Expand your Sympathies, Serve Others

Just as the body is the house you live in, the world is the body of God. An ant biting the little finger of your foot is able to draw your attention to the spot, and you react to the pain, making an effort to remove the tiny enemy. You must similarly feel the pain, misery, or joy or elation, wherever it is evinced in the entire land; you must make an effort to protect the land from the enemy, however remote may be the place where the enemy has presented himself. Be kind with all your kin. Expand your sympathies, serve others who stand in need to the extent of your skill and resources. Do not fritter away your talents in profitless channels. Respect for the parents, who started you in life and brought you into this world which has enabled you to gather such a vast and varied treasure of experience, is the first lesson that Dharma teaches. Gratitude is the spring which feeds that respect.

Baba (thought for the day) 

I am reading the book, Homecoming from John Bradshaw. I read it before and I was always impressed by that inner child work and he uses a very spiritual way to explain it and we feel the spiritual background and he was a priest as well. He described the day before his ordination he left drunk all that behind him and he tells us in the book about the difficult times afterwards and how he felt and how he began that inner child work.

Years ago I did a workshop and we were groups of people talking to each other and all them seemed to have some sad stories and I still thought that my story was not that bad after all. I just wanted to know more about the inner child and believed that it was more interest and less about getting aware of that inner child, but it should end with a surprise I had not expected. 

During the whole time in the workshop I still thought that my life was okay and under control, whatever control, but I thought it was not that bad and I was looking for answers still on the experience and insight level, but somehow I noticed I couldn’t make myself clear and it was impossible to address insights and the dream stage and that was rather frustrating. 

The last day I still hoped for something, I don’t know what, but it was for sure not there and I felt like I couldn’t stop crying anymore after coming back and that is only when the grieving began, but now I was alone and there was no more group or workshops.

It felt like out of control and that was kind of not that nice, and I didn’t know what to do and I wrote the therapist who is an American an upset email about it and that they are there when we do not need it and not there when we need it, so in that sense quite.

He told me to go and see someone, but I didn’t go as I had no trust at all and after all I was not ready to go for one step more in that direction and I didn't know why. 

I just had to handle it myself and that is how I went to Bhajans again and noticed that it made me feel better and slowly it was possible to build up some kind of inner self-trust. 

It was no more just about finding it what I always had troubles from the beginning when I went to groups, but it was about holding on to something and somehow he felt present afterwards and that was good enough. Even if next day it began again, for a moment it was okay again.

“I know what I really want for Christmas. I want my childhood back. Nobody is going to give me that. I might give at least the memory of it to myself if I try. I know it doesn't make sense, but since when is Christmas about sense, anyway? It is about a child, of long ago and far away, and it is about the child of now. In you and me. Waiting behind the door of or hearts for something wonderful to happen. A child who is impractical, unrealistic, simpleminded and terribly vulnerable to joy.” Robert Fulghum

After I came back from India last year and we landed there was that feeling like age regression because I felt what I had never felt before. 

I wondered what happened to me actually, it seemed a kind of back to that time, when I couldn't make the decision and what I had learnt in the inner view that it was totally different as I thought it was.

Today we know that it was not possible to address the subject with my mother because of the neighborhood and pride and she couldn’t take it, but I didn’t know that at that time I had been let down by the family. I really thought that it was my problem and I tried to avoid talking about it to not get strange answers and it didn’t work out and the question was what was wrong.

The neighbor was responsible, he turned into the opposite after a short relationship and the problem was the parents and that my mother was not able to handle it. 

Not the neighbor was the problem, but the family and that they avoided it whatever reason that hard way we got aware that it was not possible to talk really, before probably I didn't notice it yet.

With that book we go into all those problems of the hurt inner child and in such families it is usually like that we cannot talk. 

When I felt okay again due to the spiritual background, whatever that was, I went to Singapore to get a new visa and in that moment I had that dream of the neighbor. 

So in the moment I thought it was gone, it came back in the dream and began to be present like a shadow in dreams and insights and that is the level I was looking for and I didn’t find it in the inner child workshop, but to get a feeling for it so that we really can understand it that is another question. Actually we understand it only by listening and thinking it over, Baba works on the inner view level.

I was still thinking through the whole inner child workshop that my life was okay and under control waiting for answers, what means I had those insights already years ahead and I was still not able to see it in my own life on the experience level. It is about seven years back I did that inner child workshop and I liked it very much only not the outcome of it and I was kind of fascinated by it. 

