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Lightning Path Workbook Two

H e a l i n g F r a m e w o r k

By Gina Ratkovic Mike Sosteric

Version .60

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Published by Lightning Path Press St. Albert, Alberta Canada

press.lightningpath.org

©2018 Lightning Path and Michael S. and Gina R.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means,

electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,

or otherwise without written permission.

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Table of Contents

Table of Contents ................................................................................................................................................ 3

Preface .................................................................................................................................................................. 5

Workbook goals .................................................................................................................................................. 7

Key Concepts ....................................................................................................................................................... 8

Study Questions ................................................................................................................................................... 9

Introduction: Why healing? .............................................................................................................................. 11

Accept and Realize the Damage.................................................................................................................... 25

The Challenges You Will Need to Face ....................................................................................................... 26

LP HEALING Framework ........................................................................................................................... 27

What You Need to Know While on the LP Journey .................................................................................. 29

Self-acceptance ............................................................................................................................................... 32

Study Questions ............................................................................................................................................. 35

1. “H” is for help ................................................................................................................................................ 36

How to Choose a Competent Professional Healer? .................................................................................... 37

Additional Thoughts on Getting Help .......................................................................................................... 43

Study Questions ............................................................................................................................................. 52

2. “E” is for Healthy Environment .................................................................................................................... 53

Protecting Your Wounds by Establishing Right Environment .................................................................... 56

Environmental Assessments .......................................................................................................................... 59

Treat and Heal the Wound........................................................................................................................... 61

Triggering as a Sign of Infection and Psychic Sepsis .................................................................................... 64

Study Questions ............................................................................................................................................. 68

4. “A” is for Addictions ................................................................................................................................. 69

Lightning Path Addictions Analysis .............................................................................................................. 80

Treatment ....................................................................................................................................................... 84

Study Questions ............................................................................................................................................. 90

5. “L” is for Lies ............................................................................................................................................. 92

It’s not so bad after all! .................................................................................................................................. 93

Look at me, I’m rich and successful ............................................................................................................. 95

I got a job........................................................................................................................................................ 98

Learning to Lie: Modelling .......................................................................................................................... 100

Learning to Lie: Personal Safety ................................................................................................................. 101

Learning to Lie: Reinforcing Boundaries ................................................................................................... 103

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Learning to Lie: Avoiding Guilt and Shame ............................................................................................... 105

Learning to Lie: The Individualization of Truth ........................................................................................ 107

Learning to Lie: System Maintenance ........................................................................................................ 110

LP’s Understanding of Lies ......................................................................................................................... 117

Study Questions ........................................................................................................................................... 119

HEALING: Step 5 Ideologies ......................................................................................................................... 120

Intergenerational Toxicity ............................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

HEALING: Step 6 Needs ................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

Importance of attachment (need for love) ...................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

Appendix One: What does it mean to be healed? ............................................. Error! Bookmark not defined.

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Preface

Greetings and welcome to the Lightning Path (or just LP for short).

The Lightning Path is a powerful, effective, grounded, logical,

intuitive, modern, and authentic path of human development. It is

a blend of authentic spirituality and connected science, a powerful

representation of core human and spiritual truths that can take you

from disconnected and depressed to healthy, connected, and

empowered, quickly and safely.

The book that you have in your hand is the second book in a series

of Lightning Path workbooks designed to teach you what you need

to know to heal, connect, and advance towards your full human

potential. This book focusses on the healing process and

introduces you to the LP HEALING framework. The Lightning

Path HEALING framework is a framework for understanding the

healing process. The HEALING Framework contains seven

Focus Points that you need focus and work on if you are going to

move forward to heal and connect.

Both individuals and professional healers can use this book to

provide focus to their healing work.

Note, this framework is not designed as a therapeutic model so

much as a self-directed guide to help you take authentic healing

steps forward on your own. Use the LP framework to help give

you focus. Use whatever therapy, (e.g., Dialectical Behavioural

Therapy, ACT, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, etc.) you want, so

long as you feel it is being effective.

Please note, if at any time you feel confused, anxious, or distressed

by any information provided in this workbook, please consult your

local medical or mental health practitioner. The LP is not

responsible for any psychological, emotional, or physic breakdown

you may experience as a result of your focussing work. In other

words, if you need help, get help. Consult the “getting help”

information under the Help section in this book if you are not

sure. It is important to remember, the book in your hand is not

intended to stand-alone. It is part of a larger curriculum designed

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to help move you forward and realize your full human potential.

To access the full curriculum, visit the Lightning Path at

http://www.lightningpath.org/

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Workbook goals

By the end of this second LP workbook, you should:

• Replace with three to seven workbooks goals

• Replace with three to seven workbooks goals

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Key Concepts

By the end of this book, you should be familiar with the following

LP concepts. Test your knowledge of these concepts with online

LP flashcards at Quizlet.com (https://quizlet.com/???????).

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Study Questions

At the end of each unit of this book, and in all the LP workbooks,

you will find study questions. You may also find “moments of

reflection.” These study questions and moments of reflection are

designed to help you understand, process, integrate, and ground

the LP materials. You can use these study question at two levels.

Level one is personal level. At this level you read and answer the

study questions and moments of reflection so that you can

understand, heal, integrate, and connect. You can do this LP level

on your own by writing down your responses and reflecting on

these. You can do this with a therapist or healer, where you write

down your answers and share with your healer. You can do this in

a healing group of some sort, where you write down your answers

and share with members of the group. You can also do this with

the help of other LP students by visiting the online forums and

sharing your responses with other students.

Write down your responses in the margins of this workbook or, better yet, create for yourself an LP Healing and Connection Journal, or just HC Journal for short. A Healing and Connection Journal is a journal that you keep with you while you do the work required to heal and reconnect. Use your HC Journal to record your thoughts and feelings during the course of your regular life, and also to write down your answers to the questions provided. Use your answers to remember and reflect.1

Level two is a certification level. For this level you submit well

thought out and comprehensive answers for all the study questions

and moments of reflection in each of the LP Workbooks.

Certification does not mean you are totally healed, connected, etc.

It just means you are committed to the path of healing and

connection, putting in the effort you need to understand, integrate

1 https://spiritwiki.lightningpath.org/index.php/Healing_and_Connection_Journal

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and ground the material into your own life. Certification says you

know the material, have understood it, and have applied it to your

own life. You can find out more about certification by visiting the

LP Certification Page.

https://www.lightningpath.org/certification/

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Introduction: Why healing?

As you pick up this workbook for the first time, as you begin to

read these first words, curious as to what they may be, a first

question that might pop into your mind is why healing? Why, in

the context of human development are we talking about healing?

Recall, as we learned in LP Workbook One, your physical body

is a vessel for your higher consciousness. The simple truth is, for

the vessel to be able to hold/handle your higher consciousness, it

has to be healthy and whole—and by that we mean there should be

no “holes” in the glass. If there are holes in the glass, if there is

damage to the physical body (the Physical Unit as we like to call

it)2 then it doesn’t matter how fast you pour Consciousness into the

glass, the water simply pours out. If you got holes in the physical

vessel, you got to fix the holes. It is as simple as that.

Of course, the question that pops up now is, “Do I have holes in

my glass?” The answer to that question is an unequivocal yes. As

outlined in the paper Toxic Socialization,3 as a consequence of the

toxic socialization process we endure, we all experience a lot of

damage. If this damage, if not addressed, it not only prevents us

from connecting to our own higher consciousness, it also

undermines our mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual well-

being.

But what is toxic socialization exactly? To understand toxic

socialization you must understand what socialization is.

Socialization is the process whereby we are trained to fit into human society. Socialization is the process of learning how to fit

into one’s family and culture, and how to be who you think you

should be. Socialization starts at birth when we are assigned a

binary gender category, and it continues through childhood,

adolescence, and adulthood where we learn not only how to act

and how to dress, but how to think and feel “properly.”

2 https://spiritwiki.lightningpath.org/index.php/Physical_Unit. 3 Mike Sosteric, "Toxic Socialization," Socjourn (2016). See https://www.academia.edu/25275338/Toxic_Socialization.

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You would think that the socialization process we all undergo

would be designed to make us healthy, whole, and well-connected,

but unfortunately despite our intellectual and modern

advancements, it is not. For reasons too complex to get into here,

our “modern” socialization process is a Toxic Socialization4

process. This toxic socialization process is characterized by (to one

extent or another) a) violence, b) neglect, c) chaos, d) destruction

of attachments, and e) ideological indoctrination and deception.

The violence, neglect, chaos, destruction of attachments, and

indoctrination leave us unhealthy, sick, completely disconnected,

and with many “holes” in our glass. But in order to understand let

us look briefly at each of these in turn.

Violence

As noted, toxic socialization is characterized by violence. Violence

includes all forms of violence, like physical, emotional,

psychological, and sexual. Violence, in particular emotional,

psychological, and sexual violence, is very damaging to the physical

unit. If you read the article Toxic Socialization5 you’ll see the

evidence is quite clear on this. Violence of any sort, and this

includes the emotional damage of screaming, yelling, name-calling,

etc., as well as the psychological violence of exclusion,

condescension, condemnation, manipulation, and control, etc.,

damages our physical unit and makes it harder to contain

consciousness because of the holes it creates in the physical unit.

What kind of damage are we talking about? Copious damage,

especially when the assaults are chronic.6 It is like getting punched

in the arm over, and over, and over again. You might be able to

recover from the first punch or two, but repeated assaults will bring

permanent neuromuscular damage. The only difference is that in

the case of emotional and psychological violence, the damage is

4 https://spiritwiki.lightningpath.org/Toxic_Socialization. 5 Sosteric, "Toxic Socialization." See https://www.academia.edu/25275338/Toxic_Socialization. 6 For a relatively complete list of damages, see Sosteric, "Toxic Socialization." See https://www.academia.edu/25275338/Toxic_Socialization

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emotional, psychological, and far worse than merely

neuromuscular. Emotional trauma damages your emotional

responses, making it difficult to trust, to be happy, and to connect.

Psychological trauma damages your psychological structures,

making it difficult to control your impulses, and to keep your

bodily ego in check, or to be able to function in an emotionally

stable manner. Emotional and psychological trauma can even

damage your intellectual functioning by lowering your intelligence

quotient (IQ) and making it harder for you to process, think, and

understand. And that’s not the worst of it. Toxic socialization also

damages your ability to connect to self, to others, and to your

higher self or what we refer to as your higher consciousness.

As you can see, violence causes all sorts of complex neurological,

psychological, and emotional difficulties that makes handling and

containing Higher Consciousness (HC) harder. It is extremely

hard for somebody who has had their cognitive operations altered

by violence and neglect, who is depressed, who struggles with a

personality disorder e.g. borderline personality disorder (BPD),

narcissist personality disorder (NPD), avoidant personality

disorder (APD) etc., who is dealing with post-traumatic stress

disorders (PTSD), who has some other “disorder,” who is

struggling with impulsivity, or some other maladaptive coping

disorder, to deal with their trauma and connect and handle higher

levels of Consciousness. To put it bluntly, a damaged body, i.e.

toxic socialization results in damaged “flesh,” and is “weak” and

can’t handle the flow.

If it helps, you can think of it like this. Think of your body like a

prism, the kind that breaks white light into its component colours.

Think of your Consciousness as a white beam of light flowing into

the prism and then out into the “real” world beyond. In a healthy

situation, the beam enters the body/prism and is then refracted out

into the seven beautiful colours (the ROY-G-BIV) of the visible

spectrum. However, when the physical unit is damaged, when the

prism is cracked by violence, neglect, and other aspects of toxic

socialization, the light does not refract out in pure form. When the

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prism is damaged, cracked, or broken, the light that flows out is

distorted, bent, and incomplete. To put it bluntly, violence cracks

the prism (your physical unit) and as result, diseases and distorts

the light (the Consciousness) that flows through the body. When

the damage is severe, the refracted light can be very distorted, ugly,

and even socio-psychologically pathological.

Obviously, if violence is as bad as we say it is, you will need to immediately reduce it in your life to near zero levels as soon as possible. We will talk more about violence in this Workbook in the next section on Environment. For now, you can prepare for that section by assessing the violence of your own childhood, home, and work environments by using the LP “How Toxic is my world?” survey instrument.

https://www.lightningpath.org/heal/self-assessments/how-toxic-is-my-world/

Neglect

Violence is not the only thing that damages your body and

undermines your ability to connect. Neglect of your essential

human needs also causes damage and undermines the

development of your full human potential. It is easy to understand

why neglect is bad. It is like growing a pretty flower in a pretty pot,

but not giving it enough food, water, energy (i.e. sunlight) so that it

can grow and thrive. If you don’t feed and water the plant, it will

grow up to be smaller. If you starve the plant, it will grow up

stunted or die. So if you want to grow a healthy and strong plant,

you will need to give it just the right amount food, water, and

energy/sunlight, as well as enough support and love, so it can grow

up fast and strong.

It is the same with humans, only obviously, humans are more

complex and have many more needs than a plant. For your

information, the Lightning Path lists the following as essential

human needs.

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LP’s Seven Essential Needs

1. Physiological needs (food, water, nourishment, shelter,

emotional and physical comforts such as emotionally

stable, consistent and trusting unconditional love,

companionship, and sex etc.).

2. Safety needs (safe home, safe spaces to develop and learn,

to be able to master skills etc.). Note, safety includes the

absence of assault of any kind, including physical assault

(e.g., spankings, pushing or shoving, slamming doors,

destruction of personal property etc.), emotional and

psychological assault (e.g. verbal name calling, shaming,

blaming, withdrawal, and or exclusion), and spiritual

assault (e.g. misguided spiritual teachings, hierarchical

beliefs, and oppression etc.).

3. Love needs (e.g. unconditional support, to feel that you

belong, and that you are accepted, and safe inclusion).

4. Need for truth/understanding. The need to know and

understand the world you are born in and are able to

become your true authentic self.

5. Need for esteem/Power. The need to feel good about

one’s self. The need for self-efficacy and the ability to learn

the tools in order for you to control your needs in the

world.

6. Need for alignment with Highest Self (Self-actualization, as

per Maslow). To be content and connected physically,

emotionally, psychologically, intellectually and spiritually

and in complete balance.

7. Need for connection with Highest Self (in Transpersonal

Psychology, transcendence; in Christianity, Islamic beliefs

etc. salvation; in Buddhism, enlightenment; and in yoga,

whole etc.).

To be clear, if a human child is going to enter what we might want

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to call Growth Mode (more on this in the final unit “G” is for

Growth), and if that child is going to grow into a healthy, strong,

independent, free thinking, spiritually awakened, and connected

human adult, all the above needs must be simultaneously met,

especially during early childhood, and especially in the so-called

sensitive or critical periods of infancy, childhood, adolescence,

and early adulthood.7 It simply doesn’t matter what the “genetics”

of the child is. If you do not meet all the needs, the child will not

mature fully to their authentic true self. It is just like when you’re

growing a flower in a pot; if you do not meet all the needs for water,

nutrients, and sunlight, the flower will be stunted. It is only when all the human needs are met that full and healthy development, and strong and clean connections, can occur.

Instability and Chaos

Both violence and neglect undermine the health, development,

and well-being of the physical unit and make healthy and pure

connection difficult. Unfortunately, violence and neglect are not

the only things that impact the physical unit. Familial instability,

crowding, and associated environmental chaos also have negative

impacts.

Chaotic environments are characterized by crowding, noise, lack

of routine, and instability. Chaos and crowding is associated with

7 If at this point you are thinking that achieving this, i.e., meeting the full gamut of human needs, requires a massive input of time and energy far greater than any single person or intimate duo (or trio, or whatever) could every possibly achieve, you are correct. Thus, the wisdom in the old-timey saying “It takes a village to raise a child…” is correct, but only partially. In fact, it takes a family, community, village, and indeed the entire planet to properly raise a child.

If at this point you are also thinking that Earth civilizations are a long way away from full satisfaction of human needs, you are correct. Obviously, as a species, when it comes to meeting the needs of our global citizenry, we still got a lot of work left to do. Note however that it is not that we cannot do it. At this time we have the technical, political, social, and even economic capabilities to meet the full needs of all human beings on Earth. We have enough food to feed everybody, we have the technology to house and protect the entire planet, and we have the economic, political, and distributive prowess to make sure it all gets distributed fairly, and have had this capacity to do so for decades. And because we are also approaching an “automation revolution”, meeting the needs of humans with all our talents and skills should make prioritizing human needs even easier. However, the problem is not evolutionary development of the human species, the problem is that The System currently in place is designed deliberately to not meet all of our human needs, but to enrich a “chosen” few. We can do it, but we are just going to have to replace The System.

You can find out more about our current economic systems and why they are incompatible with the satisfaction of our human needs, and even how to replace them, by reading Rocket Scientists’ Guide to Money and the Economy. https://press.lightningpath.org/product/rocket-scientists-guide-money-economy/.

