Relationship to Self

“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.” —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Not so happy with yourself?

Not so happy
with yourself?

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Your health will suffer

“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.” —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If your relationship with yourself is antagonistic, your health will suffer.

If your internal monologue is a constant beratement of your physical, emotional, and mental characteristics, your health will suffer.

Unheard Voices?

Unheard Voices?

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Denial and compartment-
alization are not your friend

If you have learned to judge and deny hidden and suppressed parts of yourself, you will live a life devoid of joy, passion, forgiveness, and compassion. You will sour on the world, suffer relentlessly, and most likely die in terrible pain. STOP IT! I would rather this not be your life.

Negative thinking about oneself can affect health through a variety of scientific mechanisms, primarily involving psychological and physiological pathways. Here’s how it works:

Psychological Stress and the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) Axis

Negative thinking can lead to chronic stress, which activates the body’s stress-response system. The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is a central part of this system. When stressed, the hypothalamus releases corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), which prompts the pituitary gland to release adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH). ACTH then stimulates the adrenal glands to produce cortisol, the body’s main stress hormone. While cortisol is vital for managing stress, chronic elevation can lead to various health issues, including:

Immune System Suppression: Excessive cortisol can suppress the immune system, making the body more susceptible to infections and diseases.

Increased Risk of Chronic Diseases: Elevated cortisol levels are associated with an increased risk of conditions like hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease.

Mental Health Issues: Chronic stress can contribute to the development of anxiety, depression, and other mental health disorders.

Inflammatory Responses

Negative thinking and chronic stress can also trigger an inflammatory response in the body. Stress can promote inflammation through the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines. Chronic inflammation is linked to a host of diseases, including:

Cardiovascular Disease: Inflammation is a key factor in the development of atherosclerosis and other cardiovascular conditions.

Neurodegenerative Diseases: Chronic inflammation may contribute to the development of diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Mental Health: Inflammation has been linked to depression, suggesting a bi-directional relationship between mental health and inflammation.

Behavioral Factors

Negative self-thoughts can influence health indirectly through behavioral changes. Individuals with a negative self-view may engage in unhealthy behaviors, such as:

Poor Diet and Physical Inactivity: Negative emotions can lead to comfort eating, poor diet choices, and reduced motivation to exercise.

Substance Abuse: People may use alcohol, tobacco, or other substances as a coping mechanism for negative feelings.

Sleep Disturbances: Negative thinking can affect sleep patterns, leading to problems like insomnia. Poor sleep is associated with a range of health issues, including obesity, cardiovascular disease, and weakened immunity.

Neuroendocrine Changes

Negative thinking can affect neurotransmitter levels, such as serotonin and dopamine, which play crucial roles in mood regulation. Imbalances in these neurotransmitters can lead to mood disorders, affecting overall health and well-being.

Telomere Length

Chronic stress and negative thinking may even impact cellular aging through effects on telomeres, the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes. Telomere shortening is associated with aging and an increased risk of chronic diseases.

If you could only see

If you could
only see

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First know what you are not, then flourish

A healthy relationship with yourself is having compassion, acceptance, and love of ALL aspects of yourself—the best to the worst. How do we achieve this? Hard work. Developing a healthy relationship with the self requires the courage to look deep inside and the will to do the work necessary to transcend the multitude of beliefs you have taken on about yourself and the world.

Very little of your perception of yourself is valid, and ANY negative perception of yourself is absolutely false.

Patience is the virtue

Patience is
the virtue

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Intention—the necessary will

First, understand that the human psyche is complicated—an amalgam of all our experiences from the moment of conception, confounded and filtered through our unique genetic predispositions. Learning to accept all of you is a marathon, not a sprint.

Secondly, and most importantly, make a clear decision to walk this “road less traveled.” To choose to turn the light of consciousness inwards, to discover, to forgive, to love, and to evolve. When you make this choice, The One True God will provide all that you need. You only need to be open to what is offered.

When I was 25, I completed the first level, 40-day Arica® training. The Arica Mystical School’s introductory courses presented precise maps of the total human psyche. After one had learned the maps and chosen to become conscious, the entire process of the mind/ego was revealed. Every thought was observed and located within the map. Our psyche’s previously sub and unconscious motivations were brought to the light of consciousness.

This work was an amazing and extremely painful process. Although incredible in their ability to make one aware, these early trainings were significantly devoid of heart, empathy, compassion, or Spirit. Arica’s trainings were warriors’ work, ruthless, relentless, and liberating; a systematic disassembly of all we thought we were.

