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Lesson 1: Definitions: Beginning to Understand the Six-Step Roadmap of Inner Bonding

Rick came to see me (Dr. Margaret) because, for the fourth time in the last two years, he thought he had found his mate, only to have her leave him after a few months. He had gone to numerous different therapists and workshops, yet here he was repeating this pattern again. Rick had discovered one of my books on the Inner Bonding process and had read it from cover to cover in one night. He came intwo days later, so excited because he realized he had discovered the cause of his difficulties. "I have been making my girlfriends responsible for my feelings. When they feel my neediness, they leave. I knew I was doing it, but I didn't know how not to do it. Now I get it from reading your book and I just want a session to solidify my learning."

We spent the session practicing the Inner Bonding process. I didn't hear from Rick again until a year later, when he called to tell me he was getting married. "Inner Bonding has changed my life," he told me."I am so grateful to have found this process and grateful that I can practice it on my own. It really works! I just want to say 'Thanks!'"

I was delighted.

Welcome to our introductory course on the Six Steps of InnerBonding. This course will give you all the basics of the Inner Bonding process. Inner Bonding is a process which, when practiced consistently, heals fear, limiting beliefs, anger, shame, guilt, aloneness, depression, anxiety, addictive behavior, as well as relationship problems. Inner Bonding provides you with the skills to take loving care of yourself, share your love with others, and be empowered to take full responsibility for all your own feelings and behavior.

• Do you know how to stay centered, open-hearted and powerful when someone is yelling at you or blaming you?

• Do you know how to be immune to criticism, judgment and rejection?

• Do you know how to not lose yourself in the face of others' controlling, engulfing, or smothering behavior?

• Are you stuck in The Resistance Syndrome, wanting to make changes but not following through, with issues like weight, exercise, lateness, spending, chores, clutter?

• Do you know how to remain reliably loving with yourself and others, regardless of how others are behaving?

• Are you tired of reading books, attending workshops and seminars, trying therapies that do not bring the lasting results you hoped for?

Intent 

Our intent is what governs how we think, feel and behave. Our intent is a powerful and creative force - the essence of free will. Your intent is your deepest desire, your primary motive or goal, your highest priority in any given moment. There are only two primary intents:  

• To learn about loving yourself and others, even in the face of fear and pain.

• To protect yourself from fear and pain with addictive, controlling behavior and thereby avoid responsibility for your feelings and actions.

When your intent is to learn to love, you are willing to face your fears and feel your painful feelings in order to understand how you may be creating them and discover what you need to do differently. The deeper purpose here is to become a more loving human being, starting with yourself. When you open to learning about your own fear and beliefs and about what brings you joy, you move toward love. When the intent is to learn, learning about love becomes more important than protecting against fear. When your intent is to learn to love, your deepest desire is to find your safety, peace, lovability and worth through an internal connection with the unconditional love that is available on the spiritual level.  

When your intent is to protect yourself from fear and pain, and avoid responsibility for your feelings, your deepest desire is to find your safety, peace, lovability and worth through externals, such as attention, approval, sex, substances, things and activities. When you believe that others are responsible for how you feel, you try to control them in order to feel safe and worthy.  

In every moment, each one of us chooses our intent  - either to attempt to feel externally safe by controlling others and our own feelings, or to create inner safety by learning about loving ourselves and others. While the choices that others make may influence you, no one but you has control over your intent. Not even a Higher Power can control your intent, since that would negate your free will. In each moment, you choose what is most important to you, and in each moment you have an opportunity to change your mind. 

There is an important distinction between the intent to know and the intent to learn. The intent to know comes from the part of us that wants to know what to do and how to do it .right. in order to have control over getting what we may want - attention, approval and so on. People can even get addicted to gathering information; they think it will give them more control. Having the intent to learn means that you do not have to know what to do. You only need to learn how to open to a higher source of guidance, and you will be directed. Guidance in what is loving to ourselves and others is always available to us when we know how to access it. Part of the practice of Inner Bonding is learning how to access this powerful and wise guidance. 

Core Self and Wounded Self  

Our core Self is our true Self or essence. It is helpful to imagine the core Self as a bright and shining child, the natural light within that is an individualized expression of Divine Love. This aspect of ourselves is actually ageless - it always has been and it always will be; it evolves through our life experiences. Our core Self contains our unique gifts and talents, our natural wisdom and intuition, our curiosity and sense of wonder, our playfulness and spontaneity, and our ability to love. This is the unwounded aspect of the soul. It can never be harmed. It was never touched by any abuse we suffered. Instead, the core Self was hidden away. It waits to be retrieved through a healing process. Because of this unbroken part in each of us, complete healing can occur. Your healing is complete when you have fully retrieved and deeply know this aspect of yourself, who you really are - a child of the unconditional love that is God. Practicing Inner Bonding leads to the reclaiming of the core Self.  

