside me, present and interested in everything I say and totally receiving me, I immediately got the feeling of sweetness but it felt like then I giving my little girl to God without changing my own attitudes. When I checked with the God within, I became the sweetness. But somehow, my wounded self was still operating from the belief that what I am experiencing is not interesting or important. I checked with guidance again and this is what I was told “I am totally interested in your experiences because you are an integral part of the creative process of the universe. Your experiences, your sensations are integral to the whole.”

So now I get it, at least on a deeper level. By not staying connected to myself in the real time present, I am refusing to participate in the grand scheme. I can reframe this, my feelings, my real time experiences as a sacred process of great importance. I can understand that fulfilling my purpose does not only come from what I do to bring divine love to others, how I make others feel, but that it comes from accepting, fully accepting, the importance of every moment of my human experience. As long as I remember this, I think I can learn to do it

PS to punishment

As I absorb the implications of this article about deservign to be punished, I begin to realize that anytime I tried to make someone else “wrong,” this was coming from the same wounded part of me that believes that it is okay to use shame and blame. Offering wanted information is completely different. Helping people during Inner Bonding sessions when they want to know what is going on is different, but any other time that I was telling anyone what they should do or what is wrong, even if I was completely right, is a subtle way of shaming them. I have mostly learned to ask “Do you want to know what I am picking up?” but I think that writing this has given me a deeper awareness of how unacceptable this really is.

Do You Believe That You Deserve to be Punished?

When I was a child and I did something that was “bad” enough, I was hit or spanked. I did not question it. I was told and believed that I “deserved it.” I decided long ago that it is not acceptable to hit a child or anyone else; that I would never do it, and my inner child has every confidence that I would NEVER allow anyone to hit her now.

Other times, I was simply yelled at. Again I did not question it and believed that I had done something to “deserve” it. It took me a bit longer to realize that no one deserve to be yelled at either. It is no longer something I would no longer do, and my inner child knows that I would never made her stay there and listen to someone yell at her.

Mostly though, I was shamed and blamed. I did not question that either, of course. It has taken much, much longer to realize that even if I have done something that someone does not like, even if they are “right” about it, e.g., I was late after all, they do not have the right to shame and blame me. I do not have to listen to it. I might be willing to have a conversation about it, but shaming and blaming me is out.

I find that this is a huge issue for many people. When I ask them to tune and ask their inner child how he or she feels when someone is shaming and blaming them (on the inner or outer level), they say that they feel like they are being beaten up. If I ask them if they would allow someone to physically beat their child, they usually say, “No, of course not.” Yet they are allowing their child to be beaten up by believing that it is okay for someone to do this to them when they are in the “wrong”.

So let’s address the false belief here. Even if someone is “right” about something, if someone on the inside or outside has a “legitimate-seeming” criticism (e.g., you are overweight, you should take their advice and you don’t), that does not mean that they have the right to beat your inner child up, just as whatever you did as a child did not give your parents the right to hurt you. Your parents were blaming you for their feelings because they did not know how to take care of their own inner kids. It was never about what you did. Your wounded self learned it from them.

Keeping your inner child safe then means taking the job of never allowing anyone to hurt him or her, not to hit, not to yell, not to shame and blame. It means refusing to engage in conversations with people who are telling you what is wrong with you and trying to make you feel bad enough so that you will change. It means gently and compassionately stopping your own wounded self from trying to make you okay by doing that on the inner level.

On the outer level it means setting a boundary. A boundary is not about trying to change someone else, it is about taking care of yourself. It is about noticing that your child is getting beaten up and saying “I will not have this kind of conversation with you. Can we talk about something else?” and being willing to hang up the phone or leave if the beatings do not stop.

Mostly though it is about knowing, on the deepest level, that NO ONE has the right to do this to you. Even if they get upset with you for refusing to allow it and try harder, even if they threaten to leave you, you do not give them the right to do it. You do not sacrifice your child. Your inner child never deserved to be punished, to be beaten in any way. Your child needs you to say that starting now you are totally committed to learning how to make sure that this never happens to him or her again.