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“poorer developmental outcomes for all children.”8 This includes

reduced academic performance, 9 lethargy, delayed intellectual and

psychomotor development, 10 and so on. Chaos and crowding can

also impact and undermine child-parent attachment11 (see below)

and lead to behavioural problems in school,12 aggression and

conduct disorders.13 Chaos and instability in our environments are

a particular problem when the chaos is intense and chronic (i.e.,

long term).14

Why is chaos and instability associated with reduced

developmental outcomes? Researchers are still working on that

question, but it likely comes down to inability to engage in focused

exploratory play, lack of emotion/physical/psychological safety,

and the toxic impact of stress on brain neurology. Children in

chaotic environments are embedded in a sea of stimulation,

distraction, redirection, uncertainty, and often unsafety e.g. “Is

mommy or daddy coming home drunk? Is mommy or daddy

going to hit me? Is mommy or daddy going to be mad today?”…

You get the picture. In these conditions, energy and attention

which would normally be given over to focused and safe

exploration and play, is diverted to anticipatory anxiety ridden self-

protection and defense. Under conditions of toxic stress, the child

is always trying to increase their safety and security rather than

simply playing and growing. When this occurs, over time, instead

of biological energy being directed to the development of an open

8 Anne Martin, Rachel Razza and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, "Specifying the Links between Household Chaos and Preschool Children's Development," Early child development and care 182.10 (2012). 9 Martin, Razza and Brooks-Gunn, "Specifying the Links between Household Chaos and Preschool Children's Development." 10 Kim T. Ferguson, Rochelle C. Cassells, Jack W. MacAllister and Gary W. Evans, "The Physical Environment and Child Development: An International Review," International Journal of Psychology 48.4 (2013). 11 Gary W. Evans, Lorraine E. Maxwell and Betty Hart, "Parental Language and Verbal Responsiveness to Children in Crowded Homes," Developmental Psychology.4 (1999). 12 Sara R. Jaffee, Ken B. Hanscombe, Claire M. A. Haworth, Oliver S. P. Davis and Robert Plomin, "Chaotic Homes and Children's Disruptive Behavior: A Longitudinal Cross-Lagged Twin Study," Psychological science 23.6 (2012). 13 Gary W. Evans, "Child Development and the Physical Environment," Annual Review of Psychology (2006). 14 Rebekah Levine Coley, Alicia Doyle Lynch and Melissa Kull, "Early Exposure to Environmental Chaos and Children's Physical and Mental Health," Early Childhood Research Quarterly 32 (2015).

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and expressive human being which can understand and accept its

own Self, and in where the being can handle strong connection

experiences, we instead create conditions in where developing

humans divert their energies towards the development of

defensive, stunted, and hyper reactive states whose primary focus

is on building barriers rather than developing and connecting to

the world. It is hard to be open and connected, it is hard to develop

your full potential, when you are constantly in Defense Mode. And

this is of course not even to mention the neurological damage that

occurs under states of constant stress, like the kind caused by

instability and chronic chaos.

To be clear, chaos and instability is bad. If a human child is going

to enter what we might want to call Growth Mode, and if that child

is going to grow into a strong and fully connected human being and

not a reactive and defensive little shit, it must have a safe, calm,

and stimulating environment that encourages play and growth,

rather than toxic environment that encourages reactive defenses.

Honestly, this is not biological rocket science, this is simple

common sense. Even a wise child knows you don’t plant seeds into

a garden full of toxic sludge. If you do, you get distorted, stunted,

and toxic plants. Similarly, you don’t plant human infants and

children into households full of the toxic sludge of violence,

neglect, abuse, and chaos. If you do, it should be no surprise to

anyone if the child grows up distorted, stunted, and toxic.

Destruction of Attachments

Violence, neglect, and chaos/instability all undermine

development, harm the physical unit, and cause toxic

development, but toxic socialization does more than all that. Toxic

socialization also undermines child attachment. Attachment is the

emotional bond between a child and a parent, primary caregiver,

teacher, mentor and or other caregiving agent in where the child

learns its intrinsic and extrinsic sense of self. Attachment is what

causes a child to smile and feel safe when they see a caregiver enter

the room. “Attachment can be understood as… the enduring

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emotional closeness which binds families to prepare children for

independence and parenthood…. ”15

Why are attachments so important? As one researcher notes,

“…. Attachment allows children the ‘secure base’ necessary to

explore, learn and relate, and the well being, motivation, and

opportunity to do so. It is important for safety, stress regulation,

adaptability, and resilience.”16 More to the point, attachments are

necessary for survival, satisfaction of human needs, and even full

human growth. Recall the Seven Essential Needs here. Infants,

children, adolescents, and even younger adults cannot meet their

own needs. We, all us human’s, are completely dependent on

adult caregivers for years, and partially dependent on them for

decades. This type of long-term “no-return” investment required

to meet the needs of a child/adolescent/young adult requires a

titanium of biological attachment experiences. Evolutionary

speaking, neurological mechanisms that facilitate and encourage

primary attachments to parental units, and secondary attachments

such as friends or teachers, and eventually tertiary attachments to

employers and other members of the individual’s community,

make perfect sense, and become an obviously essential

requirement of growth.

So, what happens when attachments are damaged? Bad things

happen at a number of different levels. Weak, disordered, or

absent child attachment experiences have a profound impact on

the health and well-being17 of the individual. Weak, disordered, or

absent attachments debilitate the physical unit and undermine its

ability to connect. As one researcher put it, “Disturbed childhood

attachment relates to adult physical and psychological ill-health,

including major causes of mortality. It is a key factor in

intergenerational parenting difficulties, and predisposes children

15 Corinne Rees, "Childhood Attachment," The British journal of general practice: the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners 57.544 (2007). 16 Rees, "Childhood Attachment." 17 V. J. Felitti, "[the Relationship of Adverse Childhood Experiences to Adult Health: Turning Gold into Lead]," Z Psychosom Med Psychother 48.4 (2002).

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to substance abuse, temper problems, homelessness, promiscuity,

early pregnancy, and criminality.”18 Obviously, we cannot ignore

the importance of attachment experiences in our growth and

development.19

What causes damaged attachments? There are lots of different

things. Primary and secondary attachments are destroyed by

chaotic and disordered environments, absent parents, poorly

managed break-ups, violence and assault against children (e.g. if

you hit, call your child or other family members names, or shame

them, or otherwise assault your kids and other immediate family

members, you undermine a child’s abilities to trust and attach,

duh). Primary attachments may also be undermined or destroyed

if you or your primary attachment persons are mentally ill,

physically ill, impoverished (i.e. parents having to work all the

time). Also, when people grow up unattached and consequently

do not have the primary experiences necessary to understand and

commit to a child needs, they repeat the cycles of attachment

abuse and neglect. Finally, tertiary attachments to community and

even the planet are destroyed by competition, war, and ideologies

of “good versus evil” that set groups (like Christians, Capitalists,

etc.) up against other groups (like Muslims, Communists, etc.), and

thwarts authentic healthy attachments. And the end result is that

attachment experiences are based on faulty and flawed

foundations.

How does one develop healthy childhood attachments?

Number one, recognize that attachment is a critical, biological,

evolutionary, developmental, imperative that must be met. You

can’t fool around here. Healthy attachments are critical. There is

18 Rees, "Childhood Attachment.": emphasis added 19 If you are struggling with what we are suggesting, perhaps think of your attachment experiences to your pet, your hobby, or your passions, and reflect on all the vested energies you justify and do to commit and maintain that attachment. Now think about how you were raised, or how you justified your own parenting compared to the ways in how you invest in the “other” stuff you choose to do. If you are being honest with yourself, you will see that in order to commit, to master, to learn, and to grow, your attachment to whatever or whoever will determine what your authentic experiences will be. It is the same for our children.

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no question about this, and we are certainly not going to argue it

with anyone, so don’t even bother to try. If you want to grow

healthy independent human beings, do everything you can to

make sure to provide conditions where they can properly attach.

Of course, recognizing that attachment is important might be a

challenge. Almost all of us are raised in societies that value

independence. In these societies, we are encouraged, from a very

early age, to be independent from our home and our hearth. Thus,

we’ve all been raised by parents who push us towards

independence (i.e., they work to break our attachment). We’ve all

gone to schools where breaking attachments is the hidden agenda

of the twelve-year game.20 We look at all of this and we think it is

normal and healthy, but it is not. It may be normal in the sense

that the vast majority of people experience this; but it is certainly

not healthy. It is a toxic situation that undermines human

development and diminishes human potential. And if you are

feeling uncomfortable with this assertion, relax and keep an open

mind, the point is to get you to recognize your own unmet needs

so you can address and work through your issues so you can be an

active informed agent of meeting your own needs and the needs

of those whom you choose to connect and attach to.

Once you have recognized the critical significance of healthy

attachments then number two, do everything you can to develop

healthy attachments by caring for, meeting the needs of, paying

attention to, being close to, communicating to, protecting,

snuggling, encouraging, nurturing, and supporting the being(s) in

your personal charge. And in case you are wondering, yes, this is

a lot of work. It requires more than just a few minutes of parent

time every day. And yes, just to be clear, the majority of this does

fall to the primary caregivers. Understand however, this doesn’t

mean society, teachers the community, the extended family,

daycares, and even friend groups cannot or should not provide

20 Why is the “hidden goal” of the school system to break attachments? So the children can go off to work early of course, even if that work is in factories and fast food outlets with horrendous, even sweat shop conditions.

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assistance and support,21 it just means that at the end of the day it’s

the job of a child’s healthy parent(s), in whatever configuration

works for the parent(s) involved,22 to provide strong and healthy

primary attachments. There’s simply no other way to do this.

Obviously, if you’re paying attention at this point you will realize,

developing healthy attachments is a lot work, for everybody. It’s

not just a question of feeding them and sending them out to

play/work. It is a question of ongoing, long term parental,

community, civil, national, and global support. It sounds like it

would be a lot to get to this point, but it isn’t. To be sure, for an

individual or two it is impossible, but humanity as a whole has the

economic, political, and technological means to create a society

capable of providing the conditions for healthy attachments and

complete needs satisfaction right now. What’s missing is a) the

understanding of how important it is, and b) the political will and

desire to shift economic and social priorities.

Ideology/Indoctrination

Hopefully at this point you get a sense of just how important

meeting human needs and developing healthy attachments is. It is

21 In fact, it means society can and should provide support, because there is no way a single parent, even two healthy and functioning parents, can do it all by themselves. It is the best interests of all us if we grow up healthy, connected, and strong. The only way to do that is to create a society and planet with childcare and healthy educational development as the primary social, economic, and political goal. This is not impossible We have the technology, capability, and resources. We just need to shift people’s thinking and free them from their old energy chains. 22 Early researchers working on attachment, i.e., Bowlby, suggested that infants are “predisposed” to attach to a single primary person, a “mother,” only. This absurdly sexist view leaves fathers disconnected and unattached, and, when the father is present and scapegoat his responsibilities onto his female partner, this damages the child. A “father figure” that fails to attach to their child contributes to the mental, emotional, and psychological burden of a child growing up. Children need to have strong attachments to both parents. A child who is attached to only one parent always worries and wonders what is wrong with them that the other parent will not attach. Lopsided family attachments thus lead to self-esteem and self-love issues.

And note, this is not necessarily to blame fathers for not attaching. Fathers themselves are victims of a toxic socialization process that undermines their attachments and destroys their ability to connect. Men are the traditional breadwinners after all, and if they are to perform well in that role, if they are going to leave the family for long stretches at a time and go win the bread, their attachments must be broken, otherwise they will be less likely to go out. The toxic socialization process discourages feelings in men and damages men’s early attachment. It is not surprising that when they have their own children, they find it troublesome, or even impossible, to attach to their own kids. This also leaves women who are considered the primary caregivers without the appropriate healthy supports in order for them to provide the necessary attachment experiences to the child/ren. Suffice to say, there is no biological gene that makes one a superior attachment person. It requires the dedication and work of all those involved directly and indirectly.

23

not just a question of spiritual connection, it is question of basic

human health. If you don’t provide non-toxic environments, if you

don’t meet all your essential needs, if you force children to grow

up in chaos, and if you stand by while attachments are broken, you

get unhealthy, sick, diminished human beings, and that’s not only

not cool, but it is costly at all levels!

As for shifting economic and social priorities, that’s a whole

different ball game. Shifting planetary priorities is going to involve

nothing more nor less than the complete dismantling of an

ideology and way of looking at the world that normalizes

detachment and encourages us to commit acts of violence towards

each other.

Though you may be uncomfortable admitting it, this ideology is

easy to see, especially once it is pointed out to you. For example,

this system of ideology teaches us that violence against others, such

as spanking our own children, is good for us because it encourages

discipline and builds character. You know, “what doesn’t kill us

makes us stronger” or “spare the rod, spoil the child.” These ideas,

which are part of a larger ideology, encourage us to engage in and

justify violent acts which damage and even destroy our own

children and ourselves.

Or, perhaps consider the ideological encouragement to break our

attachment to our offspring by pushing our children and

adolescents away. We are told that our children “need”

independence, even at a very early age. In fact, we know this is not

true. Infants, children, adolescents, and even adults do not need

complete independence, they need strong and healthy

attachments so they can develop independence in their own right

time and, more importantly, they need to be protected from

violence, abuse, and the assaults of sexual, social, and even

socioeconomic predator’s assaults that can cause damage as they

develop. We have to understand, despite what the “ideology” says,

these experiences are not “rights of passage,” they are not part of

some cosmic “lesson” plan. They should not be considered a

normal part of growing up. They are toxic experiences that,

24

because we are misinformed about the damage they cause, we

justify and allow, and even encourage our children to have long

before they are capable of handling these experiences. And

because of our faulty ideas about human nature and human

development, because of this ideology which we are soaked in

from birth, we harm our children, push them to premature

independence, and even expose them to highly toxic people, long

before they are strong enough or capable enough to handle it. The

result is profound damage23 and disabled connection.

This ideology, this set of ideas that encourages us towards violence

and detachment, is powerful and it is deeply engrained in our

minds and in all of our institutions. What’s more, it has been

around for thousands and thousands of years. If this sounds a bit

conspiratorial, it is not. This statement is rooted in established

history. In fact, you can see the ideological system represented

quite clearing in the royal courts of the Persian empire where elite

high priests created and codified it down. If you’re interested in

the story, check out the readings in next footnote.24 The point here

is that just because we have normalized violence and attachment

issues as a normal process, does not make it right. In fact, those

who study or are committed to the wellbeing of others, will agree

that emotional, psychological, and spiritual stability increases when

there is less stress or trauma.

As we’ve already noted, ideology and indoctrination is another

element of toxic socialization, and doing something about it is

23 Gina and I recently watched a mediocre documentary on Lindsey Lohan, Hollywood child star. The film documents the toxic socialization Lindsey experienced as a consequence of being exposed, through her fame, to toxic environments filled with predators and adult sickness. The experience literally destroyed her; it will likely take her a decade or more to recover. What struck me most about the film was a comment by an individual who said there is a saying in Hollywood that goes “You are forever the emotional age that you were on the day that you become famous.” This is almost certainly true. Exposure to the toxicity of adult Hollywood no doubts stunts emotional, psychological, and spiritual development. However, as should be clear to you by now, it is worse than that. It is not only that exposure to toxicity stunts development; exposure does ongoing damage. 24 If you’re interested in the history, read Mike Sosteric, From Zoroaster to Star Wars, Jesus to Marx: The Science and Technology of Mass Human Behaviour, 2018, Available: https://www.academia.edu/34504691. You can also see elements of this ancient ideology expressed in the “modern” western tarot deck. Mike Sosteric, "A Sociology of Tarot," Canadian Journal of Sociology 39.3 (2014). Also, J. Harold Ellens, "Introduction: The Destructive Power of Religion," The Destructive Power of Religion: Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ed. J. Harold Ellens (Westport, CT: Praegar, 2001).

25

important, not only by changing our ideas about things so we can

create a better world, but also for healing and health. On the LP

we spend a lot of time exploring ideology, indoctrination, and the

debilitating impact this has on the health of the physical unit and

its ability to connect. We discuss the issue in some detail in this

workbook in the unit “‘I’ that explores “Ideology/Indoctrination,”

and in LP Workbook Four: Archetypal Study, and also in Rocket Scientists’ Guide to Money and The Economy (RSGME),25 so for

now we will only say this: from the day we are born to the day we

die, we are filled with the black tars of ideological manipulation

and profound and systemic deception. To be blunt, to preserve an

ancient system of power and privilege, we are filled with epic levels

of intellectual, moral, and spiritual crap. This systemic deception

is not benign by any stretch of the imagination—the systematic

deception causes considerable damage. It causes damage to us

directly because it teaches us Toxic Socialization and encourages

us towards violence and neglect. It causes damage indirectly

because it leads us to engage in actions and seek out experiences

that undermine our development and cause us severe damage. As

we will see, this ideology is even at the root of sexist, racist, classicist

reasoning’s and so on. In truth, this ideology, which as we’ve said

we will explore in some detail as we progress through the LP

corpus, is causing a global shit show. If we want to move forward,

if we want to raise healthy humans, if we want to heal, then this

ideology has to be removed so we can stop justifying all the toxic

behaviours and so we can change our socialization process to

something more healthy and pure.

