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Lecture
tapes from 2000Lecture
tapes from 1999
Lecture
tapes from 2000:
January lectures:
01/05: Dreams as a tool for practicing
the state of forgiving
01/12: Inner child work as a tool for practicing
the state of forgiving
01/19: Flash backs and memories as a tool for
practicing the state of forgiving
01/26: Movement and touch as tools for practicing
the state of forgiving
February lectures:
2/02: Self awareness as a tool for practicing
the state of forgiving
2/09: Self talk as a tool for achieving reverence.
2/16: Contemplation as a tool for achieving reverence.
2/23: Wandering thoughts as a menu for
contemplation
March lectures:
3/01: How a state of forgiving promotes
creativity
3/08: Movement and touch as an education in compassion
3/15: Finding reverence for your courage to feel
3/22: Embracing your psychological defenses
3/29: Finding reverence for the inner adult
April lectures:
4/01: Resolving Relationship Conflicts
- The Real Lessons of Women & Men
4/05: Why We Must Have Reverence for Our Grief
4/12: Finding the Right Topic for Contemplation
4/19: Embracing Anger to Make It Safe
4/26: Movement and Touch as Tools for Developing
Self Reverence
4/29: Chronic Grief in Relationships
May lectures:
5/03: Embracing our Defenses, Anger &
Shame
This lecture deals with identifying and
embracing (treating with loving respect and kindness) the psychological
defenses we use to protect ourselves from hurt and thus from healing.
It talks about the necessity of anger, and deals directly with shame.
Shame is at the core of everything from eating disorders, to paranoia to
narcissism. When experiencing shame, we confront an image of ourselves
that we find fundamentally unacceptable. The damning thing about
wrestling with our shame is that the very fact of trying to come out of
isolation by sharing it with another means that we not only reveal past
shames, but we experience additional shame in the course of revealing
our vulnerability. Shame can be a self annihilating block to healing.
This lecture addresses how to penetrate and heal these issues with love.
5/06: Lessons for Those Who Give Too Much
The pain that takes place in our relationships
can be intense and life threatening. And the saddest thing of all,
that it is almost always born of intense love. This lecture addresses
the causes of chronic grief in relationships with ideas on how women and
men can best operate from their own positions of internal power.
This month's focus will be on the mechanism of giving too much, and will
explain how it prevents you from getting the things you most want.
This lecture will also provide insights about why this pattern gets started
and what the deep spiritual lessons are in trying a different way of relating
to the world.
5/10: Reverence for Cathexis and Cognitive Rehearsal
of the Offense
Reverence for what? Cathexis.
It’s such a great word, and it covers a long sentence of a description.
Cathexis, in this situation, is that state you’re in where you focus all
of your psychic / mental energy on the injurer or injury. It is the
emotional counterpart of its inflictor, Cognitive Rehearsal, whereby we
become
consumed, preoccupied and obsessed with mental
replays, edited both for the past and for the future. Well,
why not? Well, because these things prevent you from living your
own life while you're still in it. Discussing “why not remain
in a state of cathexis?” leads us near the intrinsic value of this model
of forgiveness, which is that in achieving a state of forgiving you get
your life back. Releasing your preoccupation with someone else, even
if it is a moment at a time, paves the way for your freedom from daily,
even hourly, psychic reinjury by the perpetrator. This lecture talks
about how to identify the problem and how to treat it with the model of
relaxed resistance to the pain and applying self love.
5/17: Facing Permanent Damage and an Altered World
View
Forgiveness encompasses an understanding
that we cannot go back and change the reality of the past and that to live
in a state of resistance hoping for such a change makes an absurd parody
of your life. Realize it? Well, of course you know about it.
But this step says realize it. Bring it down deep enough into your feeling
self and high enough into your cognitive self to fully comprehend exactly
how you were / are damaged by the injury. This lecture discusses
how to make sufficient enough connection between your reactions to life’s
situations and the injury you experienced to enable you to stop and be
still and become consciously aware of how the injury has changed you and
changed your life.
5/24: Meditations Designed Specifically for Grief
and Trauma
These meditations are designed to not
only assist us in learning the technique being taught in these lectures,
but to go further and actually initiate our souls. Thomas Moore said in
1988 that the soul grows wise through initiation. Initiation
is far deeper and more challenging than learning. In learning one
doesn’t have to be so deeply affected as in initiation. It is the
difference between reading about sperm and eggs, and having one’s first
sexual encounter. In initiation, the soul is put to a test.