My family was overshadowed, they ignored what happened in the neighborhood and their own relationship and responsibility in it and why it was like that, they just ignored it.

It was not possible to talk and address the issue. It means they made that fun of it when I tried and for me it was no matter of fun. It was not even possible to mention it and even less to talk about it and to tell that it was a problem and what happened was that I began to feel homesick when I was at home and therefore, I wanted to leave again and never come back, but I always came back.  

With time I thought they were right as I had all against me and I was wrong and I just didn’t get it. If everything would be okay, there would be no problem, but the problem in the neighborhood went on until that guy died finally.

The pain of being let down by them is an all different issue and painful and something like that was in the air after the inner child workshop even if I didn't realize it. I had to avoid it as well and that felt probably better.

It was impossible to know and since it has changed we got few moments of age regression and it feels like it should have felt years ago and it was not possible to feel it, because it was ignored and it was about being let down by them.

If we address the inner child whatever it is, we have to grieve and mourn it there is always something that is painful for the inner child. I just didn't go into that during the workshop only afterwards. 

It was only one part of the situation, getting aware that I was not able to know what it was, the reason I had been let down, not a good feeling. 

Feeling the pain is another challenge, even if it was good to finally know why it felt wrong. 

But it went into age regressions and experiences I couldn't explain, but when reading that book he explains it. It was about decisions we were not able to take, because it was not clear and as it is only now clear. 

Life would have been different if that would not have happened. Nothing is fine and not that bad as I thought during that inner child workshop, I was just not yet able to get it. 

We were talking about it and it was an issue of co-dependence. 

My mother used my father’s weakness to feel stronger herself, that is what I understood as co-dependent. Whatever that was what happened, it made her go into her role and she got attached to that, it felt special to her. 

The attachment of hers was directly related to his weakness and not to his strength. 

That is not a normal relationship, but it is co-dependent. It is the same with alcoholism the people around adjust to the energy, learn to live with it and adapt to it and that creates co-dependence. The whole family lives from the problem of the person we see as problem or weak. 

In the book he has still another way of explaining co-dependence, when being let down, we have to adjust with the conventionality and family and background and instead of being ourselves, we have to play a role and get co-dependent. The initial feelings get lost and we have to adapt to a role in our environment, whatever that is. 

And we don’t know how to get back to our own self.

It is like the inner child is as he calls it contaminated and functions know in a certain pattern and it is repeated. That inner pain of the child was much bigger than I thought it was and it takes time to be able to feel it and I hoped to get it only by insights as we do now, but years later. We have to feel the pain and mourn it to be able to heal it.

He calls co-dependence the loss of our true and real identity, but that is a spiritual question, because we have to realize ‘who am I?’

In that sense we could tell that the people or the women who began to look for something, she had been a meditation teacher before, it felt like a restless search in her, had lost their identity which was build on enthusiasm and commitment to the inner teacher, it was in direction of feelings and the heart.

And I felt exposed to the leader and he didn’t know what he was doing and afterwards, when the other came back as he was not able to do the right thing, I felt also exposed to them and that is how they all turned into enemies. It was insight, but nevertheless, it was terrible. The reality of it came only afterwards. 

Yogis are our friends, if we follow that feeling of higher self or friendship, we do it because we know that it is the right path to go or the right thing to do, it is a permanent level and that is why it feels save, it is knowing without thinking, it is by intuition.

We didn’t realize that it was because our own higher self and that it is reflected in the mirror of Atma and therefore, we feel it is right and it is about self-realization, that was not present. 

It is Baba who made us aware of it that it is about self-realization and he is transparent that we do not get lost. We mediated and that’s it and we repeated the sutras and by that remembered good and divine qualities, what influenced the mind, but the motivation behind we didn’t know and it was the reflection of the higher self. 

That is only feeling level, intuition, knowing without thinking, but if the master is actually not present as master, the path was gone … there was no more reason to go for it, because he was not present. He is the light and if we cannot see that light anymore, we don't know where we are and where to go and the result is feeling lost.

There was no more path as it had been before and no more reflection of the higher self, it is like the light went out. 

Before there was a street light and we went on and followed the light and now we get aware that there should be a crossroad, but there is no light and we don’t know what direction to go, all what is left is darkness. 

The motivator is also divinity, but that motivator was gone, no more light.

In that situation I got a book and some vibuthi and I took some of it to feel better during my meditation and there was the light again, out of the sight of light it was kind of easy. So I knew I would go to him, as there was light and what we did before, there was no light, even if I didn’t understand it and it was very difficult to understand as Baba said in the interview room, we have to understand it.  

