HOW MY NEGATIVE EMOTIONS AFFECTED MY PHYSICAL BODY

     I was around seven years old when my suppressed negative emotions first began to be reflected in my bodily functions and I began to have an inflammatory condition in my lower bowel, medically known as "Irritable Bowel Syndrome," or IBS.  The symptoms varied from being an uncomfortable feeling of tenderness in my lower abdomen to that of excruciating pain, accompanied with Diarrhea, lots of mucus and a fever.

      According to the Mayo Clinic Diet Book, the exact physical cause of IBS has not been determined, but it does say that stress can definitely aggravate the symptoms of IBS an make them worse.  Quote: "If  you're like most people with IBS, you probably find that your signs and symptoms are worse or more frequent during stressful events, such as a change in your daily routine."

     My father had died four years earlier, and at that time my mother was barely managing to earn enough money to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table, so there was no money to pay for professional medical care or diagnosis.  Without a doctor to advise her, she simply treated my condition with bed rest and a liquid diet, and in a week or so I would recover.  Several of my paternal aunts and uncles also had IBS during their lifetime and were known by other family members as having a volatile temper, which they also tried to suppress because of religious and socially negative consequences.  So, based on that knowledge of my own genetic background, plus my personal history of suppressing my rage to try and keep peace in my family, I concluded that my suppressed negative emotions greatly influenced, or possibly even created the IBS condition in my colon--not only as a child but also as an adult.

      After bearing the vindictive consequences of being physically beaten and verbally degraded by my mother for my rebellious resistance to her during my toddler years and early childhood, by the time I was seven I had begun to make a concentrated effort to swallow my anger and to try and be more submissive to her in order to prevent even more harsh consequences for my continued rebellion.  It was then that the IBS problems first began to manifest in my digestive system. Then, after the tragic drowning of my brother when I was nine, I felt extremely guilty, thinking that my anger and resentment towards his bullying efforts to put and keep me beneath him had possibly caused his untimely death.  The guilt for that was particularly stressful for me and I fought it emotionally as I had physically fought those who bullied me.  I did it by "beating up on myself" with self-condemnation and defamation,  and so the IBS malady came again, with increasing pain and colon distress.

      Because I hated myself for being such an angry, resentful person, I began to doubt and lose confidence in myself and to feel inferior relative to other people, particularly those like my mother who bullied and degraded me.  My pride then rushed to rescue me from going into a deep well of depression and self-destruction by motivating me to be more cooperative and submissive to my mother and the other authorities in my life.  I surmised that if I served and pleased people instead of rebelling and fighting against them, that they would no longer have any reason to punish or degrade me and I would no longer have a reason to resent them and to feel guilty for it.

      Although I thought that the people-pleasing service that I gave my mother, and later to my husband (who soon became a replica of my bullying, fault-finding mother), would cause both of them to see me in a more favorable light and eliminate any further fault-finding defamation, I was shocked to find that the more I served either of them for that result, the more they required of me to give and do in order to have it.  If I dared to protest or put up any resistance, they would then withhold their seeming love, and the same old bullying degradation would begin all over again to bring me into submission to them.

      So, even though I was doing my best to not be angry or resentful towards anyone, the continued mistreatment of my mother and husband kept me emotionally upset and afraid that I would lose control, vent my rage towards them and then have to cope with the consequential guilt for doing it.  However, because my submissiveness enabled them and others to continue to bully and mistreat me, there was a lot of continuing rage for me to suppress, so the IBS became chronic and I was under a doctor's care for several years--with a persistent low-grade temperature, constant soreness in my lower abdomen and my digestive system vacillating between constipation one day and  diarrhea the next.  The doctor who treated me at that time diagnosed the condition as not only being IBS, but also Ulcerative Colitis, aggravated into that intensity by the suppressed resentment I felt towards both my husband and mother (who by then were competing with each other over who would possess and control me.)

     To cope with the condition, the doctor prescribed nerve and emotion depressants, as well as Antacid and bowel soothing preparations, and by faithfully taking them, carefully monitoring my diet and becoming more emotionally passive and people-pleasing, there was a notable lessening in the re-occurring of the IBS and Colitis condition; again adding creditability to my theory that suppressed emotions greatly affected (if not actually created) those maladies in my physical body.

     Because of my submissive character in my teens and throughout my adult years, there was one other significant physical malady that developed in me, which had even more subtle emotional undertones to it than that of the IBS and Colitis.  Because I had been so emotionally weak in allowing other people to dominate and cause me to suppress my individuality in order to serve them, my self-condemnation for failing to "stand my ground" in that regard began to be reflected in another area of my body.  Late in my life, some unknown factor began to impair the nerves in my legs and feet so that I am now, at eighty-five, so unbalanced and unsteady on my feet that I cannot stand alone nor walk without the balancing support of a sturdy walker.

     Although this particular impairment is often created by a Diabetic condition in the patient, my blood glucose tests consistently remain in the normal range, and even though a few years ago I spent three days at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, being tested for Diabetes and having pins stuck in my legs to test the nerve/muscle interaction, the doctors still ruled out Diabetes as being the cause for me to lose the mobility in my legs.

      Because of this lack of concrete information as to the creation of my malady, I again concluded that because I resented myself for being such a bad, inferior creation I, unknowingly, also resented and judged God. Therefore, my soul or individuality was separated from his grace, which then allowed a negative spirit to come into my consciousness,  It then usurped God's role as the directing, motivating spirit within me and directed my Immune System to function as a negative, destructive factor in my body, rather than to protect my body from viral and bacterial infections, or to cope with them once they had invaded my body.  In that negative capacity my Immune System then began to attack and impair the nerves that provide the electrical impulses to the muscles in my legs so that they contract or expand to meet the demand being placed on them.

       Due to the impairment of the nerves in my legs. the muscles no longer function properly.  So, I then see my physical malady of not being able to stand my ground as being the "effect" of a spiritual cause, which was the self-hatred I had for being such a weak, inferior person that I failed to "stand my ground," character-wise and as a spiritual "Child of God." That hatred was then transferred to my body and was replicated in my legs and feet, so that I now cannot "stand my ground" physically.



