See people as teachers

They think about lessons that they want to pass along to others. For homework, they are asked to share their story with a loved one. Session five is one of the most difficult. Here, they confront life's limitations--the greatest limitation of all being death. You recognize, free, and bring that lamb (fear) back into the flock (of love). THE CARE OF THE SPIRITUAL SEED Any fear that is occurring is the soul's greatest nutrient--right now. Seek out your spiritual nutrition. The good news is that as a spiritual seed, you are always, spiritually speaking, viable. Do you want the seed to not grow? Store it in the spiritual equivalent of a cool, dry, dark place (unconsciousness). Want the seed to grow? Plant it in the spiritual equivalent of a warm, wet place and shine light on it (consciousness). WHAT IS FEAR CHASING? In this sense, it would be possible to find a healthy way to help. Of course, we can also inform therapeutic groups for suggestions. Any other intervention aimed at direct contact with the dependent will unfortunately only be detrimental and counterproductive. As for the relationship between alcoholism and drug addiction, I believe it is appropriate to end here. Making peace is the feeling of bliss associated with the decision to make peace by declaring to ourselves and the world that we have overcome what has afflicted us. It means saying it no longer hurts me, and it no longer forms part of my present.

Whatever that happened, I overcame it, and it made me stronger than before. Making peace has to do with compensation and forgiveness, choosing not to make peace comes through the desire for revenge. In the language of love, what we choose to give in the name of shared pleasure, compensation takes on a very specific meaning: the meaning of giving us back with another coin that nobody can repay with the coin of the damage done. Once the damage or an offense has been received, It's impossible to knot the belt of life and eliminate the damage done. On that Friday night, when the rest of the world just stopped, I was drinking and walking around our front yard, pacing, as if continually moving might change the facts. The house was filled with neighbors and all of our family had flown in. This was the day she passed. Amanda had been in hospice for eight days, and I think we had more visitors than the hospice had ever seen in their history. There were at least forty family members there every day, flying in and out, cooking meals and feeding the whole place. Amanda was still seeing angels throughout this entire process, even in hospice. Mom, Jesus is going to heal me, or I'm going to heaven. Our pastor from church came over that Friday night. He had never been in the hospice, so he didn't know what the room looked like. I had a vision this morning, he said, and the time corresponded exactly to when Amanda had passed away. They talk to each other about what they consider a good death: whether they want to die at home or in the hospital, what their funeral will look like, how they hope their families will adapt in the aftermath, and how they want to be remembered by those who love them. In the next two sessions, they dwell on their creative and experiential sources of meaning--the people, places, projects, and ideas that helped them express their most important values and connect to life. They discuss their responsibilities and any unfinished business they have and what's preventing them from accomplishing those goals. They're also asked to think about the role that love, beauty, and humor played in their lives. Many people mention their families here. Others discuss work, or hobbies like keeping a garden.

The former IBM executive mentioned seeing the statue of winged victory, the Nike of Samothrace, at the Louvre in Paris when she was a young woman. In the final session, the patients consider their hopes for the future and their legacy, the part of them that will go on living even after they are dead. They present a legacy project to the group, which is generally something they do or create that represents how they want to be remembered. One man brought in a woodcut of a heart sculpted into a Celtic Trinity. Fear chasing is an ego-transcending spiritual practice similar to prayer and meditation. It is also the act of challenging fear to its death, or perhaps more accurately, it is loving fear to death. Fear chasing does not require anything beyond what is provided to you by the fear and that which is within you: a genuine, humble, and complete contrition; WHO IS A FEAR CHASER? A fear chaser is someone who has decided that he or she has truly had enough suffering. So, a fear chaser intends to realize the Truth. A fear chaser is an active seeker intent on living a life of freedom from all fear. Just as a storm chaser makes the conscious and bold choice to chase after natural storms, a fear chaser makes the conscious and bold choice to chase after the fears that can naturally arise from the mind. Although fears, like a storm, can inspire great destruction, they can also make the necessary space for wonderful things to manifest. A storm chaser captures images of and/or experiences with the storm. For this reason, no one can remedy damage by eliminating the damage, they only can act in such a way as to compensate for the damage done with something different. If we have been embarrassed in public, who could ever make us and those standing there forget what they have seen, heard, or experienced? When we choose to heal from toxic relationships, we can feel anger. A possible reaction to the anger is that of wanting revenge. When we are getting out of a codependent situation, when we are absorbed in the memories of our history, the desire for revenge can be very strong and tempting. Revenge has a strong compensating power;

