Author: rennwest

Creating Inner Peace – Expressing Anger

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(Remember that my answers to these questions are only examples. What matters are your own answers.)

Who is the safest person for you to express anger around?

The first thing these abusers did was essentially steal my parents. They made it very clear that if anyone ever found out, that person or those people would be killed. They made certain I believed this. These monstrous men not only sought to embed their anger in me, but also their fear of discovery. As a child I was essentially a sponge, an easy container for the monstrous men to try to unload their burden of anger energy in. I was successful in hiding the abuse from my parents partially because they could have never guessed that things like that could even happen. Knowledge about cult abuse was not widespread in 1966. They completely trusted the person that secretly took me to the monstrous men. They no doubt noticed a change in me, but simply could not explain it and just did the best they could. I aimed the anger and frustration of having to keep this secret at my mother, because she was the safest person to aim it at. She would not respond in kind and she would still love me. Unfortunately, she probably thought it was something about her that made me express anger towards her.

My mother died several years ago. It occurred to me to tell the being who had been my mother that if she was now aware of the abuse I experienced, it was not her fault. She was in no way to blame for not having been able to protect me. And this released me to see how I had gone out of my way to protect her from the knowledge of the abuse, when at the same time I was so fierce about not wanting her to protect me from other things like dogs and lightning. Now, I can see that we do the best we can with what we have at any given time. And I’m free to forgive myself for the ways I treated my mother when I was a child doing the best I could, while she was doing the best she could.

Creating Inner Peace – Natural tendency was towards inner peace?

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What shocking violence have you experienced and how have you reacted?

Was I a child whose natural tendency was towards inner peace? Do people in general have a natural tendency towards inner peace? I don’t know the answer to either question, but I suspect yes. Then what would a child like that do when confronted with the excessive anger of several men who are members of a hate and rage cult? We have the age-old fight or flight instincts until we’re able to work past duality. The first and second time I fought back, but with disastrous consequences to the other children. I also tried to have all the children run away and that was even more devastatingly disastrous. I was made to believe they all died that night. Then survival mode kicked in. I walled off the emotions with the memories to be remembered when I had the ability and safety to deal with it.

Creating Inner Peace – Emotion/Belief Tool

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Creating peace within yourself can be imaged by thinking of a stream when there are a lot of rocks for shallow water to flow over. It makes a lovely gurgling sound, but when you have deeper water and not so many rocks, it moves along without any sound at all. No ripples. No waves. Completely smooth and peaceful. So, you can relate creating inner peace to removing the rocks from a stream and letting it be deeper. And each of the rocks is an illusion or a fear or a misconception or a false belief. And they’re easy to remove. Well, maybe not so “easy,” but just take it one by one.

Here is a technique for looking at feelings and beliefs that I still find quite useful. You give the answers with a focus on self, without involving other people or outer conditions. It’s not a matter of looking at what you think something or someone has done to you. It’s a matter of looking at what you are inwardly doing to yourself. It’s meant to be a quick tool of a sentence or two per answer.
 
Generically a person can ask: What takes you out of peace? Write the first thing that comes to mind in one short sentence or phrase. Usually, I’m using this process because I’m aware that something has disturbed me. And so, an answer is fairly obvious. But when I’m just doing a self-check, two other things help that might be helpful to you if nothing comes to mind. Think of a recent event that triggered anxiety, anger or irritation. Or ask yourself what you think would make someone else lose their peace? Some people find it easier to depersonalize things. But remember the answer actually applies to you. It’s what you think.
 
But usually, a specific event has occurred to prompt wanting to walk thru this exercise. In this case the first question can be worded: “What event disturbed your peace?” So, begin with very briefly describing the incident in one or two sentences. Beware of going down a rabbit hole here. It’s very easy to get off on emoting and forget the purpose of this exercise, which is to see behind the outer situation and to see behind our reaction to it.
 
Identify the current feeling of non-peace. Here are a few potentials:
Anxiety? Unrest? Ill at ease? Irritation? Anger? Need for change? Fear? Worry? Concern? Powerless? Justified? Responsible? Righteous? Disappointment? Sadness? Confused? Bewildered?


