I feel compelled to finish this article now because of some writing I promised my yahoo mailing list I would do for my next Update.

" In October 2008 as I am working on my November Joy2MeU Update in which I promised my yahoo mailing list that I would talk about my experience of participating in a Landmark Forum Education weekend, I realized that in conjunction with that I would need to finish an article I started last year about the Law of Attraction. In early 1991 I wrote an article on New Age Misinterpretations of Metaphysical Truth and when The Secret came out I felt a need to expand on what I had touched upon in the Misinterpretations article because I have seen so many people hurt because of the ways in which spiritual teachers, new age gurus, and new thought churches were/are teaching the Law of Attraction." The Metaphysics of Emotions - emotional energy is real

I have also been feeling the tug to finish it because of what I hear when I attend a New Thought Church near here. I like the energy of the church, and the music, and mostly the message - except for the ways the minister teaches the Law of Attraction.

Anyone who teaches the Law of Attraction, who teaches that we create our life experiences through our way of thinking - without pointing out to the people they are teaching how negatively they were programmed in childhood, is going to cause many of the people they are trying to teach to feel shame.

"In working with codependents trying to overcome the power of the shame, I have often said, "You can't tell a shame based codependent enough that it was not their fault - that they were powerless to change until it was time to change." When people who are healers reinforce the judgment and shame of the disease through making black and white statements like the one above, I get angry because I have used such statements in the past to beat myself up. Until I learned how to have internal boundaries, and trust my own Truth, I took in statements from experts (whether they were authors or people with more recovery than I had or anyone that I saw as knowing more than defective me) and allowed it to fuel and feed my disease in shaming and judging and beating myself up. I am constantly needing to tell clients that such messages are not necessarily the Truth." - New Age Misinterpretations of Metaphysical Truth

It is wonderful to tell people that who they really are is Spiritual Beings having a human experience and that their True essence is Love. It is not okay when those Truths are taught in such a way that the people listening get the message that they are doing something wrong because of the way they think and react without telling them what the cause of that negative, fear and shame based relationship with life is, where it came from.

"As long as we keep reacting out of black and white polarized thinking, we are powerless to change our patterns. Recognizing we were powerless out of ego self to do anything but react, creates the space to allow us to start changing our relationship with ourselves and stop being our own worst enemy. Recognizing our powerlessness to control life out of ego, helps us to begin to take power away from the feeling of toxic shame and start forgiving ourselves. Awakening to the futility, the inherent dysfunction, of allowing our early childhood ego programming to define us and run our lives - and our powerlessness to change that until we became conscious that it needed to, and could, be changed - begins the process of learning to Love ourselves, and creates the space to start being open to relaxing and enjoying life. By learning to stop empowering polarized reaction to the toxic shame, we can start being honest enough with ourselves to own our responsibility in how our lives have unfolded so that we can make amends to our self and others - and that allows us to start changing our behavior and relationship patterns substantially and significantly." - Attack on America - A Call for Higher Consciousness Chapter 5

The minister at the church I go to here - which is a Science of Mind church - aggressively teaches the Law of Attraction as part of his fund raising efforts. The more you give to me, the more you are going to receive.  There is of course, Truth in the practice of Spiritual Tithing - of giving and receiving as I talk about on my Spiritual Tithes page.

"The Metaphysical Law of Karma - of cause and effect / giving and receiving / what you sow you reap - is what governs this life experience we are having. Giving and receiving are two parts of one dynamic - like breathing. As a friend of mine who is a New Thought minister says, "to say giving is more Blessed than receiving is like saying exhaling is more Blessed than inhaling." Just as breath needs to flow in and out, so too does energy need to flow - on all levels, including emotional energy. Blocking the flow of any energy, whether it is money energy or emotional energy, is dysfunctional.

  Human beings are not damned with an n. We are emotionally dammed. Dammed up, blocked up - which is what causes us to feel damned with an n.

