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POST TWO:  This is a complex posting in two parts that refers to a topic so vast and complex that I cannot really even begin to address it – no matter how I might try.  The first writing today lies below in POST ONE.  This section will be my attempt to try to describe in part what has been occupying my sleeping-dreaming time throughout the past two nights.

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These words I write here are simply my attempt to describe how I comprehend what I have been dreaming about and do not reflect anyone else’s ideas.

In the dreams I have been shown a vast interlinking highway that comes to me in words as “a spiritual internet of thought” to which “on ramps” and “exit ramps” are being built.  There are masses of people intently hard at work on the construction of this system.  Although in many ways this “internet” is not unlike what we know of the internet we use in this material world, the one in my dreams is also entirely different.

This spiritual internet is absolutely – and I mean absolutely protected by God.  It cannot be accessed in any way by any human being who does not have pure loving good intentions concerning all aspects of this linking system.  It is not liable to any failings of any kind because it does not exist in the material world.

In my dreams it seems that it is mostly women who are concerned with the use of this system of thought.

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For background, readers might wish at some point to read some of the information contained here:

LINKS HERE TO FOLLOW FOR DESCRIPTION OF ‘WOMEN’S QUALITIES’ AND WHAT THEY MEAN FOR THE FUTURE OF THE HUMAN RACE

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The dreams are about what is needed to nurture humanity in every necessary way.  The dreams tell of very difficult transitional stages in its evolution that the human race is likely to go through in the not-very-distant future.  These struggles are birth pains which will end in the existence of peace on earth among humankind.

What will be required through these growth and developmental stages are the qualities humanity at present considers to be ‘feminine’.  Women also know how to sustain life on every level — and by accessing this “spiritual internet” I was shown in my dreams women will not only never forget what we already know, we will remember what seems now to have been forgotten, and we will share ALL THAT WE KNOW and all that we learn with each other (because there is no difficulty with transmitting information across time or space) when that information is needed — anywhere by anyone on the planet.

Men are not and will not ever be barred access to the information this “spiritual internet” holds — the requirement for purity of soul is the same — souls are without gender.  Information this “web” is providing specifically about nurturing humanity has yet to become common knowledge to men – but this is changing and will continue to do so.

That’s about it for the dreams.  VERY busy people.  LOTS of very busy people already know this system exists.  LOTS of very busy people are increasing ways to access the system, and are finding ways to use the information within that system for nurturing, healing and expanding the ever-advancing positive state of the human race toward its ultimate destiny of creating a peaceful global civilization based on true spiritual knowledge and practice.

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POST ONE:  This may be the strangest post I have ever written because it is based upon what I dreamt all night last night and the night before.  This post is based on what cannot be seen in this tangible, material world.  And it is based upon what I know about what I knew about a long time ago in the middle of my 7th year of life.

In some ways I have hopes that if I write this post the dreams of these past two nights will not come back to me.  In other ways I criticize myself, “Why, Linda, would you wish these dreams to disappear?”

My response to myself would be, “I don’t want these dreams if I am the only one having them.  I do not wish to have this kind of dream if it is nothing but pure nonsense.  The dreams speak of things too important for me to have them if there is nobody else to whom I can speak of them to, nobody else who will understand them.”

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At age 60, as I look back to something I knew at age 7, I know that it didn’t bother me in any way to know what I knew then nobody else I knew — knew it.  I know now that what I knew when I was 7 was absolutely true.  But back then I had no way to comprehend the implications or the ramifications of what I knew (though at 7 I didn’t even know that what I knew was something that even COULD be known!).

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What I have dreamt about these past two nights is connected, I strongly suspect, to what I knew when I was 7.  If this is true, then I feel as singularly alone with this information as I was at age 7 — only now as an adult I recognize such strangeness when I detect it!

I spoke to no one about what I knew at 7 because it never entered my mind to put that awareness into words.  Now I at least dare to write here about something that I could class as a being a riddle more than anything else.

In the days when most believed earth to be the center of our universe, to speak otherwise was to either speak heresy — or a riddle.

In the days when most believed the earth to be flat, to suggest that the earth is round instead was either heresy — or a riddle.