Accept and Realize the Damage

So, having arrived at this point of our introduction, the question is,

“what are you going to do now?” At this point, there are two things

you can do. You can dismiss what we have said so far and go back

to your normal existence, or you can accept what we have said and

resolve that it is time to move forward and do something about it.

25 To access, visit https://press.lightningpath.org/product/rocket-scientists-guide-money-economy/.

26

If you do decide to go back to your normal life, we bid you fond

adieux. If you do decide to move forward, there will be some

immediate challenges.

The Challenges You Will Need to Face

Challenge number one will be a challenge to acknowledge and

accept how bad the toxicity and the damage really is. There’s no

sense in sugar coating this. You do not have to “evolve” or develop

or learn lessons. Right now you most likely do not have the power

and the capacity to make a strong and pure connection to your

own higher Consciousness despite what you think. Unless you

have such a powerful, pure, and permanent connection to your

Highest Self (HS), something which very few people have, chances

are you are going to have to commit to HEALING. If you spend

your days in disconnected consciousness, you are damaged and

distorted by the toxic socialization process we all endure, and

you’ve got healing and reconnecton work to do. But don’t fret. As

stated, in order to be fully connected to one’s own HS, it is not

only rare, but understandablly hard to accomplish when so much

of our existence is rooted in faulty perceptions. And if you are

deluding yourself into thinking that you have done your

dues/work, go ahead. But please know that there will always be

someone who will see through your façade and challenge you. So

instead of making excuses for your reasonings, consider what we

have to say.

Of course, reading these words for the first time you may not want

to admit they you are psychically and emotionally ill and

completely disconnected from your own Highest Self. You will say

to yourself, “I’m not like them”, or “I have studied and am a better

person as result” “I’m rich and I must be OK.” Unfortunately, as

we’ll se in more detail in the chapter “L” is for Lies, you are going

to have to admit this. The truth is, we’ve all been damaged by toxic

socialization to one extent or another and we all must admit that

damage before we can begin to move forward towards healing and

reconnection.

27

If you do finally admit that there is damage, then you will need to

deal with challenge number two. Challenge number two will be

dealing with the social/societal resistance and push back that you

will receive when you announce your intent to move forward.

Whether you say it openly or just meekly try and convey it, it won’t

matter. Until things have shifted a bit more on this Earth, you are

likely to get pushback. We suspect that until the mid to late 2020s

most people will remain stuck in their delusions of normality, and

few people in your family or friend groups will support your

recognition and admission. Of these, some (perhaps many) will try

to push you back into silent acceptance of “normal” realities.

They’ll say, “it is just you” or “don’t be such a baby” or “you are

being too sensitive.” They may even, if they feel guilt and shame

over the way they have treated you or others like you in the past,

gaslight you into silence. Social and familial pressure will make it

hard for you to come out and say, “This, our reality, is really bad

and toxic, and I’ve been hurt as a result.”

If this happens to you, don’t waste your time and energy beating

your head against their brick walls. Find some alternative friends

and look for necessary support outside your toxic family. There’s

no sense in pushing against people who are a) not ready to move

forward and b) likely to push against you to keep you down and

suppressed. If you do that, you’re not helping them (they’ll “move

forward” when it is their time, or not), and you’re wasting your

energy and time.

The challenges of seeing and admitting to the nature of the cold, hard,

toxic reality that surrounds you is captured in the Allegory of the Room. https://www.michaelsharp.org/allegory-of-the-blindfold/

LP HEALING Framework

If you manage to get past the challenge of accepting, and the

challenge of standing up and moving forward even against

social/familial push back, challenge number three is the challenge

28

of doing the work to heal, reconnect, and finally integrate and grow

We won’t lie to you. The work of healing, connection, and growth,

we’ll just call it The Work26 from here on out, is difficult,

challenging, and complicated. Fortunately, it is exactly at this point

that the Lightning Path steps in. The LP offers guidance and

instruction on both healing and connection.

As regards healing, the LP offers the LP HEALING Framework.

The HEALING Framework, which we will discuss in the rest of

this book, offers you a roadmap to help you understand and

navigate your healing journey.

As regards connection, The LP offers you the LP Connection Framework in LP Workbook Three. The LP Connection

Framework will help you organize your thinking and your

connection practice. We won’t talk more about connection much

in this workbook. When you are ready to explore connection,

move on to LP Workbook Three: Connection.

Finally, as regard growth, the LP offers advanced connection and

growth guidance in LP Workbooks Four, Five, Six, and also

webinars and additional training materials, like the SpiritWiki, to

help you sort it all out and make sense. You can avail yourself of

these resources as you see fit.

With that all said, at this point the questions before us are, “What

is the LP Healing Framework?” and “How can it help?” The

answer to both questions is simple. The LP HEALING

Framework is a set of seven focus points that you must pay

attention to, consider, and work through in order to move forward

with your healing process. The seven focus points are outlined by

the acronym HEALING, they are:

H = Help

E = Environment

A = Addictions

26 See https://spiritwiki.lightningpath.org/The_Work.

29

L = Lies

I = Ideologies

N = Needs

G = Growth

Each step in the LP HEALING framework is a guide to those

issues that most of us must work through on our healing journey.

Each of these steps are interdependent, and are necessary, and will

require action if you truly wish to heal. Most important to keep in

mind, each step will mean something different, and will dive

“deeper” into the core of things, depending on where you are at in

your own healing process. As you read through each of the steps

in the units that follow, consider where you are in the process. Are

you at the beginning? Are you working near the middle? Or are

you somewhere towards the end of the work. Keep your position

in mind and expect to read each unit more than twice. It is up to

you to do the work by reading through the sections and applying

what you read to your healing journey as appropriate. Before we

get to that though, there are a few things about the LP HEALING

Framework that you need to know, and that we need to say.

What You Need to Know While on the LP Journey

Number one, you need to know that the LP HEALING

Framework is a framework, a roadmap, and not a therapy. The

LP doesn’t tell you what strategies or healing modalities you

should use to heal and connect (though it may recommend stuff at

times). Instead, the LP HEALING Framework gives you advice

on the things that you (and your therapist/healer) need to pay

attention to and focus on as you travel along The Way.27

Number two, you need to know that the LP HEALING

Framework is not a linear roadmap. It can be if that is appropriate

for you, but it can also be a “pick and choose” sort of affair. If you

are new to all this, you might want to start with the “H” and the

“E” by getting help and detoxifying your environments. On the

27 The phrase “The Way” or “The Path” is simply a shorthand reference to any authentic system of human development/human spirituality that leads to authentic healing and connection.

30

other hand, if you have had some treatment, therapy, or other

kinds of support in the past, you might start where you feel makes

the most sense, for e.g., addressing the abuse in your intimate

partner relationship, or getting your addiction(s) under control. To

decide where to start, read through the book at least once, and

then follow your gut or get guidance from a trusted healing

professional.

If you feel you need guidance on where to start, the LP offers a

Healing MAP (Mindful Action Plan). A Healing MAP is a

questionnaire you fill out and a guided follow up session that gives

you advice on what aspects of your life you need to focus/work on

first, second, third, and so on. To purchase a Healing MAP, visit

the link below.

https://www.lightningpath.org/service/healing-map/

Number three, moving forward, you need to understand, that the

LP requires discipline and focus. In LP Workbook One, we spoke

about the importance of “staying the course,” meaning if you want

to successfully move forward and connect, you must stay

committed to The Work even when you are tired, doubtful, and

unsure. It is going to be a challenge. Understand, healing and

connection involve a lot more than a trip or two to the therapist, a

singing bowl, and a glass of wine with some friends. Healing and

re-connection are a lot of work. To get through it all, discipline is

the key. To be sure, you do not have to saturate your life with

“healing, healing, healing,” but you must do a little bit every day.

The LP HEALING Framework is helpful in this regard because

it helps you stay focused and disciplined on the tasks at hand.

Work a little bit on some things in the framework every day in

whatever stage of development you are in, and you’ll make

consistent progress forward.

Number four, you need to understand, you need to be

accountable and you need to take responsibility. We cannot

31

overemphasize how important responsibility and accountability

are if you want to truly heal and connect. If you are sincere about

healing, whether you are a clinician, or client, or both, healing will

require you to be accountable and responsible for all the toxic

things you’ve done in the past. This means no complacency, no

projection of your issues onto others, no scapegoating of others for

things you are responsible for, and no excuses whatsoever. If you

want to move forward, take responsibility and be accountable.

At this point, this notion that you should be accountable and

responsible shouldn’t be too much of a stretch. If it helps you to

put it all together, you can use the SAAR acronym to move

forward. SAAR stands for See, Accept, be Accountable, and take

Responsibility. See the toxicity that surrounds you. Accept that it

is unhealthy and disconnecting. Be Accountable for your part in

the toxicity. Take Responsibility for the things that are yours so

that you can do your part in cleaning up the toxic mess.

Facing the ugly truths of ourselves, our world, our part in the

problem, and our past actions, and being accountable and

responsible, are necessary steps forward in the process of healing.

It is the only way forward out of the morass of disconnection and

toxicity that surrounds you, and within which you are embedded.

It is the only way to pursue authentic healing.

SAAR Affirmation

Today I will see the toxicity that surrounds me,

Today I will accept that it is unhealthy and disconnecting.

Today I will be accountable for my part in the show,

Today I will take responsibility for the bad things I can

change.

If seeing, accepting, being accountable, and taking responsibility

sounds like a big challenge, it is. But it is necessary. Don’t worry

too much if you don’t understand the importance of it now, or if

you feel a little overwhelmed at the thought of it. The reasons why

32

accountability and responsibility are so important will become

clear as you move forward through the materials, and it will

become much easier to SAAR as you move forward. For now, put

SAAR in your mind, or on a sticky note to remind yourself, and

get to work on it. Take it easy and move slowly through the

process.

Self-acceptance

To be sure, seeing and accepting the truth, being accountable and

taking responsibility, are big challenges. One of the things that will

help you navigate this challenge is simple self-acceptance. Moving

forward, simply accept who you are and what you have been

through without judgment or shame.

Listen carefully now, because this is of critical importance. There

is no shame in being damaged by toxic socialization. There is no

shame in being hurt, angry, or sad. There is no shame in being

angry and hateful. There is no shame in struggling with addictions.

There is no shame in making mistakes. There is no shame in

repeatedly falling down. There is no shame in harming others

while you are comatose and damaged “at the wheel.” Understand,

it is not a question of shame or guilt. It is a question of seeing the

toxicity and damage so you can heal and reconnect. There’s no

fuss “at the gate” and certainly no test that you must pass. All you

must do is see the truth, accept that things are not perfect, be

accountable for your part in the toxicity, take responsibility for the

things that are yours, and commit to ending the nonsense, healing

your physical unit, and reconnecting with your Highest Self.28 For

the religiously minded amongst you, this is the “narrow gate”

28 Note, if you are a therapist, no shame and no judgment applies to you and your practice as well. Do not shame and judge a person damaged by toxic socialization. Instead, accept that it has been a struggle for them and help them on their healing journey. If you’re a therapist that judges and shames those who come for your help, stop. If you can’t stop, find another profession.

Also note, acceptance and no-judgment should not be used as an excuse to enable. You do not judge/shame a person who has self-medicated themselves into addiction, but neither do you enable toxicity or accept the addiction as is. You help them clean up their environment. You help them heal. You help them free themselves of addiction.

33

through which you “enter into the Kingdom;”29 this is the way to

the attainment of Nirvana, or whatever you want to call successful

reconnection. That’s all there is to it. It all starts with simple self-

acceptance.

As a final note, we’d like to reiterate, healing, connection, and

integration/growth require time, effort, and copious personal

reflection. You can’t just pick up a singing bowl or pray in a pew

on Sunday and think you have done your work. You must spend

time thinking and processing in a mindful and consistent manner

so that you can understand, process, transform, and dismiss. Both

Gina and I, Michael S., do this reflection when we write. We do

some grounding techniques, get ourselves comfortable, breathe,

and connect. Some of you might do it by painting, writing songs

and poems, or making videos and films. Whatever method you

have an affinity for, use that to help you with your healing work.

Finally, if you are not the literary or music type, or even if you are,

a personal journal, what we might want to call your Healing and

Connection Journal (HC journal),30 one not attached to digital

screen, will certainly help you process and reflect. Chronicling

your thoughts and feelings in a personal HC journal will not only

help you record, analyze, process, and take necessary action, it will

also make it easier for you to get help when and if you need it

because you will have a record of your mental/emotional processes

that you can share with your therapist/healer.

Moment of Reflection: throughout this and subsequent LP

workbooks you will find these “moments of reflection.”

These moments are designed to get you to pause and think

about important concepts and how they apply to your life.

Right down the insights you receive during these moments in

your HC Journal. You can post your moment of reflection

29 Matthew 7:13-14. 30 https://spiritwiki.lightningpath.org/Healing_and_Connection_Journal.

34

on the LP HC Journal forums if you wish to share.

https://www.lightningpath.org/forums/forum/hc-journal/. If

you wish, you can keep your posts private and “student only.

To learn how, visit the link above.

And that’s all we have to say in this unit. To recap what we have

learned so far, in LP Workbook One31 we learned that the body is

a vessel for Consciousness and that proper human development

involves filling the body with higher Consciousness. Also in

Workbook One, we learned that filling the vessel requires us to

“make a connection.” When we make a connection,

Consciousness begins to flow into the body.

In this workbook, Workbook Two, we begin our reconnection

process by beginning to heal damage to the physical unit that

causes “holes in the glass.” Here we learn that the body is damaged

by a toxic socialization process and that this damage makes it hard

for the body to contain higher Consciousness. To put it simply,

neglect, violence, and toxic traditions create holes in the glass

through which the water of higher Consciousness either flows out,

or becomes twisted and corrupted, like a beam of light through a

cracked and shattered prism. We have learned that toxic traditions

create major obstacles that prevent us seeing and recognizing the

problems. And we have learned that when we finally do see and

recognize the problem, there is still lots of work we (and by “we”

we mean you the individual and society at large) have to do to heal

the damage and reconnect. Finally, we have learned that the LP

Healing Framework and the LP Connection Framework help with

the healing and reconnection work.

At this moment we are done our introductory work and it is now

time to begin the healing and reconnection process. We will start,

in the next unit with the first focus point in the LP HEALING

Framework, getting Help. Before we get to that, however, here are

31 https://press.lightningpath.org/product/the-lightning-path-book-one-authentic-spirituality/.

35

some study questions that you can look over to help you process

and integrate what you have learned so far.

Study Questions

1. Examine your life and make a list of all the violent things

that have happened, and that continue to happen. This

includes physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual

violence. This includes violence perpetrated against you,

and violence you perpetrate against others Write these

experiences, and your own violent actions, down in your

HC journal. Work to overcome shame and judgment so

you can share openly with your therapist/healer, your

healing group, or online in the LP forums, HC Journal

section.

2. List the LP’s Seven Essential Needs. Think about your

own childhood. Were all these needs met by your

parents, family, friends and teachers etc.? If not, in what

ways did the socialization process fail to meet your

childhood needs? Did you experience an unsafe

environment? Was your need for truth and

understanding thwarted in some way? What negative

“thing” stopped you from trusting? Write your thoughts

down in your HC Journal. If you like, share with your

therapist/healer, the group, or in the online forums in the

HC Journal.

3. What is the Inertia of Normal? How does that arise (i.e.

traditions, expectations, the establishment of a toxic

normality, etc.)? Think about the traditional ways of

thinking and acting you were taught. Are any of these

toxic in any way? That is, do they encourage violence and

neglect? Write these down and share with the group or

online.

36

1. “H” is for help

It would be nice if we could say that healing and reconnection are

easy processes. It would be nice if we could wave a magic wand,

say magic words like “abracadabra,” and you would be healed and

connected.” But, we can’t. Healing and connecting can be tough

processes and they can take a long time, especially if your

childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood experiences were

difficult, and by that we mean violent, abusive, and neglectful. If

you grew up in constant emotional, psychological, verbal, or

physical assault, if as a child you experienced chronic neglect of

your essential needs, if your life was chaos growing up, healing and

connection will be difficult. In fact, in cases of extreme

childhood/adolescent toxicity, which are far more prevalent than

most of us would like to admit, the damage will be so profound,

and the healing and connection might be so difficult, that to

accomplish it, you’ll need to get some help.