Quote from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

And all energy is ultimately, on the highest level LOVE energy. Stopping the flow of energy, blocks the flow of Love." - Metaphysical Law: Giving and Receiving ~ Donations / Love Offerings

It is good to tithe where we are spiritually fed - it helps us to align with Universal energy flow, to keep the giving and receiving flowing. Learning to keep the energy flowing between levels was vital to me in my recovery - and part of the reason the 12 steps are a program of empowerment.

"What the Twelve Steps did for me was to help me start letting go of the ego-self's faulty programming. When I surrendered trying to control things out of ego-self and started looking to a Higher Power is when I started to access my Spiritual Self. My Spiritual Self is the part of me that knows that I am a Spiritual Being who is related to everyone and everything - that we are all ONE. Through my Spiritual Self I have access to all the power in the Universe.

So when I started praying and meditating I started to access the power to change my life. And it was very important for me personally to realize that prayer and meditation did not just mean formal prayer and formal meditation. What I came to realize is that prayer is "talking to" my Higher Power and other Recovering people, while meditation is "listening to" my Higher Power and other Recovering people. I learned to talk to and listen to my Higher Power all day long - to keep the energy flowing between the physical level and the Spiritual level - between my self and my Self." - Powerlessness & Empowerment - why the 12 steps work

Tithing is aligning with metaphysical law, but this minister really takes it to extremes. Recently he gave a pitch about how he realized that he had been tithing 10% when he was 12 or 13 years old and that as an adult 10% wasn't nearly enough. Then he used the examples of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet as people who tithed 99% of their income. Excuse me! I think he might have been confusing cause and effect there a bit. If indeed there are billionaires who tithe 99% of the millions more they make in a year, it might just have something to do with the tax breaks they get for charitable donations. I wonder how much either of those guys tithed when they were starting out.

And I am not denying that it is possible to use the Law of Attraction to make money. It certainly is. In a quote later on the page I talk about using metaphysical law to manifest new cars or whatever. It is possible to that Donald Trump uses metaphysical law to make money, but I would bet you that Donald Trump is not an old soul. I don't know about Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, but because someone has made a lot of money, has millions or billions, does not mean they are enlightened or Loving or have a high level of consciousness. It is hard for people who are heart connected to have a lot of success in a system that does not honor and respect the heart.

"One of the things that I believe is important to understand when looking at what is happening in the world, is that there are different categories of souls. It is old souls who are awakening to enlightenment in this New Age. The majority of people on the planet are not old souls. That does not make them bad or wrong or less than old souls. They are the enlightened ones in some other space time illusion - perhaps in some other dream. They are not going to become enlightened at this time - they are not supposed to. It is not necessary for them to become enlightened in this particular illusion - and because of that they do not even understand what we are talking about. That is perfect.

It also helps to realize that most of the people who have power and riches are not old souls. Old souls have lived a lot of lifetimes and were born at a heart chakra level of consciousness in this lifetime. Their life paths are about following their heart path - not the power and acquisition path of those who are coming from a solar plexus chakra level of consciousness. In fact, many old souls are out of balance in relationship to their solar plexus consciousness (and therefore money and material possessions) because they did not know how to allow themselves to open up to manifestation without betraying their heart path. Many of us had the experience in past lives of abusing our power and are terrified of doing it again. We are also terrified because in past lives when we owned our power we got punished for it. Prior to the reversing of the energy field of Collective Human Emotional Consciousness back into positive alignment with Love, growing towards the Light attracted the dark. In this new Age growing towards the Light will attract more Light. (Although it won't always feel like it.)" - My Spiritual Belief System and the New Millennium

The Law of Karma is not just about this lifetime. That is evidently what is believed in the Science of Mind beliefs. That Karma just relates to cause and effect as it pertains to creating your reality out of your beliefs in this lifetime. That minister was going on one day about all that Truly exists is Love and The Law - he kept hammering on it. Basically saying that if you aren't creating anything you want in your life than you are not aligned with Love because you aren't applying the Law of Attraction. He was giving out the message that anyone listening who wasn't living the life they wanted to live was doing something wrong, was not aligned with Love. I kept wanting to scream at him - yes the Law, but what about the Law of Karma. The Law of Karma trumps the Law of Attraction.