It is affected, moved, stunned perhaps into a new dimension of being.
Jean Houstin, in 1987, in her book Search for the Beloved
speaks of “transformation through sacred wounding,” Maybe all we’re
saying through all of these processes is that is that whatever it is that
you do, at the point at which you create “sacred wounding” you have an
important spiritual, physical, cognitive, and emotional change.
I thought I invented this technique. Then
I discovered the Buddhists did it hundreds of years ago. That should
encourage you about the existence of universal consciousness. It
does me.
So this lecture includes meditations for
deep grief and injury. A meditation just for you; one for you
and others like you; another for you and the injurer; and yet another
for you and the injurer and all those in the world who have acted like
your injurer.
5/31: Movement and Touch as Tools for Inspiring Reverence
Mind exists not just in our heads, but
in our bodies. Possibly (probably?) in the energy surrounding our
bodies. Quite possibly extending far into the universe. Since
our bodies are the most accessible, this lecture teaches techniques for
creating connection with our mind/body. In addition, because the
techniques are designed to promote pleasure and the awareness of feeling,
they stimulate the production of chemicals which make the adoption
of reverence for oneself -- the purpose of this whole model -- much easier.
June lectures:
6/03: Why Do I Have to Do All the
Work?
This once-a-month Saturday afternoon
lecture takes the concept of Meta Ego being taught in the Wednesday
night lectures and applies it to lessons of women and men -- our day-to-day
living issues. This lecture addresses the causes of chronic
grief in over givers with ideas on how they can best operate from their
own positions of internal power. This month's focus will be on the
mechanisms of giving as a means of control, and will explain how it prevents
you from receiving the things you most want. This lecture will also
provide insights about why this pattern gets started and what the deep
spiritual lessons are in trying a different way of relating to the
world.
6/07: The Experience of Embracing Pain
This night, we’ll talk about how our
fear of pain creates resistance to healing, and we’ll do exercises and
meditations that demonstrate how well, within an environment of self care
and self compassion, we are capable of embracing more pain than we
imagined. We tend to be sheltered from knowing our emotional capacities
by a cultural mind set that promotes avoiding emotional pain to protect
ourselves from some kind of permanent psychic scarring. This lecture will
focus on relaxation techniques that promote self compassion and tenderness
and attentiveness toward your self while you’re hurting, so that you can
not only survive pain but can experience an evolution of your spirit that
puts you in another realm of living as a result of feeling deep hurt.
Refusing to absorb and accept the pain in our lives is a great personal
and social tragedy because the self that arises out of this kind of painful
process in an environment of self love, is infinitely more useful and satisfying
to itself and to those around it. A self that loves and is not afraid
of pain will say no when it needs to, even if it is going to make someone
else unhappy. A self that loves and is not afraid of pain becomes
less of a hostage to other people, places and things, and is more apt to
make decisions that are loving and beneficial instead of selfish and injurious.
A self that loves and is not afraid of pain is not afraid to be compassionate.
And a compassionate self can create a compassionate family which can help
create a compassionate community. Can you imagine living in
a compassionate community?
6/14: Techniques for Developing Self Love
All of us are admonished to stop being
so self abusive and start being more self loving. Yet, our
primary experience in our formative years is one of having whatever available
love and affection there is come from outside us. Many more of us
have mysteriously come to believe that self love will make us selfish and
narcissistic. So, what’s the truth?
Even when we finally acknowledge that we really
don’t love ourselves enough and that we should, we’re hard pressed to figure
out how to go about it. Somehow a hot bath or a soothing massage
doesn’t quite serve to fulfill the tremendous need created by deep injury.
This lecture, then, will clarify the issues surrounding
the basis for self love and will delve deeply into a number of effective
techniques for applying love to one’s self in a meaningful, healing way.
. . a way that can be felt as love.
6/21: Finding Meaning in Your Grief
This is an area where all outsiders to
your pain must take caution. It’s an emerging under-standing that people
need to work out their own answers and find their own meaning about the
traumas in their lives based on their own religious or philosophical systems
of beliefs.