    

THE PSYCHIC NETHER WORLD OF HELL

      According to Judeo-Christian biblical history, the first human being, Adam,  a male, came into being after all other animal life had been created, having a higher degree of intelligence and awareness than the animal. ("The Lord God then formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into him the breath of life, and the man became a living being." Gen. 2:7 NIV). Adam, with his greater intelligence, was then given dominance over the animal world.  Later, his helpmate, Eve, was created; having the same intelligence and awareness as he, but with a female body instead of a male body.

     Although in the spiritual chain of command, Adam was submissive to God, he had the dominant role over Eve and she was submissive to him.  However, both of them had an awareness of  their own selfhood and sovereign individuality, as well as a sense of their self-worth relative to  God, and to each other, which I see as being the Pride-Ego faculty in their consciousness.

      Because all forms of creation have both positive and a negative factors inherent within them to maintain balance and harmony in their lives or function, the Pride-Ego faculty within the human consciousness also has both positive and negative aspects within it. (Webster's New World dictionary depicts those factors as being: self-respect and dignity, as well as an over high opinion of oneself as haughtiness and arrogance.)

     There are also other positive and negative attributes of character within the human consciousness. Expressing love in its truest sense of unselfishly caring for someone else without needing or expecting to be loved in return; being virtuously moral; treating others as you would have them treat you, and having a conscience to tell you when you fail to live up to that high standard would be considered as being the "Good side" to your consciousness.  Selfishness, the lack of virtue and morality; treating others badly because they have treated you that way, and the lack of conscience would be considered as being the "Dark Side" of your consciousness.

      However, even though the "Dark Side" is obviously a self-centered  destructive-negative factor within your consciousness, it still has a meaningful purpose in each person's life as it creates and provides the negative stress that calls forth the positive virtue-building, character-strengthening, humanistic qualities of the "Good side."  Example: the emotion of fear brings forth courage; hate brings forth love, impatience brings forth patience, etc.  As long as they are functioning harmoniously within the human consciousness, the "Dark" and the "Good" side" then enable the human entity to be much more than a human animal (selfishly living in a "Survival of the fittest" environment.)

       Because of Adam and Eve's original fall from the state of grace though, we their progeny, are currently born with the "Dark side" of our Ego being dominant within our consciousness, with the positive "Good side" being repressed to the extent that only the facet of conscience is still active.  (Even that facet is non-existent in the amoral Psychopath, who continues to fall further into the Psychic Nether world of Hell.)  With little or no positive, counteracting, modifying and regenerative qualities within us to balance and create harmony within us, there is little true love being expressed and, for the most part, human beings live a negative existence filled with hate, dissension and egocentrically competitive strife.
    
      According to the scriptures and the history of Adam and Eve (which I refer to because, their story not only depicts the disruption of the harmonious relationship between the man and woman as a "unit," it also metaphorically depicts what transpires within the confines of each human being's consciousness between the "Good Side" and the "Bad Side"), both Adam and Eve were aware that they were "beneath" God, ego-wise.  As Adam's helpmate, Eve was also aware that she was beneath Adam in that regard, and that challenged her Pride-Ego faculty to test both Adam's and God's authority over her (just as all children, compulsively test the authority of their parents.)

      When there is a void or "need" in any facet of creation, there is always something to "fill" it, and that need in Eve then attracted the serpent (which I call the Serpent of Pride) to tempt her to rationalize that since she could freely eat the "fruit" of all the other "trees," God was wrong when he admonished Adam and her to refrain from eating the fruit of the tree of "The knowledge of good and evil."  So, Eve doubted God and ate the forbidden fruit, and in doing so, gave her allegiance to the Serpent of pride instead of to God. Since no apparent harm came to her, she then convinced Adam to also eat the fruit. (This is where Adam, being the dominant one over Eve, failed to keep her from disobeying God.  By giving his allegiance to Eve and eating the forbidden fruit himself, he also failed to remain true to God.)

      After both of them ate the fruit of the "Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil," they immediately became more aware and saw that they were "naked" (which I metaphorically interpret to mean their conscience began to express itself within them, causing them to be aware of their wrongdoing.)  Then, when God asked Adam if he had eaten the fruit, he failed Eve again by blaming her for tempting him to do wrong.

      Because both Adam and Eve gave their allegiance to the Serpent of Pride and catered to the negative self-centered "Dark side" of their consciousness, it separated them from the dominance of God, repressed the "Good Side" and became the motivating factor within their consciousness, Without it bringing virtue and saving grace to balance the selfish negativity with them, they fell to the level of the animal and began to live a selfish, egocentrically competitive lifestyle.

      The progeny of Adam and Eve then come into the world, with the "Dark Side" of their consciousness still being dominant within them, which is controlled by the Serpent of Pride. Working through the Pride-Ego facet of the "Dark Side," it motivates them to compulsively seek to reign supreme relative to God and to each other.  In doing so, it tempts the husband to utilize his God-given hierarchy of male dominance and physical brawn to bully his wife into being submissive and beneath him.  At the same time, it tempts the wife to create an illusion of manliness and ego-superiority for her husband by catering to him physically and serving him sexually. When he becomes emotionally dependent on her to maintain that illusion, she then withdraws her support and gains the dominant role over him; he then reverts back to bullying her to frighten her to be submissive again, or, more often than not, he simply becomes a "wimp" and gives her the dominating role.

      In that way, both the man and the woman compete with each other over who will be the "boss" in the home.  Then, when the children are born to them, the same competitive lifestyle is passed on to them so that  they also compete with each other over who will be the one on the top rung of the family " Totem Pole," with the weaker or younger children being on the lower rung.

      As such, the Serpent of Pride rules in each human being's mind, body and life, fulfilling its own negative agenda by expressing through them. Therefore, they are no longer Children of God but Children of the Serpent of Pride.  Instead of living in Paradise, with the positive spirit of God expressing true love through them, and fulfilling his purpose for their lives, they express hate, and live and die in the Psychic Nether World of Hell.
 
       "Thou shall have no other Gods before me" and "Thou shall love  thy neighbor as thyself."

     

    




     

MY LOST BIRTHRIGHT AS A CHILD OF GOD or "Adams's Pride"

      

      "To thine own self, be true, and it must follow as night the day thou canst be false to any man." This quote from Shakespeare is one of my favorite admonitions, although it has also been the most difficult for me to follow.  As a small child I primarily lost my Birthright as a Child of God through resenting my mother.  My father passed away when I was still a toddler and my mother was a frightened, angry soul who took out her frustration and bitterness on my brother and me. He was eight at the time and I was almost four.  He conformed to her and I rebelled against her, so I was the one she angrily spanked and told I was a "Bad little girl" when my misbehaviors added to the overload of emotional stress she was already facing.  (It was the time of the Great Depression era in America; jobs were scarce for even skilled fathers, and at that time, there was no state or government subsidized welfare programs for indigent people, so feeding, housing and clothing two young children presented quite a challenge for a widowed mother with only an eighth grade education and few marketable skills.)