"Being Creators of our life - this is one that I run into in Metaphysical New Thought Churches sometimes, as well as in other New Age type associations. The law of mind action which states that what we focus on is what we create - is True. The problem is that isn't the whole Truth. There are other factors involved - including Karma. We are co-creators in our life - not the sole creator.

It is also, one of the black and white statements that are sometimes made that can convey shaming messages if not qualified. Telling someone they are creating their own reality without also telling them that they were programmed to come from fear and negativity - and that they were powerless over that programming until they learned they can change it - can cause codependents to feel ashamed. It is a Truth but not the whole Truth." - New Age Misinterpretations of Metaphysical Truth

I very much disagree with that very limiting interpretation of the Law of Karma. I believe that Karma is a Law of energy interaction that operates over multiple lifetimes. When I was trying to figure out how there could be a Loving Higher Power, I realized that it was necessary for me to do a paradigm shift in my perspective for that to even be remotely possible.

"When I first got into twelve step recovery in January of 1984, I had great resistance to even hearing the word spiritual because I associated it with religion and God. The concept of God that I had grown up with was a mean, vicious SOB - and I didn't want anything to do with that God or anything having to do with religion or spirituality because of the Spiritual abuse I had suffered at the hands of the shaming religion I grew up in.

But I was desperate. I was willing to try anything to stop living in the hell my life had become the last 5 or 6 years of my alcoholic drinking. I was told that spiritual was not the same as religious, and that I could choose a concept of a Higher Power of my own understanding. I was desperate enough to start trying out this 12 step thing - and to consider their idea that maybe there might be a Loving Higher Power.

So I started on a quest to figure out a concept of a Higher Power that could possibly be Loving.

One of the first things I needed to do was to change the context in which I viewed life. I realized that if I looked at this life experience as if it were a one time thing - that our existence began with birth and ended with death - there was no possible way that it could be fair and Loving. Not with billionaires on one hand and children starving to death on the other.

The only way I could see that it was possible that there was a Universal Force that could possibly be Loving, that could possibly Love me in my imperfect humanness, that could possibly have a Divine Plan that was somehow fair and equitable - was over the span of multiple lifetimes. Reincarnation is what made sense when I started searching for some Spiritual answers.

"All the worlds a stage and the men and women merely players.

They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts."
- William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II Scene 1

We have all lived multiple lifetimes. We have all experienced every facet of being human.

We are now not just healing our wounds from this lifetime, we are doing Karmic settlement on a massive scale, at a very accelerated rate.

Karma is the Loving, wonderful law of energy interaction which governs human interaction. Like the other levels of Universal Law, it is about cause and effect. In this case, "what you sow, you reap."

Karmic Law dictates that every action of cause on the Physical Plane is paid for with a consequence of effect on the Physical Plane. In other words, no one can end up in the hole, or in some hell in an afterlife. (Hell is here on earth, and we have all experienced it already.)

Quote from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

Starting to see death as a transition, as a milestone in a longer journey, made life make more sense to me. It at least had the possibility of being fair and Loving, if the part of it I could see was only a small piece of a much larger puzzle." - Attack on America: A Spiritual Healing Perspective & Call for Higher Consciousness Chapter 1

I talk more about Karma in this excerpt from the online book I have been quoting: Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in the Light Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life Chapter 13: Changing the Music: Love instead of fear and shame

"We are works in progress. Wherever we are at in this moment is a perfect part of our path - is a transitory moment in our journey through this lifetime. We are involved in a dynamic transformational process that is unfolding perfectly according to the Divine Plan of a Loving Universal Source. We are not in control of this process. What we can have some control of is our perspective of / attitudes towards / relationship with, the journey. By learning to accept where we are at today with compassion and Love, we gain the capacity to get some enJoyment out of this day of our journey. By learning to start stopping the shame and judgment internally, we start seeing with more clarity anything in our life that is not working in our best interests, so we can do whatever we are capable of today - in our imperfect human way - to change the things we have the power to change. We are co-creators here, not The Creator. And nothing we do as co-creators is powerful enough to cause us to be separated from The Source.

