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© 2010 Howard McQueen

Unconditional Personal Regard is the blanket acceptance of a person regardless of what they say or do. Without Unconditional Personal Regard (for themselves), people may come to see and imagine themselves in the negative ways that others have made them feel.

Further, those sharing their negative feelings may also denigrate and corrupt their image of the person they are projecting their feelings upon.

When we live and our experience is entirely filtered through the shallow field of behavior, it can be very challenging to maintain an unblemished positive potential for ourselves or for others that we are in challenging and loving relationships.

It is a challenge to step back from highly charged emotions, where our thoughts and words are so full of judgments, so fueled by our own projections. When we don’t hold ourselves and others in the field of unconditional Personal Regard, there is the very real risk that the image of self as this vast potential for innate goodness becomes obscured and covered over.

In the darkness and fog of the illusions stirred up by intense vented emotions, we begin to believe that the core of a person (ourselves or others) is corrupted, unsafe, beyond repair, beyond our ability to remain in connection with them. We become the enslaved images of our ego's dramas and we are lost in dramatic illusion and delusion.

We each can benefit from practices and disciplines, such as Unconditional Personal Regard, that help us to separate how we receive behavior from how we receive and regard the core potential of others.

~~~ ~ ~~~

More on Unconditional Personal Regard

David G. Myers says the following in his Psychology: Eight Edition in Modules:

"People also nurture our growth by being accepting—by offering us what Rogers called unconditional positive regard. This is an attitude of grace, an attitude that values us even knowing our failings. It is a profound relief to drop our pretenses, confess our worst feelings, and discover that we are still accepted. In a good marriage, a close family, or an intimate friendship, we are free to be spontaneous without fearing the loss of others' esteem."

Unconditional positive regard can be facilitated by keeping in mind Carl Rogers’ belief that all people have the internal resources required for personal growth. Rogers' theory encouraged other psychiatrists to suspend judgement, and to listen to a person with an attitude that the client has within himself the ability to change, without actually changing who he is.

© 2010 Howard McQueen

Friction, tension,

contrary energies, heated interplay - the inevitable collision.

Inner struggle, confusion, conflict,

The perception of injustice,

judgment.

Blame, shame, externalizing and perpetrating aggression,

revenge and vengeance – someone must pay for my ache, my anxiety, my pain.

Closing down, hardening, the stoppage of listening,

removal of self and the anesthetic numbness of distancing,

disengagement from the messiness of life,

an inner dis-Heartening – a covering over of compassion.

Laws, lawyers, departments of justice,

all spawned in an attempt to fill the inner void.

Few actually doing true listening,

connecting hearts,

working towards dissolving the paradoxical

pairing of victim .vs. perpetrator.

There is an abundant library of inherited pain and suffering still in circulation, still on the best seller list.

Be aware that there is also an abundance of joy, wisdom-teachings and pathways back into connection to your heart.

Become very clear what is circulating deep within your self. You are the archivist, the librarian, the editor, the director - fully capable of rewriting and updating everything you are subscribed to.

It may feel like many of your stories are inaccessible and read-only. Open these stories and their underlying beliefs and bear witness to the injustices and judgments you carry. You can then begin to dismiss and begin to dismantle the inner judgment, the need to impose justice or the need to remain dis-involved, disempowered and always turning away.

Uncover and turn inward, toward your heart. Learn to project your heartfelt-intent and lay down your judgment and aggression.

This is the essential inner struggle.

Version 2.1 | 09.24.2010

© 2010 Howard McQueen

It is remarkable, this journey we undertake,

constructing and then being faced with the challenge

of deconstructing our home-grown sense-of-self.

Rather than ask the question “why” is life the way it is,

it seems more fruitful to surrender to the realization that we,

like all living things,

even the earth, moon and celestial bodies,

are in relationship to smaller and larger rhythms,

smaller and larger gravities constantly influencing our experiencing life.

We are, each and every one of us,

universally bounded by these powerful influences.

If we choose to not recognize and appreciate the influences of relationship

(i.e. others upon us and our influence upon others),

we can drive ourselves into madness, depression, anger and numbness.

“Why is life doing this to me?”

Life itself becomes the perpetrator

and we, the victim.