And the yogi said to the leader, ‘if you don’t hold up the light, someone else will do it at your place’, but he didn’t hold up the light and he was just an actor as we know in the mean time, he was never interested in holding up the light, but only in his role, that is the actor.

That is one reason why ‘lost’, but nevertheless, we are lucky, because we are not anymore in that, we left. But we have to realize what has happened and why we left and we have to face it and why?

It is a pattern and it will not change.

If we read the first chapter of ‘Homecoming’ it is all about how that hurt or wounded inner child is controlling our life. First it is about contamination and how it is in everything present we do and think, we see it always the same way and it is conditioned and not our own self, but a role we had to play because we couldn’t be our own self.

And we go to co-dependence. 

He likes word games like Baba, contamination is each letter - co-dependence, offender behaviors, narcissistic disorders, trust issues, acting out/acting in behaviors, magical beliefs and intimacy disorders, none disciplined behaviors, addictive, compulsive behaviors, thought distortions, emptiness (apathy, depression).

The identity is outside of who they really are. It was in the dream of the father as Nazi and the family in the concentration camp all our energy in the family turned around the same thing and that was his weakness or the father the bully or he who had to be saved. It was the triangle of savior, bully and victims. The mother was constantly talking about that only and she couldn’t talk about anything else and after he died I felt relieved that she stopped talking, it was about two weeks before his 80^th birthday.

The Nazi was the stress and everything turned around it and that is why I always wanted to leave and the brother as well and never get back, that heavy it felt.

I was listening to the other in the inner child workshop and I thought that my life was still okay? I spoke about the Nazi dream, but there was no insight, it was open yet and there should have been a comment about it, we talked about it in the group, but there was no response and nobody understood it that it was about energy and all energy turning around the same stress always. 

I also mentioned that my mother was constantly talking about him and that it was co-dependence that we talked about it in the workshop, but not with the course leaders, so with the other it was kind of clear, with the course leader was like no sharing at all like they were like not really present and it was somehow not possible to share with them what we worked out in the group.

He talked about shame and shame was always in the air above him and it was in the air like with Darshan and nearly funny and it was not clear why and what was toxic shame and what was normal shame that created a problem actually now I can see it. 

They created a problem, she was telling me in my insight or dream that they had earned a lot of money with that work, what was the level of the Sannyasin and about the role in the movement and also there were iron chains at the arms, heavy chains and it felt like they were in conflict with the freedom of Osho and it felt not at all okay.

I would have wished it would have been different and that is why I didn’t listen and I couldn't go to the people he told me I should talk to after the workshop.

But I wrote and I had to pay him for it and he also made clear that a black hole means lot trust and that helped to get clearer about the experience. 

There was not only the problem with a hurt child, but also the problem master not present and a black hole.

Baba said, the path with Osho doesn’t work because older age needs more safety and that had not only to do with me, but also with them. 

They were wearing heavy chains and earned a lot of money and committing people to their work and even if they did it in the name of Osho, they went for safety and money etc. so that was probably why if we get older we need more safety. 

It was in the insight, ‘stop dancing’ and I went to Bhajans again and soon after the insights in the dream stage after I finished the book, it began to make more sense. 

From the inside I got already the message when I had to change it, but after I began a new job and I published it and didn’t think about it anymore and I just forgot about it.

In that book he tells us that he was a priest as well, therefore, we find spiritual aim in the search for the self and he calls it the divine child and he makes that difference between normal shame and toxic shame and that was just confusing with the therapist in the inner child workshop as there was constantly that shame in the air, but no discrimination between normal and not normal, between healthy and sick and that is the main thing, isn’t it? I guess one shame was normal and healthy and had to do with the fact that there was no freedom as there should have been and the toxic shame we worked with in the groups. 

The shame I noticed above him in the air always looked rather normal, I just didn’t know why it was constantly there, but in a sense I do understand it now. First it seemed even funny and it is if we see always shame in the air above a person, it is kind of something to see that, but he didn't know it and there was no way I could tell him. 

It was like in Darshan, only the insights were not as I would have liked them to be. 

I wondered if he was focused on shame constantly and it was also confusing at the same time and I couldn’t be myself at the end in that inner child workshop.

At that time I couldn't relate it to my former spiritual experience and I had to follow the inner master to get out of that and in listening to Baba and thinking over his words, we get answers and we begin to feel it and that is what he is telling also in his book at the end of the book. 