Spiritual Connection or Spiritual Bypass?

I used to belong to a spiritual community, a place where I would go to weekly Reiki healing circles. This community also regularly invited “highly enlightened” spiritual teachers to come and give talks and workshops. Each one had dedicated years to their spiritual practices and each offered the way to true enlightenment and connection with God. At first I would wonder what was wrong with me, because everyone else seemed so enchanted and I was clearly not getting it. Indeed, I have had this experience repeatedly over the years. Gradually, I realized that what was true of each of these teachers was that I could not “feel” them at all. They were not present. If that was where their practice would lead, it was not something I could believe in.

In contrast this, I remember as I write this column, going to hear Margaret Paul, the co-founder of Inner Bonding speak at an Association of Humanistic Psychology conference in Indianapolis, a 4-hour drive from here. It was 1992, I think. I had just read “Healing Your Aloneness” and I wanted to find out if she was the real deal. Looking back, what was different was that I could feel her. She was present, connected to herself and maybe that is why what she offered felt right to me.

Margaret Paul has written about the spiritual bypass as a form of spiritual addiction, a way to escape our feelings by connecting with God and that is certainly true. But I think that the various spiritual practices that amount to recipes for spiritual bypass also appeal to people because they want to have a spiritual life and these practices have been presented as the only way to do it. The recipes include concepts like: your life is not real, it is just a drama that is not worth paying attention to or the truly enlightened person does not react to anything and reacting to things is a sign that you are “attached,” an undesirable thing so you have to discount your own feelings. Admittedly, when translated into Inner Bonding terms, much of what these practices offer can make sense, but for the wounded ego self who is seeking enlightenment this is a prescription for active disconnection in the name of spiritual growth.

I know many people who are deeply spiritual and at the same time totally disconnected from their inner child. Some of them have been going to God since childhood, leaving their bodies, leaving the horror of what was going on, and truly connecting with God’s love. Others seem to have learned this as adults. They are often deeply intuitive. They experience great bliss. The information they get about how much God loves them, the guidance they get about the nature of spirit are profound. I have known people whose dissociated parts could have easily written the book “Conversations with God.” Yet this has no effect on their wounded selves. They still feel empty and unsafe much of the time. They still get deeply triggered by interactions in their real lives. Since this does not make sense in the context of their spiritual devotion, the solution, in their minds, just like the solution for all of our wounded selves, is to just do more of the same in the hope that doing it enough will make everything okay.

At the same time, in Inner Bonding, connecting with love from spirit is essential and is the core ingredient in our healing. Why does one work and not the other?

The problem with going “out there” to meet God is that when we are out there, we are dissociated. We are energetically disconnected from our bodies. Nothing we “get” out there can be brought inside where it needs to go. There is no pathway. No matter how intense the experience of God’s love is out there, our abandoned inner child is just a lonely bystander and it is as if this is happening to someone else. There is no way around this.

The truth is that only we can get to where our abandoned little ones are. No other person can and without our help God can’t either. So with Inner Bonding, we are “inside” when we connect with God’s love. We are energetically connected to our inner child and to God. We, as loving adults, as the spiritually connected parents that we did not originally have, are the only conduits thru which this love can and does get in and change the experience of the hurt children inside.

Margaret Paul writes about intent, how we must be in the intent to learn about loving ourselves in order to heal. I understand this in a deeper way now. A lot of people are in the intent to access God, to experience God’s love. A lot of spiritual practices offer ways to do this. However, what we need to understand as we undertake our spiritual journey is that only by taking the job of learning how to bring love to our inner kids will it ever be possible to have the deep spiritual connection that we want. A spiritual bypass experience might provide a temporary fix, but for permanent results that translate into real healing, only having a spiritually connected loving adult, the one who truly wants the job of learning to bring love to the child inside, will do the job.