What I knew at age 7 along with the expansion of that awareness through these two repeating dreams would, in today’s world, mostly be considered with the same dead-end, narrow-minded perceptions among nearly every human being alive.

*Age 7 – What I knew at Easter, 1959

But, most thankfully, not among ALL humans.  There are some people who have also been blessed (I can think of no other way to explain how it is possible to know something that is important and true way before the majority of other humans ‘get it’) with understanding truth that I have also been given to understand.

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I will never be able to say in this lifetime that I have honored to the best of my ability the truth that I have been blessed to recognize.  I come up very short when it comes to be able to live up to — inside and out — the guidance about spiritual matters that God has chosen to reveal to me (for reasons I will never know in this lifetime).

What I do glimpse in my understanding, and have glimpsed since I was in the middle of my 7th year of life, is that God put into action a great plan for humanity when He created us.  This plan has always been moving forward — and humanity with it.

This plan can be glimpsed by anyone who can read the prayer posted at this link with an open mind and an open heart —

*PRAYER – ALL HUMANITY HAS BEEN CREATED ‘FROM THE SAME STOCK’

Peace will come to this planet.  Peace will come to and through the one species that has been created with powers to access and to comprehend spiritual realities — the human race.  The choice has been given to us as to how the changes that need to happen will transpire.

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There is some very important information posted at this link:

*WOMEN’S ROLE IN ESTABLISHING WORLD PEACE

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Click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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Sometimes I wonder about the feelings that have no names, at least not that I can think of in English.  I suppose I could call this one I have today ‘the very windy day’ feeling.  Maybe the wind does bring feelings with it sometimes.

I remember this feeling even from my childhood.  Of course back then, it wasn’t just wind that brought it.  Being on the mountain side when the clouds were coming in low and piling up against the mountains at the end of the valley so that in moments I would be enveloped in fog so thick I couldn’t see the house when I was outside brought a very similar feeling.

Is this a sort of Oz-onian feeling as in being picked up by a gargantuan wind that rips one from all that’s familiar and sends you flying into a foreign world in another time and place?

Does this wind carry feelings from all of us from all around the world?  Does it bring with it a nameless kind of longing — for what?  For nothing that is – or can be – known?

I used to call this feeling my ‘wild’ feeling.  It used to come to me often when there was no wind at all on the outside of me — but oh boy!  There was this wind on the inside of me, making me feel huge inside – and empty – and alone.

Is this a wind that those upon sailing vessels in the middle of some vast unknown ocean used to pray for?

Is this a wind that promises change – some kind of change – change that is unknown because it is not here yet?

Howling wind, howling like the wolves did around us on the Alaskan mountain.  Howling like Banshees.  Howling like souls of the lost.  Howling that always carries some question, a question that is by itself voiceless, soundless, silent without the wind to carry it around like a bit of seed fluff nobody notices unless it lands on you or me.

Howling wind with echoes of heart aches for those we long for and miss, those we love forever, those who are not with us in the present moment in body with their smiles, their voice, their touch, their shadow that walks around with them – where we can see it.

Wind that crosses prairies, howls across wide open spaces, fills nooks and crannies with soil robbed from one place and carried vast distances to someplace else.

Wind that sends all but the strongest birds into hiding places among branches of trees until it is quiet again.  Wind that swallows shouts.

Wind that threatens to expose our secrets and the greatest mysteries of life.

These winds that remind of what is forgotten most of the time, remind of what is coming, of things that animals know like the coming of earthquakes, the coming of Tsunamis, the coming of the future and the leaving of the present into the past — where the past does not stay — because the wind knows where the past is — as it brings it swirling again around us on these days, these very windy days, in memories carried within feelings we cannot name.

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I am reminded of —

MY MOTHER’S DREAM – March 29, 1960
The whole family was out walking and suddenly we looked up to see a dark rainbow appear – then it got bright and behind it a skyline appeared outlining massive dormed buildings such as I’ve never seen and skyscraper bldgs – then it all disappeared and a big wind came.

We realized it was a hurricane. We could hardly stand up against the wind. We saw big apt bldgs on the sides of the streets but the entrances faced another street and we were on the wrong side. The wind grew stronger – finally a door appeared and we went in the bldg and the person asked us what was wrong? We told her of the great wind but as we pointed outside – all was silent and the wind was gone … and I awoke.

