Living through emotional pain.

When we have a physical injury it is so much easier on some level to endure and I certainly don't want to underestimate the impact on peoples lives who live with chronic pain.  I wish to differentiate between emotional and physical pain because one is seen and the other subjective and unseen to the observer.  It is difficult to imagine the psychic gash to the soul that some people experience during times of emotional trauma that is caused by relationship difficulties.
I pray for those who are married and with kids to work through things together and remain as one unit because of the times we live in it's easier to stabilize the life of the kids who need certain goods and good school districts.  There is a time when people have to end a relationship if it is abusive and only that person will know when that time has come.  I encourage time to work things out on a spiritual level by learning to meditate and still the mind through connecting the soul with the greater Power of the Universe.
It takes courage to stay in a relationship and work things out and it definitely takes two to make it work.  When either partner has decided to leave it leaves no other option.  Self development is such an important part of our lives that we cannot look to our partner to fulfill our unmet needs and many of which have entered into the relationship because they have not been dealt with from our past.
If you are on the verge of chucking in the towel with your relationship I suggest that you spend time in stillness and alone and connect with your heart.  Be humble and willing to do what it takes to make the relationship work.  Meditation is key to connecting with how you really feel and if you can get past the anger and fear and experience a stillness inside you can look at what parts of the relationship are working and what can be salvaged.
Take short vacations from one another and do your separate interests so that you are not focused on having needs met by your partner/spouse.  Learn to let one person talk and wait for them to finish before responding to what is being said even if it is hurtful.  Pray inside for humility and understanding.  Be prepared to take the heat and blame and when the other person is feeling more trusting and secure you can each take part ownership of what has gone wrong with the relationship.  The stronger of the two needs to be more objective when the crisis mode is in effect.  Be patient and take a time out if you feel that you are getting impatient.
The tongue is a small part of our body but does immense damage with one short movement.  We can destroy relationships and incur guilt and shame if we don't control it's impulse to lash out.  Tell yourself that you will only speak kind and thoughtful words.  Write out hostile feelings and put them in a place that you consider sacred.  In the East they have prayer stands of pujas.  I suggest that you keep offering the broken relationship to your Higher Power.  Nothing is impossible through the Power of Love.
Meditate daily, pray often, stay in constant remembrance of your higher power.

Adalaide Street, Windsor

My mother died in February of this year at the ripe old age of ninety seven.  She had a cousin Mary who died at one hundred and one and was most put out that she could not attend a funeral for her because she was an atheist.  One of the things that is a source of connection with our past and ancestors is having places to visit.  Adelaide Street in Windsor was a place my mother took me to see the home where her father was born and raised.

His name was Arthur Brown and stood bold and brash in a family picture in the back garden of the terraced home where his mother and father who was the chief carpenter at Windsor Chapel.  One of thirteen children who could choose to have bread with butter or jam as my mother used to say as a way of making it clear to me that sacrifices were part of growing up.  Her father looked like a dandy!  After meeting my grandmother Ida who was the daughter of a sea captain they never visited his family as a couple because my grandmother thought them beneath her class.  In England the class distinctions were very strong and people could tell who belonged in the lower working class by the way they spoke and where they could afford to live.  My grandmother would pace outside my grandfather's home when he went home to visit but didn't go in.

After seeing the outside of the home my mother took me to an iron fenced old graveyard close by where we visited the graves of my mother's parental grandparents.  She liked to have contact with the places that held their memory and it created a certainty in our own lives about being part of the bigger picture of the Brown family from Windsor.  In 1960 we visited my mother's uncle at Wimbledon Hospital who was alert and friendly at 104 years old.  He didn't have any place to go when his housekeeper was hospitalized so he went to hospital too and caught pneumonia and died shortly after.

One thing I can be sure of is that on my mother's side of the family there is longevity!  However, on my father's side the counterbalance of hereditary disease at the young age of 48 makes the odds about 50:50.  At least I can hope for old age but enjoy life anyway.  Luckily through my spiritual path I have become vegetarian and health conscious and thus reduced my chances of developing cancer of the colon that my father suffered.  Our family ancestors have been strong and able to overcome odds and perils in a way that we have not had to deal with in our modern life of luxury.  Even though I have worked hard and raised by a widow of four children I know that I have always been able to earn a living and raise my daughter on a nursing salary while her father completed his education.

I love to visit England and call my brother who lives outside London to talk about his health and life since he spent the last ten years taking care of our mother.  My sister was always the blond haired blue eyed favorite of my mother's and I was referred to as "that Rita!"  Some of the time with my mother was okay but for the most part it was a very difficult relationship and particularly since my sister did mean things to me then had my mother's support for every undertaking in her life.  I kept quiet about my sister's spite because I wouldn't be supported by our mother.  Unless blood was visible which happened when we lived in Carvongu in the bush along the coast of Kenya.  I remember looking into a bogelvelia bush that our mother had planted in our garden which had prickly thorns when my sister pushed me from behind.  I still have scars on the inside of both thighs from the deep cuts and scratches.

My sister's manipulation and my mother's favoritism toward her lasted until practically the end of our mother's life when she learned that our brother had lost the sight in his eye due to a punch during an argument between my siblings.  When my brother told me what happened I could not imagine how such a drastic amount of damage could have resulted because I have seen facial wounds from fights between patients in psychiatric wards and none that I had witnessed resulted in blindness.  I later found out that my sister had taken karate lessons and had learned this technique for hitting someones eye in her class.  Needles to say I am supportive of my brother because I too have been victim to my sister's spite.  Like the time she punched my in the jaw when I was thirteen and our mother had allowed us to go on vacation to Somerset with the girl next door who was fifteen.  I drank merry down which is an alcoholic drink like cider but more potent.  I really was out of my league with older girls who could carry their liquor so much better and punish me who was not used to it!