Determine what belief is causing this feeling. Some potential sentence beginnings to choose from are:
People should be…
The world should be…
I didn’t expect…
This always happens…
This can escalate into…
I always hate it when…
I demand to be treated…
It’s unacceptable to…


Identify triggers. Briefly describe the event or circumstances that led up to this disturbance of peace within yourself.


Look at the drawbacks of allowing the cycles to continue.


Ask yourself if you would defend these feelings and beliefs.


Then ask yourself if you DO defend them.


Look at the results or consequences of harboring these feelings and beliefs.


If you’re willing and ready to surrender them, then create a short action plan using whatever tools you have. Create whatever works for you, here are some ideas:
Create a positive phrase or mantra that can be repeated daily to replace the belief.
Visualize placing feelings or beliefs or triggers in a purifying fire whenever they occur.
When a similar thought or feeling begins literally put your hand in front of you as if you’re stopping someone and say: Stop.
Figure a way to face a fear head on.
Create a visualization in which you experience the trigger you listed, but respond in a different way.
Ask for help.

Creating Inner Peace – Events Don’t Define Us

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What abilities have you proven that separate your sense of being, how you identify yourself, from the events you’ve experienced?

I was eight when the pedophile started making me accessible to cult abusers, a hate and rage cult. Thankfully, only every couple of years. The pedophile didn’t seem to be active in the actual cult abuse. It was more like they gave him permission to be a pedophile, if he provided them with children. The effect on my life was devastating, but I was able to wall off the devastation until I could muster the knowledge, tools and understanding to deal with it. Our minds are really amazing in the different ways there are to survive. The majority of me that grew older was able to maintain the attitude, from after the car accident, of trusting things to work out eventually and always being cared for.

Creating Inner Peace – General Attitude of Trust

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What attitude towards life do you have that has already or can set a foundation for inner peace?

A general attitude of trust is an important aspect of peace. And what I take away from this next event would help solidify that in me, despite the damage that the pedophile had and would do. This next incident happened when I was six years old and stands out as molding my attitude about life in general. We had a very serious car accident. My father, mother, brother and I were beginning a vacation. We had our gear on top of the station wagon so that the back seats could be down and my brother and I had room to play games. My brother is ten years older than me. Who knows why we chose Chinese checkers, which is played with marbles. Luckily the marbles didn’t hurt anyone. But the fact that they didn’t is part of what some said was a miracle.

Some terrible crosswinds caught the car and we were rolled over several times. My brother was strong and tall enough to brace his legs against the wheel wells. He put one arm around me and the other against the roof. He was my seat belt so neither of us went flying out the back of the car. In fact, I don’t think anyone had a scratch. The insurance company replaced the car and somehow, we were on the road again the next day. I put this event in here because at that young age I knew the situation was quite serious, but I felt quite safe. I came away with a sense of always being cared for. That sense has added to my general trust. It’s an attitude that no matter how it looks, it always works out.

As I’m writing this book, it shows me how important that car accident turned out to be. Well, not the actual accident, but what I came away from it with. Somehow the re-enforcement of that attitude of things always working out and me always being cared for set a foundation that may have been critical to coping with the devastatingly traumatic events that were to occur occasionally over the next eight years.

Creating Inner Peace – Responsibility Boundaries

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How would you describe your responsibility boundaries?

Based on the experiences when I was seven of fighting and having my gullibility tested, I wanted to be someone who caused no harm. My parents taught me early on to accept responsibility for my actions. Putting the two together, I decided that an individual is responsible for the harm he/she causes and must face the consequences. These two girls were responsible for how they treated me, just as I was responsible for how I treated them. I was also responsible for my reactions and how I treated myself.  These pre-made decisions about the demarcation lines for responsibility would come in very handy when I was under excessive stress in survival mode. They would become the boundaries that protected me, my lines in the sand or “don’t cross this line,” so to speak. We all know there is a balance to find. Some people blame others too much and treat themselves like victims. Some people feel the need to control others and treat themselves like martyrs. The balance is not in the middle between extremes. The balance is when dualistic opposites cease to have meaning. Of course, I didn’t know this at age 7, but I did decide on my boundaries at the time and have continued to adjust them as appropriate.

Creating Inner Peace – Manipulation and Boundaries

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(Reminder – One reason I began with examples from childhood was to remind us that we already have some foundation for creating inner peace.)