Understand, this is not a statement about your strength or

weakness. It is just the way it is. Some of us have experienced so

much damage that to heal and connect we are going to need some

help. We may need that help now, or we may need it later.

Experience enough trauma and even the toughest among us will

eventually need professional assistance. Even the strongest

weightlifter eventually reaches their limit. Do not be shamed into

suffering in silence. If you need help, get it.

How do you know if you’re going to need help with the healing

and connecting process? On this, we have some things for you to

consider.

Number one, follow your gut instincts. If you’re finding things are

a challenge, if you seem stuck in the same place, if you feel like

you are spinning your wheels, if you are feeling anxious that you

are not moving forward, or if you have this annoying subterranean

itch that just won’t go away, then you may need to get yourself

some help. Follow your gut intuition. If you think you need help,

get help.

37

Number two, take an honest look at your emotional and

psychological state. If you find you are permanently cycling in and

out of depression, relationships, and addictions, if you find you are

long-term avoidant, apathetic, and unmotivated, if you are angry,

reactive, defensive, and agitated, if you are lashing out at loved

ones and others all the time, if you are struggling with compuslivity,

rumination, then you’re probably experiencing mental or

emotional disruption, and you probably need to get some help.

Life should be lived in calm, serene, peaceful, and (if not blissful,

then at least) purposeful contentment. If this isn’t your life, then

you probably need help.

How to Choose a Competent Professional Healer?

Of course, the question now is, how do you find appropriate and

competent help? There are a few strategies you can use, and a few

things to consider. We recommend that you start with the

following:

First, ask someone, especially someone who you have witnessed

overcoming an obstacle or healing a problem. If you see

somebody heal and transform, ask them how it happened and

what kinds of supports and help they received to get to where they

are today. Don’t be afraid to ask them the names of practitioners,

books, support groups, etc. Word of mouth, coupled with the

observance of actual healing change, is a wonderful way to seek

and find appropriate and competent help.

Just be careful about the observance part, that’s all. If somebody

tells you about this awesome healer/therapist, but nothing changes

in them, i.e., they haven’t resolved their issues or traumas, they are

still disconnected from their family, they are still struggling with

addiction, they still have visible self-esteem issues, then be wary.

Don’t listen to their advice and don’t visit their therapist because

a) their therapist probably isn’t effective, else there’d be some

progress, and b) they aren’t in a position to accurately reflect or

advise because they aren’t aware they are making no progress.

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If you don’t know anybody personally who has been successfully

assisted by a healing professional, the second thing, the next best

thing, is to contact your local psychological/mental health referral

agencies and ask them for their recommendations. Local agencies

will keep a list of practitioners and their areas of expertise, and

they will be able to guide you towards some initial assistance. If

you take this route, keep in mind that their recommendations will

be general recommendations, meaning they can only point you in

the general direction; the therapist they point you to may be

appropriate or not. It is up to you to determine if the therapist is

appropriate or not.

Qualifications

How do you assess if a therapist or healer is appropriate? To do

that you need to assess for yourself whether the healer is Qualified

and Competent to help you with your issues

Qualified healers will be healers that have a specific expertise in

the area of healing for which you seek assistance. If you’re dealing

with addictions, this person should have knowledge and

experience dealing with addiction. If you’re dealing with anger and

hatred, then this person should have knowledge and experience

dealing with psychological/emotional trauma. If you have been

sexually assaulted, the person should have knowledge and

experience with sexual violence. If you’re working with your

partner on a relationship, find a good relationship expert and so

on.

You get the idea.

Ensure that the help you are receiving is coming from someone

who has studied and has knowledge, expertise, and experience in

the issues you are seeking support with. It is ill-advised to discuss

relationship issues with a therapist who has been divorced multiple

times, or has old energy views of child and adult development. In

other words, you wouldn’t discuss your suicide ideations with your

mechanic, unless he’s been on a successful healing path, and you

shouldn’t discuss car repairs with a psychologist, unless they know

39

something about cars. Focus and look for help in specific areas

and look for healers that can help with the same. Qualified and

competent healers will know their craft and be effective.

And note, qualifications does not necessarily mean those fancy

letters some of us have behind our names. While formal education

is important, and nothing beats a good teacher when it comes to

organizing and presenting important knowledge, people don’t

always need a formal education to learn a skill or be an effective

healer, just so long as they are educated. Self-education, i.e.,

reading books, taking classes here and there, can work too, so long

as they put in the time and the practice and practice healthy ways

in being human.

Competence

In addition to being qualified in the area you’re seeking help in,

the therapist should also be competent. This is an important

consideration. Sad to say, but not all healers (doctors,

psychologists, empaths, etc.) will, for whatever reason,32 be

competent in their practice, even though some of them have years

of “book learning” behind them. Some will be struggling with their

own emotional/psychological trauma and this will impact their

ability to heal. Others may be deluding themselves about their own

expertise and competence. It’s like an addictions counsellor who

is addicted to shopping, or a relationship counsellor who doesn’t

model healthy boundaries or who has been divorced several times,

or a psychotherapist whose is obsessive/compulsive and focuses

on your homework instead of your resistance to your homework.

You get the idea.

32 If you’re a therapist/healer you have to be aware, sometimes you need healing to. We’ve all been through trauma at some level, and we all need healing, including the healers. I (Gina) have learned as a domestic abuse and violence counsellor, that my effectiveness to help others was directly related to my own level of wellbeing. In my early days, my educated ego needs, and my own childhood and adolescent trauma sometimes got in the way of me being an authentic and effective healer. Counselling growth works both ways i.e., a healer will grow and heal just as their client grows and heals. That is why being a healer requires you to adhere to and model the highest standards of ethical boundaries and practices.

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In general, you want to avoid healers who have unresolved issues

of their own to deal with, especially when those issues are close to

the ones you are dealing with. We point this out because it is a

healer’s nature to want to help others, but healers are no different

than you. They come from the same families that you come from

and grow up with toxic socialization as we all do. Consequently,

they experience the same traumas as everybody else. Therefore, it

is not safe to assume that just because a healer has gone to school,

just because they are recognized by a professional organization,

and just because they have their own practice, that they are sincere,

effective, and competent in their chosen field. A healer can read

all the books in the world and take all the best classes from all the

best universities, but their effectiveness and competence as a

healer will be compromised if they haven’t fully healed themselves.

This is the unfortunate reality. Many healers are as sick, or even

sicker, than you. You can’t just throw yourself out into the healing

space and hope for the best. You must take responsibility and be

accountable for your own healing process. This means finding

healers and making sure they are qualified and competent to help

you with your healing process.

Questions and Red Flags

A question that must arise at this point is how do you tell if a healer

is qualified and competent? There are a few things you can look

for.

Number one, look at their qualifications. Start by examining their

credentials. Do they have an educational background in the

healing services they offer? We noted above that education is not

the only thing you should look at, but it is something you should

look at. Whether we are talking physical, emotional, psychological,

or spiritual, healing is a complicated thing and education helps a

person understand these “things” at a deeper level.

Education is important, but it is not the only thing that qualifies a

person to help with a healing issue. The second thing you should

look at is experience in the area. This can be educational

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experience, but also real-life experience, both positive and

negative. In this regard, do not be afraid to ask the tough questions.

If you’re dealing with a relationship counsellor, ask them if they

have a stable family. If they don’t, if they are either too young to

have the necessary experience, or if they’ve been divorced several

times, think twice. Can you really expect a therapist who has never

had a stable relationship, or cannot maintain a stable relationship,

to offer you advice on your own relationship?

In addition to looking at qualifications and experience, you should

also, if you can, ask your healer about their own mental/emotional

health history. Have they ever been depressed? Have they ever

suffered OCD? Do they have other symptoms of psychological

trauma and damage? Don’t be shy about this. Ask them what their

challenges have been. Of course, if you ask this question, be

prepared for defensive responses. Some therapists will be

uncomfortable with questions like this. Some will get defensive

and hostile. They will say you are crossing personal boundaries

and not want to share with you their histories. In those cases where

healers react defensively or aggressively, you might want to find

another therapist. Any therapist who tries to tell you that they

haven’t experienced emotional or psychological trauma, or who

aggressively tries to put you down for asking, is either lying, self-

delusional, or both. We’ve all got trauma to deal with and if a

therapist isn’t open enough and self-aware enough to acknowledge

that, it is unlikely they’ll have done any of the work necessary to

understand and heal their own trauma and damage, and very

unlikely they will be able to help you.33

33 Note to therapists and healers, especially those working with emotions and psychology, if you ever want to be fully effective and live up to your potential as healer, you need to admit to yourself any trauma you’ve experienced and damage that has been done and do something about it. And note, it doesn’t take much. Our daughter had her self-esteem destroyed by a single session with an incompetent and unqualified speech pathologist who made her feel stupid with a single word. It took over a decade to build up her self confidence in the face of school authority, and she still struggles from time to time. The damage from that single incident was profound. And that’s just a single incident. Most of us have experienced far worse than her. If we don’t acknowledge the damage we’ve experienced, we can’t heal. If we can’t heal, we can’t be an effective healer because our own issues will always block our understanding and corrupt the guidance we give to others. We often wonder what happened to that speech pathologist to make her think what she was doing was okay.

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Of course, in your exploration of qualifications and competence,

be reasonable. You cannot expect your healer/therapist to be one

hundred percent healed nor can you expect them to reveal all the

gory details of their traumas and experiences to you. This is a

professional relationship after all. You can, however, expect them

to be honest about the reality of their past trauma, and to share

with you general details about how they have dealt with, or are

dealing with, the issues. If they deny, it is a red flag that should set

you on your guard.

Speaking of red flags, a third thing you should watch out for when

assessing the qualification and competence of a potential therapist

or healer is the presence or absence of professional emotional

boundaries. Professional healers should be just that, professional.

They should not act like your friend, they should not replace your

mother or father emotionally, they should not “have coffee” or

“drink wine” with you, etc. Remember this always, it is not a

healer’s job to fill your emotional and psychological holes, but

rather to equip you with the skills and knowledge you need in

order to heal your own damage and patch your own holes. Healers

and therapists teach you how to meet your own needs, find your

own friends, navigate your own personal relationships, and fix your

own damage. Their job is to guide you through a healing process

and nothing more.

If you feel like your counsellor/healer is your friend, if you feel a

budding emotional attachment to them, and especially if they’ve

made you worried about them, something is wrong with the

therapeutic relationship. Either you are projecting unmet needs

onto the relationship, hoping the therapist will meet them, or they

are projecting their needs on you, hoping you will meet theirs.

Either way, appropriate professional boundaries are absent. Either

way, it is a red flag. If your healer isn’t at least self-aware and

educated enough to know that therapeutic relationships are not

“friend” relationships or “partner” relationships or “parent”

relationships, or if your healer is not powerful enough to prevent

inappropriate attachments from developing, their ability to help

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you will be limited, and they may even cause you more long-term

damage.

Additional Thoughts on Getting Help

Hopefully, this section on “getting help” has been enough to orient

you to the importance of getting help sometimes. Hopefully, this

section has also given you some information that can help you find

the best type of help there is. The lesson of the unit is simple. If

you need help, get it; but, be careful and attentive to the type of

help you get. Not all help is competent or appropriately qualified

to help you on your way. Moving forward, get help if you need it,

but be discerning of the type of help you get. Ask the hard question

and watch for red flags, just in case it is not. If you don’t get answers

to your questions, and if you see some rad flags, you may need to

look for better help.

Before closing out this section on how to get help, there are a few

more things additional thoughts we would like to state.

The first additional thought is this, get it through your head, there

is no shame in getting help, even when it comes to seeking help

for mental health issues. Remember, your body is a physical

vehicle for Consciousness, like your car is a physical vehicle for

your body. If your car is not working properly, you don’t hide it in

a corner and blame it for breaking down, you try and fix it yourself

or you take it to someone qualified and competent who can. That

is all there is to it. It is the same with your physical unit, your mind

and body. As you learned in LP Workbook One, your physical

unit is a vehicle for your Consciousness. Now you will understand,

your physical unit is a complicated piece of bio-machinery that

when broken sometimes requires expertise and resources to fix so

it can function properly. There’s as much shame in that as there is

shame in taking your car to a mechanic to fix, which is to say, none.

If anybody tries to shame you for your illness, addiction, or

whatever, whether that person is your mom, your dad, your

partner, your spouse, a friend, a priest, avoid physical contact with

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them, and block them out of your awareness. If you need help

fixing your physical unit, simply get help.

The second additional thought is, you do not need to actually

connect physically and in expensive therapeutic sessions with

helping professionals to get help. Sometimes you can “help

yourself” by immersing yourself in information found in self-help

books, videos, workshops, support groups, etc. These days, there

is no shortage of information in this regard, so we encourage you

to seek out help in whatever form you can find it. Once again, we

remind you, be discerning. Just because somebody has a book, a

blog, or a website does not mean they are qualified to help you

heal and connect. Pay attention to qualifications and look for red

flags.

Our third additional thought, if you do choose to seek out a

personal healing experience with another healer, make sure you

feel comfortable and safe with whatever professional you choose

to work with. If you don’t feel comfortable or safe, either say

something to the therapist, or find another therapist. Saying something to the therapist is always the best course of action because a competent healer will welcome feedback, will

understand that they won’t be able to “connect” and support

everybody, and will appreciate the opportunity to improve their

practice. Put another way, not saying something to a professional

is not doing them any favours. Not providing feedback to a healer

prevents a competent and qualified healer from growing their own

skill and expertise. Similarly, not providing feedback to

incompetent or unqualified healers also prevents their growth.

Your single feedback may not jolt and incompetent healer into

self-reflection and action, but if they hear it enough times, from

multiple diverse sources, it might. Don’t be silent about things.

Being silent helps nobody. Always give constructive feedback to

your therapist/healer.

Note, the admonition to provide feedback is not a license to be

ignorant to people. Don’t be mean to your healer; do not let anger

and resentment turn your feedback into emotional or

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psychological assault. Just be honest about your thoughts and your

feelings. Find a way to present feedback in a positive fashion and

with helpful intent. Feedback that hurts another person is not feedback, it is assault.

Also, keep in mind, while competent therapists will welcome

feedback, incompetent and unqualified therapists may be

threatened by your feedback, even when it is presented in a

positive fashion and with helpful intent. If a healer reacts

defensively to feedback you provide, this is a red flag. As already

noted, if you say something to the therapist and they divert, blame

you, react defensively, or aggressively push you back down, find

another therapist.34

Fourth, while it is important to seek help when you need help, it

is also important that the people you seek help from are at least

healthier than you. This goes for professionals, friends, and family.

If you are relying on help from individuals who are not grounded,

informed, or healthy themselves, your healing will be

compromised. People who are sick themselves will not be able to

help you heal. People who have “done a little” might be able to

“help a little,” but they will only be able to take you so far, which

is fine. A person doesn’t have to be a fully ascended master healer to you heal. At the same time, they can only lift you as high “up the ladder” of healing and connection as they are. Be honest with

yourself about the help you are receiving.

And note, there is no point “hoping” for the best here. There is

no point pretending to feel supported if you aren’t properly

supported, and there is no point desperately clinging on to

34 Also note, if you are dealing with a healer who can’t deal with even constructive feedback, if you find someone that diverts, blames, reacts defensively, and aggressively pushes you back down, consider filing a formal complaint to the appropriate professional bodies that oversee your healer’s profession. These sorts of attacks might not sound serious, but they are. You can help shift professional awareness and ethical standards by making complaints. Complaints don’t have to be mean. They just have to be feedback. If the therapist isn’t taking your feedback, talk to their professional association. Doing so will not only make it more likely for your therapist to actually listen, but it will also help shift professional awareness and ethical standards in a more positive direction.

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therapists, family members, or friends who are sick and stuck. In

fact, doing that can cause more damage;35 so, don’t do it.

Fifth, in addition to getting over shame, learning to help yourself,

seeking out competent and qualified help which you are

comfortable with, and learning to recognize and avoid the toxicity

and assaults of family and friends, you also need to distinguish

between authentic assistance and enabling. An enabler is an

individual who enables your bad behaviour, even when that

behaviour is violent and super toxic. An enabler is someone who

says “let’s go for a drink” even though they know you are struggling

with addiction. An enabler is someone who says, “that’s ok,” even

when you have done something horribly wrong. Remember, enablers enable. They enable sickness. They enable violence. They enable toxicity and disconnection even while ostensibly trying to help. Truth is, being supportive doesn’t mean accepting

every shitty thing you think, and every horrible thing you do.

Support means love and acceptance while at the same time

challenging your wrong thoughts, wrong actions, and so on. Trust

us: you do not want an enabler in your life. You want people who

will support your healing journey and encourage you towards

connection.