      Being too young to understand my mother's plight, I was angry and hurt that she vented her impatience and anger on me, and as long as I could resent and judge her for it, I had the energy and confidence to keep on rebelling against her until I was around seven or so, at which time I felt my first real pangs of guilt from my conscience. However, the guilt I felt wasn't for resenting my mother, because, with her unjust way of disciplining me I, could easily justify it; my guilt came from resenting God, and I could not justify that.  From my cradle days on I had been taught by my mother and extended family members that God was my Creator and the source of all that was good in my life.  Since my environment in general was so deprived and seemingly devoid of anything good, I blamed him for causing my father to die at the early age of thirty-one;  for giving me to such a mean mother, and for allowing my big brother to continually tease and try to "Lord" it over me.

      So, I then drew my seven-year-old shoulders up proud, set my naturally square jaw in defiance and judged God to be a biased, cruel taskmaster; telling myself that "If God doesn't like me, I don't have to like him," That defiance was my waterloo, because my conscience started bothering me a lot after that, and the guilt I felt became so great that, during the church service one Sunday morning, I interrupted the pastor's sermon by leaving my seat and running down the aisle to the altar.  Crying woeful tears, I then begged God to forgive me for being so angry with him.

     After that, I was afraid to allow myself to feel anger towards God, or to even think bad thoughts about him.  I then began to make a conscious effort to try to control my emotions and to become good, intellectually  reasoning that if I tried harder to be good, both God and my mother would like and treat me better. However, just because I decided to be good didn't mean that other people would make it easy for me to do so, or that I could willfully keep from being angry at someone who mistreated me.

      And hurt me they did; my brother and the bullies at school seemed to sense that I wasn't nearly as volatile in physically defending myself as I had been earlier on, so they would try even harder to "get my goat" by teasingly degrading me for being a girl and therefore inferior to them.  To show them that being a girl didn't stop me from defending myself, I would again double up my fists and let them have it, just as I had always done; and if my mother or a teacher spanked me for fighting, I still would resent and judge them for their seeming discrimination against me for being a girl.  (I based that on the fact they always seemed to treat me more harshly than they treated my brother, or the other boys that teased me.)

      So, even though I had experienced the guilt of resenting and judging God, and out of fear had become submissive to his superiority over me, I was still resisting my mother, brother and peers; fighting to keep my sense of self-worth from being degraded by their efforts to put me beneath them.  Then, the year I turned nine, I faced another situation that brought me to my repentant, submissive knees and nearly annihilated my selfhood as a Child of God,

      During the summer of that year my brother drowned.  He was thirteen, a lonely little boy who, with no father or man in his life to engage him in more masculine experiences and activities, was enticed by some macho acting sixteen year old boys to go boating with them.  He was thrilled to be included in the adventure, but knowing our mother would forbid him to go because he didn't know how to swim, he did it behind her back. While they were out on the lake, the older boys, thinking they were doing my brother and another little boy a favor by forcing them to learn how to swim, threw both the younger boys into the lake. Both boys panicked and started struggling to swim but failed in the attempt. The older boys managed to save the younger boy, but my brother drowned.

      Having resented my brother so much in the past for trying to bully me,I was again inundated with guilt, thinking that I had caused his death by resenting him. Instead of blaming God for his death though, I blamed myself.  Then like the prize fighter who inadvertently kills his opponent in the boxing ring and, being overwhelmed with guilt is afraid to fight again, I  became afraid to defend myself--either physically or by silently resenting and judging someone. 

      Had I understood that my angry, resentful and rebellious personality was not an outer reflection of my true selfhood, but that of a negative spirit that had been projected into my consciousness by my mother, I could have dealt differently with the guilt it created for me with its negative responses to the injustice and stresses I faced.  But, thinking that I was the Bad little girl that my mother and the world (and in my mind, even God) saw me as being, I  had turned my anger, resentment and judgment on my self; "beating up on myself" with self-degradation and condemnation every time I felt any hint of anger rising in me or had a bad thought come into my mind. It was as though, my mother, with her ego-degrading physical and verbal abuse was still disciplining me from within my own consciousness.

      Because of my self-condemnation, as well as the continued degradation I received from others, I lost more and more confidence in myself and became less able to stand my ground in a world that seemed bent on either controlling me or destroying me.  Being fearful of God and ashamed to face him, there was no help coming from him to me, so I became a "People Pleaser," serving my mother, grandparents, teachers, and later on, my husband, in-laws and anyone else who sensed that they could easily control me by defaming my sense of self-worth.  Because of my submissiveness, they knew that I posed no real threat to them, so they all took advantage of me; demanding more service from me and giving less back in the way of praise and acknowledgment. Then, if I objected and protested the injustice, the same old ego-degrading verbal fault-finding and rejection technique would soon bring me back to being submissive and in their control again.

    After a time, I became so accustomed to people finding fault with me that I became sensitized to being abused, feeling felt ill at ease when someone was nice to me. I well remember being glorified one year at the end of my term as PTA president for my son's elementary school.  Evidently, I did an exemplary job because at the last meeting of the school year, my publicity chairman set up a huge screen that filled most of the stage area.  He then projected a huge picture of a photo frame on the screen and started putting sections of my picture inside the frame like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, with each piece being accompanied by an accolade of praise for what I had accomplished in different projects that I had undertaken to fulfill that year.  After all of the pieces were in place, a giant portrait of me was revealed.  Everyone began to clap and gave me a standing ovation, and I was so embarrassed and uncomfortable by it, that I wanted to run out of the room.

     I was very confused over having that feeling, and after questioning myself why I had it, I realized that I had a perverted need to be abused and mistreated, not only to justify my own resentment and judgment towards myself for the  submissive "mouse" I had become, but because I also needed the challenge of trying to upgrade my self-image in the eyes of others and to also give me some reason to get out of bed each morning.