"Free Will - free will is an illusion that exists within certain levels of the illusion. On the highest level, we are all part of the ONENESS and nothing any of us do can change that - because ONENESS is the highest Truth. On Lower levels we have free will to a certain extent. All of our actions on the physical plane however are governed by the Law of Karma - so that free will exists within the context of Karmic settlement." - New Age Misinterpretations of Metaphysical Truth

We do not have the power to separate from The Source because separation is an illusion. The Age of Healing and Joy which has dawned in human consciousness on the planet is an age in which the old souls are doing Karmic settlement for lifetimes of Karma. We are not being allowed to create new Karma in this lifetime - we are here to settle Karmic debts.

We do not have the power to do anything except the Karmic settlement we are here to accomplish. Abundance is a good example of this reality. Just because abundance has not manifested in our life financially does not mean we are doing something wrong - or that it is a situation that we necessarily have the power to change. Karmically it may be necessary for me, or any one of us, to learn to be fully alive and access Joy and serenity in this lifetime without ever having financial abundance.

"Abundance - as long as we are in the Karmic realm, let me address abundance. Some of us came into this lifetime with issues to heal around money and financial abundance. Other people had already done their healing around abundance issues - or will do it in some future life. People that have a very easy time manifesting financial abundance are not better than, or more evolved than, people who have struggled financially in this lifetime. It is just about having different types of paths - it is not something that rich people are justified in judging other people for (or vice versa), or that anyone needs to feel ashamed of because it means you are doing something wrong.

Now, all of us have childhood experiences that are reflections of the Karmic debts we need to settle. That means, that things in childhood wounded us around the issues we are here to work on and heal. So, like any other issues, abundance is an area that many people need to work on - to remove the dysfunctional, self sabotaging programming that comes from our childhood. As long as we are working on uncovering our wounds and healing them, we are doing our part in the process. It is important to learn to accept and Love ourselves no matter where we are in regard to any issue, and not give any issue (such as not having money) the power to affect our sense of self worth - or set us up to think that we are doing something wrong if we have not reached "there" yet. We may never get "there" in this lifetime - it is important not to buy into being the victim of ourselves in relationship to any issue." - New Age Misinterpretations of Metaphysical Truth

There is no destination to be reached. Doing the work does not mean we are going to be rewarded in some specific way in this lifetime. Being willing to do the healing work does not necessarily mean we are going to get that special relationship or the financial abundance or whatever - in this lifetime. Doing the work makes us available for the possibility of having all of our dreams come true - it is not a guarantee the we will reach some specific goal / destination in this lifetime.

"So, I am walking to the post office exploring the idea of this new type of web page and the following interaction took place within me (in my inner reality these are fleeting thoughts rather than a formal conversation.)

ego/critical parent: "Your giving away all of this information for free and meanwhile you can't even pay your rent. That's really stupid"

Magical thinking inner child (who believes in fairy tales): "Oh, but we're going to be rewarded. All kinds of good things are going to happen - including getting a lot of money."

Adult on Spiritual Path: "Now, settle down you two. In the first place, it is very important and wonderful to give away what I have been given - that is how to keep the energy flowing - and that is what works, it is what I need to do for me/us. And I am going to do it because it feels good, it feels right - like the next thing in front of me to do. We'll worry about the rent when it is time to pay the rent - for today, for this moment, we will do what feels right for today. And I need to tell you that our reward may just be to feel good about what we're doing - and if that is all there is, that is still a wonderful gift. On top of that we are getting positive feedback from all over - and that is a great bonus. There may never be a lot of money, but that is not important. There is enough money for today. And we are very blessed to have something to do today that is fulfilling and makes us happy."