Moment of reflection. Pause for a moment and ask yourself

the question, “who are the enablers in my life.” Reflect on

those enabling relationships, asking yourself “how and why

do I let them enable me?” Write down your responses in

35 Clinging to sick people in the hope that they’ll give you the support and assistance you need is dangerous, because they can do damage. They can do damage by a) offering you bad advice, b) lashing out when you trigger them, and c) undermining you in unconscious ways to prevent you from getting ahead of them. Obviously, if you are putting yourself in situations where more damage is being done, you won’t be making progress on the healing front.

A good thing to watch for here in any of your relationships is safety. If you’re not safe, you’re not healing. If you are not safe, you could be taking on more damage. If you cannot be completely emotionally, psychologically, and physically safe, you won’t be able to heal and reconnect. Therefore, it is imperative that you seek help from authentic and connected sources who are healed and connected (or on the path to healing and connection) themselves and avoid help from those who are disconnected and sick themselves.

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your HC Journal and post on the LP HC Journal forums if

you wish to share.

Enabling, we have to say, is a pretty big problem, and one we can’t

go into detail here. Here we’ll just briefly explore two questions,

and let you figure the rest out for yourself. Question one is “why

do people enable us?” and question two is “why do we allow

people to enable us?”

As for why people enable, they do this for the simple reason that

enablers benefit from the behaviour they enable. It might be

shocking, but it is not hard to realize. Pharmaceutical companies

do not benefit when they heal you, they benefit by ensuring you

stay sick, so you can pay them to help alleviate your symptoms.

Marketers do not benefit by teaching us that consumerism is

destroying the planet; they benefit by fueling our addiction.

Politicians do not benefit by leading healthy and connected

citizens; they benefit by having sick and disconnected masses

which they can easily manipulate and control. Similarly, friends

and family members enable your toxic behaviours because they

benefit from the “status quo” in some way.

It is like when you are trying to quit smoking while your “friend”

or sibling cajoles you with cigarettes. They do this because they

benefit from your addiction. They want company with their

addiction. They want a smoking buddy. They don’t want you to

quit smoking because if you do, they will feel bad for still smoking,

and their willpower will be tested.

Anyway, you get the idea. People enable your toxic and unhealthy

behaviour because they benefit from it in some way. When you

pause to reflect, identify all the enablers in your life and ask

yourself, why they are doing it.

As for why we allow people to enable us, it is not because there is

something wrong with us in any way, it is because we are rewarded

emotionally, psychologically, and even financially by the people

who enable (and benefit from our) toxic behaviour. For example,

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we gain acceptance and inclusion36 when we “have a drink with the

boys.” We gain esteem, power,37 acceptance, and inclusion in the

“cool,” mean girl/boy groups, when we engage in spiteful gossip.

We get to play with new toys, or gulp down tasty substances, when

we let the advertisers fuel our addictions. We are shunned and

often attacked when we refuse to participate any longer in the

“mutually beneficial” enabling schemes. It takes a lot of work, and

a hard shift, to get us to the point where we are willing to push the

enablers out; however, we must do it. If you are trying to quit

smoking and you hang out with smokers, you’ll never quit. If we

want to heal, we need to pause and reflect. We need to find good

healers and we need to step out of enabling relationships.

Finally, our sixth thought is this: always remember, friends and family are not help. Many people see friends, families, religions,

and other groups of non-mental-health-professionals as sources of

help. Our society in fact encourages you to find support in friends

and family. On the LP, however, we do not recommend relying

on friends, families, and other non-mental-health professionals for

healing and connection guidance, unless they are themselves

healed and connected, or at least on an authentic path forward.

We discourage this for several reasons.

1. As we’ll see later when we discuss intergenerational

toxicity, many of our unhealthy attitudes, behaviors, and

problems are rooted in our primary relationships. Bad

ideas we have about religion, spirituality, ourselves, etc.,

(what we call Wrong Thought), are rooted in what we

learned in family and, to a lesser extent, our friend groups.

If you are struggling, stuck, and having a tough time, it is

probably because of ideas learned, reinforced, and rooted

in our relationships with our families and friends. If that’s

the case, going to them for help will not help, it will only

36 Inclusion and acceptance are one of our seven essential needs. 37 Esteem and power are also one of our seven essential needs.

49

reinforce patterns of thinking and behaviour that are toxic,

and make your healing process harder as a result.

2. Most of the toxicity and trauma in your life occurs at the

hands of family and, to a lesser extent, friend groups. If

you think about it, it will be your family, your parents, your

brothers and sisters, your aunts and uncles, and others who

are “close to you” who will have done the most harm. It is

our parents who hit us the most. It is our parents who

scream at us the most. It is our parents who shame us the

most. It is family members and “friends” (acquaintances)

who are the primary perpetrators of sexual assault.38 It’s in

families where we tolerate and are subject to the most

violence. If you find this hard to believe, consider that the

home is the only place where it is legal to assault a human

being that is smaller in stature and weaker in strength. That

is, it is normal and legal for adults to “hit” their own

children within “reasonable” limits of physical harm

defined by a callous legal system. It is also still perfectly

legal for parents to engage in mental and emotional

torture39 of their children. And this doesn’t even include an

assessment of the psychological and emotional assault

directed at us by our siblings. Families, and to a lesser

extent friends, are the primary location of assault and

trauma. It’s not a judgment; it is just the way it is.40

38 On the primary source of sexual assault, see this awesome web page at https://www.rainn.org/statistics/perpetrators-sexual-violence. 39 We cannot speak for you, but we (Gina and I) were tortured a lot as children growing up. The use of the word torture is an accurate description of our emotional, psychological, physical, and spiritual traumas. For example, my mother used to whip me with leather belts, make me stand in the corner for hours, and withdraw affection (emotional isolation) for long periods of time, whenever my brother and I did something she judged to be wrong. 40 Why are families the primary source of assault and trauma? There are several reasons for that. Number one, they are private spaces, and it is easy to hurt others in private, especially when these spaces are protected by codes of silence (“what happens in the family, stays in the family.), as many family spaces are. Number two, assault is encouraged in families. “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” as the bible says. Number three, assault is modelled in families. Our parents did it to us and through this modeling, we learn to do it to our children. Number four, emotional trauma travels downhill. When a parent comes home after experiencing violence and trauma at work (a so-called “hard day”), they take it out on safe targets, i.e., targets that cannot defend themselves and fight back, i.e., their children. There is no safer target than a small and defenseless child, in a private family space, or a spouse silenced by mafia like codes that say “keep it in the family.” We learn from our parents that it is ok to assault weak and defenseless targets and

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3. This tendency for families to be the primary source of

assault and damage leads us to the third reason why we

don’t recommend you go to your family and support which

is, your family knows better than anybody on the planet

how to hurt you. They know your sensitivities; they know

your weaknesses; they know your soft spots; they know

your buttons. They know, in short, exactly what to do to

badly hurt you. Do not be a fool about this. When they are

sick and disconnected themselves, when they are struggling

with their own emotional/psychological damage, when they

are defensive and repressed, they will do it, often in subtle

and hard to identify ways, but often with violent and direct

emotional, verbal, psychological, or even physical assault.

They often won’t do it on purpose. They won’t do it to be

consciously mean to you. They will do it a) in self-defence,

b) because they are unconsciously (and sometimes

consciously) projecting their anger and resentment, and c)

because they are sick and in desperate and in need of

healing themselves. However, whether they “mean it” or

not doesn’t matter. It is important to understand, no matter

if someone “means it” or not, an assault is an assault and it

will damage you and undermine your healing progress.

Remember, an assault by an individual who knows your

sensitivities, weakness, and buttons is more likely to be

more damaging than an assault by a total stranger.

And that’s all we have to say. To summarize the message of this

unit, if you need help, don’t let shame or guilt stop you. If you

need help, get help, just make sure it is qualified, competent,

helpful, and not enabling. We do not recommend you get help

from family and friends, unless they are healthy and authentically

supportive. If your family is not healthy, seek help exclusively from

professionals; but, make sure the professionals are at least as

when we need the emotional outlet, we do what was done to us, often with impunity because it is in private and nobody will talk about.

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healthy as you. Pay attention to credentials and competence, and

watch for any red flags. If you cannot afford professional

assistance, find it in books or online.

Speaking of finding help from books, the rest of this book, and the

rest of the Lightning Path for that matter, is devoted to help you

heal and connect. The rest of this book does this by running

through the rest of the LP HEALING Framework. As noted, the

framework is not a healing methodology. It’s a guide to help you

focus on those things most important in the healing process, like

environment, addiction, dissembling, etc. Focus on dealing with

these things builds an excellent foundation for healing moving

forward.

As a final note, whether you on a healing journey yourself (and

who isn’t really) or whether you are focused on healing others, this

is a useful guide.

If you are using it yourself, use it to help you decide what to work

on, what sorts of therapist to work with, etc. can share the

framework with your therapist/healer if want, and if they open, but

not necessary. Your therapist does not need to be aware of this

framework, so long as you guide the therapy. For example, do you

have a good therapist helping you, but are they not focussed

enough on your toxic environment. After reading this book and

realizing how important the environment is, you can ask your

therapist to help you reduce toxicity in the environment.

If you are a professional healer working with others, you can use

this booklet to “guide your guidance.” Use this book as a

therapeutic template that guides you to focus on critical healing

issues, like the environment, addiction, and so on. After reading

this booklet you will know that if a client comes to you, you have

to help them to detoxify their environment, deal with their

addictions, reduce their lying and self-deception, correct their

thinking (help them remove ideology), help them learn to meet

their needs, and put them into open growth mode. Use whatever

therapeutic techniques you like, just make sure you help them with

the critical HEALING issues identified in this book.

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Study Questions

4. Healing is important, and so is getting help, especially if

you need it to heal. What are some ways that you can tell

if you need help or not? Do you think you personally

need physical, emotional, or psychological healing

assistance? If so, why? Right your answers down to these

question in your HC Journal and share with the group or

online.

5. How do you find/choose a competent healer? Why are

qualifications and competence important? What are

some red flags to watch out for? Have you had

experiences with incompetent and unqualified healers?

Write your answers down in your HC Journal, and share

with your group or online.

6. Think back on the moment of reflection you did earlier.

Did you identify any enablers in your life? Did you come

up with some of the reasons why you might allow the

enabling? Go further now and look at your own behavior.

Are you an enabler of others? If so, what emotional

needs are you getting met when you enable the toxicity of

others. Write it down and share.

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2. “E” is for Healthy Environment

In the last unit, we looked at the issue of help. There we

emphasized that sometimes it may be necessary to get help. You

should understand, getting help is not an indication of personal

weakness, it is a reflection of how bad the damage can sometimes

be. As we said in the last unit, if you think you need help, get help.

If you do need help, look for healers who are competent and

qualified to help you with your issues and look for red flags that

warn you when the healer may be dealing with their own issues,

and not in a position to help you with your own.

In this unit, we are going to look at the second plank in the LP

HEALING framework which is environment, specifically, the

need for a healthy non-toxic, non-violent, safe, clean, healing

environments. We’ll just say this directly. If you are going to heal

the trauma and damage done to you by Toxic Socialization, you

are going to need to have an environment suitable for healing. This

means you are going to need to dramatically reduce and eventually

eliminate the amount of violence and toxicity in the environments

of which you are a part.

Why?

Because, as we elaborate in more detail in the working paper

“Toxic Socialization,”41 toxic, violent, and neglectful environments,

especially home environments where you are exposed to chronic

physical, emotional, psychological, and even spiritual assault,

cause profound psychological, emotional, and spiritual damage,

and deep disconnection. To be perfectly clear, toxic environments

damage and disconnect you. This you should already know, and if

not, you need to know and accept this as a core truth because toxic environments also prevent you from healing and connecting. This

is particularly important. You cannot heal if you live in a toxic

environment. You cannot heal if you work in a toxic environment.

41 See https://spiritwiki.lightningpath.org/Toxic_Socialization, also Sosteric, "Toxic Socialization."

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You cannot heal if your social groupings are toxic. It simply does

not work that way.

It is not rocket science. As any medical professional will tell you,

if you want to heal a physical wound you must protect and treat

the wound. If you cut your hand with a knife, if you shred your

knee in a bike accident, to heal the wound you must protect and

treat the wound. Why? Simple. To block bacteria from entering,

to avoid additional trauma, and to provide the scaffolding and

extra help that a wound may need to heal. If you don’t protect the

wound from further assault, if you don’t clean and treat the wound

(bandages, stitches, antiseptics, etc.) to give it a proper scaffolding,

the wound will not heal. If you poke at your cut with a stick, if you

jump into a dirty pool with a bunch of open wounds, or if you live

in a home space that is filthy and full of bacteria, your physical

wounds will never heal. In fact, if you do any of these things, your

wounds will get worse. It is as simple and straightforward as that.

If you want to heal your physical wounds you must provide a

healthy, clean, and safe environment so you can protect and treat

the wound.

When it comes to physical wounds, this is an absolute no-brainer.

If you gash your leg in a bike accident and just get back up and

start riding your bike again, your injury will not heal, and it may get

even worse. Similarly, if you break an arm by falling off a ladder

while roofing your home and just get back up on the ladder without

seeing a doctor, your injury will never heal. If you want to heal a

physical wound, the first thing you must do is take steps to protect

and treat the wound.

Unfortunately, while this is an obvious no–brainer for physical

wounds, the necessity of protecting wounds is not so obvious when

it comes to the emotional, psychological, behavioural, and spiritual

damage that is caused by toxic socialization. If somebody calls you

a name, if somebody assaults your self-esteem, if a parent spanks

you and makes you feel small and powerless, you are not always

aware of the damage that is done, or the need to treat and protect

the psychic wound, in the same way you are aware of the need to

55

protect a physical wound. Consequently, you often engage in

activities and put yourselves in situations where you re-traumatize

the wound, or even make it worse. It is like breaking your arm,

suppressing pain and awareness of the injury, and going about life

as if nothing had happened. It’s the dumbest f@#!ing thing you can

do.

Why are we not aware of the need to treat psychic wounds? Why

do we go about retraumatizing ourselves, our children, our

families, and friends over and over again, instead of healing our

wounds?

Reason one for this is because we can’t see psychic wounds like

we see physical wounds. Beyond tears and a sad face, there is no

immediate physical evidence for even debilitating psychic

wounds.42

Reason two is that we are told that we should “get over it” and even

embrace future assault because the psychic trauma “build

character” and “make us stronger.”43

Reason three as we’ll see as we travel forward on this path, is that

we are all embedded in what we call Old Energy Ideologies and

belief systems that encourage the violence.

Reason four is that our psychologies, as yet, remain primitive,

superstitious, and embedded in the ideologies which encourage

violence and trauma.

Whatever the reasons we do it doesn’t matter. Failure to protect

and treat our psychic wounds, and constant re-exposure to toxicity

and psychic violence, is a hyper-toxic dynamic that is certain to

disconnect you and (if never properly treated) damage you for life.

42 There is evidence, of course. Serious psychic wounds eventually lead to psychic infections, physical illness, and general ugliness. The ugliness of septic infection and the physical consequences can take decades to manifest, however. By the time that happens, it is very difficult to make the connect to the psychic trauma that caused it. 43 When I was a child and an adult hurt my feelings, they didn’t care. I was just expected to put up and shut up. If I said anything, I was often assaulted even worse. Nobody, not my mom, not my teachers, not my friends, not even so-called mental health professionals, ever treated my wounds properly. And we know it is the same for the vast majority of people. Almost everybody on this planet experiences chronic psychic assault, and very few people are treated properly for it.

56

It is bizarre when you think about it. We experience serious

psychic wounding and instead of protecting the wound, we expose

it to further assault. It doesn’t matter how serious the psychic

wound is; as individuals, as a society, as a planet, we rarely take

steps to protect the psychic wounds. Instead, we tell ourselves it is

OK and expose our wounds and the wounds of others to ongoing

chronic assault, thereby making things worse.

This hyper-toxic dynamic where we don’t recognize our psychic

wounds and go about and do things that make them worse is most

obvious in families of parents with adolescents and children, which

is where most of the assault we experience in our early days

happens. Parents assault (spank, yell at, belittle, shame, etc.) their

children not because they are bad parents but because they don’t

understand the severity of the wounds they are causing, because

that’s how their parents dealt with them, and because they are

dealing with psychic trauma damage themselves. They spank their

children because they believe it controls their behaviour. They

emotionally assault adolescents because they think it keeps them

in line. They are filled with anger and rage themselves because of

past trauma, toxic work environments, etc., and they take it out on

the weakest members of the family unit. Regardless how it

happens, it happens all the time. Children and adolescents are

wounded; the wounds are not recognized and treated, the children

are repeatedly traumatized, and the wounds get worse and worse

as they grow. They succumb to their wounds, “settle in,” and the

cycle repeats itself.