     Because my true selfhood was suppressed and more or less "put to sleep" within me by the negative spirit, that had been projected into me from my mother, it was no longer the "center or nucleus" of my being, The negative spirit had become that "center" and was in charge; using my mind, emotions and body to fulfill its negative agenda to the world instead of allowing me to fulfill God's purpose for my life.  To do that, it needed for me to emotionally remain in that depraved inferior state, so it could express through me as being a wimp and a coward, that would then "invite" others to mistreat me. It also knew, that being mistreated, I would be resentful and judgmental towards those who did it to me, and because of it I would feel guilty, doubt myself and feel inferior.  I then continued to be a wimp and a coward, which kept on controlling me.

     In that way I lived in "Hell" and was part of Satan's Master-Slave environment, wherein those on the lower rung of the social "Totem Pole" "burn" with envy and hatred towards those on the upper rung, never realizing that their prideful need to be glorified relative to God (the Creator) is the primary cause of their descent into the negative realm of Hell.  Nor, did they understand, that all that is required for them to be reinstated as Children of God, is to humbly submit themselves to the jurisdiction of God's superiority over them, and to accept the forgiveness he offers to them.

      So, to find my way back through that maize of darkness and self-deception, I needed to better understand and to virtuously deal with the element of my own pride, which, according to Webster's New World Dictionary: expresses as an inordinate high self-esteem, arrogance or conceit.  I had to also realize that, even though I seemed to be such an inferior,"nothing" person on the outside, deep inside of my consciousness, I had this prideful need to feel superior relative to other people.  That need then invited others to try and make me feel inferior, the principle being;  "You can never be made to feel inferior unless you first have the prideful need to feel superior."
    
     Therefore, it was pride that caused me to resent other human beings who belittled and put me beneath them, It was pride that caused me to resent God for placing me in a deprived, abusive environment that undermined and degraded my self-esteem and self-image, and it was pride that caused me to beat up on myself with self-recrimination so that it destroyed my self-confidence and made me doubt my ability to defend myself rightly.

     It was also pride in Adam and Eve that allowed the negative spirit (the Serpent) to tempt both of them to disobey God, and then to justify their wrongdoing by blaming something or someone else for causing them to do it. It was pride that separated them from God and caused them to fall to this lower level of existence.  We, their progeny, then come into the world still separated from God and still subject to the control of the negative spirit, that works through our pride to tempt us to continue needing to glorify ourselves relative to God.  That is how we lost our BIRTHRIGHT AS A CHILD OF GOD and how we pride-fully continue to lose it.

      "For those who are led by the spirit of God are Sons of God." (Romans 8:14 NIV) .

       And, as I see it: Those who are led by the spirit of Pride are the "Sons" of whoever degrades them or promises to glorify them.



.

"TURNING THE OTHER CHEEK"

      My paternal grandfather was a self-ordained preacher, who was known for the fiery "Hell fire and Damnation" sermons that he evangelistically preached in one-room rural schoolhouses and various churches that invited him to be guest speaker.  According to Grandpa, God was this fearsome tyrant who would "Spew you out of his mouth and send you straight to Hell when you died," if you failed to live up to His rules for human behavior.

       The first pair of rules were: "Love God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might," and  "You shall have no other God but me," which, as a little kid, I tried to obey, in spite of the fact that Grandpa depicted God as being so vengeful and mean. I will confess though,that my effort to love God, stemmed more from the self-serving fear that He would send me to Hell if I didn't love him, than out of a true desire to obey his rule.

        The second pair of rules were: "Love your neighbor as yourself" and  "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."  My understanding of those rules, as a four year old, was: If you "Play nice" with the other kids, they will "Play nice" with you.  However, that understanding proved to be wrong, because even though I wanted to "Play nice," most of the kids I knew seemed to be more interesting in finding out who would be the "TOP DOG" and "LEADER OF THE PACK," instead of each kid doing unto others as he would have them do unto him."

       The third rule was to: "Honor your mother and father."  I didn't know precisely what that meant because my father had died before I really knew him. That, plus the fact that my mother seemed to spank me for every childish wrong I said or did, caused me to conclude that honoring my parents meant that I had to love and obey them, no matter if they were dead or how unjustly they treated me.

      The fourth rule of "Judge not lest you be judged" I didn't understand at all until I became a lot more enlightened as to the correct meaning of the scriptures, which turned out to be a very significant rule, because if you judge another person who mistreats you, it allows the negative spirit in him (that caused him to mistreat you) to also come into you. You then become like that person, or you spend your lifetime trying to be different from him.  In either situation he controls your life.

      The fifth rule was to "Turn the other cheek." when someone mistreats you,  as my brother (who was four years older than I) was always doing.  He would make an ugly face at me, pinch me, or kick me beneath the table, when our mother's back was turned, just to irritate me into responding to him. Without considering whether I should obey the "Turn the other cheek" rule or not, I would instinctively defend myself by jabbing my elbow into his ribs or hitting him hard with my fist.  He would then run to our mother, complaining that I had hit him for no reason.

       My mother was the one who disciplined me since my father was not there, and she did so with a heavy hand (as that was the way her father had disciplined her).  Not only did she spank me with my deceased father's belt for hitting my brother, she also degraded me by telling me I was a hateful little girl, and told me again and again that I was going to Hell if I didn't change my ways.  Her injustice to me was further compounded by the fact that her ears seemed to be closed to my plaintive defense of: "But, Bubba started it."  What was even more unjust: in my presence, she would give my brother a big hug, wipe his tears away and tell him how much she and God loved him for being such a good boy; her actions telling me loud and clear that I was too bad to be loved.  I was four; my brother was eight. 

       Since I was the one on the receiving end of my brother's bullying, I knew he was good only when he was facing our mother and not good when her back was turned.  I then burned with resentment and judgment towards her, not only for spanking me unjustly but also for her seeming "blindness" to my brother's faults.  My judgment of her then created a hypnotic receptivity in me that allowed the negative spirit (that was in her) to be projected into my consciousness.

      It then superimposed itself over my true selfhood and expressed itself as my "Bad little girl" identity.  Since that false identity was created in me by my judgment of my mother's injustice to me, it needed her to keep on mistreating me and for me keep on judging her in order for it to continue to exist in me. Because of that, if she didn't have a reason to scold and belittle me, the negative spirit in me would cause me to say or do something to upset her into doing it. It did the same thing at school.  By expressing through me as a chip-on-my-shoulder attitude, it challenged the bullies there to tease and hassle me.  I then physically fought them, just as I had done with my brother at home, and for doing so, I was spanked by our teacher in front of the whole class.