Deep personal injury creates very deep grief and
loss, and great damage can be done by trying to take on a belief that doesn’t
emerge from within one’s own spirit, because it has the effect of Band-Aiding
grief and hindering the natural process of finding one’s own, unique spiritual
path out of their painful experiences.
This lecture will help you find the tools to develop
your own knowing; a Knowing that makes us keenly aware that we have
senses beyond the five we normally acknowledge. A Knowing that helps
us begin to understand how precious the process of healing is in the shaping
of our souls and our futures.
As a result of his experience in the holocaust,
Viktor Frankl came to believe that finding meaning in life – and especially
in unavoidable human suffering – is basic to our psychological motivation
and adjustment.
This lecture will demonstrate that when we open
our hearts to change, and we use the universal tools of rigorous honesty
and self love / care / compassion, the overwhelming, inexpressible
sense of cosmic Meaning comes unbidden.
A Sense of Meaning and Purpose is intrinsic to
the unburdened, undefended human spirit. It is a Sense that
goes beyond the educative, emulative, developmental, communal and vehicle
of blessing ideals that are commonly held as the value of deep healing.
We’ll talk about these and compare them to the
inexpressible emergence of Meaning and Purpose we discover in this Meta
Ego model of forgiving unforgivable grief.
July lectures:
7/05: Grief, Shame and Dissociation:
the crippling obstacles to healing
Shame is the experience of feeling defective
to the very core of your being. Whereas, Guilt is what is felt when
we make a mistake, Shame is the experience of feeling that you as a person
are a mistake. At least with Guilt there is a way of making things
right, of correcting the wrong. With Shame there is no way to make
amends or correct the wrong, because the wrong is you as a person.
Shame by its nature, demands secrecy and diversions. Healing of Grief
and Trauma requires just the opposite, so to remain engulfed in Shame is
to commit spiritual suicide.
This lecture will address the connections between
Grief, Shame and Dissociation, will examine the ways in which the spiritually
dead push the limits of danger, the ways in which they abuse themselves
and others, and the desperate attempts we make as we search in vain for
external sources of self worth and relief.
7/08: Am I just being too sensitive?
This once-a-month Saturday afternoon
lecture takes the principles taught in the Wednesday night lectures and
applies them to lessons of women and men for our day-to-day living issues.
We’ll talk in this lecture about the issue carried by many women that they
are just too sensitive and need to deal with their sensitivity all on their
own. And we’ll talk about ways in which men, who would prefer to
just have peace, can accommodate the valuable sensitivity of their women.
We’ll also talk about how to apply the dynamics
of inter-sex communication to the issues that occur when women have conflict
with each other.
7/12: Trust
Trust. It’s defined by Random House
as “1. reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc.,
of a person or thing; confidence. 2. confident expectation
of something; hope.” It’s synonymous with certainty...
with assurance and confidence, and it implies a feeling of security.
But when you’re grieving or experiencing the aftermath
of terrible trauma, the very word, “trust” can bring with it excruciating
pain because it has become synonymous with betrayal and disappointment.
For some, the experience of personal trauma brings to light the fact that
many people they thought they could rely upon can’t or don’t give the needed
support and the feeling of mistrust is intensified.
So, who, what and how can you trust?
This lecture will discuss the issues of trust
created by great loss, and we’ll talk about how the issue is healed through
a re-examination of our foundations for trust.
7/19: Loneliness
The grip of loneliness brought about
by grief and trauma runs the gamut from feeling alone while with friends
and family to actually being without human company. It’s hard to
say which is more difficult, but it’s not hard to see why it’s happening.
The sense of alienation that takes place within one’s psyche from having
your world shattered is enough all on its own to make you feel very lonely.
But we live in a world that intensifies our isolation by not understanding
what is required to give adequate support to those who are hurt.
Rare is the friend or family member that knows to listen with an open,
willing heart and stilled lips.
We’ll talk this night about both situations, and
we’ll hit head-on the techniques for accommodating this painful part of
grief’s reality.
7/26: When Food Gets Confused With Protection
and Love
Combining the ideas of Freud and Maslow,
at the very core of our being is a built in requirement that certain needs
be met. These needs include Physiological needs (food, water,
oxygen, etc.), Safety, Love, Esteem and Self Actualization. What
happens, then, when the non physiological needs are not met?