Protecting Your Wounds by Establishing Right Environment

Obviously, if you want to stay mentally and emotionally healthy,

and if you want to heal psychic wounds you currently suffer from,

enabling this toxic dynamic won’t work. Just as you need to protect

and treat your physical wounds from ongoing assault so they can

heal, you also need to protect your psychological wounds from

further assault, and you need to treat these wounds with the same

care and attention you would pay to a physical wound. If you don’t,

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if you are emotionally or psychologically wounded but expose

yourself to ongoing assault, your wounds will never heal, and you’ll

eventually harden and die. This should be no great psychological

or spiritual revelation. It is only common sense. If you don’t

protect your psychic and emotional wounds from further assault,

and if you don’t treat them, then just like dipping an open, bloody

wound into a dirty cesspool of water, or getting back on a bike even

against your doctors’ advice to stay safe until your broken bones

heal, your wounds will never heal. It won’t matter how many times a week you see your expensive and “knowledgeable” therapist; if you are going back to a toxic environment at home or at work you will never, ever heal.

So, what are you going to do?

The easiest and fastest way to protect your wounds from further

harm so that they can properly heal, and, equally as important, to

ensure no new wounds are created, is to establish what we call

Right Environment. As explained in more detail in the article “The

LP Alignment Rule Set,”44 right environment is a clean, non-toxic

environment that supports and makes healing and reconnection

possible. As regards healing, a right environment is a calm and ordered environment, free from all forms of violence, toxicity, and abuse.

Right environment is an environment where we are safe, nurtured, and

fully respected for the Divine beings that we are.

Establishing right environment both inside and outside the home

is of critical importance for healing not only yourself, but the entire

planet.45 To establish right environment, to create environments

where wounds are protected and can heal, do the following:

44 https://www.lightningpath.org/articles/lp-alignment-rule-set/ 45 And reconnection, we might add.

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1) detoxify your home environments so you are not

exposed to toxicity behaviours (violence, aggression,

etc.) and toxic thought at home.

2) stay away from/get out of other toxic environments that

might infect you.

3) get away from toxic people who expose you to toxic

thoughts and additional harm, and

To help shift your realities towards right environment, we

recommend a total commitment to non-violence in your life. Non-

violence means that no violence is allowed. In a non-violent

environment, there is no yelling, no name calling, no emotional

assault, no physical violence, and no aggression of any kind.

Committing to non-violence provides an easy to understand, rock

solid foundation upon which to build healthy environments where

healing can occur.

Of course, if you think about it, establishing right environment at

home, at work, and in your friendship groups, even staying away

from toxic people so you can clean your wounds and heal, can be

quite challenging, not only because none of us have absolute

control over all our environments (unless we live alone, in which

case we have control of our home environment), but also because

there are a lot of unwell people around us. We would have to say

that many (perhaps most) of our domestic, work, and social

environments are toxic to one extent or another. In many (perhaps

most) of our environments, even asserting the desire to establish

right environment can be met with hostility and ridicule. As we’ll

see in our section on ideology, we’re all trained to believe that

violence is, at one level or another, OK, even salutatory. We are

taught that adversity and stress “build character,” that we need to

“fight” to become tough, and so we expose ourselves to, tolerate,

and sometimes even encourage various forms of abuse and assault.

Even physical assault on defenceless children, euphemized as

59

“spanking,” is still tolerated by most parents,46 even though it

lowers IQ47 and causes other serious damage.

Because there is still a general belief on this planet that forms of

emotional, psychological, and spiritual violence are OK, it is not

always possible to totally stay away from toxic environments and

toxic/violent people, simply because there are so many of them.

However, you should at least create a healthy space in your home

environment where you can protect and clean your wound.

Ideally, your entire home should be a safe and non-toxic space,

but if all you can do is create a one-room cocoon, that’s fine too.

If you can’t even do that, if you can’t even create a safe one-room

cocoon, you may need to terminate relationships and/or seek

professional help.

Environmental Assessments

For your assistance, the LP provides several online instruments

that you can use to assess the extent to which your environments

are detoxified right environments.

The “How Toxic is My World?” instrument can give you an

indication of how toxic your childhood, adolescent, current

domestic, social, and even work environments are. You can use

the survey to assess your childhood, home, work, school, and

social environments. The survey gives you a Toxicity Score for

each of these environments. To move towards right environment,

work to lower your toxicity score.

The “How Violent Am I?” instrument can give you an indication

of the ways you contribute to the toxicity in your environments.

Obviously, if you are going to work towards right environment, you

will have to address your own toxic and negative behaviours.

46 Scott Clement, "Millennials Like to Spank Their Kids Just as Much as Their Parents Did," Washington Post 2015. 47 Paul Taylor, "Spanking Lowers Iq: Study," The Globe and Mail 2018.

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Finally, the “How Chaotic is my World?” can give you an

indication of how chaotic your home environment is, and some

hints on what to do to work towards calm and safe environment.

You can access all these instruments by visiting

https://www.lightningpath.org/self-assessments/healing/environment/

Note, if these assessments trigger guilt and shame because you find

you have been engaged in acts of toxicity, take a deep breath, relax,

and face the truth they reveal. Work through the guilt and shame

not by suppressing it, because that will cause illness eventually, but

by acknowledging it exists, determining the source, and changing

your behaviours so there is no more guilt and shame. As noted in

the book The Great Awakening: Concepts and Techniques for Successful Spiritual Practice, guilt and shame are Steering

Emotions48 that help you identify when your behaviour is out of

alignment with your own higher Self. Guilt and shame are sourced

in unaligned behaviour, which is behaviour that harms others.49

Relief from guilt and shame only comes when you face the truth

of your behaviours and change your behaviour (i.e., steer your

actions) to be more in alignment with your own Highest Self.

As for the truth of your behaviour, the truth is, we all experience

toxicity and we all contribute to the toxicity in one way or another.

Because of ignorance, psychological trauma, and profound

disconnection, we have all harmed other living beings.

Consequently, we must all acknowledge this so that we can change

our behaviours and clear guilt and shame. Anybody that tells you

differently is lying either because their guilt and shame is too

overwhelming, or because they are seeking power over you.

Remember, life is not a contest to see who the winner is and these

assessments are not intended to show you how much of a “loser”

48 https://spiritwiki.lightningpath.org/Steering_Emotions. 49 We’ll learn more about alignment in LP Workbook Three: Connection.

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you are. They are intended simply to help you improve and align

your behaviour so you can work towards the establishment of right

environment, so you can properly heal and connect. That is all. If

you experience overwhelming guilt and shame, take a deep breath,

acknowledge, relax, and begin changing your behaviour.

We’ll talk more about the challenges of establishing right

environment as we progress through the LP corpus, particularly

when we discuss the LP Connection Framework in Workbook Three, so we won’t say anything more here. For now, do what you

can. Commit to non-violence in all areas of your life and begin

creating right environment. Start at home and work out from there.

Treat and Heal the Wound

Creating a right environment where your psychic wounds are

protected is only the first step in healing. Once you have taken

steps to protect the wound, your next step is to treat the wound so

it can heal.

How do you treat a psychic wound? The same way you treat a

physical wound. First, you clean and disinfect the wound to

prevent infection. Then, you treat the wound.

As for cleaning and disinfecting the wound, the need for this

should be obvious. If you cut your hand open while whittling a

figurine, the first thing you do is clean the wound to get any dirt

out so it doesn’t get infected. That’s a no-brainer. Everybody past

the age of ten knows how to clean and disinfect a physical wound.

A clean cloth, clean water, and a disinfecting solution (soap, etc.),

are what you do to disinfect a physical wound.

It is the same with psychic emotional, psychological, or spiritual

wounds. If you receive some kind of psychic injury, you have to

clean and disinfect the wound. To clean a physical wound, you get

rid of physical dirt and grime, and disinfect to kill any lingering

bacteria. To clean and disinfect a psychic wound, you get rid of

psychic (i.e., emotional, psychological, and spiritual) dirt and

grime in the wound, and you disinfect the wound to kill any

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lingering psychic bacteria. The only difference is that in the case

of physical wounds you are dealing with physical dirt and bacteria

while in the case of psychic wounds you are dealing with

mental/emotional/spiritual dirt and bacteria, or what we like to call

Wrong Thought,50 or Toxic Thought, if you prefer.

What is wrong thought/toxic thought? Simply defined, wrong

thought is dirty and infectious thought-grime that undermines and

prevents healing and connection, and causes psychic infections.

Wrong thought is thought that diminishes you and makes you feel

unworthy, impotent, and “less than.” Wrong thoughts include

thoughts like “I’m stupid,” “I’m a loser,” “I’m a sinner,” “I’m

weak,” “I’m not worthy,” “I’m being punished for my sins,” “It’s

my bad karma,” and so on. Toxic thought makes you feel

powerless. Toxic thought makes you feel weak and impotent, and

makes you think you deserve bad things in your life because you

deserve it, or because it is some kind of “life lesson.”

For your information, toxic thoughts are inserted into your mental

and emotional systems like bacteria is inserted into your physical

systems. Insertion of toxic thought happens “accidentally” when

you are psychically assaulted and exposed to negative

environments, and it happens intentionally when people (parents,

friends, teachers, coworkers, etc.) call you names, make you feel

stupid, make you feel “less than,” make you feel unworthy (i.e. you

are a dirty sinner, you are a dirty ape, etc.), and teach you archetypes and ideologies that diminish you, make you feel small,

or make you feel like you deserve to be punished.

We will talk more about ideologies and how they infect your

psychic wounds in the unit “I” is for Ideology later in this

workbook and again in more detail in LP Workbook Four: Archetypes, where we look at cleaning out all the negative and

infections Old Energy Archetypes which pollute the psychic-

sphere of this world. For now, the question is, how do you disinfect

50 https://spiritwiki.lightningpath.org/Wrong_Thought.

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and clean psychic wounds of the bacterial infection of toxic/wrong

thought?

To be honest, that’s a complicated topic not only because a) there

is a lot of toxic thought still floating around, but also because b) we

are exposed to chronic psychic assault, and inundated with toxic

ideological grime, from the moment we are born, and c) during

that period, and for reasons already noted, the wounds caused by

the assault and early infection are almost never properly treated.51

When you combine the facts that a) there is a lot of toxic thought

floating around, b) we are exposed to chronic psychic assault, and

c) our wounds are never treated properly, you can see why

disinfecting and cleaning our psychic wounds can be such a

challenge. It can be like trying to treat a leg wound that has become

gangrenous because of lack of treatment. By the time you get to

the point where you actually look at the wound, it’s a festering,

gunky, mess of chronic, long-term infection. Fortunately, unlike a

gangrenous wound which must be amputated, you don’t have to

amputate gangrenous psychic wounds; nevertheless, treatment is a

challenge.

So, what do you do?

You can start the disinfection process yourself by reading up on

things like cognitive behavioural therapy and linguistic

“reprogramming,” or by simply using an Affirmation of Self52 to

help clean out the wound. An Affirmation of Self (AOS) is an affirmation of the power, light, and divinity of your own Highest Self. An AOS is like a disinfectant wipe you use to clean out dirt

and grime from your psychic wounds. An AOS should be

something simple to repeat like

51 This situation is absurd, when you think about it. If your child fell and gashed its leg open and instead of treating the wound properly you threw dirt in it and poked it with a stick, you’d be charged with child abuse. However, that’s exactly what most people do when it comes to psychic wounds. They either don’t see them, pretend they aren’t there, poke them with sticks, and continue to throw dirt into them until they become festering, fetid piles of putrid psychic puss. 52 https://spiritwiki.lightningpath.org/Affirmation_of_Self.

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I am powerful. I am healthy. I am beautiful. I am strong.

I am worthy. I am connected. I am beautiful. I am strong.

Using an AOS can be helpful to treat and disinfect daily wounds you receive. For example, if somebody at work calls and engages

in passive-aggressive assault, or even direct assault like calling you

a “stupid bitch,” do not engage in the toxicity. Do what you need

to do to stop the assault (speak with HR, speak with the person,

avoid the person, etc.) and go home later and do the AOS, ideally,

on a long nature walks, while meditating quietly with music and

candles, or in a hot bath with a relaxing glass of chamomile tea.

An AOS can also help you deal with chronic psychic infection and

even gangrenous psychic infections arising from what we call a

PSST (or psycho-social-spiritual_ Trauma. A PSST infection

occurs in the same way as a physical infection occurs. When you

aren’t aware of a wound, if you do not protect your wounds, if you

do not clean your wounds, and if you do not treat your wounds,

your wounds (physical or psychic) will become infected. In the

case of psychic wounds, you develop PSST infections. If psychic

wounds go untreated for extended periods of time, and in

particular if the wounds are constantly retraumatized, Psychic

Sepsis may be the result.

How do you know if your wounds are infected or have become

septic? If you are filled with anxiety, negativity, and depression, if

you are pissed off and angry all the time, if you are filled with

hatred, if you are compulsive, addicted, or worse, you are likely

dealing with some kind of PSST infection. You can also tell if you

have a PSST infection if you are easily triggered by things.

Triggering as a Sign of Infection and Psychic Sepsis

What is triggering? Triggering is what happens when you “go off”

on somebody. Think of being triggered like the emotional reaction

that would happen if you gashed your leg open in a biking accident

and some insensitive individual was callously, and without medical

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skill, poking around in the wound. If this happens, if a sibling

pokes your physical wound with a finger, for example, you would

cry or get mad. You would be “triggered” because the wound is

not healed and the poking causes pain and makes the injury worse.

If the wound was healed, somebody poking at it would only cause

annoyance.53

Just as poking around in a physical wound will cause your body to

trigger a defensive response, so too will it trigger a defensive

response when somebody pokes around in a psychic wound that

is not healed. When someone callously, and without emotional,

psychological, or spiritual skill, either intentionally or

unintentionally pokes a psychic wound, 54 you will get sad, upset,

anxious, angry, etc., because the poking causes pain and makes the

injury worse. As with a physical wound, the triggering is a defensive

reaction designed to protect a wound that is unhealed. As with a

physical wound, the triggering is an autonomic emotional response

and something you have minimal control over. If you are triggered easily, it is because your psychic wound(s) are not healed; if your psychic wounds are not healed, you need additional protection and treatment.

Note, we all have different triggers, depending on our injuries. You

are not going to be triggered if somebody pokes you in an arm that

is not injured. However, if your arm is broken, that is a different

story. If someone pokes at a broken arm, a defensive response will

be triggered. Similarly, if your self-esteem and self-worth are intact,

a jab or joke now and then isn’t going to bother you. However, if

53 When triggered, you always need to ask yourself if the person who triggered you is a) doing it on purpose or b) doing it because they are unaware and simply don’t know any better. If the person who triggers you is doing it on purpose, remove them from your life. If they are doing it because they are unaware, do not return their insensitivity with assault. Instead, find ways to communicate with and educate, them. Educate them about the deleterious consequences of toxic socialization and assault, and communicate to them how their actions are insulting the wounds and causing you more pain. 54 You should know, “triggering” is an autonomic bodily response that occurs in an effort you to protect your wound. If you gash your leg and somebody pokes it, your bodily will engage a response. They poke your wound, you start to cry at the additional pain hoping this will elicit sensitivity and compassion. If this doesn’t work, if they callously keep poking in the wound, your “trigger” will escalate. You will get angry and push them away. “Triggering” is an autonomic defensive reaction that occurs when your body is worried that a wound that is not healed and still painful is under immediate threat. Note, triggering only occurs when the wound is not healed. If the wound was completely healed, you would not be so easily triggered by a poke.

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your self-esteem is decimated because of childhood assault and

trauma (i.e. toxic socialization), that’s a different story. If you are

traumatized by toxic socialization, especially if you have

experienced a lot of verbal assault (name calling, belittling, passive-

aggressive jibes, etc.), you will be hypersensitive to words and the

meaning behind them. If the wounds are bad, even the intimation

of verbal assault will trigger you.

Just as we all have different triggers, it is important to note, we all

respond to the triggers differently, depending on what you have

tried, and depending on what has worked in the past. If you receive

a physical gash in your leg and somebody callously pokes around

in it, at first you are likely to reflexively withdraw, cry, whine, or do

something similar in an attempt to elicit compassion and get away

from the jab. If that works, that response will be reinforced and

you will do that again in the future. However, if crying and reflexive

withdrawal does not stop the poking, you will escalate and

intensify. If an individual keeps poking at your wound, and if

crying does not work to stop the assault, your response will escalate

and you might get angry and aggressive in an effort to shove the

individual away. If that works, the response will be reinforced and

in the future, you’ll skip over the crying and jump right to anger

and aggression. Over the long term, if you experience chronic

assault, if people are always poking at your wound, the wound will

become infected. As noted above, you will know you are infected

because you are easily triggered. If you do find yourself easily

triggered by certain things, it is probably because you have a PSST

infection.

