Hello John,
I hope you are well!
I took a few weeks off from studying the EC program, knowing I'd now learned a great deal about it, wanting to absorb it more deeply on its own terms, and recognizing I could return to the study of it with fresh eyes. So,now I'm back.
The first and only thing I randomly "plugged" back into last night was your discussion in Deep Clearing of self-acceptance, where you state: "the ATTITUDE [my emphasis] of self-rejection is worse for you than the feeling to which it is applied; that when you 'make-wrong,' reject, and disvalidate any feeling--including painful feelings of any sort--you are hurting yourself more than the feelings themselves could hurt you because you are building the suppressed subconscious and laying the foundation for ongoing emotional stress."
Reading that section of Deep Clearing (page 115) brought me back to the 15 years I worked with Byron Katie's teachings. From her I learned that when I saw something as less than loving and friendly in another human being, I was simply projecting and shifting my recognition about myself to that other person or persons. While there is some/a lot of truth in that assessment, I was never able to move beyond the concept of projection to a healthier emotional state, and I became "stuck" with that mind-set. No way seemed available to address those feelings on a deeper level, let alone spiritually join in with or move toward that other person, other than to notice what I was thinking and feeling. Thus, existing in that very tough spot, I had to singularly reject my negative feelings AND my projections, if that makes sense. Another way to say this is that my emotions became "frozen into projections." And, so, without a whole EC type program to work with, I was--and many people can be!--intellectually hijacked by cerebral observations of feelings and emotions. And, what "sealed in" that mind-set was the awareness that I was often able to put a humorous spin on my own verbalized projections, and, as a result, I didn't want to give them up and move past them toward the expansion of my understanding of myself. Today, I'm exploring the possibility that such an overall attitude, as described above, helped lead the way to a well-defined but non-terminal physical ailment I've had for six years.
All of the above-described was further complicated by my desire to see my perceptions of Byron Katie's philosophy as "perfect" and "all-inclusive"--which it is not!--and by largely unconsciously feeling the "terror" of not being able to find any other way or person (until you) to enlighten me more fully on what is possible.
In the end, I simply made myself 'wrong' while in the act of projecting my feelings and emotions onto somebody else.
So, thank you for writing your books and making your Forum available!
Care to comment?
Kat