What are some of examples from your own life of where you have learned to avoid being manipulated and to strengthen your boundaries?

My mother tried to inflict her fears on me, tried to make me responsible for how she felt, tried to make me feel guilty in order to manipulate me. She probably wasn’t so much conscious of this. She just worried a lot about things I felt were pretty silly, like being afraid of dogs. And her mother had instilled a lot of fears in her that she had readily accepted. I refused to live according to her fears and learned not to inflict my own fears on other people. It took me until high school, but I also learned not to let her inflict guilt on me for supposedly creating her feelings. Again, this probably wasn’t her conscious intent, but it’s how it came across to me and how I reacted. It came full circle when I was 45 and she was 85 and she wanted to live up a flight of stairs. I didn’t let the concerns of my brother and sister for her safety limit where she could live. I trusted her to know the capabilities of her own body and make her own decisions. It goes back to people being responsible for their own stuff, their own thoughts, beliefs and feelings. This goes right along with being responsible for our own actions. Also, setting and knowing our own boundaries. But not being so rigid with them that we behave like porcupines to other people. We can quietly maintain our boundaries without having to get in people’s faces about it. Even now, there our times I yell at my brother when he steps on one of my invisible boundaries and it simply doesn’t need to be handled that way.

Creating Inner Peace – More Than Two Sides – Mediator

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How are you at seeing more than two sides, seeing alternatives, seeing opportunities, seeing common ground?

A peace keeper sometimes plays the role of a mediator, helping people see more than two sides to a disagreement. I wanted to walk in harmony with people and my surroundings. I feel I’m here to learn how to express my individuality in harmony with the whole of God’s creation.

Example: Just in my childhood years I transitioned from fighting to walking away to mediating. I never have understood why some people like to pick fights. These were just normal kid fights, usually just words. But one time two of us bit each other. Our parents certainly had something to say about that one. I fought back in equal measure. If they quit, I’d quit. Finally, I learned to just walk away in the first place and simply refuse to engage. The worst thing we did to other people was hide in the trees and throw water balloons at passing cars. The parents put an end to that one, also.

In those days kids were expected to entertain themselves. We were sent out after breakfast and expected back for the evening meal. Of course, we usually showed up at someone’s house for lunch. Other than that, mostly no adults knew what we were up to, unless we got in trouble. And a lot of times we worked the trouble out ourselves so our parents wouldn’t find out. Based on some of our group games, I’ll say there were twelve kids in the neighborhood. Although, we were usually in groups of two or three. I started out to talk about harmony. When I wasn’t directly involved in the fighting, I was quite often the mediator. I felt if people looked at things from more than two sides, they could usually find some common ground. This came in handy when I was working as an adult and quite often placed myself in the role of mediator.

Creating Inner Peace – Acceptance of People’s Differences

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Are their divisive topics that you’ve been able to escape?

I was also taught to respect people having different beliefs. My Mom was Catholic, but she had many friends who were Greek Orthodox, Jewish, Protestant, Baptist, Mormon, Lutheran, etc. And my Dad seemed to accept people without religious beliefs as easily as those who did. So, early on I was taught diversity and tolerance. Which is pretty big when we consider that most wars are caused by intolerance. An entire topic for argument was never introduced into my life. Politics was another hot topic that my parents never engaged in divisive debates regarding. They were interested in it and discussed it, but didn’t argue or complain about political news items. Isn’t it great when we’re not taught to fight over them in the first place.

The Man Who Saved My Life

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It was some 45 years ago when I really did have pneumonia. I was in the hospital with a ridiculously high fever, say 105 degrees Fahrenheit. I was busy dreaming about this apple tree just out my window that I had engineered to drip fresh juice directly into my mouth. Every time this male nurse was on duty, he would antagonize me by waking me up every hour and making me drink a full glass of water. He was relentless. But every time he was on duty, my temperature went down a few degrees. Every time he was not on duty, my temperature went back up. Finally, he pulled a double shift and broke my fever so I could get out of the hospital. I never got to thank him, so I always send him blessings wherever he may be. My posting yesterday reminded me to honor him with this posting. But also, to extend the blessings to all those who truly care about helping other people, just for the sheer pleasure of doing so.