So I set a boundary with the critical parent by not buying into the criticism, I set a boundary with my inner child by not building up expectations of some kind of reward, and I work my recovery program by focusing on the half of the glass that is full (my needs that have been met) and being grateful for the gifts I have been given, instead of allowing the disease to focus on fear and scarcity, on the half that is empty (my wants that have not been met.)

The purpose of doing the inner child healing work is to improve the quality of my life today - not to reach a destination or reward. Today, I have choices about how I respond to my internal process. Today, I can let go of the future and the past for this moment, which gives me the freedom to be happy and joyous in the moment for quite a few of the moments of my day." - Setting Boundaries with inner children

The reward for doing this work is in the quality of our day to day life - and in our next lifetime. Of course most of us want very much to believe this is our last lifetime - but I believe that though we are close to graduation, we are not quite there yet.

The destination thinking is part of codependency - part of the intellectual paradigm we learned in childhood. As I say in the quote from my book that I use earlier in this work, the Universe has the power to get us where we are supposed to be when we are supposed to be there - our choice is to follow the carrots or wait for the stick. The purpose of doing this healing is to be able to stop being so afraid of doing life "wrong." The reward for remembering who we really are and doing what we need to do to tune in more clearly to our intuitive guidance is that we get to relax and follow the carrots. It makes life so much easier and more enJoyable.

"I learned to focus on my recovery as my number 1 priority because it worked to make my life easier and less painful in the long run. It took me years in recovery to really understand all of this - and to give recovery the priority focus - but eventually I came to understand that I could make a conscious choice to be a positive co-creator in my life instead of a negative one. That I could start creating cause that would have better effect.

I focus on recovery because it works. By paying attention, being conscious and willing, I get to follow the messages instead of forcing the Universe to use the stick on me. Choosing to make recovery the number one priority in my life makes life easier and less painful. Bottom line." - January 2002 Update Newsletter: Part 1

  Chapter 13: Changing the Music: Love instead of fear and shame

I also talk in this excerpt about one of the core dynamics of the disease of codependency - destination thinking. We don't feel comfortable in our own skins in the moment and feel like we won't be okay until we get "there" - wherever that is: the money, the relationship, the house, whatever. We were programmed to seek a destination by fairy tales - that were later followed up by books and movies and songs - that always ended "and they lived happily ever after."

Because of this destination thinking dynamic, many people hear the Law of Attraction and immediately start trying to create the destination that they think is going to fix them and make them happy. They buy into trying to get there - and feel like they are doing something wrong if they haven't gotten there yet. It is a grave disservice that so many spiritual teachers are teaching the Law of Attraction in a way that causes people to focus on reaching a destination instead of being present for the journey. As I said in the excerpt I just quoted: "Doing the work makes us available for the possibility of having all of our dreams come true - it is not a guarantee the we will reach some specific goal / destination in this lifetime."

We want to do the positive affirmations and change our thinking to make it possible to create what we want in our lives, but that doesn't mean we are doing something wrong if we haven't gotten there yet - or that we won't be okay until we get there. Here is an article in which I discuss this destination thinking and applying the Serenity Prayer in our lives.

"In our disease we were reacting to life out of a dysfunctional belief system. We were playing the game of life according to a set of rules that do not work to bring us happiness, serenity, and fulfillment.

There is no happily ever after on this plane, in these bodies. The goal is not to do life "right" in order to reach a destination. True success is achieved by learning, growing, and enjoying the journey - not by reaching a specific destination.

Living can only be done one day at a time. Today is all we really have. If we spend all of our time focused on the future we will miss out on today.

