Transformation.....never ends..

I've just returned from my agreement in London and while I am waiting on the bus to take me home I've come into an internet cafe to write this blog. I won't get very far before I am kicked out but I will make a start. I travelled to London for my agreement and after it I went up to the 1st day of the 1st of the communication courses that I speak so highly about. This is the course where participants get to experience the impact of the model of communication that we are all born into it, a model that is based on fixing and surviving our communication with others and ourselves. Central to this way of communicating is what is called a point of view. This is something we decided about ourselves when we were very young and it then gives us our identity and from there our lives. I thought that mine was 'I'm not loved, I'm alone' but I couldn't understand how it operated in my life. As a result my coach on the team programme I am on was frustrated that I operated on my own all the time and couldn't see why.



I walked into the course at the exact point where the course leader was speaking about the point of view and how it gets formed. I listened intently because I wanted so much to have a breakthrough around this. The course leader spoke about how it is formed by the words we say when we decide who we are and asked participants what they saw in what he was saying. One lady shared something and what she said hit me like a hammer blow and I thought that's it that's my point of view. It's not 'I'm not loved, I'm alone, it's I'm not included, I'm alone'. As this hit me I had a picture of when I was very young and I saw how close my brothers were and I said 'I'm not included, I'm alone' and this has been my experience in every area of my life. Not feeling included. Although at 4 years of age I probably wouldn't have said 'I'm not included'. What I more than likely said to myself was 'I'm not a part, I'm alone'. The power of that decision gave me a life where no matter what I tried to do I always felt that I wasn't a part. Some of that had been coming through this blog. All I have ever wanted to do is to belong and all I ever seem to do is to stand out.

What I see now with perfect clarity is that my point of view has created it to be like that. I'm living with a family and I had it that I'm not included, even though they have made so many efforts to include me. I have it at college that I am not included, but this is the experience my point of view is giving to me. It has to in order to survive, it is not the way it really is. This is just such a huge insight for me and will transform the entire way I am with people and in groups. When this ran me even though I would try to include myself what was running in the background and will always run until it is distinguished is that I was trying to include myself inside a context of 'I'm not included, I'm alone' no wonder all of my efforts were doomed to failure and never brought the result I hoped for, leaving me feeing small separate and alone when surrounded by people.

When I think of the guy from the gym and how my way of being with him is that I'm excluded from his life even though the constant text messages and calls gave me all the evidence that it wasn't this way...I just couldn't see it until today. I've treated everyone and everything like I'm being excluded and it's been horrible for them and for me. Viewing everything that happens through the filter of being excluded and alone has made for a lonely life. But I am so grateful that I have seen it now. I am so lucky in being given the opportunity to give it up and create something new and wonderful., a possibility for me of being connected and included. That point of view is always going to be there, it is like a trap that we create when we are young that becomes who we think we are and it acts like a trap in that we are caught within it and even when it is identified it doesn't go away, the difference is that once it is identified it loses some of its power.

I assert that whatever self- development programme one does, whether it is with Landmark Education or whoever that this is the ultimate aim. Uncovering the game between the non-self and the self, or between identity and possibility. I also believe this to be the aim of all spiritual development.

I came into the house and shared this with the lady here and she gave me a huge hug and said how much they wanted to include me and for the first time I really heard it and knew that it was genuine and now I am upstairs writing this blog. Transformation or seeing the familiar in a new light never changes. I'm not going to say that just because I saw this today that I now have power over this point of view and that it won't operate anymore. It will, because it was put in place for survival and it will morph again into something more subtle that once again will be hidden from my view. I feel so grateful that I was aware of feeling alone and separate from people to an abnormal degree. That it was so acute that I noticed it and this awareness together with my commitment to be willing to look and see no matter what the cost, is what produced the breakthrough. But it takes this. To want to break free and transform the identity just as badly as a drowning man wants air - it demands and takes nothing less than this......