"To see ones predicament clearly is the first step toward going beyond it."

Eckhart Tolle

Enlightened Teacher

 

 

 

 

 

Letting our parents off the hook

 

 

 

 

"The energetic conditions imprinted in our emotional body during childhood are the conditions we have come into this life to overcome because they are what prevent us from experiencing unconditional love" Michael Brown – The Presence Process

 

According to recent findings, every child needs to feel unconditional love in order to grow up to be a fully, functioning human being. (See article on identifying unmet emotional needs). As I grew up and started investigating the human condition, I came to believe that it was a parent's duty to love their child unconditionally. In other words, I was wounded because my parents had not been able to give me all the love I wanted as a child.

 

Recently this paradigm has been shattered. For good.

 

Reading Michael Brown's book 'The Presence Process', and participating in its experiential exercises, new realizations are coming to light. As he says:

 

"It was never their responsibility and it will never be their responsibility, to place unconditional love in our experience. It’s only their responsibility to reflect to us the conditions we place on our love for them".

 

This turns everything on its head. Despite the fact that I knew it was my responsibility to love myself, I never realized that actually it was never my parents responsibility to give me what I have been seeking, namely unconditional love. Which means I can no longer blame them for not giving it to me. Damm. My victim-consciousness has taken another fatal blow.

 

He continues: "Learning how to give to ourselves what we have been mistakenly seeking from others is the message our parents, family members, and those who bring any form of intimacy into our experience, are attempting to convey to us.

 

The energetic conditions imprinted in our emotional body during childhood are the conditions we have come into this life to overcome because they are what prevent us from experiencing unconditional love”.

 

So, that's it, it's all up to me. No-one on the outside is ever going to give me the feeling I am looking for...ever. Which is actually quite a relief, because it's quite exhausting, all this approval-seeking and love-seeking business.

 

So how do we do this for ourselves?

 

"Releasing ourselves from lack and entering into unlimited abundance commences when we give unconditionally to ourselves that which we have been seeking from others: unconditional attention".

 

And what does this mean? It means giving full attention to the emotional resonances which arise in the body when we feel we want or need or desire something, and rather than running after or grabbing that 'thing' which we think will make us 'feel better', (eg, food, cigarette, perfect partner), instead we allow ourselves to feel the resonance of that desire. We give it our full attention, so that the charge (aka unmet emotional need) can beintegrated inside our body.

 

So here are two ways of doing this:

 

Either think of the thing you are missing (eg, love, support etc) , feel what that feels like to not have that thing, and focus all your attention on that feeling until the emotional charge integrates

 

or

 

Think of the thing you would like, (eg, love, support), feel what that feels like to have that thing, and focus all your attention on that feeling until the emotional charge integrates

 

And thus, as Michael puts it "The moment we take steps to integrate the uncomfortable resonance that drives our unconscious definition of love, we begin to preceive our parents, family, and loved ones of the past in a new light.

 

The veil our charged emotional state projects on them lifts, and we perceive them "in the light" of what they authentically are: the ones who loved us enough to take on the painful roles of reflecting our unintegrated emotional charge so we have the opportunity to perceive, unconditionally feel and integrate it".