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My daughter, who is working on her doctorate (and who also has a two year old and is expecting her second child) sent me this link with some questions, I suppose, on both the accuracy of the information presented here and its usefulness:

Attachment: Why it’s crucial for your baby

My first reaction to even applying my thoughts to this website is that I am tired.  I am very, very, very tired of trying to think through to its truth the topic of infant attachment and I am tired of trying to imagine how the facts about this most important topic can be conveyed to ‘the public’.

Trying to see how anyone can write something even slightly intelligent (or useful) about ‘forming an attachment’ with a toddler without considering all attachments this little person either has had or has not had prior to that age makes me so tired I can hardly begin to think about how impossible ‘forming an attachment’ with a toddler would be if there has been no appropriate attachment from at least the instant it was born (actually, since conception).

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The first thing I would say to my daughter on the topic is the same thing I would say to anyone else who wishes to begin to think with any intelligence about the topic of early attachment.  It is not enough to allude to the early attachment research and theory.  In today’s world the beginning light of understanding about human attachment lies in the work of the developmental neuroscientists who are clearly speaking the truth about attachment – though (I would sure be tired if I were THEM) – so very, very few people wish to take the time and apply the effort it takes to understand what these people are saying.

Read these critically important articles by Dr. Allan N. Schore:

MOST IMPORTANT:

The Effects of a Secure Attachment Relationship on Right Brain Development, Affect Regulation, & Infant Mental Health

Followed by:

Attachment and the Regulation of the Right Brain

The Effects of Early Relational Trauma on Right Brain Development, Affect Regulation, and Infant Mental Health

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And check out these notes taken from Schore’s book, Affect Regulation and the Repair of the Self by Allan N. Schore (Apr 2003)

**Dr. Allan Schore on Emotional Regulation – Notes

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There is NO EASY WAY to understand what attachment actually is – or what it actually does!  In fact, without understanding what Schore is telling us about attachment, we will not really have a workable understanding of what attachment is.

We can say the following with understanding of what we mean without any scientific facts about what we are referring to:

“The sun came up.  It is day.”

“The sun went down.  It is night.”

If we only wish for a similar simplistic understanding of attachment we can rely on “pop” information such as is presented at this link:  Attachment: Why it’s crucial for your baby

If we want the truth, we will have to work for it.  Quality of early attachment determines how a human being’s body and brain will develop.  If we don’t care what that means – then what more can I say?

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Today an all day art fair was held in this small town.  I volunteered to help a woman who had a booth where children could paint birds with brilliant water colors and then glue all kinds of feathers and tiny shiny things on them if they wished.  There were many other art projects available for the children throughout the old school building that has been turned into an art center.  Hundreds of children participated with their parents.

Between running little water bottles across the hall to refill them with fresh water between children, I watched.  Of course the children that showed up belonged with parents who cared enough to get them to the fair — a select group in many ways, I suppose.  But what fun the children had.  Pure — FUN!

Yet all of the children were also quite serious about their work.  Very intent.  Very focused.  Every one of them held their own unique vision — and fulfilled it.  I saw no frustration.  So self judgment.  I did see lots of enjoyment — and innocence.

I marveled at the freedom of heart these children have.  They are fully occupied with being children — as if there is no tomorrow.  As if there is no possibility of realization that in not very many years they will all be grown up — as they become so different from the children they are right now (I suppose all of them, over 100 that came into our room throughout the day, were under age 14).

What will they remember of their childhood?  Where does that simple pure clarity go that lets these children be but one thing — their own self?

I can never be around groups of children like I was today, watching them, providing for them whatever I can to make sure they have what they need to make what their heart wishes — without wondering what I would have looked like when I was their age – to somebody else who was watching me.

I noticed in the slides I was going through yesterday of my childhood that there are pictures of me with my siblings – most often pictures taken on holidays, where there is a smile on my face.  I don’t have a slide projector – so I won’t know what these pictures actually tell me until the day I can scan them into my computer and view them closely.

How could I have ever been happy as a child – in between the terrible abuse?  I saw no sadness in the eyes of any of these children today.  Who could ever see sadness in the face of a child and not wish to do anything possible to make that sadness go away?

