"Three Big Lies"

Candy: I heard don Miguel Ruiz at a talk once say that there are three really big lies.

TACOallan: Yes, those are big lies.

Vitality: Why would love hurt?

TACOallan: Real love does not hurt.

Candy: It his last lie that I am not sure I got. The emphasis was on the first and a little bit on the second.

Vitality: Why would I not be enough? And to whom?

Moonlight: Indeed. Any time I feel powerless and inferior, I am convinced that I am not "good" enough.

TACOallan: How about this? "I am not good enough to receive love, love is important, therefore I have to be something I am not in order to receive love, which is actually VERY important."

TACOallan: Life and death at two years old.

Vitality: Huh? What do you mean?

Moonlight: Yeah, explain.

TACOallan: When you didn’t receive unconditional love as a child, the message was that you were not enough. So you had to be more. Which is not YOU. You had to be that which is lovable, which is not you, obviously, or they would have just loved you the way you were. TACOallan: When we were little, and learning all of this, we listened and believed all of it.

Candy: That is what I was trying to say... I don't feel that I am performing at a sufficient level to deserve the love. I did not "earn" it by having some undefined quality.

TACOallan: So you have to develop the quality that they seem to want you to have in order to be loved.

Candy: When I was little? Heck, it still works on me now!

TACOallan: Yes, little then, big now. What we learned then, controls us now.

Vitality: So, how do we let go of what we believed to be true?

TACOallan: First, comes Awareness.

Candy: But what is it that I must have? It is a mystery ingredient because I can never be good enough to get it, and even if I do it right, the "attagirls" never last long and I have to earn it all again.

TACOallan: How does it work for you guys, this "earning love" thing?

Moonlight: It NEVER worked! I learned to lose myself in my fantasies, and my toy playing world. I often see myself going off into fantasies now. It absolutely does not serve my adult life.

Candy: It is the same with business too: "What have you done for us lately?" I am always afraid that I have not done enough to earn the love or attention that will make be good enough for the job.

TACOallan: It is the Dream of the Planet.

TACOallan: I heard a woman holding a two-year-old boy today in a store, telling someone how hard she had to work now that she was a mother: "Harder than having a job."

TACOallan: That little boy heard every word.

Candy: So the little boy heard that he was "a chore?"

Vitality: He was "an effort?"

TACOallan: He was learning: "I make my mother suffer by being me, by being alive."

Moonlight: Yeah, like he was so difficult... like he makes mom really suffer.

Candy: I hear that, I am always convinced that I am a burden.

TACOallan: "I had better be good, to make it worth while for my mother to bear this burden."

Vitality: I was a burden on my mother, my sister, and by brothers.

TACOallan: The child learns to say, Mom, what do you want me to be to be "good?"

Vitality: Not just good, but darned smart.

TACOallan: Smart, good, cute, funny, whatever they want. Or quiet and invisible.

Moonlight: Interesting, I just realized that I believe most people (maybe everyone) would rather that I just "play with my toys," and not bother them.

TACOallan: Moonlight, you may even seek out friends and relationships to support that belief.

Moonlight: Good "stalking" material. I am going to take a long hard look at this, TACOallan.

Vitality: I have always believed that most people would rather I just go away. I took that for granted until this moment.

TACOallan: Ouch, Vitality.

Vitality: Very Ouch!!

TACOallan: Do they read the scripts that you have in your head, Vitality? Do they tell you to go away, or do you just disappear, and save yourself the embarrassment?

TACOallan: Think about who you have filled your lives with over time.

Vitality: People who make me feel like I'm needed.

TACOallan: People in need, who need you? So you can know you are lovable?

Vitality: Oh, yeah...why am I a nurse?????

TACOallan: Nurses are great. We need them.

Vitality: Who needs them?

TACOallan: Sick people need nurses and caregivers. But when nurses need us to be sick so they can nurse us, then we have set up a sick-y relationship.

Vitality: But what about well people?

TACOallan: Not good, because there is no way for you to get them to love you by nursing them. Helpers, rescuers, and heroes need victims.

TACOallan: You are the director of your movie. Of course you are going to hire actors who read the script you are familiar with. If you need victims to heal, you can't really let them heal, because then they won't need you anymore.

Candy: The most powerful thing I heard during the workshop was that the First Agreement meant "Stop Your Self-Abuse-- Don’t go against yourself."

Candy: I have abused myself with people who abuse me in the ways that I was taught to abuse myself.

Moonlight: But still, sick people usually seek out help, and need it.

Vitality: I see nursing as promoting health and wellness... but is that really what I see?

TACOallan: Stalk it well.

TACOallan: Awareness gives you freedom of choice.