However, equally available and at our disposal are our innate abilities to:

1. Focus and concentrate where we place our attention

2. Move from a reactionary to a responsive manner in which we perceive and choose to interpret events and circumstances

3. Begin to experiment with and gain a mastery of how we can shape, influence and direct our intentions to be in relationship with that which is alive in our lives

This journey we have been born into is nothing short of learning to resurrect and reclaim our own self. It is a journey into our own darkness and light, our own stubbornness, our own fear, our own ecstasy, our own ability to shut down or awaken. It is a journey in uncovering and the recovering our native wonder, our innate innocence and our awe at the mesmerizing and uncontrollable flow of life.

True sacrifice, as Saki Santorelli says is

“The pull of the soul toward what is possible (once we have shed) the pull of the past toward what has been conditioned”.

True sacrifice is personally experienced as an ongoing commitment to letting go, to releasing and liberating our own sense-of-self that has become entangled with our learned and practiced conditioning - that which supposedly protects and defends our self from life. Sacrifice is finding the courage to let go and become naked again to being deeply, unconditionally touched by the experiences flowing from life.

May you be blessed, in each and every day, to discern and choose to sacrifice aspects of your burdened sense-of-self, to lay down the feelings of resentment, of being aggressed upon by life, of feeling inadequate,
of your relationship with inner guilt and shame …

Come accept life on its terms. There is an abundance of sacredness to give, to receive and to share, together … in our extended relationship, with

Family, Tribe & Community!

These are some of the most potent and sacred practices that encourage unity.

These are the sacred vows that individual selves can choose to sow,

to capture, redirect and blend the energies of Yin & Yang.

This is a pathway into enlarging each individual heart,

to experience that we are a living we-ness,

that we are, irrevocably born from and return to a common, sacred Oneness,

with all of life's forms.

Version 2.1 | 9.24.2010

© 2010 Howard McQueen

If we are to evolve,

we must uncover and embody the consciousness of inner peace,

we must find our own “eye in the storm”.

As the perceptual duration between cause and effect collapses,

as the destructive patriarchical power over others erodes,

the old, unsustainable ways of our culture are failing and falling away.

This places cataclysmic stress on our belief structures,

on what we have become accustomed to bring us security and comfort.

What is not yet transparent to us is that our internal operating system has become

compromised and corrupted by the very ways we have turned and looked away,

have sanctioned and even supported ways of living that are not symbiotic,

not in any true sustainable way.

So, we are left, in what feels more and more like the 11^th hour,

like the house is on fire, like there is a lack of safety and security,

nearly everywhere we turn.

As much as we would like to say it ain’t so,

so it is for a growing advance guard of us -

challenged with awakening,

with weaning ourselves from the seemingly scarce resources of aging currency,

the propped up and declining economy,

the increasingly polluted human ecology,

for such a long time, based upon fear, anger, greed and exclusionary practices.

It is time to awaken the radical,

the deeper courage

the evolutionary spirit held within our DNA

and step up the pace to wean ourselves from these worn out, unsustainable ways.

There are still many, many caught in deep fear and resistance,

clutching to the inbred ignorance,

flailing about, thinking they are drowning,

and capable of taking others down with them.

There is a fierceness brewing as well

ready to claim and be the embodiment of love,

to do what it takes to demonstrate unity,

love over fear

connection over separation.

For this to happen one human being at a time,

we must all teach, and accept the teachings

that we are the eye of the storm,

not the storm,

that destruction is inevitable,

that resurrection of the sacred

requires that we challenge everything

and do whatever it takes to bring forward

our transformation and evolution.

Version 1.0 | 9.12.2010

(C) 2010 Howard McQueen

Each of us have created and stored disempowering mental states as a result of our feeling vulnerable and over-exposed to the world. These states contain our unprocessed, distorted and obsessed over sensations, feelings and unfelt emotions. They represent our shadow, our pain body.

Take a moment and face this truth: When we become anxious in the moment, we have learned to refer to, to believe and trust these mental states to give us the guidance and wisdom to navigate our life.

When we were little, we were wide open and gullible. When we were overwhelmed, we learned to tell ourselves lies, then listen to the echo of these lies as we repeated them back to ourselves. And then we forgot it was the shadow side of our selves that was doing all the talking, speaking all the lies – all the while we were hoping it was our authentic self coming to our rescue.

My inner liar, your inner liar, it is these liars that are feeding us the poison that we, still gullible and childlike, so robustly continue to consume. Why is this? Perhaps it is because it is easier to still suckle on lies that hurt ourselves and then hurt others. Doing this give us drama and attention. It is much more work to to bring forward the courage to fiercely stop listening to all the lies, discern what is true and live in love!