This lecture will talk about the over- and under-inflation
of core needs that occurs when the needs for Safety, Love, Esteem and Self
Actualization are not met, and we will examine specifically how food becomes
an eating disorder in that context.
7/29: Facing Pain
August lectures:
8/02: Unrelenting Anxiety and Issues
of Trust
Most people feel anxiety at some time
in life. Anxiety is related to a natural response of the body to potentially
threatening situations. When danger is sensed, the nervous system releases
adrenaline and cortisone into the blood stream, causing rapid heart beat,
shallow and rapid breathing, tensing of the muscles and heightened alertness,
all of which ready the mind and body for action. Initiation
of anxiety attacks can come from traumatic experiences, childhood abuses
that lurk below the surface of consciousness, genetic inheritance, substance
withdrawal and some organic diseases. The issue in this lecture,
of course, will be identifying anxiety, separating real threat from that
imposed by grief and trauma, and demonstrating techniques for finding peace
and comfort in response.
8/05: Chronic Grief in Relationships
This once-a-month Saturday afternoon
lecture takes the principles taught in the Wednesday night lectures and
applies them to lessons of women and men for our day-to-day living issues.
We’ll talk in this lecture about the pain that takes place in our relationships.
Left untreated over time, it can be intense and life threatening.
And the saddest thing of all, that it is almost always born of intense
love. This lecture will address the causes of chronic grief in relationships
and offer ideas on how women and men can best operate from their own positions
of internal power.
8/09: Self Sabotage
The phrase, “You are your own worst enemy”
describes the dilemma faced when we try to make major changes in how we
address life’s problems. Often, self sabotage is treated as a minor
inconvenience that can be overcome by dedication to positive affirmations
and self discipline. However, when self sabotage has its roots in deep
trauma and grief, much more is required to resolve it. This
lecture will talk about how to recognize signs of self sabotage and will
offer techniques for finding safety in making the change to self actualization.
8/16: The Courage to Feel
The grip of unrelenting pain brought
about by grief and trauma runs the gamut from making us feel sad to leaving
us feeling terrified, paralyzed and incapacitated. Living in a culture
that doesn’t honor, let alone encourage, embracing deep pain, can make
it feel dangerous to allow ourselves to give in and explore the nuances
of our feelings. Because we live in a world that intensifies our isolation
by not understanding what is required to give adequate support to those
who are hurt, it is critical that those who grieve learn techniques for
self support in this most necessary aspect of healing. This week’s lecture,
then, will address the kinds of feelings we most fear, and will offer techniques
for easing our way into the step most necessary for making changes in how
we come to terms with life.
8/19: Disordered Eating: When food gets
confused with protection and love
Combining the ideas of Freud and Maslow,
at the very core of our being is a built in requirement that certain needs
be met. These needs include Physiological needs (food, water,
oxygen, etc.), Safety, Love, Esteem and Self Actualization. What
happens, then, when the non physiological needs are not met?
This lecture will talk about the over- and under-inflation
of core needs that occurs when the needs for Safety, Love, Esteem and Self
Actualization are not met, and we will examine specifically how food becomes
an eating disorder in that context.
8/23: Painful Flashbacks as a Source for Healing
Flashbacks and chronic, repetitive memories
and thoughts are common symptoms of severe grief and trauma. We have
a tendency to work as hard as we can at dismissing or ignoring those painful
mental events. And that’s a tragedy, since those thoughts are rich
with information that we can use to create deep healing in an otherwise
devastating experience. This lecture will address how to recognize
those that we’ve successfully ignored for too many years, and techniques
for bringing them into a realm where they can be useful for bringing us
peace in our traumas.
8/26: Loneliness
The grip of loneliness brought about
by conflict in relationships and by grief and trauma runs the gamut from
feeling alone while with friends and family to actually being without human
company. It’s hard to say which is more difficult, but it’s not hard
to see why it’s happening. The sense of alienation that takes place
within one’s psyche from having your world shattered is enough all on its
own to make you feel very lonely. But we live in a world that intensifies
our isolation by not understanding what is required to give adequate support
to those who are hurt. Rare is the friend or family member that knows
to listen with an open, willing heart and stilled lips.
We’ll talk this afternoon about both situations,
and we’ll hit head-on the techniques for accommodating this painful part
of grief’s reality.
8/30: Anger: Is it Real?
or a Cover for Pain?
