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It is also open to that vast and mysterious part of us that we call our unconscious. It pays attention to the messages that we receive daily from the unconscious, such as dreams, struggles and illness.
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When we allow ourselves to feel these painful feelings, give them an accurate name, and when we share the grief with safe and supportive others over time, we are able to complete our grief work and thus be free of it.
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When this vital part of each of us is not nurtured and allowed freedom of expression, a false or co-dependent self emerges.
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We are not our feelings.
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This lack of awareness of a major source of the family chaos results in extensive, destructive and unnecessary acceptance, as well as self blame and guilt among family members.
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Through Heaven's Gate and Back speaks to all of us that have been abused as children. Lee Thornton's descriptions of the aftereffects of repeated trauma and a profound Near-Death Experience (NDE) are not only true but explained in a way that the reader can take in. It is rare to find a book so well written that it has both sexual abuse and an NDE under one cover. We definitely will be recommending this book to our patients.
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At this point we understand that if the mother or other parent figure cannot provide these first few needs, the child’s physical, mental-emotional and spiritual growth would likely be stunted.
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From the recovery experience of hundreds of thousands of people, we know that there is an effective way out of this constricting and binding effect of shame: to tell the story of our suffering to safe and supportive others.
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By choosing recovery and risking to be real, we set the healthy boundaries that say, "I am in charge of my recovery and my life, and no one else on this Earth is.
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One alternative that nearly always relieves our suffering is surrender: we surrender our false self, and our attachment to the notion that we can control anything.
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Separation, suffering and evil are the absence of realizing Love, and are therefore ultimately illusions. They are also manifestations of our searching for Love, Wholeness, and Home. The evil or darkness is thus ultimately in the service of the Light.
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Rather happiness, peace or serenity is our natural state. Beneath all of what we add to our feelings and experience, beneath our self-contraction, lies serenity Itself.
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These core issues are: control, trust, feelings, being over responsible, neglecting our own needs, all-or-none thinking and behaving, high tolerance for inappropriate behavior and low self-esteem. To these I have added being real, grieving our ungrieved losses, fear of abandonment, difficulty resolving conflict, and difficulty giving and receiving love.