       Again, I faced the injustice of being degraded and punished for merely defending myself, which then became a pattern for my life. To keep from becoming even more judgmental and feeling guilty for being that way, I would then conform to and appease the very people that bullied and mistreated me.  But, then that enabled them to take advantage of me and to make even more unreasonable demands on my time and effort to please them. I would again resent and judge the injustice, feel guilty for it, and the guilt would "feed" and sustain  the "Bad little girl" identity in me. (There just  didn't seem to be any way I could upgrade that negative identity.)

       Had I not, early on, been exposed to all those biblical rules for human behavior by Grandpa, and knew in my heart that there was a way to be saved from such a negative lifestyle, I could easily have become a rebellious outcast in society--seeking to escape my guilt by taking drugs, drowning it with alcohol, eating myself into oblivion and possibly prostituting my body sexually.  But, because I had those rules drilled into my head, I could not escape feeling guilty for my failure to abide by them, but in that instance, the guilt proved to be a blessing.  It caused me to seek a more humane way to live.
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      The understanding that came to me from that quest was to find out that by resenting and judging my mother's unjust treatment of me I had allowed the negative spirit that was in her, to come into me,  It then masqueraded as my true identity and replaced my Creator's purpose for my life with its own self-serving agenda.  Because I had given my allegiance to it and allowed it to control my feelings, thoughts and actions  (even though it was done on the subconscious level), it had become my God. So, in that way I broke the first two rules of "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might" and "You shall have no other God but me." 

      All of the other rules for good behavior that Grandpa taught, then began to make sense to me, and I could see that if I sincerely sought to love God and to be obedient to his rules, his Holy Spirit would come into me and oust the negative spirit that had made a home there.  And that is exactly what happened; The Holy Spirit did come into me; it did oust the negative spirit from me; and as my true God, it is now directing and energizing me to write articles such as this and to fulfill his purpose for my life.

      So, now I find it easy to be obedient to God's rules: I can love my neighbor as myself; I can do unto others as I would have them do unto me; I can honor my deceased parents in memory; and I can TURN THE OTHER CHEEK, which means: that by relating to others who mistreat me with true love, patience and understanding, rather than resentment and judgment, I deflect their wrong back to them so they can then become aware of it. In that regard, it takes their attention away from seeing me as being the  "Bad little girl" and focuses it on themselves. In being aware of their own shortcomings,  they are then given a real opportunity to seek to be corrected of it.
    


    

   








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THE KING MAKERS or "First Table"

     When I was small my mother, brother and I would gather at family reunions.  My father was one of eleven children, eight of which were still living at that time.  These people were very close and cared a lot for each other, so that even though my father had passed on several years before, we, his immediate family, were always welcome at these family affairs.  Often, there were as many as twenty relatives who attended (my mother, my grand parents, uncles, aunts and cousins.)

      Mealtime for so many people presented quite a challenge, which a lot of people solve by serving buffet style, letting each person serve himself and sit where he can.  However, my relatives seemed to think that meals had to be a formal sit-down-at-the-table affair, which was usually accomplished by serving the meal in shifts. The table, often being large enough to seat eight or even ten diners, was then filled with one group after the other until all had been fed.

      However, there was one definite and fixed seating protocol in force at all of these family dinners; the men and boys were always served at the first table setting and the women, girls and smaller children were served at the second table setting.  I used to wonder about this arrangement, and I will admit that I resented having to wait until the "second table" to eat my lunch or dinner.  It seemed to me, that serving the men and boys first was glorifying them, and that being born a boy somehow gave him the "edge" over being born a girl.

       When I asked my mother why the women always had to eat last, she simply replied, "Because Daddies work very hard and need to eat right away."  That didn't make any sense to me, because I could clearly see that the womenfolk in the family worked just as hard as the men did, and quite often they were still washing dishes and putting youngsters to bed long after the men were sitting on the porch smoking their  "hand-rolled" cigarettes and discussing the challenges of their day.

       Along with serving the men at "first table" those ladies did something else that puzzled me. During the summer with its longer daytime hours, the women (after everyone had been fed and the kids were off playing somewhere--except me, who  seemed to always be sitting in a corner with my head buried in a book) would share secrets with each other. In hushed tones, they would giggle and talk about what little boys their husbands were when they were sick or got physically hurt in some way.  Occasionally, their voices would drop even lower (my ears would perk up then) and they would whisper bedroom secrets to each other, which were also less than complimentary to the husbands. 

      I sat listening to the women talk and wondered why, when being face to face with their husbands, they would set the men up to think and feel as though they were kings but would show contempt for them behind their backs.  My grandfather and uncles were hardworking, muscular, masculine looking males on the outside (who seemed to be perfectly capable of "wearing the pants" in the family), so why did their wives feel they needed to keep catering to and building up their husband's ego so that he appeared to be dominant and manly when he was already that way?

     After hearing the women talk in such derogatory tones about their husbands, I concluded that those men were not nearly as manly on the inside as they appeared to be on the outside, nor did they actually have the dominant role in the family. That meant the man's prestige over the woman was, for the most part, an illusion created by the woman, who, by willfully being submissive and catering to him, set him up to feel like a king. But what the man failed to realize was: the KINGMAKER is always greater than the king he or she creates.

     After watching that fiasco of the women manipulating their husbands to feel kingly, authoritative and in charge of their families, I made up my mind that when I grew up I would not cater to men that way and create an illusion of manliness for them.. For that reason I could never master the skill of flirting with the boys my own age so as to make them feel comfortable in being around me.  Older, more mature men had no problem "coming on" to me, but then, I was afraid of them; so, for the most part, I spent my teen aged years sitting on the sidelines, being a "wallflower."

    Then, my husband (who was six years older than I, but still young enough not to frighten me) came along, full of compliments and gifts.  I was not only flattered that he wanted me, I was also led to believe that his manly confidence and actions were genuine and that our marriage would be different than that of my grandmother and aunts ( Because of my father's early death I knew little about what went on in my own parents' marriage.)   However, I soon found out that my new husband's seeming manliness was also an illusion that had been created by his mother and sister catering to him.  What was even more disconcerting to me, was that he fully expected me (as the new woman in his life) to also cater to him and maintain that manly façade his mother and sister had created for him.