Ever watch someone (or yourself) go into
a screaming rage with the feeling that the “anger” being displayed was
a cover for excruciating pain? Ever watch someone (or yourself) cry
and get the feeling that what was really wrong was tears being displayed
as a cover for excruciating anger? Until conscious awareness is linked
appropriately with our feelings, we get little relief from emotional expression.
This lecture will address how to tell the difference between these kinds
of pain, and will offer ideas on how to nurture them both into a state
of reverence for yourself.
September lectures:
9/06 Shame (back by popular demand)
Shame is the experience of feeling
defective to the very core of your being. Whereas, Guilt is what is felt
when we make a mistake, Shame is the experience of feeling that you as
a person are a mistake. At least with Guilt there is a way of making
things right, of correcting the wrong. With Shame there is no way
to make amends or correct the wrong, because the wrong is you as a person.
Shame by its nature, demands secrecy and diversions. Since healing
grief and trauma requires just the opposite, to remain engulfed in Shame
is to commit spiritual suicide. This lecture will offer an
opportunity for all participating to examine the connections between their
shame, their grief and the ways in which they try to dissociate.
We will examine the ways in which the spiritually dead push the limits
of danger, the ways in which they abuse themselves and others, and the
desperate attempts we make as we search in vain for external sources of
self worth and relief.
9/13 From Regret to Remorse
Regret is the perpetual fuel of grief
because it is so unresolvable, and it is so incriminating that it becomes
self perpetuating. The capacity for hindsight that is such a powerful
learning mechanism for us as humans becomes a blade of torture for the
grief stricken who see in their reality those things they failed to do,
or those things they did that resulted in loss. The unresolvability
inherent in true regret creates nearly unbearable pain, and we are a culture,
perhaps even a species, that avoids all pain at all costs.
In fact, though, if we were to suddenly stop avoiding the pain while in
our standard operating mental states with their attendant self-critical
attitudes, the pain would truly be unbearable and scaring. Suicides
could result from that kind of self awareness without the unconditional
kindness necessary to make it a learning, growing experience of deep spirit.
So how do we resolve this? Do we ignore it, try to push it out of
our minds? Do we plunge ourselves into the depths of unresolvable
regret with no hope of self absolution? This lecture will address
how regret evolves into the enlightened experience of remorse where our
regret and guilt can be drawn into a sense of meaning and purpose.
9/16 Food, Protection and Love: How the
Body Feeds the Soul
The grip of anorexia, the burden of obesity
and the humiliation of bulemia, are viewed in this once-a-month lecture
series through an understanding of our survival mechanisms.
This lecture will focus on techniques for creating a relationship with
our bodies that allows us to go beyond our body image, our obsession, our
shame, and our hatred.
9/20 Self Loathing: Its Causes and Effects
The justification for self hatred is
rarely examined in conscious detail. And it is almost never examined
in loving consciousness. This night’s lecture will look at
the roots of our self hatred and will examine the effects it has on perpetuating
its own existence.
9/27 The compulsion to mate and find a mate
There seems no greater force at times
than that which drives us to find love... to find our soul mate...
to fill the deep need for companion-ship. some of us feel at times
that we’re going to die if we don’t find, get or keep “the one” that will
meet that pounding, powerful need for connection and one-ness.
This lecture will address the need of “usness” that exists in us, and will
offer a model for both embracing the need and bringing it into balance
with our need for healthy treatment.
October lectures:
10/04 When Positive Affirmations Gag You
It seems like it should work better than
it does, this business of affirming “the good” in our lives. After
all, it beats the heck out of some of the awfulizng tapes that play in
our heads.
Why, then, do affirmations make some of us feel
like such hypocrites? Why do we feel so false and phoney when we
say them? What do you do when the voice in your head hurls insults
in response to your affirmations? This lecture will talk about an
approach to affirmations that permits a more soothing entrance into the
realm of thinking kind thoughts than our traditional application of affirmations
brings. And, as always, we will apply the evening’s techniques
to the needs created by our specific issues of loss.
10/07 Chronic Grief in Relationships: Sick
of Being Responsible for the Whole Relationship
This once-a-month Saturday afternoon
lecture takes the principles taught in the Wednesday night lectures and
applies them to specific lessons of women and men – they are different
– for our day-to-day living issues. We’ll talk in this lecture
about the pain that takes place in our relationships when one of us finds
ourselves doing all the work and all the giving and all the giving in so
that the relationship won’t fall apart. Left untreated over time,
this phenomenon can make both partners intensely bitter. This
lecture will address the issues of giving and giving in and how they work
to create the very thing we are attempting to prevent.