Take care and do your own family review and decide where to put your time and effort.  My sister is superficial for sure and although I had gone along with her ways in the past I now have drawn a line in the sand.  I have not worked for the past two years due to a legal issue that I was cleared of and now have to defend myself from an attack by the state board of nursing on my professional standing and reputation.  I know one thing for sure - you either have to learn to fight back in life and that is what personal responsibility is about or be a victim.  See where you stand in your life and decide what steps you need to take to develop courage to stand firm in your convictions.  Two checks written to me and one for eight hundred and twenty dollars as a gift from my brother and mother were not honored by my sister and her husband.  I now have those checks at a lawyer's office.  It doesn't mean that I have any dislike, hatred or animosity, it's just I have learned to put myself first.

I am a Professional Life Coach and can be contacted at lawrencerita511@gmail.com
I require individuals to commit to a regular practice of meditation and vegetarian diet.  I also promote antioxidants and you can go to my site at http://myrain.me/rita

Fear of Rejection!

Rejection is a painful experience that we all experience from time to time.  For some it becomes a barrier to relationships because the fear of abandonment and rejection are so intense that they fail to expand their consciousness.  What happens when we are rejected?  We fear that we are not worthy, or that we are stupid or unlovable.  These are core values that I have written about before.

Fear of abandonment is an inner obstacle to being in perfect harmony within.  You can live an empowered life through connecting your soul with your Higher Power.  When the feeling hits it is normally felt in the chakra or energy center at about the level of the stomach.  Everyone who has felt this feeling will know how draining it is.  Breath into the feeling and close your eyes.  Vulnerability is a very real sensation that can be overcome when you connect with your soul.  I will write a short plan that will guide you in dealing with unexpected rejection so that you can practice and over time you will go into a mode of transcendence.  It is a process that takes place over time when you meditate daily.  The ego or small "I" identification becomes absorbed into the same power that you share with God that is your very own soul with meditation and under the guidance of a spiritual master. 
Plan
Your reaction:  Shock and sense of betrayal at being rejected by one whom you trusted.
What to do:  Take several deep breaths and sit in a comfortable position with your eyes closed.  Try to allow your heart to be still with the breath and let your mind calm down.
Your reaction:  Tense body posture and racing thoughts about why that person did what they did that leaves you with a feeling of victimization.  You will learn new ways of coping from every situation in your life as your build up your tools of transcendence.  It takes practice and situations can become learning labs for personal development.  It all depends on how you want to look at it.
What to do:  I have written previously about responsibility being an attitude that takes you into an active mode thus empowering your inner state.  You won't dwell in the victim mode.  Your first reaction or attitude should be one of the following: anger at one end of the scale to detachment at the other.  How do you get there?  It is all in how you hold the energy of your thoughts.  Your body will respond to the situation in the way you tell it to.  We store stressful emotions like anger in our body and it causes our body pH to become acidic.  Your attitude can be of allowing the other person to be the way they are.  Focus your thoughts on your own good.  They might in fact be doing you a favor by showing you their true colors before you shared something more sensitive with them than on their facebook wall. 
Your reaction:  Renuminating over the incident.  It is a typical habit for our minds to keep going over some senario in our lives and we keep the tape playing over and over in our minds. 
What to do:  When you observe yourself doing this say to yourself literally "drop it!"  This kind of behavior is learned and a way of coping that isn't going to benefit you in any way.  Let this new experience be an opportunity to learn to let go and move on.
Your reaction:  Feeling guilt and blame for the person's rejection of you.  When guilt arises it is because you have a behavior pattern that needs to be addressed.  Sometimes it goes back to how we were treated as children.  Some parents believed in shaming children as part of bringing the will of the child under control. With responsibility for how we respond to situations there is no room for blame.
What to do:  Again this is another opportunity for introspection and knowing yourself.  Journaling is the best tool for accessing our thoughts and feelings even those that you might be more conscious of expressing through the spoken word.  Let the pen roll and let your feelings go!  You may find that there are people whom you want to forgive and let go of their emotional hold on you.  If it involves family members you may take out photographs and write a prayer that releases their particular relationship from you.  Light a candle as you say your prayer.  You may have to repeat this ritual.
Your reaction:  Embarrassement.  It is natural to feel self conscious as part of identification with the small ego.  It likes the feelings that it has been accostomed to having you emotionally debilitated by. 
What to do:  Transcending the smaller identification is something that you will grow to appreciate because the more you practice the more you will live in the soul that it empowered by God.  As you get used to a more uplifting state you will notice when you are being pulled to the feeling level that has been more evident in your psyche.  You can then shift inside through taking yourself through a series of steps like those described.  Find what works for you.

David Bowen wrote a theory that was based on the level of anxiety in a family and that determines our enmeshment or detachment in relationships.  Particularly as we get older we have spent more time becoming more true to who we really are.  Adolescents attempt to look different on the outside as a sign of rebellion but they do not have the emotional maturity to feel comfortable in their own skins and depend on their peers for validation still.  The more authentic you become, others will view you as less like them and thus you will experience their rejection.  This is an inevitable outcome and the stakes are high because you can choose to stay in the comfort zone of being accepted by your family or group or of evolving into who you truly are without reservation or fear about who that is.