It is helpful to imagine the wounded self as a wounded child who learned to be an unloving Adult. Our wounded self is often a mirror image of one or both of our parents. Even though we may have said, .I.ll never be like that,. our wounded self learned to be just like our parents.  

Your wounded self is the aspect that may have suffered from physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse or neglect, and it carries all the fears, false beliefs and controlling behavior that result from these experiences. While these fears, beliefs and behavior cause us pain in our adult lives, they were the only way we could feel safe when we were children. They were our survival mechanisms. Your wounded self can be any age in any given moment, depending upon how old you were when you learned a particular false belief, addiction or way to control.  

The wounded self is the aspect of you that may use food, drugs or alcohol to numb out fear and loneliness. In addition, the wounded self always fears being rejected/abandoned, on the one hand, and being engulfed/smothered/controlled on the other hand. In other words, the wounded self fears loss of other and loss of self, because it does not know how to manage rejection without taking it personally, or to set appropriate limits against engulfment. Through anger, blame, resistance, compliance or withdrawal, the wounded self hopes to ward off and control that which it fears. All the parts of the wounded self need healing, and they can be healed only through compassion, acceptance and unconditional love.  

.I.ve had it with living like this. It.s not giving me 
what I want. It.s not working. There must be something better out there and I want to find it.. 

Almost any activity can be used as a protection against your pain. It depends on your intent. For example, meditation can be used as a way to connect with a spiritual source and learn about loving, or it can be used to bliss out and avoid responsibility for your feelings. There are many people who have meditated for years without improving the quality of their lives because they have used meditation as a way to avoid pain rather than a way to learn. Likewise, reading the Bible can be a way to help you open your heart and move into your lovingness and your desire to learn, or it can be used as an anesthetic, an addiction, a way to avoid yourself and your fear. When the Bible is used this way, it often becomes a tool to control others and God, to make God love us more or reward us. Neither the ancient Hebrews nor Jesus intended this sacred text to be used to manipulate and control. 

The intent to protect closes the heart, leaving you feeling alone inside and this terrible aloneness then drives your wounded self to try to have control over getting love to stop the painful feeling of aloneness. You might try to have control over getting love with criticism, blame, silence, giving in. You might avoid pain through withdrawal, resistance, numbing out with food, drugs, alcohol, TV, gambling, and so on. The more you try to have control over getting love and avoiding pain, the worse you feel and the more you do it to try to feel better. Can you see what a vicious circle inner abandonment is? 

One of the major false beliefs of the wounded self is that we, as separate egos, cut off from a Higher Power, can have power over ourselves and others. We can, to a certain extent, control others. behavior (although not their feelings), but not without violating ourselves and others. The wounded self is willing to violate the core Self and others to have this control. We violate ourselves through substance and process addictions (addictions to things and activities). We violate others through controlling behavior - anger, blame, judgment, compliance, withdrawal, violence. Whenever we violate ourselves or others, we are acting from our wounded self. 

Until we practice Inner Bonding and develop a strong loving Adult self, it is the wounded self that decides whether to learn or to protect. When we decide to open to learning, it is often because some part of our wounded self hits bottom and says, .I.ve had it with living like this. It.s not giving me what I want. It.s not working. There must be something better out there and I want to find it.. 

False Beliefs 

Our false beliefs are the lies we have learned that cause us unnecessary fear, anxiety and pain. We know a belief is false when the belief itself causes us fear, anxiety and pain. We then protect against the fear, anxiety and pain caused by our false beliefs by sinking into our various addictions, our ways of controlling ourselves and others. 

It is our wounded self that has absorbed our false beliefs, many of which we adopted when we were very small. A false belief is a belief about ourselves, others, the world, the universe or God/Higher Power that disempowers us and causes us to fear. Our false beliefs are the conclusions we drew about ourselves, others, the world, etc., as a result of our difficult childhood experiences. Our false, self-limiting beliefs cause much of our pain and much of our behavior that causes us pain. 