I understand, first hand, how compelling these lies are. They always seem to start with a judgment about self or someone else - these judgments are typically juvenile and simplistic, and they assassinate character and are ugly. They are ugly because they show us how we are so self-absorbed in trying to defend the brittle ego that has bought into all the lies.

WHY DO THE LIES HAVE SUCH POWER?

The lies are powered through our ancient flight-fight survival response mechanisms, originally developed to protect us as an organism. In reality, in this modern world, 99.9% of what we encounter is merely the exacerbated and accumulated stress of psychological discomfort. Even so, our primitive brain, having encountered pain and the discomforts from past experiences, indelibly etches these experiences and, without us even knowing it, manufactures strategies of avoidance (if experiences were painful) or pursue and capture (if experiences were extremely pleasurable or rewarding). These strategies and their underlying judgments are transmitted to us at near instantaneous speeds, loading up like life-or-death messages, pulling on our awareness, demanding our attention and shaping our intention.

Considerable training is required to begin discerning that this high-potency information coming to us at such a velocity and amplitude have little or no value being reacted to. In fact, if they are reacted to, people around us will begin to wonder why we are “wigging out”, as they sense the in-the-moment reality is calm.

So, the challenge becomes one of beginning to extract our awareness and consciousness from these highly charged messages, so that we do not become hijacked and behave in reactive, unconscious ways. When we give in and succumb to these messengers and the messages, we exit the moment and become non-living, sleepwalkers, living in the dream that is best called a “nightmare”.

Learn to become acutely aware of what you are serving when you feel anxious, or when you feel a story that includes judgment blooming in your mind. Know that you are accessing the demon-liar within, and that believing in any of what is conveyed is to breed suffering – your own, as well as exporting suffering to others.

You need not continue to play the powerless victim, as the unreality of the demon-liar is of your own mind’s making. Be mindful that when you catch yourself loosing focus on being fully in the moment, that confusion, restlessness, doubt, pessimism, fantasy, delusion, illusion and numbness are the breeding ground for falseness, for our conditioning and our deep groove to seek out and listen to our demon-liar.

Get your awareness into your physical body. Get your body moving. Get your breathing deepened and focused. Open your eyes and your senses to what is going on in this moment. Begin discerning what is really real from the veil and inner environmental distortions created by the demon-liar Begin to discern what is a lie from what is real, from what the demon-liar is manufacturing over reality, so you can experience and discern what is real.

And, be fierce as well as kind to yourself. Our current awareness is a work-in-process. When our sense of reality shrinks and/or begins to collapse, know that we are merely repeating the age-old acquired habit of listening to the demon-liar. As we continue to rehearse and bring our increased awareness to bear, we begin learning to no longer trust the demon-liar. If the intensity of the hi-jackings are on the increase, now that the demon-liar knows it is threatened, threatened with extinction. What it fears the most is no having you a willing participant in listening to its lies and then going into reaction.

It may just be that a friend will slap you into awareness! Let it be a blessing if you meet those that will love you without constantly trying to coddle and cater to your dramas!

© 2010 Howard McQueen

In every moment,

especially those where we become filled with anxiety,

we have capacity and choice,

to either capitulate to entrenched habits,

drifting into grooved repetition ...

Or,

we can become present to the tug and pull

of repressed fear-anger-grief,

uncover our humanity,

connect to the heart of our compassion,

fill with responsiveness -

and remain vividly connected to the mysterious

journey of experiencing life,

on life’s terms ...

It is always the myriad small choices

that will show us our strength,

let us realize our short-circuits,

our blind spots,

keeping us separate from our authenticity

and the unity which is our birthright.

Indeed, this is the noble struggle.

Writing from the Anahata community, Floyd, Virginia

At the conclusion of Summer Evolution Camp.

(c) 2010 Howard McQueen | Version 2.2 8/31/2010

There are places on this earth

fully ripened,

ready for your initiation into inter-connectedness,

ready for you to claim and co-exist with as your HOME.

Gracing and extending your connections beyond the domain and dominion of humans,

the vast natural world is ready to interface and be a lover's embrace.

The invitation is to open to and be infected by all manner of mysterious phenomena,

emerging from and being organically nourished by the Goddess Mother - Gaia.

AN INVOCATION TO BE WELCOMED TO RECEIVE THE LAND

The first fall leaves float by on the river, infiltrating and embracing my earth suit.

I am buoyed as well as immersed in this liquid life-giving force,

flowing and caressing the everything that is me.