10/11 Depression
If your depression is severe enough,
you won’t believe learning more about it could ever help. That’s
the nature of depression in a state of unattended self hatred. Depression
in a state of reverence for the human experience of loss is an entirely
different experience. This lecture will offer you an opportunity to explore
your own experiences with depression and learn where you can make changes
in how you view this often-debilitating occurrence so common to those who
have had great loss.
10/18 When nothing makes you happy
This lecture will look at the problem
experienced by many who are working to make changes in their lives:
that of working hard to accomplish a goal, make a move, change a relationship,
get a new career, and so on, only to find that once the goal is attained
you remain as miserable, if not more so, than you were before the effort.
10/25 The Illusion of Control
Often, while trying to resolve past injustices,
we find ourselves unhappy that we failed to prevent the very thing we suffer
from. Our tendency, blessed with the human propensity for hindsight,
is to evaluate all that transpired before an event based upon information
gained after an event. Loving tolerance for the human experience
of learning is rarely part of our consideration in reviewing the events
of our lives, and so we often justify continued self condemnation with
our opinions about what we should have done differently. This
night’s lecture will look at the roots of our illusions of control and
will examine the effects it has on perpetuating our grief.
10/28 Hopelessness: When think you can't take
any more
When we've had a lot of problems for
a long time, or when we've come out of abusive homes, either as children
or as adults, when the losses in our lives have overwhelmed us, when we've
tried and tried and tried and still find ourselves feeling hopeless, there
has to be a workable and immediately answer or our grip on life, our grip
on recovery becomes too tenuous. This lecture will look at
the kinds of losses we experience and the mechanisms of response that keep
the thought of a bright future beyond our grasps.
11/01 Abandonment and Betrayal
These words evoke powerful images in
our hearts: Images of abandoned children, betrayed lovers.
And many people have those experiences as a legacy for their whole lives.
But many feel discarded and rejected by life itself; feel that at every
turn they find themselves forsaken, rejected and deserted by whatever
the good is that we see around and unavailable to us. Others feel
that life – people – have seduced them into believing that they can have
good, they can have happiness, only to find themselves deserted, their
confidence in happiness and trust violated and their hopes and expectations
dashed at the whim of another. When you’ve lived much of your life
feeling abandoned and betrayed, it can create a curious setup both for
more abandonment and betrayal in the future, and for an unconscionable
inability to remove oneself from an intolerably abusive situation for fear
of inflicting on another the very deepest pain of ones own life.
This lecture will address the subtleties
of these experiences and will talk about how the ability to feel ones own
pain and give meaningfully felt love to ones own self can change the pattern
and the experience of abandonment and betrayal in your life.
11/08 Why won’t he listen to me?
Why won’t she stop nagging me?
Chronic relationship conflicts are brutal
to life. Our attachment to each other – or more accurately, the way
in which we attach to each other – is, at once, the most important
contribution to good health, and the most disastrous. What
is she to do when she so fervently needs to be heard and the one(s)
she loves turn a deaf ear? How is she to resolve the issues most
affecting her when there is no one there to hear and respond and consider
what she is saying? What is he to do when, to the very core
of his being, he needs silence in order to function? How is he to
get the space he needs to consider his problem if there is no peace?
And how do these individuals manage to work out their difficulties together
when their communication needs are so different? This lecture, formerly
given on the first Saturday of each month, will look at the problems experienced
by many who are working to make their relationships work in a seemingly
unworkable environment of differences.
11/15 Indignation: A tool for
change? Or an obstacle to healing?
What is this for, this feeling provoked
in us, of righteous resentment at the offense, the ineptitude, the insult
to intelligence by others? How does indignation work to make us whole
and where is it along the continuum of experience that indignation becomes
an obstacle for growth, communication and resolution? Why are some
of us so prone to bouts of indignation and others not? This
lecture will address the issues of this curious experience of supreme rightness.
We’ll talk about how it helps, how it hinders, and how to recognize its
intoxicating effects that lead to a dead end of resentment, wrath and ire.