How do you treat a PSST infection? That’s a complicated topic

that involves a fair amount of challenging and often painful social,

emotional, and psychological work, like detoxifying your

environment, learning to be truthful with yourself, learning to

recognize ideology, learning to get your needs satisfied, and so on.

We’ll be dealing with all these things, and more, moving forward.

All we will say now regarding treatment is that in addition to

making sure you detoxify your environment and relationships, you

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will also have to spend some time finding the wound. Obviously,

you can’t heal a wound and treat an infection if you don’t know

where the wound is. You have to find the wound so you can treat

it properly. This is easy when it comes to physical wounds, but not

so easy when it comes to psychic ones, particularly since a) there

is no immediate physical correlate of psycho-emotional wounds

and b) the wound may have occurred years, even decades ago,

perhaps even when you were a small child and c) you may be

repressing awareness of the wound for various different reasons.

In cases where the wound is shrouded in the mists of time and self-

repression, it may be a challenge to uncover the wound, but you

must do it. You cannot heal a wound properly if you do not know

what its source is.

As noted, we will talk more about healing PSST infections as we

progress through the LP corpus. For now, understand that you will

find clues to the source of your wound by paying attention to who

and what you are getting triggered by. Are you getting triggered by

females? Are you hypersensitive to words and name-calling? Does

sexism rock your boat? The things that trigger emotional

responses are the things you should be focussing on.

Moment of Reflection: spend a few moments thinking about

what triggers you. Do certain actions trigger you? Do certain

thoughts trigger you? Do certain people (or “types” of

people) trigger you? Write down your triggers in your HC

Journal and, on your own or with a therapist, try and trace

these triggers back to your wounds.

So far in this workbook we have discussed getting help, detoxifying

your world, establishing right environment, and cleaning and

treating psychic wounds as necessary steps in the healing process.

To treat psychic wounds, do exactly what you would do with

physical wounds. clean the wound, protect the wound, treat the

wound. Do this by detoxifying environment to make sure wound

not continually assaulted, by using disinfectant salves like an AOS.

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Of course, as noted, sometimes, because of lack of awareness and

lack of treatment, your psychic wounds get infected, or become

septic. As we’ve noted, cleaning and treating infected or septic

psychic wounds can be a challenge. We’ll talk more about

cleaning, disinfecting, and treating your infected and septic psychic

wounds moving forward in this, and subsequent, LP Workbooks.

We’ll start this discussion in the next unit when we look at one of

the more serious examples of psychic sepsis, addiction.

Study Questions

1. How do you detoxify your environment? What is right

environment? How do you establish right environment?

What are some of the challenges you might face when

trying to detoxify your environment?

2. Why do psychic wounds become infected? What do we

call a psychological, emotional, or spiritual wound that has

become infected? What can you do to prevent psychic

wounds from becoming infected?

3. What is an Affirmation of Self? What sorts of wounds and

PSST Infections is it intended to clean/cure. What is an

Affirmation of Compassion? What sorts of wounds is it

intended to clean/cure. Think of your own PSST

Infections. Can you think of an affirmation that might help

you clean the wound? Write your affirmation down in your

HC Journal, and share on the forums if you wish.

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4. “A” is for Addictions

You don’t wake up one morning and decide to be a drug addict. It takes at least three months’ shooting twice a day to get any habit at all.... [It is]] no exaggeration to say it takes about a year and several hundred injections to make an addict. William S. Burroughs, Junky.

So far in this workbook, we have looked at the issue of help and

the environment. We have emphasized the need to focus on

creating a healthy, protective, and nurturing environment so you

can protect, clean, and treat your wounds, especially when they get

infected. We have also said, if you find you need help, get help.

Getting help may be particularly important if you find your wounds

are infected, or you are dealing with serious emotional sepsis.

When wounds are infected, right environment and simple

affirmations may not be sufficient. When wounds are infected, you

may need competent and professional help.

This is especially true when it comes to the third point in the LP

HEALING Framework, Addiction. For your information, an

addiction is anything upon which you, or rather your physical unit,

has a biological, psychological, or emotional dependency. An

addiction is something you do that you cannot stop. You can get

addicted to anything. As you will see, you can get addicted to

substances like money, heroin, cocaine, alcohol, cannabis, and

fentanyl, in which case we would say you have a Substance

Addiction) and you can get addicted to behaviours like shopping,

exercise, sex, technology (i.e., smartphones), and even social

media use, like Facebook,55 in which case we would say you have

a Behavioural Addiction. You can also become addicted to other

people, something typically known as co-dependency but what we,

for reasons that will become clear shortly, would prefer to call a

Relationship Addiction.

55 Mike Sosteric, "Why We Should All Cut the Facebook Cord. ," The Conversation (2018).

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How do you tell if you are addicted to something? The test for

addiction is quite simple. If there is a substance or activity that you

cannot stop, and that you justify and make excuses for, you are

addicted.56 You are addicted to alcohol if you cannot stop drinking

for any significant length of time. You are addicted to shopping if

your week is not complete without a consumer purchase of some

sort. You are addicted to gambling if you compromise your

financial security and obligations to feed your fix. You are addicted

to social media if you spend all day long peering at your screen

and not growing or learning etc.

What causes addictions? In the not-too-distant past, scientists

explained addiction by blaming the addicts themselves, basically

suggesting that there was something wrong with them. Addicts were

“bad, crazy, ignorant people”57 who were addicted because they

were weak or had moral failings. Of course, scientists have now

admitted that there is no such thing as an “addictive personality”

or genetic causation; unfortunately, science’s understanding of the

causes of addiction hasn’t advanced that much beyond this

appalling “blame the victim” strategy. Nowadays, folks are just

subtler about it, blaming an individual’s defective neuro-

mechanisms,58 their lack of “psychosocial skills,”59 the presence of

“outlying traits” 60 (read “abnormal”), how individuals interpret

their “experiences,” 61 and even difficulty with “self-regulation.”62 As

one scientist puts it:

56 Carlton K. Erickson and Richard E. Wilcox, "Neurobiological Causes of Addiction," Journal of Social Work Practice in the Addictions 1.3 (2001). 57 Erickson and Wilcox, "Neurobiological Causes of Addiction," 7. 58 Marc A. Schuckit, "An Overview of Genetic Influences in Alcoholism," Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment.1 (2009). 59 Kenneth E. Leonard, "Perspective: Beyond the Neural Circuits," Nature 522 (2015). 60 Maria Szalavitz, "The Addictive Personality Isn't What You Think It Is," Scientific America 2016. 61 Presumably, if one “interprets” an experience the “wrong” way, one can become addicted. Szalavitz, "The Addictive Personality Isn't What You Think It Is." 62 For the record, I find this author’s “self-regulation” thesis to be absurd. Her notion that addictions are “developmental disorders,” “learning problems,” that can be “outgrown,” is merely a restatement of “blame the victim” arguments she herself attempts to debunk, i.e., old “morality” or “character disorder” arguments. We have to say, the mental and spiritual gymnastics required to support and deny the exact same position are impressive.

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When genes are abnormal, brain enzymes and other proteins that are involved with neurotransmitter function may be abnormal. For example, the production (synthesis) or breakdown (metabolism) of dopamine is the responsibility of various enzymes. If the person has a genetic defect such that the enzymes that make or break down dopamine are faulty, then the amount of dopamine in the brain will be abnormal. Also, the response of that person’s brain dopamine systems to changes in the environment may be abnormal as well. In the mesolimbic system such abnormal” functions of dopamine may lead to distorted mood, such as too little pleasure from positive experiences or too much pain from negative interactions. The person with such a genetic defect may be especially susceptible to the ability of cocaine to elevate brain dopamine to levels that are closer to “normal.”63

Are “bad genes,” “brain illness,” lack of social skills, or “faulty”

readings or reality the cause of addiction? Absolutely not. All these

explanations, and when we say “all” we mean “all,” blame the victim. These explanations conveniently, and intentionally, divert

attention from the real culprit which is our toxic environments,

toxic societies, toxic cultural practices, toxic educational practices,

and toxic religious practices.

It is the avoidable toxicity of our collective

human realities that are the proximate causes of addictions.

Although, to be fair, she does get close. According to her “…addiction is a learned relationship between the timing and pattern of the exposure to substances or other potentially addictive experiences and a person’s predispositions, cultural and physical environment, and social and emotional needs.” She even points directly at the environment when she mentions autism and maltreated children: “solutions. In fact, severely neglected children often develop autistic-like behavior such as constantly rocking as a way to soothe or stimulate themselves—and maltreated children often appear to have ADHD because they are hypervigilant to “distractions” like the sound of a door slamming.” Maia Szalavitz, Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Adddiction. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2016).

In the end, however, she finally says addiction is a “learning disorder” and “compulsives self-medication,” thereby placing the blame squarely in the individual’s lap, where The System needs it to be. and now what it really is which is a perfectly reasonable adaptation to a highly toxic environment. 63 Erickson and Wilcox, "Neurobiological Causes of Addiction," 10-11.

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Remember, toxic socialization involves violence, frustration of

needs, chaos, destruction of attachments, and indoctrination.

Violence and assault (i.e., yelling, name-calling, shaming, physical

assaults etc.), the neglect of our essential needs (i.e. emotional

withdrawal, enmeshment, triangulation etc.), the experience of

chronic chaos at home and in the world, the destruction of our

attachments, and the profound guilt and shame we experience as

a consequence of the disjunctive and harmful actions we engage

while trying to survive and defend ourselves while in a state of

indoctrinated disjuncture/disconnection,64 all make us feel bad.65

When we live in toxic environments and are

subjected to toxic socialization, we feel bad.

Nobody wants to feel bad, especially when it is ongoing. Not only

does it feel bad, but it is bad for the health and well being of the

physical body. Thus, we have an instinct to avoid pain

programmed into our body, and that is exactly what we try to do.

When our environments are highly toxic, when our needs aren’t

being met, when our experiences of life are highly painful, we have

an instinct to try and do something about it. At first, we will first try

to halt the assault, reduce the toxicity, and cry out to have our

needs met. As children, we might scream for our needs to be

satisfied and beg and plead for the violence to stop. As adolescents,

we might desperately point out the hypocrisy and the toxicity.

Unfortunately, however, our societies are so toxic that our efforts

to stop the toxicity and get our needs met typically fail. As children

we are either ignored or told the toxicity is “good for us” (“Spare

the rod and spoil the child”), that it “builds character,” or that we

did something to deserve it (karma, original sin, etc.). As

64 As explained in more detail in LP Workbook Three: Connection, disjuncture occurs when we engage in actions that our out of alignment with your own Highest Self. Explain disjuncture. Separation from HS. Causes pain. Makes you feel bad. More in this in ALIGNMENT section in WKBKIII 65 Neurologically, are brain’s neurons are firing in attempts to cope as we are chronically washed in toxic stress hormones.

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adolescents, our insights and requests are dismissed, and we are

told we are “going through a phase,” or that it is our

genetic/moral/spiritual weakness that makes us vulnerable. As

adults, we are expected to be able to “deal with it,” otherwise we

are labelled weak and whiney. When our efforts to reduce toxicity

and improve our environment fail, as they inevitably do, we

a) seek out things that calm the internal chaos caused by the

violence, neglect, and chaos of a toxic environment

(soothing, in other words),

b) look for ways to escape the environment (we escape the

house, we run away, we take drugs),

c) seek out “things” that make us feel good or

d) find things that satisfy a need left unsatisfied by toxic

socialization, for example, the need for parental love.66

This is where addictions come from. Addictions come directly

from our self-soothing attempts to escape from our hellish

experiences and feel better, or to satisfy some unmet need, when

we either can’t improve our environments or can’t get our needs

met authentically. We take pharmaceuticals to calm our frazzled

nerves. We start smoking because it calms us and helps us “fit in”

(satisfied a need for belonging). We drink alcohol because it helps

us fill “the hole” left by a parent’s failure to provide unconditional

love.67 We shoot heroin because a) it helps us escape, b) blocks

out our pain and calms the chaos, and c) makes us feel good. We

go running because it a) gets us out of our toxic environment, b)

calms us, c) releases “happy chemicals” in the brain, like serotonin,

oxytocin, and endorphins, and even d) helps us lose weight and

66 A rather interesting take is provided by the article “Is addiction an Attachment Disorder?” which says that alcoholics had terrible parents and as a result didn’t “attach.” Thus, attachment disorder is cause of addiction.

This is one not inaccurate way to look at it, but it too narrowly focusses on one essential need, love, and ignores six others, failure of which to satisfy can also lead to anxiety, anguish, pain, and addiction. Alcoholics Guide, Is Addiction an Attachment Disorder?, 2014, Inside the Alcoholic Brain, December 12 2018. 67 Alcoholics Guide, Is Addiction an Attachment Disorder?

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look good so we can meet an essential need by “belonging” to the

“cool people’s club.”

It is the same with all addictions. We do it because it soothes us,

helps us escape, makes us feel good, or satisfies an unmet need.

Do you get the picture?

When our environments are toxic, we look for ways to

compensate/cope/escape. It is this natural desire to Self-Medicate

that is the cause of our collective addictions.

Put this way, this seems like common psychological sense, and it

is. We do substances and engage in certain behaviours because the

substance or behaviour helps us in some way. But self-medication

doesn’t explain where addiction develops, especially when it

comes to addictions like running. Lots of people run, but not

everybody gets addicted to running. Everybody self medicates, but

not everybody gets addicted to medication

As it turns out, the addiction itself arises from two places.

On the one hand, addiction arises because substances like alcohol,

tobacco, cocaine, are all physically addictive, in some cases, as with

Fentanyl and related opiates, powerfully so. But the physically

addictive properties of some substances are not the only, nor the

most important, mechanism at work. As Szalavitz explains, “only

10%–20% of drug users become addicted to substances like

marijuana, alcohol, cocaine, and heroin.”68 That’s a remarkably

low percentage, considering common perceptions about the

dangers of things like heroin. Thus, the addictive properties of

some substances do not explain why a) most people who try

addictive substances don’t become addicted and b) why some

activities such as shopping, social media habits, or hoarding (none

of which could be physically addicting) become addictions

nevertheless.

To understand why this is, we must understand the

reward/reinforcement mechanisms in the brain, specifically the

68 Szalavitz, Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Adddiction. 273.

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role of dopamine. Dopamine is a learning chemical. When

dopamine is released in your brain, your brain “learns” something,

specifically an association. When we endure toxic environments,

we look for things that help us cope. When we find the “thing”

that helps us escape, calms us, makes us feel good, or meets a

need, dopamine, a chemical long linked to addiction,69 is released.

Dopamine programs your brain and attaches you to whatever

substance or behaviour is meeting your need, helping you escape,

making you feel good, etc., so you will do it again in the future. As

psychologist David J. Ley says, dopamine release is “like a little

red flag to your brain, saying ‘hey, pay attention, this is about to

feel good, and you want to remember this, so you can do it

again.’”70 The more dopamine is released in relation to your

“thing,” the more attached to your “thing” you become, and the

more addicted you are. In the case of a behaviour addiction to

running, when you repeatedly go running to escape and to trigger

endorphins, you slowly become neurologically attached to that

activity.71

Of course, not everybody who runs is addicted. If you go running

not to escape or feel good but to exercise and stay in shape,

dopamine is not triggered in the same way. Addiction is caused by

a response to toxic socialization that, when paired with dopamine

programming, leads to a substance or behavioural attachment. Put

another way, if you experienced toxic socialization, if you live in a

toxic environment, you are prone to developing addictions

because you will be motivated to find something that offers

relief/release/pleasure/escape.

69 Trevor W. Robbins and Barry J. Everitt, "Drug Addiction: Bad Habits Add Up," Nature 398 (1999). Note the title of this article. Despite talking about genetics and the neuropathology of addiction, the authors (or the editors) insert a statement that blames the addict. 70 David J. Ley, No, Dopamine Is Not Addictive, 2017, Psychology Today, Available: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-who-stray/201701/no-dopamine-is-not-addictive, January 6 2017. 71 Interestingly, this is the source of the problems with “self-regulation” noted by Szalavitz. It’s not that children have a “self-regulation” problem or a “learning disorder,” its that dopamine attachment caused by the need to cope with/escape from toxic environments causes and attachment that is so powerful you simply cannot stop the behaviour. Problems with self-regulation are caused by toxic environments combined with dopamine attachment. Szalavitz, Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Adddiction.