Not of a random person among other things but, of that person who made us suffer, or even more, if the suffering we inflict will not only go against the person who made us suffer but will fall on people important to him or her. Very often the simple thought of wanting or being able to avenge ourselves makes us feel better, makes us feel powerful, even in those cases where we had to decide not to complete the revenge that we had in mind. The very fact that we allowed ourselves to think about it, it brings us out of an unpleasant state of suffering, makes us feel actively turned to our well-being and takes us away from the frustration of passive suffering. Revenge arises from anger, one of the feelings that we have known well in the years of codependency and perhaps, the feeling that we have tried to repress most of all at the moments in which it would have been good to explode, not suddenly but in small and healthy doses. God got up from the throne room and came down and took Amanda. It looked like you were lying on her in a room filled with stars and there were people as far as I could see. God came down and swooped her from underneath you and He said, `It's okay, I've got her from here,' and He spun her around and she smiled at me, and they went up to heaven. I had just been yelling at Jesus in that exact moment, and I remember saying, If You send Your goddamn angels to take my daughter, I'll never talk to You again. If you want her You better come off that throne and get her Yourself. I actually said that out loud, and then the pastor came that night and told me that story because I was so mad at the angels. That brought me peace and understanding, to know that God came and had her. He was going to take care of her, and I was going to keep my promises to her. This brings me to Amanda's desire to help children with cancer. Even though she was only twelve, she saw things crystal clear. This is what I will teach my children, he said, that there is eternal love and that I will be there for them, far beyond my passing. Breitbart performed three randomized controlled experiments on the meaning-centered psychotherapy, giving it to several hundred patients. When he analyzed the results with his colleagues, Breitbart saw the therapy had been transformative. By the end of the eight sessions, the patients' attitudes toward life and death had changed. They were less hopeless and anxious about the prospect of death. They no longer wanted to die.

Their spiritual well-being improved. They reported a higher quality of life. And, of course, they found life to be more meaningful. These effects not only persisted over time--they actually got stronger. A fear chaser captures images of fear--and on the other side of the very last fear, a fear chaser experiences incredible and perfect love. LIBERATION BY FEAR Many times, a fear may not easily seem to be put into words. It may be experienced as some bodily sensation, like a knot in your stomach or an increased heart rate. Other times it might come as a lack of sleep, a nightmare, or some other disturbance. Sometimes, fear may come as a vague anxiety or underlying unease. Even though fear can seem stealthy, the result of acknowledging and chasing these fears is just as powerfully liberating. If you notice a fear, that fear may inspire discomfort or upset of a particular intensity. Even in the case of a nonverbal fear, such as tense feeling that settles somewhere within your body, the mind is actually offering you, the soul, a gift. A high level of upset is a hint that the fear being offered is one that urgently requests your attention. Feeling a desire for revenge in the healing phase of codependency is common and I would say normal. Indeed, as far as I am concerned, feeling a desire for revenge is a good sign, it means that we are giving voice to emotions that previously we were only able to repress. Everyone will decide according to their conscience which path to choose to rebalance relationships with others when they inevitably change because you will have changed and your relationships with them will change in unison. However, revenge has a limit: it bogs us down in anger, anchors us to the past, and binds us firmly to the people and relationships we want to move away from our present. Revenge requires a lot of energy, perhaps energy that you have now, and you will probably have the clarity it takes to complete an act of revenge. Investing in revenge involves using in the past an important part of our energies to be used to rebuild our present and our future.