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My own happy moment came when a young girl about nine spotted the painting of a bird I had started before any of the children arrived.  I did not have it quite done — but this little girl spotted it and loved it so much she asked who it belonged to — and if she could have it for her own.

Of course she could have it for her own!  I asked her if she wished to paint in the small amount of white paper I had not had time to fill.  Nope.  She loved the painted bird picture exactly the way it was.  I still smile inside to know something I created so pleased the heart and eye of a child!  Nothing could have affirmed ME more today.  Nothing.

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Just a little more venting about my efforts to ‘repair’ the Lloyd children’s story of our childhood today!  Off to my work table at the laundromat cafe I went at 8 this morning.  By 6 this evening I had every slide I am going to include in this saga in an archival quality slide slot – sorted MOSTLY by year.

The extras I am not going to keep in the main body of this work are being sent to my youngest sister in Seattle.  What I have left will still need to be further sorted by month of each year.  Mother mis-dated and mis-labeled many of her slides (she’s been dead since 2002).  Most are not dated at all.

SO MANY MOVES – and many of them are not reflected in the slides – which came to me in a total mess.  My ‘forensic autobiography’ as my youngest brother calls my efforts still has a long way to go — but such a long ways I have come!

These slides begin at Christmas 1955 – or 1956 — depending on what Mother decided to write on slides that seem to all be of the same Christmas!  Then, these ‘same’ slides are either labeled to have been taken in their home on Calavaras St. in Altadena, CA — OR in the next house they bought and moved into in Glendora, CA.

No way could I begin today to work my way back through — yet again — the Lloyd family mess.  But what pictures, priceless pictures of we children!  Most I swear I have never seen before.

And of course there are slides of the early Alaskan homesteading saga – all yet to be put in exact order.

Significant to me is the fact that I found one picture of my mother that I absolutely LOVE!  It is the ONLY slide in these hundreds that the film turned very red.  Mother did label this one correctly in that she is sitting at a natural little brook “washing vegetables.”  I remember this spring very well.  I turned 7 at the little cabin we lived in for those three summer months of 1958.

The cabin had no running water, no insulation – when winter showed up Mother gave up her mission to ‘practice homesteading’ in this cabin and headed into an apartment in Anchorage where I spent my 2nd grade year.

But in that picture — Mother wearing a long gathered black skirt brightly ringed with rick-rack — looks absolutely GORGEOUS and even more than happy.

I have written before here that I discovered as I transcribed the mess of Mother’s letters and journals (which took me about 2 years to do) I found two months in late winter 1958 that my mother was living in what I call “a state of perfect grace.”  Mother was obviously also in that same state when the picture of her at the spring was taken.

Although God’s grace surrounds us all – all of the time — few of us can reach or remain in that state.  Yet considering how terribly mentally ill my mother was, it seems such an incredible miracle to me that Mother could have reached that state at all.  Certainly Alaska was healing to Mother in her early years there.

I find myself thinking today that if Mother had been THE MOTHER she was in this picture all of the time — she would have been a WELL MOTHER — and my and my siblings’ lives would have been entirely different THEN — and would be in consequence NOW.

I have a lot of work yet to do on this project.  At what point I will be able to scan the slides in – let alone repair them – I don’t know.  Even thinking about that stage of this task intimidates me greatly.  But I am very pleased with my progress these past two days!  One more full day will be needed to get the months of these years from 1955 through 1969 in order.

Meanwhile, I REALLY need to cook and eat some dinner!!!!  Tomorrow I am volunteering 10-3 in town at a kids’ art fair……  Meanwhile, time for a little down time!  This was a day well spent.

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I have set before myself the intimidating task of putting in order the history of the Lloyd family presented in this terribly disorganized collection of our family’s slides taken during the homesteading years of my childhood in Alaska.  Yesterday I hauled the box of slides up to my neighborhood laundromat cafe and set myself up on a corner table to go to work on this task.  No doubt the terribly unsettled feelings I have this morning as I awoke at 3:20 a.m. are coming from the digging up of memories related to these pictures.

There will eventually be another nearly overwhelming task of figuring out what to do with these pictures once I have them identified by year and put all in order in their tidy little archival quality plastic slide holder sheets.  But it does me no good to try to think ahead to that part of this job.  Right now I am left with doing what needs to be done first — putting our chaotic family story into linear order by time and by place.