As I focus my attention on listening,

way back up the hill, the chicken run erupts as a hen loudly cackles,

boastings of her laying let another magnificent egg.

My focus shifts back to visual,

to the river’s flowing surface, where,

in the reflected early morning light

water bugs glide, rapidly darting about,

doing their living rhythms.

From my more macro perspective,

their rhythms express a coordination of play.

I sense they are also inscribing and visibly expressing a language,

appearing if but for an instant, on the rivers surface.

Yes, this defies all rational understanding and yet, intuitively,

I smile and am warmed inside by the insidious play and pleasure

knowing this is how nature plays out her rhythms with all forms:

Invisible forces flow into and animate form,

for the sheer joy,

for some vaster, symbiotic, symphonic interplay.

Morning sunlight filters through the forest canopy,

revealing and illuminating the hued colors of the pebbled riverbed.

Rapids downstream echo their frothy spill.

Crickets in trees play their percussive electronic washboard sounds.

Something upstream breaks the rivers surface with a plopping sound.

Memory from last nights cacophony surfaces, with the primal screams and screeches

as two raccoons squared off to fight over the bucket of dinner scraps yet to make it into the compost.

The sweat lodge,

the picnic table,

leaves in slow motion floating down from the sky.

The shimmering of a few select trees moved by an invisible wind

in the midst of complete stillness of neighboring trees.

Ahhhhh, this page is itself curls up, levitated by the winds visitation.

A plastic childrens bath tub, imprinted with Donald Duck underwater in swim goggles;

A white plastic chair,

a white bucket,

two blue kyaks,

a blue laundry basket.

We humans, inhabiting this land with our human-manufactured possessions.

A forest green tarp strung between trees, the tarp's top speckled with spent, dried leaves.

Near vertical support poles, cut from trees, staked into the ground and tied with twine.

Nested under the tarp a woven multi-colored hammock, currently spun tightly closed,

inviting someone to enter and seek the restorative vitality of cocoon. It too is tied to two other trees.

This natural tarp-hammock honors and graces the land, bringing such a sense of

relaxed and sacred harmony.

As I start walking toward the sweat lodge,

A blue butterfly and dragon fly appear to grace my path.

A variety of butterfly cavort over the ashes in the firepit.

There is the circular ring of stones, a big glass cider jug of water

marking due East.

A small shrine just outside the sweat lodge entrance hosts a variety of artifacts:

part of a jaw bone;

candles,

smudge bundle;

a black snake replica,

shells,

feathers,

Tibetan coins,

lambs ear, zinnia and other air-drying flower heads.

Back up near the main house,

just off the circular drive,

my eye again finds the slightly worn path.

I step off the gravel into light brush,

Passing a small tractor attachment half covered over with thistle.

I step, viscerally, into enchantment.

Grey brown trunks of naked white pines, easily seventy feet high, surround me.

Down the sloping hill, beyond the fall of the land,

is a lush, verdant narrowing valley, bounded by the serpentine river.

Here the land is hosting a small tent community, a primitive kitchen and,

part way up the hill, on the left, earthen toilets. .

I am imagining a two story tree house resting in this space,

built around and encompassing several key foundational pines.

Mmmmmmm!

What a residence.

What a contribution to the larger sense of the land itself as my/our interim,

gypsy-symbiotic home.

I notice a bee-as-emissary investigating my presence.

After gently waving it to create space, I notice it stays in perfect unison with my waves.

This is the dance of first contact. I stop waving now, knowing we have synchronized intentions.

The bee now advances, landing directly on this page of paper I am inscribing.

It makes tactile connection with several words I have just written, seemingly taking a
sample, somehow extracting the wholeness of message from its extraction.

I imagine this message being relayed to everything the bee interacts with, this message

permeating and percolating till it rejoins the hive, which initiates a widespread distribution.

For me, this is an exchanged blessing for a human expressing the intent to be in peacefully

co-existence with all of nature.

The thirty second walk back up the circular drive

opens to a lofted greenhouse and the large modern home.

A wooden vine trellis has been trained in the shape of a heart

graces the front entrance to the house.

Across from the house is a shop with a second story loft. Along the roof line are solar panels supplying the energy needs of the main house.

I resonate with all of this and breath in, slowly and deeply,

then silently mouth the blessing “Welcome Home, loved ones”.

There is an infinity of presence awaiting us, as we surrender our contrived equities and identities and release and relax into these moments with nature ...