After 3 or 4 years of this intense spiritual work, many of us had become ragged, with superb awareness of the complexity of the mind, yet lacking in the love and compassion necessary to convert that awareness to self-love and, by extension, love for all sentient beings. Knowing what we were not, with no sense of our true nature, we found ourselves in that Dark Night of the Soul.

About three years into my Arica® experience, I was really turning up the heat on trying to become enlightened. Not only was I doing the intense Arica trainings, but I was meditating an hour to an hour and a half a day with a very powerful Taoist yoga. I was doing primal therapy. I was rebirthing underwater once a week. I was involved in Jungian dream studies. I was also getting Rolfing every week—very deep evolutionary myofascial intervention.

I’ll never forget it. It was in the afternoon. I was doing my Chi gong Taoist yoga, and all of a sudden it was as if all the work I had been doing had culminated in this incredible recognition of my nothingness. I thought I was going crazy. I thought I was going to die. My heart was pounding, the sweat was pouring out of me. I had to stop.

It was no longer theoretical—the recognition of the illusion of self had become clear. I had no idea who I was. I felt like I was going to die or that I was insane. This was the start of my own dark night of the soul.

I was desperate to extinguish this feeling, to go back to sleep. However, the beauty and power of the Arica® system is once you’ve done a certain number of trainings and done them well, going back to sleep is not an option. That witness of all that you think you are and that you are not never truly goes away. For that is your true nature.

How I dealt with this was I stopped all meditation and began to drink alcohol on a regular basis. I was severely depressed. When I stopped drinking I would have severe anxiety attacks. I could hardly work at the bar where I worked. I couldn’t relate to people. I couldn’t have sex. I was smoking two packs a day. I was in such despair of my condition that suicide was a daily thought.

Luckily, the Arica® system understands that this dark night of the soul is just—and I use the word “just” generously—another step in the path towards enlightenment. Luckily, the people I was surrounded with understood this as well. I’m sure I would have been committed and severely drugged had I been diagnosed by traditional medicine at that time.

The months went by. I developed a rhythm of drinking that kept my angst somewhat controlled. I had been planning to go to the Rolf Institute to become a Rolfer when this first happened. Drinking alcohol, I was able to get on the plane to Colorado to begin the class. However, the morning of the class it was clear to me that I was in no condition to be there. Fortunately at the time, the Rolf Institute was more of a spiritual school than one that revolved around techniques. They understood and recommended I go back to San Diego and come back when I was ready.

With that failure, and the deep depression and angst of my psyche so desperate to survive, I fumbled along for five or six months. I would break down in the middle of grocery stores in tears at my condition. It was not the best of times.

After five or six months of this extreme fear of dying or going crazy—some of the last weapons of an ego desiring to survive—I finally just gave up. I went up to my room, I lay down, and I prepared myself to die or go crazy or whatever I was afraid of. I laid there for a while, while longer. Nothing happened.

I had reached the other side. I let go of what needed to be let go of. After that I no longer needed to drink. I was able to stop smoking. I was introduced to the Fisher-Hoffman process, and soon after I was able to complete my Rolf training.

In retrospect, I realize how blessed I was to be in a community that could support that particular transition. Since then, when I come across alcoholics, narcotic addicts, and addictions of all forms, my compassion for the pain they must be in is significant. I would never have this if it hadn’t been for what I had gone through. For that alone, it was worth it.

I’m not sure if there is a moral to this particular anecdote. I just wanted folks to understand that to walk this road less traveled is not easy. And we will always be helped when help is needed.

Through this darkness, some of us found our way to the Fisher-Hoffman process, an approach to ego transcendence with a much deeper reliance on support from Spirit—The One True God.

The Fischer-Hoffman process took 13 weeks. With the aid of individual therapy, the first part of the process was to write every event from childhood to twelve that could be remembered, from the most insignificant to the most traumatic. The second part was to document the childhoods of both parents, also to the age of twelve.

In addition to this profoundly introspective work, we were provided the tools to connect with something greater than ourselves throughout the process. For each of us, it was a unique connection with Spirit—The One True God.

The Fisher-Hoffman therapist would read through our writings—first our experiences, then those of our parents. The therapist would help us see the similarities in the history. Through the awareness of our patterns, and then through an awareness that these patterns were taken on from our parents and, in turn, their parents, we were given a mechanism to understand how we became who we are: a continuous chain of generation upon generation unconsciously taking on and repeating patterns of perception and behavior.