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Another string of thoughts I am having is related to my having picked up a book at the laundromat last week.  There are shelves of books at the laundromat where people bring in and donate books they don’t want.  Often in trade people take books they find there home to read.

This 1989 book may be considered obsolete:

Breaking Free: A Recovery Workbook for Facing Codependence (1989)

Pia Mellody and Andrea Wells Miller

I have never yet read any book on ‘codependence’ all the way through.  I have great difficulty in thinking about human beings in terms of a word many authors on the subjects use – or over use:  ‘dysfunctional’.

That word is a mechanistic word perhaps appropriate for some kind of tool or machine.  Humans are not machines.  I know I COULD stretch my imagination to begin to understand what the word means when applied to people — but no matter how ‘messed up’ any person might be, we are never really BROKEN — like some material object might be that once had a purpose to fulfill that is no longer possible at some point once this material object breaks!

There is another word that is nearly always paired with ‘codependency’ and ‘dysfunctional’.  That word is ‘dissociation’, usually listed (as it is in this book) with ‘defense mechanisms’ abused/traumatized children and adults are said to use in some situations they experience that are overwhelming — and terrible.

These authors include ‘dissociation’ in a descriptive list that also includes ‘suppression’ and ‘repression’ as follows:

“Suppression is consciously choosing to forget things that are too painful to remember.  You make a decision to put the memory away, or to “forget,” so that you don’t have to feel the painful or unacceptable feelings associated with it.

“Repression is automatically and unconsciously forgetting things that are too painful to remember.  Such painful and frightening memories are “automatically” shifted into the unconscious mind where they are “lost” or hidden.

“A child using dissociation psychologically takes his or her emotional and mental self away somewhere where the abuse is not experienced in full.  In other words, the child no longer experiences the abuse at the intense emotional and mental level at which the physical pain is felt, although the physical body of the child is still being abused.

“Children usually reserve dissociation to survive abuse they believe is life-threatening, such as incest, molestation, or being beaten until they think the beating is going to kill them.  The fear is either that who they are is going to be destroyed, or that they’ll be physically destroyed.”  (page xiii)

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I don’t have the book,

Facing Codependence: What It Is, Where It Comes from, How It Sabotages Our Lives by Pia Mellody and Andrea Wells Miller (May 17, 1989)

to which the workbook I picked up belongs.  This may be a useful pair of books for some people to use to identify the details of their childhood abuse history so that they can begin to change their relationship patterns with self and others in their adult lives.

Personally I have never gotten any further than the introduction in any of these types of books after I have opened the covers to.  I doubt I will get any further in this workbook, either.

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I do not have a history of sexual abuse.  I do have a history of extremely severe and overwhelming abuse of all other kinds over the first 18 years of my life.  I think that coming from the infancy-childhood that I did I am as ‘functional’ as any human being could possibly be!  I did a FANTASTIC job of surviving!

I am complex, as every human being is.  Labeling what might be ‘wrong’ with me in mechanistic terms just has never felt helpful to me.

In addition, what developmental neuroscientists know today about how early trauma and its stress changes development removes, in my opinion, much of what writers used to stuff into the closet with ‘dissociation’ painted on a sign and nailed to the door vague if not completely inaccurate.

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I do agree that dissociation is about memory processing and retrieval — or non-retrieval.  The fact is that much of what used to be thrown also behind the doors named ‘suppression’ and ‘repression’ don’t belong there, either.

Very simply put as I need to understand it, the stress hormone cortisol can literally heat up the brain’s neurons in the hippocampus memory processing region of the brain that factual details of traumas are never retained in the first place.  The cortisol literally burns the neurons trying to process the memory into cinders.

POOF!  Facts GONE!

Another part of the brain, the amygdala, processes emotional memories belonging in and kept by THE BODY.

It is rare in these kinds of discussions for the other important aspects of memory to be included such details about (do Google searches for some of these memory terms) — noetic and autonoetic consciousness, autobiographical memory, semantic memory, episodic memory, working memory, etc.  If you online search ‘brain development memory’ you will find even more info.  Add in ‘child abuse’, and……

What matters TO ME has to do with how abuse I suffered interfered with my own ongoing experiences of my SELF in my body in my earliest life.  Every time I was attacked in any way I was thrown off of the track of experiencing myself in my own life.  Theses attacks caused breaks – breaches – in my ongoing experience of ‘self-in-life’.