We were taught to be human doings rather than human beings. The ability to "be" here now, in the moment, is one of the goals of healing and recovery. To be able to be present for, and live, in the moment is a gift (a present) that we can give ourselves by aligning our will and actions with healing.

That does not mean that being here now is the only goal. Some people use "being in the moment" as an excuse to indulge in instant gratification. Instant gratification is not bad or wrong, but if we are constantly empowering instant gratification we are not taking responsibility for being co-creators in our life. Because of our childhood wounds, the majority of the time when we indulge in instant gratification, what we are doing is letting the child's wounds run the show - the "King/Queen Baby" within us whose mantra is "I want what I want and I want it now!" . . .

. . . . . We are co-creators in this life experience we are having. That means that there are some areas over which we have some power and control and some areas that we do not. The essence of the dysfunction of the condition of codependence, which is the human condition in my definition, is that we were taught to try to control things over which we have no control - and were not taught how to have healthy control over that which we can control.

I cannot control other people. I cannot control life events. I do not have the power to force a specific outcome in my life in a way that will work to satisfy the need that I think it will satisfy.

It is possible to force an outcome. Someone with enough money and/or power (political, physical, corporate, emotional, etc.) can sometimes force other people to do what they want. It is possible to bully, intimidate, rape, take over, force out of business, steal, lay on guilt trips, etc., to get an outcome you desire.

It will not fill the hole in your soul however. It will not slake the thirst you are trying to quench in a way that is lasting. It will not ultimately meet the need which you fixated on that outcome to gratify.

It will not bring peace, fulfillment, and True Love into your life. Forcing an outcome is ultimately dysfunctional.

Likewise, life events cannot be controlled. You can work and slave to buy the dream house - and have it wiped out in a matter of moments in a fire or earthquake. You can scrimp and save for retirement - and have your life savings wiped out in a financial disaster, or die the day you retire.

There are no guarantees what tomorrow will bring. Focusing all of our time and energy on the future is dysfunctional - not only because it causes us to miss out on today - but because it simply does not work to guarantee an outcome.

The out come (end result / destination) is what we are powerless over. We can take action towards an outcome, but then we need to let go of the results. We can plant the seeds of the garden we wish to grow but we cannot guarantee that the results will be what we envision - or will satisfy our underlying need.

Our job as co-creators is to imagine the garden, plant the seeds and nurture them, and enjoy the process that we are involved in today. We are ultimately powerless over the outcome. We do have the power to be present for the journey no matter what the destination ends up being.

If we are always focused on the destination, we are not living today. I spent most of my life feeling like my life would begin when ____ - I got the money, or the success, or the relationship, or whatever. That is dysfunctional and codependent and sets me up to be a victim of life and other people.

In order not to be the victim it is necessary to own our power to make choices. It is necessary to exercise power in the areas that we have some power and control.

The things that I have the power to control to some extent are my own attitudes and behaviors. I have the power to choose what actions I take." - The Recovery Process for inner child healing: Sharing experience, strength, and hope, taking action
We are co-creators in our lives - not the sole creators. We cannot create anything we want in life. I will never be a pro baseball player in this lifetime - no matter how much I use the Law of Attraction to try to create it. People are mislead by the way this is taught all the time. A guy I knew from AA who also had his kid at the same Montessori school that Darien goes to, heard the secret about 9 months ago. He got all charged up about creating wonderful things in his life. He start focusing on the positive and taking actions to create what he wanted. He decided that there was too much negativity in AA and that it was holding him back - so he stopped going to meetings.

There is a lot of negativity in AA because of the black and white thinking I talked about above - but the Law of Attraction is not powerful enough to make an alcoholic into a non alcoholic. I ran into him a couple of weeks ago. He had gotten a DUI because he had gone back to drinking.