     When I loudly objected to being his personal temptress and Kingmaker, his illusion began to disintegrate and the bullying, fault-finding, spoiled child that he really was began to express itself when he was around me (the moment his sister or mother came on the scene, his old Macho, "Sure of himself" demeanor would be restored). My first inclination was to run away from him as fast as I could, but having been brought up in a culture where all the womenfolk were required to be submissive to the  male dominance, I knew I would not get any emotional support from my mother.  She would just tell me to go back to my husband and serve him--as she and all the other women in our family had done, and were still doing.

       So, for the first five years of  my marriage, I stood my ground against  my husband and fought him over who would become the dominant factor in our home.  Evidently, I was winning, because the more we fought the more manipulative and effeminate he became;  throwing temper tantrums; slamming doors as he irately walked out of the room; getting in his car and driving like a maniac through the streets (with a lot of tire-squealing noise to let me know how angry I had made him), along with subtly hinting that he would commit suicide, and embellishing it with a lot of verbal faultfinding towards me for causing it.  Finally, I became so resentful, upset and fearful that he would lose total control and possibly kill himself or me, that I gave in to keep the peace.

      In total surrender and submission to him, I then became my husband's KINGMAKER, setting him up to think feel and act as a King over me. By doing that, I kept the peace in my marriage relationship but lost much of my individuality.  In order to keep on serving him in that way, I had to accept that the correct way of relating to one's husband was simply to appease him and let him think he was King relative to you.  I then taught my daughter to also appease and cater to her future husband, as though he were a King over her; and when my son was born, I coddled and spoiled him to feel special and Kingly.

     My teenage vow that I would not be like my mother and all the other King-making womenfolk was forgotten, and instead, I hypnotically and compulsively replicated them by spoiling both my husband and my son. At that time, if someone had told me that I was being unfair to my daughter and spoiling my son, I would have (parrot-like) repeated the same old "Old wives tale" that had been passed down through the ages from mother to daughter to me, which was: "Mothers need to be much more careful in how they raise their sons, because boy babies are so much weaker than girl babies."

     So it was, that mothers of my ilk raised our sons to feel they are more special than the girls in the family (like the princes in the countries that still cling to having a male Monarchy), and in doing so, we, unknowingly, created an emotional need in the male child for his mother (or the mother in his wife or girlfriend) to continue catering to and maintaining that false sense of manliness and superiority that she has created in him.

     Then, by the time the hormones of puberty begin to create changes in the young man's voice and hair to grow on his chest, his dependency on the female for a sense of manliness and superiority begins to express itself as an urge to have sex with her--often beginning with what the Psychologists call a sexual "Oedipus attraction" to his mother, which then transfers to other females as he grows older. (By injecting his semen into the female's uterus, so that fertilization and the creation of new life can begin, the male--possibly on the subconscious level--symbolically feels God-like at the moment of ejaculation; a thrill that is repeated every time he has sex with a real female, or when masturbating and having sex with an imaginary female, or with those he watches in a pornographic video.

     Although many men use their brawn to feel manly and exploit it by being the best athlete or biggest bully, some use their intellect and seek to win fame and fortune to impress not only other men but especially the female; however, I would say that nothing makes the average male feel more manly than having a sexual relationship with the female.  After a time, he is so conditioned to need that sexual experience as a way of bolstering his sense of being manly, that the female can easily topple him off his kingly perch. All she has to do is to play up to his sexual need and infer that she is willing to have that relationship with him,  and thenn coyly withhold her charms from him until he is willing to do her bidding. He will then physically and emotionally burn with desire for her, court her and work two jobs to buy her whatever she wants, just so he can have the privilege of giving to her sexually. 

      However, many males do not take the seductive, King-making efforts of the female lying down and maintain their dominant position over her by using their Hierarchical place in society to keep her submissive and beneath them--both emotionally and economically. My husband, for instance, knowing I had no marketable skills to financially support myself, kept threatening to divorce me and put me out on the streets, if I didn't do as he wanted me to do.  He was so forceful that I, in my country girl naivety failed to realize that there are civil laws that would require him to continue supporting me even if we were divorced, particularly after we had a child.  Out of fear, I then backed down into submissiveness to him, and endured his bullying and degradation of me for the sixty-three-year duration of our marriage.

     That reflects the efforts of just one individual husband asserting his dominant authority over his wife to keep her submissive to him, but there are also religious groups and cultures that go to much greater extents to keep females submissive to the dominant superiority of the male. Some groups, for instance, hide their women behind heavy, dark veils and deprive them of education to keep them emotionally and financially dependent on the male.  Some cultures make their young women wear "chastity belts" to keep them from having sex with anyone other than the husband that her father may have chosen for her.  Some cultures mutilate (castrate) a young girls' genitalia so as to prevent her from enjoying sex and therefore to be less inclined to cheat on her husband.

      In all of those situations, the female is more or less viewed as  a household slave and sexual receptacle for the male's sperm, and even if he uses a condom to contain that sperm, he still gets the elevation to his ego by imagining that he, like God, is creating new life by impregnating her.  (I have no clue as to how Homosexuals get their egocentric elevation over having sex with someone of the same gender, other than the one with the more masculine personality possibly feeling King-like by having his partner be submissive to him, or the submissive one feeling superior to the King by knowing he or she is the Kingmaker.)

     Therefore, the proverbial battle of the sexes goes on and on, in varying degrees, from high to low, with both males and females seeking control over the one of the opposite sex, and neither one actually being aware that the battle between them comes from a prideful foundation in each of their consciousness. With either gender, it is all done because the prideful ego in each needs to feel superior relative to the other one.  Pride, in this particular context means an inordinate, exaggerated concept of self-worth, whether it be an inflated self-image (superiority complex) or a deflated self-image (inferiority complex).

      When the prideful ego in each person is involved, each one wants to be superior and to be served at "First Table."  Life then becomes an egocentric  "dog-eat-dog" existence as children in the family grow up trying to outdo each other, as well as anyone else that threatens to undermine their pride-created need to be in the superior, dominant role relative to someone else.  Masters and slaves are thereby created; empires are built and countries go to war with each other as the larger, stronger countries prey on and gobble up the assets of the smaller countries.  Sickness and disease and ultimate death are the end result of the traumatic stresses that each person, sooner or later, is forced to face; with little spiritual grace in evidence to help them  cope with their stresses, and only medical science and chemical medication to stave off their ultimate descent into darkness and death.

