When Mother Teresa received her Nobel Prize, she was asked, what can we do to promote world Peace? She replied, Go home and Love your Family! My topic today is on Choosing Fear or Love based on the work “Love is Letting Go of Fear” – Gerald Jampolsky
Did you grow up in a home where you were constantly told to be SEEN AND NOT HEARD? Or – in one of the following TYPES OF FAMILIES –
1. LOOK GOOD where you had to hide problems from community ; usually the family enjoys some status… It’s not okay to display feelings that don’t support the family self-image. It is a constant state of Denial. Everything is always FINE – the Feelings inside are Not expressed…
In this kind of family, YOU HAVE TO BE PERFECT TO PLEASE GOD – and you knew you couldn’t be that!
RD Laing… Bradshaw’s Creating Love
When I was fourteen my class had to write a home essay on ourselves. Mine began, “Time lies heavily on my hands.” My parents were upset by this because they said it reflected on them… “You always have plenty to do…and it shows how ungrateful you are for all we have done for you.’ So I changed the opening to “I find life full of interest.” They were very happy, and I got a “Very Good.”
Children learn to live a lie..
2. Church Going — tend to spiritualize everything – WE don’t have arguments in our family – Bury their heads – there is nothing wrong here… Once again – child grows up to be an adult in denial of feelings or worse yet with a SPIRITUAL ADDICTION – They develop a Relationship with a spiritual world since this one isn’t working! (This isn’t ALWAYS the case with Church goers…but it is an extreme I am well aware of!
3. Soap Opera—roller coaster – shifting relationships and high emotions — often alcoholic homes – or homes where parents had bouts of anger followed by what looked like a lot of warmth. Sometimes these people RUN TO GOD in times of NEED ONLY
4. Not There – everyone had his or her own life — totally disorganized or looking like a hospital room – but certainly not relaxed. Each member lived separate lives, preoccupied with goals that weren’t shared. Lots of turfs and rights. ABSENT GOD – GOD IS DEAD
Encouraging a child means that one or more of the following critical life messages are coming through, either by word or by action: I believe in you, I trust you, I know you can handle this. You are listened to, you are cared for, you are very important to me.
Often in homes we grew up in, parents just weren’t there for us – sometimes physically – often emotionally.
5. Only Adults Live Here. – special rooms children can’t enter or conversations in a different language that children don’t understand.
God BECOMES SOMEONE SO DISTANT — certainly not someone we can reach.
6. Crime and Punishment – where physical and emotional boundaries are frequently violated and force and threat were often used. GOD WILL PUNISH YOU…
The relationship you have with yourself is highly influenced by the relationships you had with the adults around you as a child. The way the adults reacted to us then is often the way we react to ourselves now, both positively and negatively. When we grow up, we have a tendency to recreate the emotional environment of our early home life.
This is not good or bad, right or wrong. It is just what we know inside us “home’. We also tend to recreate in our personal relationships, the relationships we had with our mothers or with our fathers, or what they had between them. We also treat ourselves the way our parents treated us. We scold and punish ourselves in the same way.
Think for a moment of the words you use when you are scolding yourself? Most of the times you’ll find that they are the same words YOUR PARENTS used when they were scolding you?? YOU NEVER DO ANYTHING RIGHT…. It’s ALL YOUR FAULT. How often have you said these things about yourself.
What about the words you use to Praise yourself… It’s usually the ones that were used on you as well.. YOU ARE WONDERFUL.. I LOVE YOU… How often do you tell yourself these things!!
Perhaps your parents never praised you, so you have no idea of how to praise yourself and hopefully by now you know there is something to praise. ***********I AM NOT BLAMING PARENTS — they couldn’t possibly teach us what they didn’t know. This message is just about giving us access to hidden beliefs or patterns we may not already be aware of.
Sondra Ray, the great Rebirther who has done so much work with relationships claims that every major relationship we have is a reflection of the relationship we had with one of our parents.
She claims that until we clean up that first one, we will never be free to create exactly what we want in the rest of our relationships.
Have you thanked your parents lately?