He mentions that dreams are not that easy to understand and that it needs lots of practice that we get a feeling for it and that is exactly what happens here in thinking over Baba’s words, we get the practice and experience and we begin to feel comfortable with the dream stage, what means inner view.

If we talk about that and mention even with devotees the dream stage it is like they hear it for the first time and I mentioned it in the last study circle and there was no reaction, so I don't know if it didn’t tell them anything or they were just silent, but if we go to a master who tells us constantly inner view, not interview … that means – dream stage and not waking stage …, we should actually listen and be able to hear it!

Another problem of the hurt inner child is violence. The hurt inner child is not just suffering, but often acting out the childhood impressions and if the parents were violent or abusive, it gets acted out and that we see in examples or pattern which goes back to slavery or in people who had been in the concentration camp and they act it out with their own family … the matter of non-violence is not just solved with love if there is a hurt inner child.

When he talks about narcissistic disorders he mentions even every child has been a ‘we’ before it became ‘I’. 

We need a face in which we can look like in a mirror and recognize ourselves, that is the same what we know with just a bit other words and it is great.

If our caretakers were not taking care as they should have, we cannot develop and ‘I’ – awareness as we should have and in such a narcissistic deprived child is always the hunger for love, of being noticed and being accepted. 

The inner child is sabotaging the live of the adult, because it is still the small child and not a grown up. As child we want to keep the parents around and that is in the hurt inner child. That need can only be met by another person and only if we grieve for the loss healing is possible. 

If we just use spirituality to avoid it, it is not possible to heal. A lot of that inner child work has to do with the hurt inner child and in that level we are dependent on the adult, we have to express the grief.

After my ex's mother death there was that pain we feel when a mother dies, he showed no emotion what so ever. And after we came back from India and the way he said that he gave it to the Lord, he avoided to feel the pain and just gave it to Lord and never talked about it again in taking advantage of the Lord as someone he can use as an excuse, so he doesn’t have to mourn and he doesn’t have to share the pain with his sister and he doesn’t have to weep. 

Whatever is not pleasant to his mind he loads on the Lord and it is the opposite of all common sense. He actually should feel it and mourn over the mother’s death after all it was his mother, I wonder what he did with his father, he died when he was ten, maybe he also didn’t grief and he is since then such a strange guy and has that hurt child in him. But why thinking about him, he never had any second thought about us ever, to think about his state of mind is tame waste. But there is for sure a hurt child that creates only problems for the adult.

The next chapter is about trust issues, there we find the control freaks and those working non-stop because they cannot trust anyone and we have to learn how to trust again.

Acting out and acting in, primary energy is our feelings and if the energy cannot get out in tears it can be frozen and that was present in the insight before we left, there was nothing but ice, I have never seen that much ice and I was in the midst of ice, it means the emotions and feelings couldn’t anymore be expressed and there was nothing but ice left. That is how it gets confirmed and it makes sense. 

And he thought that he was a lovely ‘husband’ but in the dream there as only ice.

Where do we have to actually be in our mind to be able to see ourselves as lovely ‘life partner’ thinking that the Lord will send the other back, when in reality there is ‘ice only’? 

It is not living in the present, it is somewhere far away in his head, that ‘lovely husband’ the Lord said in his dream that he would send me back, it was probably because of that reason he let us go at the first place. He would never have let us go otherwise. 

He went into his own illusion and his own dream, going on living his dream thinking he was something beautiful, when in reality it was the opposite and nothing left but ice. 

This chapter is very our own experience.

And acting in is if we punish ourselves for it. We get punished the way we had been punished as children and I don’t know if that is the part where the fact come in that I married my father, nothing but self-punishment. 

 He was always absent and he was always in mother’s attention and she was constantly talking about it and we never felt his presence, but by her constantly talking about him. To get married with that can only be punishment.

Believe in miracles that is the next chapter. It is also the chapter of those never growing up and staying in the hurt inner child, just wait and everything will be great, that is part of magic thinking and my problem. I could not just wait and hope everything will get fine when I was getting older, that was real and to just wait and he even said wait four times, it felt like waiting for a fairytale to happen and as someone said in the study circle, we waste our time. 

Older it is not the same anymore, but of course, maybe it is still wasting time, what do I know, I guess that is the deal. We are getting answers and that is what I went for, what is the use of not being in a waiting state but we don’t get any answers?

Intimacy dysfunction, fear to be alone or to be devoured. One lives in isolation, because of being afraid to be crushed by someone and the others are that afraid of being alone they cannot let go of a dysfunctional relationship. 