     What more can I say?  We are all aware of the current deteriorating state of our existence.  Drug pushers keep pushing their drugs; Distilleries keep on producing the alcoholic drinks that depressed, guilty, inferior-feeling souls use so as to try to drown their guilts; Smoke from tobacco cripples and kills thousands daily, and people are eating themselves into becoming fat monstrosities.

    Women are beginning to "thumb their noses" at the beastly hulks or effeminate "excuses" that pose as being real men, and are growing more masculine every day with their emotional need to be dominant and superior to the men. (One day they will possibly learn how to clone their offspring, and won't even need the male for fertilizing their egg cells.)

    Men are losing more and more of their dominance over the women and are becoming more angry by the minute, with rape happening more often, as they take out their vengeance and hatred of the female on any helpless female who can not defend herself, carrying it to the extent of molesting and raping little girls.

    Gangs of thugs and misfits group together and vent their anger on each other, or they kill anyone else that gets in their way just to feel strong and manly; and Homosexuality is becoming  more and more prominent as both male and females abdicate his or her physical gender in favor of anyone who will cater to his ego and provide the superiority each person needs to survive in a predatory pride-dominated environment.

      It boils down to the reality that present day humanity has inherited the same prideful ego weakness that was seen in the biblical history of Adam and Eve, which caused them to defy God's admonition to refrain from "eating" a specific "fruit" or they would die.  Eve, feeling inferior relative to both God and Adam, was the first one to disobey and to eat the forbidden fruit.  Then, when she did not die, she tempted Adam to also disobey God.   By giving into Eve's temptation, Adam showed that he also felt inferior to God, and so, like Eve, he pride-fully disobeyed God. Because of that, they were then separated from God and fell to the lower level of existence that humanity lives in today.

    Human beings can be reunited with God though, but only when both modern day Adam and Eve are willing to give up their prideful need to feel equal to or superior relative to God, with Adam being the first. Why must Adam be first? Why not Eve?  The answer is: Even if  Eve were to stop seducing Adam to feel Kingly relative to her, he would still have the same ego need in him to feel superior to her, because he is using that superior feeling to counteract his guilt and inferior feeling relative to God.

     Without that need to feel superior to God,  Adam, can then humble himself before God and, like the prodigal son in the biblical scriptures, he can be forgiven and reunited with God.  When that happens, he will express true manliness as a "Son of God," and because of that, he no longer will have any prideful need in him to be glorified, that will tempt Eve to be a KINGMAKER to him.
                       





   

                         

MY HYPNOTICALLY CREATED BAD KID IDENTITY

     Even though photos taken of me as a child show me to be physically pretty, and my grades in school reflect a higher than average intelligence, I was so conditioned by the degradation I received early on from my immediate and extended family members that for the greater part of my life I saw myself as being a physically ugly "bad kid."

     That identity was primarily created in me  by my mother, who not only scolded and shamed me for every childish fault that I had, she would also demote any ego-building praise I might receive from someone else in her presence.  If I was told that I was a pretty little girl, for instance, she would quickly add some derogatory remark, such as,  "She would be if she didn't sass her mother, bite her nails, or wet her bed. etc."

     Later as an adult, I asked her why she would not allow anyone to compliment me when I was growing up, and she simply replied, "Because you were pretty and smart and I didn't want you to get the big head over it."  She had no cause to worry about that possibility, because once she "planted" the suggestion into my head that I was a bad kid, that is who I became--as though she had molded me from a piece of clay.  My self-image was that of a bad kid who sassed her mother, bit her nails and wet her bed.

      That bad kid identity is what I then expressed back to her, by verbally sassing and physically rebelling against her, for which she would punish me in a hostile, degrading way. When I was younger it was by liberally applying my deceased father's belt to my backside, and when I grew too big to spank, a hearty slap across my mouth would temporarily stop my sassy response to her.

      By the time I started to school, I was conditioned to expect that my teachers would also punish and degrade me, and my expectations were fulfilled.  Since earlier on I had successfully defended myself against the bullying of my brother (who was older than I) by physically fighting him, I also fought the kids at school who tried to bully me. But, even though I was their intended victim, I was the one the teacher spanked for fighting (bullying was not against the school rules; fighting was).

     The same bullying from my peers, and its consequential punishment for my defensive actions, continued throughout the elementary grades at school, so that by the time I entered high school my self-esteem had  been greatly undermined; not only by the degradation I received from the authorities in my life but primarily by my own self-condemnation for being such a bad person.  I hated everything about myself; my body, my voice and especially my rebellious ways.

     Having noted that the kids who were more respectful and obedient to the authorities fared much better than I as far as getting the "good girl/good boy" pats on the head, I began at that time to try and conform, but my fear of failing and beng punished for it seemed to negatively affect every effort I made to try and please people, so that instead of being praised for my intent, I was scolded for not doing it better.

     When I married my husband a few years later, I did so primarily because he was so complimentary and ego-building to me. Because of that I desperately hoped the honeymoon would continue throughout the life of our marriage, but it wasn't long before he also began to find fault with virtually everything I said or did.  I endured that lifestyle for the first twenty years of my marriage before I finally began to seriously question what was wrong with me that I always ended up looking bad and being the loser in all of my relationships.
     
     In seeking the answer to that, my search led me to learn more about the art of Hypnosis. I then remembered seeing a movie of a hypnotist dangling a medallion on a chain in front of a man to induce a kind of trance-like sleep in him.  Then when the man became submissive and responded to simple commands such as "You are getting sleepy" the hypnotist sugested to him that he would feel like dancing when he woke up.  The hypnotist then snapped his fingers; the man woke up and immediately began to dance.  When the hypnotist asked him why he was dancing, the man replied that he just felt like it.

    That indicated to me that one person could easily be hypnotized by another to see himself as being different than he really is, and that he could  be made to act out the hypnotist's suggestions without realizing that he was no longer functioning from his own volition.  I began to see then, that my mother's impatient way of caring for me when I was still an infant and toddler, as well as her overly harsh discipline later on, had carried  the strong suggestion in it that I was a bad kid. With her strong willed personality overriding mine she had (possibly without realizing it) hypnotically projected that suggestion into my mind that I was a bad kid. Not realizing that I was hypnotically programmed to act out her suggestion, I then began to think, feel and act like a bad kid, just as the man in the movie had danced because the hypnotist had told him he would.