They did not, however, BREAK ME.  These attacks were NOT a part of ME – were not a part of MY EXPERIENCE of my own self in my life as a child.

These attacks BELONGED TO MY MOTHER, not to me.  During the many extended abuse episodes I experienced as a child the time of my childhood life did continue to pass (with me in the middle of these ‘times’).  I suffered.  I endured.  But HOW I experienced attacks was different than ‘eating up as my own’ the actual attacks themselves – which came from my mother.

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Maybe I can describe it like this:

You are trying to concentrate on something that concerns YOU.  Perhaps you are browsing your Facebook page, reading a book, writing an email, watching a movie…..

Someone comes and INTERRUPTS you!

You KNOW the difference between what you wish to be doing, that which occupies YOU — and what someone else does to interrupt you.

True, once the interruption has passed so that you can put your concentration back where YOU naturally want it, things ARE different.  The facts about the interruption do become a part of your reality – somehow……

That interruption has for all practical purposes created a ‘dissociation’ of some kind in what WAS and could have been your continuous experience of being your own self doing what you wanted to do.  BUT YOU DID NOT CREATE THAT INTERRUPTION OR THE AUTOMATIC DISSOCIATION that the interruption created.

To say that dissociation that happens in this way is connected to a ‘defense mechanism’ within you — well, to me that’s a nonsensical assessment of the conditions of reality as I am presenting them here as an illustration.

You didn’t create the break in your own ongoing experience of yourself in your OWN life — someone else did it to/for you.

There we were as kids associating with our self having our own experiences of our self in our life — and BAM!!  We were interrupted — usually violently and painfully in ways that caused terror within us.

Then we had to cope with the interruptions (endure, survive) until such a time as we could AGAIN get back to OUR BUSINESS (re-associate with our self) of being a kid growing up having experiences of meaning to self.  When we were interrupted we then had to DIS-ASSOCIATE from our own business because someone else INTRUDED into our life.

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I do not OWN the interruptions my abusive mother caused in my life as an infant-child.  SHE created those nearly continual dissociations in my experience.  I DID NOT CREATE those breaks in my ongoing experience of my own self having my own life.  MOTHER DID!

Mother heaped her suffering upon me in any way she could, any time she wanted to.  I could not prevent these attacks or the interruptions they created in my own experience of myself in my body in my infancy and childhood.

I was completely present every time these interruptions happened.  If I had not been hyper-present during her beatings to make every effort I could not to get my head smashed open as she bashed me this way and that against hard objects, I would be dead now. (etc.)

I suffered my mother’s suffering.  In between, in my invisible times when she wasn’t occupying the time of my early life that actually BELONGED to ME, I had a wonderful time being curious and finding beauty and learning things about the world.  But my own time was not allowed to happen in a continuous stream.

I therefore have very little ability to remember my life in a continuous stream.  Mother interrupted me too many times for my body-brain to build pathways and circuits to process my memory of myself in my life in anything like an ‘ordinary’ way.  My memories are kept in ‘pieces’ just as surely as these slides I am working with provide snippets of visual images that are NOT innately connected to one another — or to any specific meaning by themselves — in any way.

I am the one creating coherent order out of the chaos of this slide mess – just as I am the one continually creating coherent order out of my own experience of myself living my life.

The way I have always remembered myself in my own life is not due to any ‘defense mechanisms’, but rather to the very real physiological conditions of my growth and development in a terribly traumatic and abusive environment.  As a result I am different, but I am not broken.

Nothing I have ever encountered in any book about ‘codependency’ addresses the reality of my experience.  I therefore diverge in my understanding from that of such authors before I make it through their book’s introduction.  I don’t even bother to try to make my thinking follow the course of their thoughts.  To do so would be yet another interruption in my own ongoing experience of my self in my body in my life — I don’t want or need.

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SEE ALSO:

+A COLLECTION OF THIS BLOG’S LINKS ON DISSOCIATION AND DISORGANIZED-DISORIENTED INSECURE ATTACHMENT

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