Now my friend is responsible for his actions. He did not go back to drinking just because of the way he heard the Law of Attraction taught. It was in fact his codependency that caused him to relapse. But the way the Law of Attraction is being taught does a disservice to many people who buy into the illusion that they can create anything they want in their lives; who get caught up in the destination thinking to the extent they aren't being present for the journey today; who feel ashamed because of how their life has unfolded because of the negative thinking they were programmed with; who get the message that they are doing something wrong if they feel fear or have a disease or don't have financial abundance in their lives.

On the day when the minister I have been speaking of was hammering away saying, "there is only Love and the Law" - he actually mentioned how someone aligned with the Law of Attraction can cure themselves of cancer. After a few more minutes of hammering away at "The Law and Love" are all that exist he said, "One person cures themselves of cancer - another person dies of cancer." And then he kind of shrugged. He didn't actually say that anyone who died of cancer was not aligned with Love and the Law of Attraction - but he implied it very strongly.

That is ridiculous! Absurd!!! He is not conscious of what he is saying. We all die - it does not mean that someone who dies of a disease is doing something wrong. This thing with cancer is something that I ran into one day some years ago in a workshop I was doing.

"One other thing I want to note from that quote from my journal. The thing I mention about cancer was a result of something that happened in a workshop I did at a Unity Church in Santa Barbara a few years back.

If one person is able to cure themselves of cancer and another person dies of cancer - that doesn't mean one person did it right and another did it wrong.

In some context I mentioned someone I knew who cured themselves of cancer. Later when I was answering questions, a woman in the group asked a question that obviously was very emotional for her - and also made it clear that she had taken my reference to mean that her husband who died of cancer had not done his healing "right."

At that point I got to share with that person, and the people in the workshop, the message from the passage above about our paths unfolding perfectly. The reason I want to make note of this here, is because of the irony involved in what happened in that workshop. I know a number of people that have been able to successful heal themselves of cancer, but the one I was thinking about whom I made mention of on that day is a perfect example of the kind of sophisticated level of the process I am talking about in this chapter - and in much of this online book.

That particular woman did not cure her cancer because she was so enlightened, because she was so far along in her recovery. It was because of her codependency that she was able to cure that cancer. It was a project to her. She was one of the types of codependents who are addicted to doing projects - and doing them perfectly. She used her black and white thinking to do the "right" things to cure her cancer.

Accessing and manifesting the power available to us from the Universe doesn't require codependency recovery. This woman was a perfect example. She was doing it "right" - and because she was following a formula that worked, she was able to do something modern science says is impossible. But like so many codependents who believe they are doing it "right" - from health fanatics to anyone who believes their way is the only way to God to the New Age authors who tell people that Love and fear are the only choices - they will judge and shame other people for where they are at on their paths. Some of the more enlightened people, who have been on a spiritual / healing path for years, may do that shaming very subtly because their ego self image is invested in what a loving person they are - but unless their intellectual paradigm is large enough to be Truly Loving, a discerning person can sense their judgment (especially if you disagree with or challenge them.)

This experience with cancer for the woman I knew, did not help her relax in her relationship with life, did not help her to access more Joy in her life - because she was still relating to life from a black and white intellectual paradigm that required her to try to control life. She had been able to heal her cancer but hadn't changed the fundamental music of her dance. When she finished her healing cancer project she went right back into her remodeling her house project to try to do that perfectly.

We cannot control life. Trying to control life will keep us in fear of making "mistakes," of doing life "wrong" - will keep us destination oriented. We were programmed to relate to life as if it were a test we can fail. That type of relationship with life does not allow us to relax and be present in the moment today.

Many of us have pursued healing and Recovery just like we did the rest of our lives - as if it were a destination to be reached where we would find "happily ever after." We have gone to healers and psychics and therapists in order to learn the "right" way to do life.

Recovery is not a dance of right and wrong, of black and white - it is a dance of integration and balance. The questions in Recovery are: Is it working for you? Is the way you live your life working to meet your needs? Is the way you are living your life bringing you some happiness?