TACOallan: Many therapists are pretty co-dependent. They let you know: "I cannot own MY pain, so let me help YOU make yours go away so I don't have to feel mine."

Moonlight: What do you mean by "own" my own pain, you mean face it?

TACOallan: Yes.

TACOallan: And No.

TACOallan: Not face it, embrace it.

Moonlight: I'm wondering what embrace our pain really means?

TACOallan: Ah, good.

TACOallan: What do you think?

Moonlight: To know it so well, and how it came about, and feel it until it doesn't hurt any more, but just is what it always really was... before I made it worse with endless commentaries.

TACOallan: Ah, sounds good. The pain is simply energy. Moving.

TACOallan: Try not naming it. Not the "good" feelings, or the "bad", but just energy.

Moonlight: Yeah, that's what I was heading for, thanks, yeah, the "bad" part was my misinterpretation.

TACOallan: Love is good, pain is bad. See the problem start already?

Moonlight: Uh huh.

TACOallan: "WHERE PREFERENCES ARE HELD, FREEDOM IS LOST."

Vitality: Why is pain bad?

TACOallan: Vitality, it isn't. We just label it that way.

TACOallan: That is what I mean by the Problem starting there, in labeling.

Vitality: Thank you, TACOallan, in my profession we refer to something called "good Pain"...

Vitality: it's a concept that many people have trouble with.

TACOallan: Can you explain it to us?

TACOallan: Candy, you still there?

Candy: Just listening...

Vitality: "Good pain" is a pain that we need to feel to know we are alive. It does not "hurt" us but gives us a message.

Candy: I know about "hurts so good"-- the pain of a work out, deep massage, etc.

TACOallan: Many people think they need to feel emotional pain to know they are alive.

TACOallan: When really they are dead.

Vitality: in palliative care some people need to know that they are still with the living. They refer to themselves as having "good pain" and they don't want it to go away. When they are ready to let go they let the "pain" take them away. This is different from the "good pain" that Candy refers to when we go for chiropractic treatment, massage therapy, acupuncture, etc. That pain is expected to be therapeutic.

Candy: don Miguel talked about the body as an instrument that produced emotions.

Candy: I found this amazing because I was domesticated to think of emotions as undesirable side effects.

Vitality: Emotions are definitely desirable side effects!!!

TACOallan: Candy, Miguel means that the emotions are latent in the body of the human, but do not come into manifestation until a thought happens.

TACOallan: The mind becomes the factory of emotions. Without the story, there is no emotion.

TACOallan: What story you tell yourself creates your emotional experience.

Moonlight: So, no story, no feelings?

TACOallan: Exactly. Judge yourself, feel hurt.

TACOallan: Love yourself, feel good.

TACOallan: It is all from the story, from the beliefs, the lies.

Candy: Really? No emotions? No thinking means no emotions? Is that possible?

TACOallan: Choose a dream to dream, based on how you want to feel.

TACOallan: Candy, brain dead means no feelings.

Vitality: Is love an emotion?

TACOallan: Most love is emotional.

Moonlight: Ah, so, it's a matter of changing the thoughts, so we don't have the unnecessary feelings of pain.

TACOallan: Moonlight, yes, but if you change to avoid pain, you will not escape.

TACOallan: Pain is actually a real part of the human experience... the suffering is optional.

Candy: I am serious here. No thinking means no emotions. Have you seen it? Maybe as a therapist?

Vitality: What do you mean by "most love"?

TACOallan: "Most love" = Dream of the Planet love.

TACOallan: To be alive is to think, Candy, so no, haven't seen it.

TACOallan: However, what we think is totally arbitrary. It is our dream. Flexible.

TACOallan: What do you want to feel? Choose your thoughts to match.

Moonlight: "Surprisingly Good" would be a great start!!

Vitality: I want to feel happy.

TACOallan: Like Candy said a while ago, Agreement #1 of The Four Agreements is to not go against yourself, don't abuse yourself, because it will produce feelings that hurt you. It makes you a Victim.

TACOallan: "Surprisingly Good" and "happy." I like those.

Candy: The reason I was so serious about these questions is that I just saw part of my life, and how I have hurt myself a lot. And I thought other people were causing me to feel bad, hurt, angry-- I have always seen lots of injustice in the world.

Candy: Thoughts = emotions is pretty intuitive. Pretty deep actually.

Candy: I think that I am always looking to live a life with "no feelings."

TACOallan: Yes, that is a common way of escaping-- the "Spiritual Bypass." To try to transcend the feelings, the hurt, the jealousy. Through meditation, or the Spiritual Inner Judge shaming you for experiencing emotions when he says they are not spiritual. It does not work, because it is ALL us!

TACOallan: Let's think, let's live! Let's feel! (Surprisingly Good and Happy!!)

 

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