11/22 Grief, Loss, Loneliness and the Upcoming
Holidays
Loss, loneliness and its attendant, seemingly
endless sense of grief, are nearly unbearable at any time of year.
But toward the end of the year, when Thanksgiving and the holy holidays
of love and unity are celebrated, our losses, our lives, are intolerable.
This lecture will acknowledge the losses we’ve experienced and address
ways to make loss, loneliness and grief a sacred, meaningful experience
as we embark on the rituals of year’s end.
11/25 Facing Loneliness. At
St. Luke's Hospital in Pasadena
11/29 The holidays, body image and food, food,
food
Body image has always been an issue.
The norm for acceptable body image is what has fluctuated widely between
cultures. The almighty camera lens that adds 20 pounds to any frame
and enhances angularity has so distorted our self images that few of us
in this country have any realistic idea of what we look like, let alone
how we should look.
Defeated by the past, and overwhelmed by the future,
the presence of the extra food at the holidays becomes an experience from
which we either run or over indulge.
Many who have experienced the loss of primary
attachment to meaningful love often find ourselves without the emotional
energy and the mental impetus to move toward caring for our bodies.
This lecture takes the focus off of food and body
image and offers viewpoints and techniques for shifting the internal experience
of self evaluation to one of tender concern. We’ll shift the focus
away from surviving the extra food of the holidays to finding sacredness
in our own discoveries about our bodies and the ways in which our minds
exist there.
12/06 Depression, Part II
In October’s lecture on depression, we
talked about depression as a normal aspect of grieving trauma and loss.
We went so far as to say that depression is valuable and provides
the potential for life changing experiences. We concluded that depression
and that it needs to be honored as a valuable and necessary experience,
and that doing so helps us maintain a healthy view of our lives.
This month’s focus will be on specific ways to go about giving depression
a place of honor in our lives, and how to make a companionate relationship
with it so that the experience remains healing and constructive instead
of degrading our day to day existence.
12/13 How do I know if I should stay with
him/her?
Chronic relationship conflicts are brutal
to life. Our attachment to each other – or more accurately, the way
in which we attach to each other – is, at once, the most important
contribution to good health, and the most disastrous. As we
age – and as we grow emotionally, intellectually and spiritually – we are
often drawn into conflict about the rightness of staying in and the wrongness
of leaving the primary relationships in our lives. One view
of therapy and set of self-help books can leave us wondering if we’re avoiding
our healing by staying. The other can make us wonder if we’re avoiding
our lessons by leaving. How do you know? How do you avoid making
a costly mistake? What are the guidelines for what seems workable
and what seems impossible. How does one know what “the lesson” is
and how do you get the courage to know it and live it?
This lecture looks at a unique model of lessons
of women and men, and offers a view of ourselves as women and as men that
can both refresh your idea of who you are and might want to be and how
you are and want to be in relation to the world around you.
12/20 Reverence for the past: A view
of loss
The end of the year, and the onset of
the holy days of unity, caring and sharing, bring with them an intense
awareness of what we’ve lost, how far we’ve come and how far we’ve not
come. Regrets of missed opportunities, mistakes made by ourselves
and by others, and plain old bad luck, clutter our views of ourselves and
our views of what life has to offer us, and can leave us believing we’ve
no where to go. This lecture will summarize the philosophy of having
reverence for pain and suffering as a value to be revered, and will talk
about how to go about it in a health-promoting, self-loving manner that
takes us out of the gibberish mentality of phony spirituality and into
the grounded reality of living, growing, changing and loving unconditionally.
12/27 Reverence for the future: A view
of loss
Loss, loneliness and its attendant, seemingly
endless sense of grief, are nearly unbearable at any time of year.
But toward the end of the year, when Thanksgiving and the holy holidays
of love and unity are celebrated, our losses, our lives, are intolerable.
And they color our view of the future. What have we to look forward
to, how can we expect it to be different, how can we avoid this kind of
pain, how can we manage to find safety in holding ourselves open to hope
and inspiration? This lecture will acknowledge the losses we’ve experienced
and will address ways to make loss, loneliness and grief a sacred, meaningful
experience as we embark on the rituals of a new year and a new millennium.