That are the inner commitments that make us stay in a relationship even if it is not okay and that is why he said in the insight that we had to get a divorce. It could have gone on like that for a long time still as it was about co-dependence and the hurt inner child. 

He  had always some type of friend telling him that it was not possible and he listened to the friend, he claimed to be married …, and he listened only to the friend, he shared only on that level not with the one he thought to be married with. It didn't occur to him that something was wrong. It was intimacy dysfunction, it was in everything, he didn't answer and signed after a long time. That is not exactly intimacy in a relationship, there is no sharing, no talk, no words, not nothing, just an empty Western shoe, more than nothing because it turns into aggravation and it is a mud hole.

No disciplined behavior is the next chapter and that we have also in his way of thinking, he did it all his life, a meditation we did actually twice a day and he never did it, but he goes on telling everybody that he does it and that he meditates.

There is no discipline in such behavior, he is no example for his daughter, he tells one thing and he does another thing.

Addictive compulsive behavior is not only about alcohol, it can also be in our thoughts and we get addicted to work or he washed his hands non-stop and even his mother told him to stop it and it was probably also a reaction of pretending that he was something he was not or he even always at the same time doing the same things like taking every day at least for an half an hour a shower and my mother got into shock when he finished a bar of soap in a few days and thing like that, he had his habits and he never went out of his habits, that is probably also why he said he would do it for his whole life, only there he refused to begin with the habit and it never became a habit.

We can also be addicted to pleasure or it has always to be fun and those people always smile they even smile when someone dies he is explaining in that chapter. Or we can be addicted to catastrophes and always worrying about it.

Thought distortions and the hurt child thinks differently from the adult, thinking of all or nothing principle, what is also present, either we are with him or not with him, but there is no sense of duty and no sense of human values, that principle of all or nothing is dominating his thinking. It is like if you don’t love me you hate me, there is nothing in between.

We have to discriminate between thinking and feeling and that seems to be the problem, the thinking is egocentric and if you don’t have time, it means I am not okay and it is not possible to see the standpoint of another person.  

They think with their emotions and either it is all generalized or differentiated. When generalizations is used to avoid that we have to look at our feelings that is sick and that is happening when we tell, the Lord takes care, I gave it to him, I don’t mourn my mother and I don’t care of the grief of my sister, he talks care that are dangerous generalizations, he does everything so I don’t have to do what I should do. That is in this chapter when he said, ‘give, give, give, I will not give, you lived a dream that is your problem not mine’.

It is not the Lord’s problem, but as he doesn’t listen to the man who is in our dreams to awake us, he goes on and it is still everything whatever comes along is given by the Lord given …, even if he said that it is not the Lords problem. 

Everything is the Lord's problem, the daughter as well as everything else and he gives it to the Lord and takes only advantage of it.

And the last chapter is emptiness, apathy, depression, and that is reflected in, no more husband, nothing left but an empty Western shoe. He is the empty shoe and once on a play ground it was in the end a lethargic and I noticed his influence it felt like I couldn’t move anymore. I got aware of it because the child had nearly an accident and I noticed it too late and I got aware of it how dangerous it was in that lethargic state of mind and he had been told in the personal interview, that his health was not good and he had mental depression.That is covered by that chapter. 

So we have all chapters covered and we get a match, that are signs of the hurt inner child and even if he was told that his health was not okay, he doesn’t do anything about it, neither mediation, nor going to medical treatment, nor something else, he just goes on and on as he did before.

So now we know why he is like that, he as the hurt inner child that is creating problems to the adult, but there is no way we can make him listen and that he does something about it. It doesn't get healed if we don’t do anything about it and if the Lord himself told him about it and he ignores it, what is the use of it?

He goes on thinking it is all him and the tells the same to his sister and that he does only give him what is good for him etc. 

It is the other side of give, give, give, he takes advantage of everything and tells it is the Lord and he can just go ahead and even if he said, he will not give, that is his problem and not the Lord’s he goes ahead like a total idiot and claims that it is all the Lord. 

He is not flexible in his thoughts and that is part of the thinking distortion and the perverted is also part of that chapter.

That is how we can look at and we get aware that after all it perfectly does make sense. If we cannot make sense when it is spiritual background, we maybe should look at it that way and with that book and all the knowledge we get about the toxic shame of the hurt inner child we get to a Western way of seeing it and in the end there is no difference, it is about truth and that is in the East and in the West true, only with Western methods it makes maybe more sense?

I went in a short cut through the first chapter and see it in the light of dreams and it does make sense.