The Arica® work gave us a complete map of our ego. Fisher-Hoffman gave us an understanding of how that map came about.

An undiscerning sponge

An undiscerning
sponge

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Filled with illusions about love

As children, we take on ALL the patterns of our caretakers: mother, father, siblings, grandparents, and teachers. As young children, we have no concept of good or bad. We only know that deep feeling of aloneness that occurs when the soul finds itself once again separated from The One True God. Our only desire is to be loved, and in our innocence, we hope that deep emptiness will be filled by imitating those from whom we wish love.

We have no discernment as to which of our parents’ thoughts and feelings are good or bad. Thus, we take them all in, filling ourselves with patterns of thought, emotion, and physical mannerisms, unaware of their value or how they will affect our later lives. As young children, we do not know that daddy abusing mommy is terrible. We only know that they will love us if we try to be like them.

Like Ogg and Thogg?

Like Ogg and Thogg?

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We became our parents, as did they

Like Ogg and Thogg?

The same motivation we had as children to absorb parental patterns—a lack of love and connection—persists throughout our adult lives. In a vain attempt to fill that emptiness inside us, we have become our parents. Their negative patterns are now ours. And the cycle of abuse continues.

The Path to Freedom

From understanding comes compassion

From understanding
comes compassion

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Forgive you, forgive them

When we understand that we cannot help who we are and that, up until the present, we have had no choice, it becomes much easier to forgive and have compassion for ourselves. When we observe the atrocities humans impose on each other, it is good to remember that these folks cannot help themselves either. If they could, they would.

Each of us is INHERENTLY GOOD. Each of us is driven towards being better humans. We are all doing the best we can; unfortunately, it is not so great. As a good friend of mine from a past life once said, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” This goes for ourselves as well.

True change comes only

True change
comes only…

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…with love and understanding

At this point, you might be thinking, yes, it is all good to understand why we do the things that we do, but how does that change anything?

Love is the answer. But not just any love—unconditional love. The Fisher-Hoffman process not only gave us a mechanism to understand why we have the negative patterns that we do, but it also guided us to an unwavering source of unconditional love. Only this unconditional love and a proper understanding of our negative patterns will allow them to dissipate. Love alone will not do it.

When that gaping emptiness of disconnection from spirit is no longer present, we no longer need to obtain love from the world around us. We are free to move through the world unshackled by those patterns of behavior that previously either consciously or unconsciously held us back in all areas of our lives.

Imagine how beautiful your relationships would be if you understood and loved every aspect of yourself and your partner, excelled in a work that aligns with YOUR talents and needs, and developed a relationship with The One True God unfettered by the beliefs, fears, and dogma of millennia of distortion.

As Many Paths as Souls

As Many Paths
as Souls

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You need to do the work—Spirit will show you the way

So yes, it is possible to have a healthy relationship with yourself, to be that better person. You just need to be willing to do the work.

It is said that there are as many paths to enlightenment as there are souls. I cannot tell you what you need to do—I can only tell you that if you wish to live a healthy life, you need to do it.

Consider using The Most Powerful Prayer as it can help significantly with fortifying intent.

The brighter the light

The brighter
the light

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The brighter the light
Deeper the understanding
The true self is revealed

Once you have chosen to move from asleep to awake, from denial to consciousness, you and your world will start to change. With this simple act of choosing to improve your relationship with yourself, the light of consciousness will begin to highlight those aspects of your nature that need illumination. The more committed you are to this process, the brighter this light.

The brighter the light, the deeper you look, and those aspects of your psyche that you were taught to judge as evil, dirty, unacceptable, and best not acknowledged will be revealed. If you have the courage and willingness to understand, forgive, and finally embrace these deep, dark, and previously forbidden aspects of yourself, true and lasting change will occur.

As you progress in this journey, you will gain access to that innate wellspring of creativity, energy, compassion, and love that is your true nature. However uncomfortable this inward journey is, the rewards are ten-fold.

Your Choice

Second only to Spirit

Second only
to Spirit

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With love of self—true health

Only second to your relationship with Spirit is your relationship with yourself. The importance of mental and emotional well-being on health is well documented.

If you genuinely wish to be healthy, your priorities may need to change. Rather than anesthetizing yourself with the external world’s unlimited distractions, you will need to choose “this road less traveled.” A path through life of ever-increasing awareness, acceptance, and Love of yourself.