     Once I understood that, I further questioned why and how I had allowed my mother to control me to the extent that she could hypnotically make me see myself as being a bad person, when I actually was not a bad person.  The answer to that was:  As an infant and toddler I needed her nurturing patience and reassuring love, but instead I received impatience and degradation from her.  I had resented and judged her for that, and then I felt guilty for it, intuitively knowing that I should honor and respect my parent.  The guilt from that resentment and judgment then caused me to feel like a bad kid, and that created a receptivity in me to accept her suggestion that I was, indeed, a bad kid.

     That hypnotically created false Identity was then superimposed over my true identity and selfhood. Then, with more degradation from my teachers, peers, and even my husband, that false identity continued to be "fed." Soon, it controlled everything I said or did.  If I rebelled against an authority, I looked bad; if I tried to conform and please someone but failed to live up to what was expected of me, I reaped the negative feedback of criticism and degradation and I looked bad. No matter how hard I tried to become good to rid myself of that identity, everything I did seemed to have a negative feedback, so that I continued to think, feel and act like a bad kid.

      By delving into my own childhood more deeply, my search revealed more of my mother's childhood background and I found that her father had aslo been overly harsh and degrading in the way he disciplined her. However, she had meekly conformed to him and allowed him to dominate and control her, whereas I had angrily and resentfully rebelled against her.  Because of that, she had received the "good girl" praise from him, and that hypnotically caused her to see herself as being good. I had rebelled though and reaped the feedback of being harshly punished, defamed and rejected, which caused me to see myself as being bad; and try as I might to be good so as to upgrade my bad self-image, I still saw myself as being bad.
 
     By understanding what happened to my mother when she was growing up, I could no longer resent her when she continued to put me down, as I knew she was not functioning from her own true self but from her father's negative spirit that was still hypnotically expressing through her.  Without the guilt for resenting her making me feel like a bad person, there was nothing in me to substantiate the bad kid identity, so it simply left me.

     My self-image and personality then reverted back to that of just being a regular person; one that makes mistakes but is willing to learn and to grow--both in character and in moral virtue--from making those mistakes.  As such, I no longer have that Hypnotically Created Bad Kid Identity.

  

THE WORLD OF EGOTISM

                                                        

                                                               

     In my life long quest to better understand my complex self, as well as other human beings, I have noted that, to a great extent there is a little interplay of ego one-upmanship going on in every type of relationship. In the home the parents often compete with each other for the dominant role; the older siblings lord it over the younger ones; the big kids bully the little kids at school and social and religious groups look down their nose at those with differing cultures, skin color and religious beliefs.

     By seeing this type of scenario being played and replayed in a variety of ways, it is quite obvious to me that there is a need in each person to be the dominant one in a relationship.  With further questioning, the understanding that came to me about such a need was this:  On this egocentrically dominated plane of life (which, according to the Judeo/Christian scriptures is a fallen level of life for human beings) "Survival of the Fittest" is the governing law for both animal and human being.  For the animal it pertains to physical survival, but for the human being it involves  the survival of both his physical body and his ego.

     Because of the need to ensure one's own survival, every form of creation is endowed with a way of protecting itself from being destroyed by predators.  Human beings have increased intelligence to that of the animal in order to outwit and protect themselves from being killed and eaten by carnivorous animals; they also have an ego that enables them to be aware of their own individuality or selfhood, as well as a sense of self-worth relative to other human beings (pride), whch enables them to protect their consciousness from being controlled by someone with a more confident ego.  (If another person can undermine your confidence and cause you to doubt yourself, that person can control how you think--and and how uou think, controls how you act.)

     From what I have observed in other human beings and learned from my own personal experience, the threat to one's individuality and sense of self-worth often begins when the human baby is still in its cradle.  At that tender age the child's only protective defense is to cry in protest if he is uncomfortable physically, or is emotionally afraid; therefore, it is very important for the mother or caregiver to be particularly patient in the way she fulfills the child's needs.  But in the World of Egotism many mothers fail in that regard and are impatient with their child's need, showing it, in the annoyed expression on their faces or the irritated tone in their voices.

      Human babies come into the world being totally self-centered and egocentric, and if the mother relates to it impatiently her negative actions carry the subtle inference that the child is not worthy of being treated any better.  Since  the baby's pride is an integral part of his consciousness, he will sense the degradation to his self-worth and will cry in protest--perhaps incessantly if the mother fails to reassure him.  But, if he continues to feel degraded, without any warmth of approval and acceptance from other human beings to counteract the degradation, he will, as a matter of survival, be forced to stop crying and to be submissive to the greater physical and ego strength of his parent.  I call him the Conformist.

      By being forced to be submissive to his parent out of fear, rather than being free to make that choice, the Conformist child is not moving from his own selfhood, so he can then be manipulated to think and act as his parent wants him to do. ( One often sees a balky child that has conformed to his parent, being forced to play a certain instrument or to possibly embark on a career that the parent, himself, wanted to be or do, but was forced to give up in order to conform to his parent.)

       On the other hand, there is the egocentrically created rebellious child.  Although many parents (willingly or unwittingly) use the army sergeant "technique" of degradation to force their offspring into conformity to them, other parents cater to their child and encourage him to express his own individuality.  They may even go overboard and coddle the child with so much attention and freedom to "be true to himself" that he feels superior to  them.  He is then empowered to rebel, not only against them but also to other authorities in his life.  I call him the Rebel.

      When the rebel goes to school then, his sense of self-worth is so high that he fully expects his teachers and classmates to cater to him as his parents have done.  In order to assert his superiority he is usually the kid that disrupts the classroom and antagonizes his teacher, teases and belittles the girls and, with a chip on his shoulder, dares the other boys to fight  him. He is therefore often disciplined by his teachers, and the "goodie goodie" conformist kids reject him as being a bully and a spoiled brat.  When he matures, unless he has been forced into conformity by overwhelming degradation, he will still show his contempt towards the Conformists, as well as their established social traditions and customs.  As such, he attracts, and is attracted to, negative experiences and often gets involved in criminal activities, that bring further rejection, condemnation and possible imprisonment to him. 

      But, whether the child is egocentrically conditioned to be a Conformist or a Rebel he no longer functions from his own selfhood, and because his self-image and personality have been shaped by other people's opinion (high or low) of his worth as a human being, he lives in what I call the World of Egotism.