Lecture
tapes from 1999:
The lectures that took place in 1999 were not
topic specific, and those that have been described have been described
in terms of the issues we discussed. Technique topics may vary:
Lecture 1: July 21, 1999
Opening night; Who I am, what these
lectures are for and how they came to be; The foundation of a new model
for forgiving; Complications in forgiving during issues of suicide and
murder; Divorce, betrayal and rejection
When someone hurts your kids;
Lecture 2: July 28, 1999
Forgiving in situations of: Betrayal,
rape, abuse, molestation; Death of a spouse due to someone
driving while drugged; Forgiving life for loss of health; Suicide
of a loved one... what if I was really responsible? Friend quit speaking
to me without explanation; Abusive boyfriend; abusive mate;
My mother didn’t like me; it’s affected my whole life. I keep being
used by people.
Lecture 3: August 4, 1999
Forgiveness as it applies to: Violent
Crime/Robbery (loss of innocence); Family fights and Abuse (absence of
a loving paradigm); Alzheimer's (prolonged and gradual loss of a loved
one), Multiple Losses.
Lecture 4: August 11, 1999
Does death of murder help? Exercises
in attaching to love; Fear of being responsible for loved one's suicide;
dangers in intellectualizing your pain. Depression as part of trauma
and grief. The science behind pleasure and self love. forms
of resistance.
Lecture 5: August 18, 1999
Fighting over mom's will with alcoholic
siblings; death of father; abandoned as a child; son going through messy
divorce; divorce; death of spouse; fatal illness in grandchild; sister
murdered by her husband who was seen out of prison 26 years later.
Lecture 6: August 25, 1999
Humor: The griever’s clock
The symbol of the stained glass heart
What forgiving really is: How to open yourself
up to your
own care
How to make the choice to care about you
Why distracting yourself from pain is destructive
What kind of pain can you trust? Opening
yourself to pain
and compassion
The Catch 22 of healing childhood abuse
How do you find safety when your issues are abandonment?
“My best friend has a life-threatening
disease”
Handouts: “Levels of Giving” and The pain is
not out
there”
Lecture 7: September 1, 1999
This tape is not described yet.
It’s an hour-long tape, with good sound quality. Description to follow
later
Lecture 8: September 8, 1999
This tape is not described yet.
It’s very hard to hear this tape, and though the lecture content is excellent,
it will probably be more helpful transcribed.
Lecture 9: September 15, 1999
How do I forgive the addict I’m living
with?
An explanation of pain emerging in the face of
gentleness
How speaking up for oneself is an act of forgiving
It is not enough to feel pain; it is not enough
to love others
A long explanation of how to do self love
The nature of body wisdom
Connecting with nature through breathing
The healing properties of imagery
How “forgiving” deep injury equates to the shamanic
journey
How to “forgive” the alcoholic/addict.
Lecture 10: September 22, 1999
This tape is not described yet.
It’s very hard to hear this tape, and though the lecture content is excellent,
it will probably do better to be transcribed.
Lecture 11: September 29, 1999
The audience shares ways they demonstrate
care about
themselves
Why do I cry when someone is nice, or when
I see
someone being nice to someone
else?
How art and music work to move us toward
self love
Why are we having such difficult problems
with sleep?
How do I regain trust after being betrayed?
What if I have too many injuries to heal?
How do I deal with my fear of intimacy
after growing up in
an abusive family?
Lecture 12: October 6, 1999
Audience sharing about experience
with Gentleness:
The difficulty in healing the split between
body and spirit
What do I do when taking care of me means
causing
someone else pain?
How do I motivate myself to do things without
being so stern
Self love through mindfulness... allowing
yourself to be
present in your own life
Quieting the panic and fear with your own
gentleness
How do you distinguish self love/kindness
from self
indulgence?
I thought I was making progress... now
I feel completely
stuck!
I’m drowning in stuff I won’t get rid of.
How do I ever trust again after being betrayed?
Lecture 13: October 13, 1999
The dilemma of healing injuries
of rape
Energy/will violations.
Trying to keep out the energy of others
When healing is complicated by a perception
that the
energy of the perpetrator is present in
your body.
The dilemma of asking for God’s help in
the midst of the
deepest anguish or betrayal
Lecture 14: October 19, 1999
Betrayal and infidelity
Conflict in relationships
Descriptions of #15 through 23 to come
 Home
Forgiving
(in brief)
Forgiving
Text Table of Contents
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& Preferences
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