Tag Archives: take responsibility for your life

Soulbyte for Friday March 22, 2024

-Artwork © 2024 Jan Ketchel

Place yourself at the center of an imaginary circle. How big is your circle? It doesn’t matter. From the center point you have access to everything within your circle; everything belongs to you. Imagine what you want inside the circle with you. What do you need and most want? You are in control. What you bring in affects you. What you leave out affects you. Imagine this circle as a bubble surrounding and protecting you. From it you can reach out or remain inside; it’s up to you. The illusion is that you are alone, but you are not. You are one circle among many, all living together, safe and protected alone and safe and protected as a mass; like a school of fish. You are part of a greater universe, and just as your little bubble is your responsibility so is the greater universe. You are inherently affected by everything and everything affects you. Such is life.

Sending you love,
The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Soulbyte for Wednesday February 28, 2024

-Artwork © 2024 Jan Ketchel

Hold yourself accountable, and without blame move into a new pattern where the only goal is spiritual. Without regret or sorrow, and knowing that you have done all you could do, move on. To hold oneself accountable means to be accountable to the self on the journey of the Self to wholeness. All circumstances in life require taking responsibility, for there is nothing you do or that has been done to you that is not part of the unfolding of the life of your spirit. A spirit is never damaged; it only ever looks forward. Even when it has to wait a long time for you to catch up, it is never sad. It just waits.

Sending you love,
The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Soulbyte for Monday February 19, 2024

-Artwork © 2024 Jan Ketchel

Lift your mood with a walk in nature, with a few breaths of fresh air, with a stroll down your street. Listen to the sounds around you, how quiet or noisy, how busy or calm, how nature is always awake in some fashion no matter the season. A mood is just emotion stuck on replay, spinning inside you, seeking a way out. Let it release in a breath and then turn in a new direction. Pay attention to why it’s there, and note what it means, but let it go. Make room for something new as you breathe and notice how beautiful the sky is, how happy the birds. A short walk can make all the difference.

Sending you love,
The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Soulbyte for Wednesday February 14, 2024

-Artwork © 2024 Jan Ketchel

Stay present in the truth of your life so that each moment counts, so that each moment is fully experienced and explored. Running off into fantasy or false ideas may relieve you of stress but also relieve you of taking responsibility for where you truly are, thus taking you from acceptance of the truth. Each day look to the truth of your life so that you may make the changes that are most helpful and beneficial to you, so that in every moment you may experience life in all its glory and as it truly is.

Sending you love,
The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Chuck’s Place: True Healing Of The Child

Healing the child self…
-Artwork © 2024 Jan Ketchel

Alice Miller’s books, on the impact of child abuse and neglect, evoke deep compassion for the wounded inner child. Healing from childhood trauma requires deep sensitivity and respect for dissociated child parts, along with their experiences of abuse and neglect.

Ultimately, complete healing requires full acceptance of everything one has experienced in life. With trauma, this includes releasing the full sensory and emotional discharge of stored reactions to the traumatic experience. With healing, those memories are no longer traumatic; they trigger no emotion or sensation. They are completely neutral.

Mentally, one is challenged to dispel beliefs that one was responsible for causing the traumatic encounter. Here one truly needs to accept that indeed they were a victim in an experience that was not of their making.

Healing also includes a vastly enlarged perspective of the experience, which includes the motives and circumstances of others involved in the traumatic experience. Ultimate healing also requires complete emotional neutrality toward one’s perpetrator.

To acknowledge one’s victim status is critical to healing and, yet, one cannot heal if one holds onto the victim status as an enduring identity. An enduring identity as victim reflects a personality construction with the wounded child in control of, what Winnicott called, the false self. This self is seen as false because rather than mature through the normal developmental stages of childhood, it mimicks adulthood while secretly dedicating itself to adaptive behaviors that protect the child from anxiety.

The false self is a commandeered adult ego state whose charge is to defend the child from any discomfort. The false self employs its resources to bury, in the physical body, the memory and impact of trauma, as well as to develop a rigid body armor to stave off the challenge of the outside world.

The false self often develops competency in a profession, which provides security for the child, but behind this seeming successful adaptation to life is a sense of self as a phony, threatened to be discovered at any moment.

I refer to this child state that controls the false self as the uninitiated child because it has failed to complete its rite of passage to advance beyond its victim status. Rites of passage are purposeful traumatic practices that societies once used to help children successfully advance into real adulthood. All trauma requires full recapitulation to complete passage into real adulthood.

Failure to advance can fixate the child in a narcissistic worldview of entitlement, protection and revenge. In her book, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child Rearing and the Roots of Violence, Alice Miller describes Hitler’s horrifically abusive childhood, that, left unprocessed, was projected outward in a ruthless quest for revenge.

These same dynamics are blatant in the cult of the child that serves the power drives of uninitiated charismatic leaders, who promise revenge upon the reigning adult authority figures in the present world. These extreme childish expectations of entitlement and protection have opened the floodgates of legitimization for the uninitiated, who blindly support these irreverent child heroes.

These extreme examples simply underscore how this developmental challenge of achieving true adulthood is the salient issue for the human race today. The hallmark of true adulthood is the acceptance of full responsibility for one’s entire life, including all experiences of victimization.

This in no way takes responsibility away from those who have victimized others. They must and will be held accountable for their actions. They will never be able to advance spiritually unless they fully feel the pain they caused and recapitulate all the pain of their own lives. These are the prerequisite rites of passage.

Ultimately, like Job, we are faced with accepting the fact that life is not fair, despite the echoes of our childhood socialization.

Ultimately, we are challenged to accept Buddha’s assessment that life is suffering. Earth School is a playing field for the suffering of attachment and loss.

The full mastery of Earth School is to arrive at the place of love, most especially for all those who had roles in our traumatic rites of passage.

Become the child acorn that advances beyond its protective shell, delivering its vitality to the mighty adult oak it was always destined to become.

Ultimately, the child’s destiny is to grow up and into its adult self, who awaits beyond its rites of passage. To that adult, bring a matured innocence, willing to journey freely in and, perhaps someday, beyond this predatory universe.

Mature the self, mature the world,
Chuck