... For example, if you concluded (falsely) from your childhood experiences that you are bad, unlovable or unworthy, then you will generally behave as if this were true. Your resulting behavior, such as anger or withdrawal, which is geared to protect you from the rejection or engulfment that you fear, may actually result in others rejecting you - which is just what you expected. This brings you pain and reaffirms your false belief about being unlovable. In addition, the very act of choosing to protect rather than to love is an abandonment of your own core Self and further reaffirms your belief in your unworthiness. You end up feeling rejected by others because you are actually rejecting yourself without realizing it.  

Inner Child 

When we use the term .Inner Child,. we are referring to the feeling part of us - both the wounded self and the core Self. Imagine a child - perhaps a sad, lonely, frightened or angry child. Imagine that within that wounded child is a beautiful light, the light of the core Self. But the wounded child does not know that this light is within. This wounded child operates from the false belief that he or she is inadequate, flawed, wrong, unlovable, unworthy - that his or her core is dark instead of light. Only when we learn how to bring unconditional love through to the wounded child will we heal enough to discover the light within. 

Your Inner Child is an infallible inner guidance system. It lets you know through your feelings what is good or bad for you, right or wrong for you. The feelings you may experience coming naturally from the core Self are the joy, peace and love that, as an adult, are the result of being loving to yourself and others. The core Self also has the natural feelings of sadness and sorrow (over people.s inhumanity to each other, for example), loneliness (when you have no one with whom to share love), grief (over loss), helplessness (over others. choices), outrage (over injustice), as well as fear of real and present danger - the fight or flight response. The feelings that come from the wounded self are anxiety, depression, anger, hurt, aloneness, neediness, emptiness, misery, guilt, shame, fear (of a perceived rather than an actual threat), and so on.  

All of your feelings let you know whether what you are doing and thinking is right or wrong for you. They let you know whether someone is open or closed, dangerous or safe. The tightness in your stomach in reaction to someone.s threatening anger tells you something important, as is the safety you feel when someone is being truly giving. Your anxiety, anger or depression may be telling you that you are not taking loving care of your self, while your peace and joy let you know that you are being truly loving to yourself. Trusting these feelings and discovering what they are telling you will help you take personal responsibility for your own feelings. 

The Loving Adult 

The loving Adult is the vehicle through which the Spirit of love and compassion that we experience as God thinks and acts. It is God.s emissary, receiving love, truth and power from Spirit and then taking loving action in our highest good.  

Many of us do not yet have a powerful, spiritually connected loving Adult who knows how to nurture and truly protect us and love others without trying to control them. Many of us do not have a loving Adult who knows how to set appropriate inner boundaries against our harming ourselves with addictive behavior. Nor do we have a loving Adult who knows how to set loving limits against harming or being harmed by others. This is because we may have had little or no role modeling on how to be a loving Adult. If your parents and their parents before did not know how to take loving care of themselves, they could not provide the necessary role modeling. That's why most people don't know how to take loving care of themselves in the face of other's anger, blame, or judgment.  

You, however, have the opportunity to practice a healing process that creates a powerful loving Adult. If you do not have role models for loving behavior, do not despair. We can all learn to access our higher guidance as a role model for loving action. If you decide to pursue learning more about Inner Bonding, you can learn to access this guidance.  

Until we are in the process of developing a loving Adult, the wounded self is in charge of our intent. There are only two circumstances under which the wounded self decides to open to learning. One is when we are in a lot of pain and realize that our protections are not working to bring us the safety, peace and joy that we want. The other is when we remember that we came here to this planet to love and evolve in our lovingness. The memory of our soul.s mission is within our core Self. Spirit attempts to remind us each day of our soul.s mission in the hope that we do not have to hit bottom to shift our intent. Those of us who learn to hear the voice of Spirit may then open to learning about loving. 

      Below is a very brief summary of the Six Steps of Inner Bonding.

Step One: Become mindful of your feelings. Decide that you want 100% responsibility for the ways in which you may be causing your own pain, and for creating your own peace and joy.  

Step Two:  Choose the intent to learn to love yourself and others. Making this choice opens your heart, allows Divine Love in and moves you into your loving adult self.  

Step Three: Choose to welcome, embrace and dialogue with your wounded self, exploring your thoughts/false beliefs and the resulting behaviors that may be causing your pain. Also explore your gifts and what brings joy to your core Self. 

Step Four:  Dialogue with your spiritual Guidance, discovering the truth and loving action toward your self. 

Step Five:  Take the loving action learned in Step Four. 

Step Six:  Evaluate the effectiveness of your loving action.

These steps are actually a powerful roadmap to healing the false beliefs that may be keeping you limited in your personal life and at work. The following lessons go into more detail about these steps.  

Look for Step One in your email box starting tomorrow!