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At this point, you should have a decent understanding of

addiction. Addiction itself consists of the physically addicting

properties of some substances and (more importantly) the Toxic

Dopamine Attachment (or just Toxic Attachment72) that occurs as

an attempt to adapt to a toxic environment and society. Dopamine

release is a neurological reflex, and the Dopamine Attachment to

substances and behaviours that result from it is a natural

consequence of this design feature of the human physical unit.73

This dopamine attachment is important, critical, indeed central to

understanding and healing from “addiction.” In fact, we would

hazard to say that it is not really “addiction” so much as toxic

attachment that is the issue. We would suggest that we shouldn’t

even really be calling it “addiction,” since the “addiction” itself is

secondary to the toxic attachment. We prefer to say people

develop Toxic Attachments to substances and behaviours, for the

reasons already outlined above. When an individual is in the

“throes” of alcohol addiction, we would prefer to say they have an

Active Substance Attachment to alcohol, and the attachment is

toxic. Similarly, instead of using the word “clean”74 to describe

someone free of “addiction,” we would prefer to say they have an

Inactive Attachment or Broken Attachment to alcohol. Inactive

attachments are not the same as broken attachments. An inactive

attachment is an attachment that still exists, i.e. vestiges of

neurological attachment remain and may become active once

again, but they are not dominant or overpowering. Because

vestiges of neurological attachment still exist, inactive attachments

72 https://spiritwiki.lightningpath.org/Toxic_Attachment. 73 For evolutionary reasons, your body has basic “Life Algorithms.” These algorithms increase the functional capacity and survivability of the organism, i.e., your physical unit. One such algorithm is the Pleasure Algorithm. This algorithm causes your physical unit to seek out pleasure and avoid pain. This algorithm includes the capacity for “self-programming.” Thus, when your body experiences pleasure, it programs itself to seek out these pleasures again. This programming is accomplished, as we have already seen, via the attachment mechanism of dopamine. 74 Note, using the word “clean” to describe someone free of an addiction implies that the when addicted the person is “dirty” and contaminated. This terminology characterizes a person struggling with toxic attachment in a judgmental and extremely moralistic fashion. We should never use the words “clean” and “dirty” since these terms ignore the environmental and neurological contexts, implies personal failure, and encourages and contributes to shame and guilt, which further exacerbates the “need” for escape Our advice is to use the terms “active” and “inactive.” Someone who is using has an active addiction. Somebody who is “clean” has inactivated their addiction.

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are prone to reactivation, especially when toxic conditions are still

prevalent. On the other hand, a broken attachment is an

attachment where the neurological attachment no longer exists.

While one can inactivate an attachment over a brief period (a few

days to a few months, depending on the addiction), it can take

many years to completely break and attachment.

A good example here is smoking. An individual can quit smoking

(i.e., inactivate their attachment) after only a few days, perhaps a

week or two. However, the attachment remains and may be

reactivated after only a single cigarette. It takes many years to break

completely and attachment to the point where smoking a cigarette

will not reactivate the latent attachment. Speaking from

experience, you can inactivate a toxic attachment to cigarettes in

only a few days, maybe a couple of weeks. However, breaking a

toxic attachment to cigarettes takes much longer than that.

Moving forward from here we will refer to “addictions” as toxic

dopamine attachments or just toxic attachments (TA) for short.

We will further refer to addictions as either active, inactive, or

broken. Thus, if you’re an alcoholic, you’re not an addict, you

have developed a toxic attachment to alcohol. If you are a

shopaholic, you are not addicted to shopping, you have a toxic

attachment to this horrifically toxic behaviour. If you have your

one-year coin you have not been “clean” for a year, your

attachment has been inactive for one year.

You can see at this point that we can become “attached” (i.e.,

addicted) to anything. Anything that gives escape, relief, or

pleasure, and that repeatedly triggers dopamine expression in the

brain, can become a toxic attachment, especially when the

substance or behaviour is in response to toxicity, neglect, anguish,

etc. It is not about “bad genes,” weak moral character, faulty

learning, or whatever; it is about this shitty world we live in and our

brain’s evolutionarily designed ability/attempt to cope with the

toxicity and pain. The mechanism is simple. We become attached

to substances and behaviours because they help us cope and

survive.

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Toxic socialization causes toxic attachments

to both substances and behaviours.

At this point, we should note that toxic socialization is not the only

cause of addiction. Other factors are involved. For example,

Pushers push us into addiction and Enablers encourage it. We’ll

look at pushers and enablers more in the section on Lies and

Ideology later. Similarly, Genetic Trauma makes us susceptible to

toxic attachments. Finally, we often turn to substances and

behaviours when we are dealing with the anguish, guilt, and shame

caused by Wrong Action. It should be noted, these additional

factors are insufficient by themselves to cause addiction. Toxic

socialization and the accompanying environmental toxicity are the

necessary and sufficient causes of our challenging toxic

attachments).

A few examples should make this all clear.

Consider cutting as an example of a toxic behavioural attachment.

For those of you who don’t know, cutting is a deliberate act of self-

harm. When someone cuts, they use a sharp object to cut into

their flesh. Cutting is a serious mental health problem. We know

of children, mostly females, as young as ten who cut.

Why does cutting start and how does it become an addiction?

Cutting starts for all the typical reasons. It can start as a distraction/escape from the pain and anguish caused by violence and chaos in the home or some traumatic event. Physical pain is

less painful than psychological and emotional pain; thus, cutting

provides relief and escape from physical and emotional pain by

drowning out the physical/emotional pain. Cutting may also start

as a desperate plea for help or change. A kid who cuts is asking for

help, crying out for attention, and making a physical record. A kid

who is cutting is attempting to send a clear message to parents and

others: “pay attention to me, I’m in need, I’m in pain, and

something needs to change.” Cutting is thus an attempt to

effectuate change, to get a need met for safety, esteem, and power,

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in an otherwise toxic environment.75 Cutting also starts because

physical harm releases the “feel good” endorphins in the brain.76

Thus cutting provides many of the “services” that typical

attachments provide. Cutting provides escape, distraction,

endorphin release, and at least at attempt at needs satisfaction. As

with all other attachments, we become gradually attached as the

dopamine “hits” us. The more often we cut for relief, distraction,

etc., the more dopamine is released, and the more attached we

become to the cutting behaviour. Eventually, we become so

attached that we are recognized as “addicted” to the cutting.

Cutting is not the only serious behavioural attachment we may

develop. As many reading this will be aware, we can also develop

toxic attachments to social media. The mechanisms of toxic

attachment to social media are identical to the mechanisms that

attach us to cutting. We use social media a) as a way to

distract/escape from chaos and violence in the home

environments, b) as a way to get some essential needs met that are

not otherwise being met in the home or in our relationships, and

c) because the “likes” and shares we get release endorphins. When

dopamine is released, toxic attachment to the social media

platform develops.

Consider platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. These

platforms provide a window into alternate realities that may distract us from the chaos, violence, and emptiness of our real lives. Also,

on these platforms, “likes” and “retweets” give us superficial jolts

of self-esteem and belongingness, two of our seven essential needs.

When a post is liked we “feel good” about ourselves. These hits,

these little “moments of distraction” and “moments of inclusion,”

75 Certainly cutting is not the most effective way of to effectuate change since an individual who cuts is often pathologized and dismissed. However, one cannot expect a twelve year old child to be able to conceptualize the reality of their toxic environment, or be able to lucidly communicate the need for change to parents and authorities who a) think within the primitive confines of old energy archetypes and old energy psychology or are b) in a state of denial regarding their own mental health issues, and their own contribution to the toxicity of the situation. As a child, telling my mother she was hurting me, and asking her to stop, only made the whipping, the emotional assaults, and the denials more violent. 76 B. A. West, "Understanding Endorphins: Our Natural Pain Relief System... Part 6," Nursing 11.2 (1981). A highlighted version is available

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give us pleasure and, through the magic of dopamine, eventually

become addictive. This is not rocket science. In fact, it is well-

known science. Facebook, and no doubt other platforms, were

deliberately designed for behavioural addiction.77 The creators of

Facebook literally set out to make you dependent on the platform.

If this sounds like an awful thing to you, it is. At least one former

Facebook executive, Chamath Palihapitiya, feels “tremendous

guilt,” as he rightly should, at the damage these platforms, which

he helped develop, are causing.78

Lightning Path Addictions Analysis

When we examine attachments to Facebook, cutting, alcohol, and

shopping as we have done above, i.e., when we identify the

behaviour or substance and clarify the reasons why we are attached

(meet a need, escape from violence, etc.), we are engaged in step

one and two of a Lightning Path Attachment Analysis (LPAA).79

Step one of the LPAA is identification of the toxic attachments.

This step is easy. If you can’t stop the substance or behaviour, you

have a toxic attachment. For example, at one time, “I was addicted

to cigarettes.”

Step two of an LPAA is clarification of the attachment. In this step,

you figure out why you became attached/addicted in the first place.

To do this, simply ask yourself the following questions: “What am

I escaping from and how does the attachment provide that

escape;” “What do I need relief from and how is the attachment

providing that relief;” “How is this substance/behaviour distracting

me;” “What needs is this attachment meeting?” Finally, “Is the

attachment helping me deal with guilt and shame.”

77 Hilary Andersson, Social Media Apps Are 'Deliberately' Addictive to Users, 2018, BBC News, Available: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44640959, November 24 2018.

78 Chamath Palihapitiya, "‘Tremendous Guilt’: Ex-Facebook Exec’s Regrets on Ripping Apart the Social Fabric," 2017. 79 https://spiritwiki.lightningpath.org/Addiction_Analysis.

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Moment of reflection: Pause for a moment an identify one of

your addictions. It could be smoking, work, an opiate, etc.

Now, identify the reward. Ask yourself the question, what

pain does it give you relieve/help you escape from? What

need is being met? Does it help you cover negative emotions

like guilt and shame? You may have to dig deep into your

childhood in some cases. Write your response in your HC

Journal and share online in the HC Journal forum if you wish.

https://www.lightningpath.org/forums/

Identification and clarification are straightforward, if not always

easy. For example, I (Mike S.) used to smoke. I started smoking

because, at the age of nineteen, I had no significant attachments in

my family (single parent mom, aunts, uncles, and cousins that

“looked down” on us) and because I had a consequent unmet

need to “fit in” and belong, I found smoking as a way to satiate my

unmet need for belonging. I started smoking so I could fit in with

friends. Even though it was thirty-five years ago, I still remember

the motivation and the wonderful feeling of “fitting in” that I got

from smoking the first time. I needed that feeling so bad that I

ignored the physical distress (nausea and headaches, etc.) caused

by the poisonous cigarettes. I needed to fit in more than I needed to feel physically well. It was the underlying need that drove me

past the poisonous cigarette stick.80

Or consider my partner Gina R.’s addiction struggles. My partner

started smoking and drinking for the same reasons as I did, i.e.,

not because she liked the taste of alcohol or cigarettes but because

she wanted to fit in with her family, and because her family

members “pushed” her into consumption. They said things like

“if you are not going to drink then at least look like you are partying

with the rest of us and smoke.” Continued “pushing” by family,

80 That an emotional need to fit in is more powerful than a physical need to feel well should be no great insight. The people who get paid to manipulate you, i.e., marketers trying to sell you products, know this well. It is why commercials aimed at the young often show a bunch of young friends “fitting in” and belonging with each other. The subliminal message sent is “consume this product if you want to fit in.”

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combined with her need to fit in, and the addictive properties of

the substances, eventually led to toxic alcohol attachment and toxic

nicotine attachment.81 Interestingly, even when she had committed

to deal with her addictions, family members resisted her healing.

They “pushed back,” making her feel like if she wanted to be a

part of the family, if she wanted to “fit in,” she needed to continue

to smoke and drink with them.

At the point where you have identified and clarified your

addictions, you are almost ready to move to the treatment stage.

Before you do that you need to conduct step three of an LPAA

which is a categorization of the attachment on a continuum from

toxic to fully benign. We should say that a substance or

behavioural addiction is not necessarily a problem and doesn’t

necessarily require treatment. One can be addicted to coffee,

alcohol, running, sex, or whatever and not experience serious

issues. Addictions only become problematic when they cover over

unresolved trauma and damage, or when they have a negative

impact on you and those around you. For example, an addiction

to coffee only becomes a problem when you drink too much daily,

and this undermines your health. Similarly, an addiction to alcohol

only becomes a problem when you are a) using alcohol to escape,

provide relief from toxic environments or internal pain and

anguish and b) cannot control your intake and therefore drink too

much, too often, and to the point of Crown Stupefaction82 and

disconnection. Finally, an attachment to sex only becomes a

problem if you’re driven by unresolved trauma, married, in a

relationship, and hurting the people you are cheating on and

hooking up with.

81 Gina’s account is quite interesting because it highlights the function of PUSHERS. Pushers are people who push you towards the development of toxic attachment. They do this for various reasons. If they are dealers, they do it for money. If they are family and friends, they do it as a way to justify their own addictions and to avoid the shame and guilt of drinking/smoking to excess around people who do not. Whether they are doing it for money or because getting others addicted makes them feel better about themselves doesn’t matter. The point is, people push addictions and they are often effective at getting others hooked, especially when the pushing is combined with other “risk factors,” like the toxic environments of a toxic socialization process. 82 https://spiritwiki.lightningpath.org/Crown_Stupification.

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When it comes to assessing the extent to which an addiction is

problematic, there are lots of different things to consider. In the

case of running or shopping, you need to consider the fiscal impact

and lost time with your family and children, if you have them. In

the case of alcohol or other harsh substances, you need to consider

the long-term impact on your self, your physical unit (i.e., your

mind and body), your family, your work life, and so on. For

example, alcoholism can a) prevent you from connecting with and

“self-actualizing”83 your Highest Self, b) cause physical and

neurological damage to your body, and c) cause you to harm the

ones you love, especially when you’re a ‘mean drunk’ and you lash

out at the ones you love. For all the reasons above, and some more

that are not enumerated, attachments to alcohol are almost always

a serious problem.

Moment of reflection: At this point pause and examine the

addictions you previously recorded in your HC Journal. Are

any of these addictions problematic? That is, do they harm

you or the people around you in any way? Do they negatively

impact your home/work life? Do they disconnect you from

Highest Self? Write your response in your HC Journal and

share online in the HC Journal forum if you wish.

https://www.lightningpath.org/forums/

To summarize, an LP Addictions Assessment involves three steps,

these being:

1. Identification of the addiction

2. Clarification of the causes

3. Categorization as toxic or benign

Moving towards treatment, you can safely ignore benign

attachment (a mild attachment to coffee, wine, etc.,) and focus

primarily on your most toxic attachments.

83 As Maslow would have said A. H. Maslow, Motivation and Personality (2nd Ed.) (New York: Harper & Row, 1970)..

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As a final note, keep in mind when conducting an assessment on

your addictions to see if they are problematic or not, there is a well-

established tendency for addicts to lie to themselves and others to

downplay their toxic attachments. We’ll talk more about the

tendency and reasons for lying in the next unit. For now, when

conducting an LPAA, you should ask friends and family what they

think about your toxic attachments and whether they are toxic or

benign. For example, if you drink, ask your wife or friends if they

think it is a problem. If they say yes, then regardless of any lies you

tell yourself, you have a toxic attachment problem.

Treatment

At this point in your reading, you should have a good

understanding of the nature and cause of addictions, you should

have identified your addictions, and you should have honestly

assessed whether the addictions are toxic and problematic, or

benign and “nothing to worry about.” Remember, they are

problematic if they a) cover over unresolved toxicity and trauma

and b) negatively impact you, your life, your family, and this planet.

Some addictions, like running or coffee, may not be problematic

at all unless you are harming yourself and others in the process.84

Others, like addictions to heroin or shopping,85 will be.

At this point, the question becomes, how do you treat the

addictions that you and your loved ones deem as problematic?

Unfortunately, treating addictions is complicated and difficult not

only because the neurological attachment is complex and

multifaceted, but also because the addictions can rewire the brain

84 As strange as it may seem, it is possible to harm others even when you are engaged in “healthier” addictions like running. We remember years ago driving through Banff in Canada and seeing a young women running through the streets in a fashionable jogger outfit, with her five year old child panting and struggling to keep up behind her. This women appeared to be so addicted to running that she would torture a young child just so she could get her fix. 85 Addiction to shopping, which judging by the ridiculous displays that occur in North America during the Black Friday to Christmas season, and by the constant need to have the “newest, latest, and greatest” thingamabobby just so you can be cool, stand out, fit it, and be “happy,” is a problem for the addict, their families, the environment, and the children who are exploited just so you can have the latest and greatest “iThingy.” Addiction to shopping, which is something encouraged by the manipulations of the marketing industry, is destroying the planet. Shopping is therefore a problematic addiction no matter if you have the money to spend to infinity or not.

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to the point where you develop a Hard Dependency. A hard

dependency occurs because some substances and behaviours

cause damage by rewiring the brain. This brain damage, this

rewiring, can make you physically dependent on your substance or

behaviour for proper brain functioning. Inactivating and breaking

toxic attachments to substances and behaviours is even more

difficult when you are dealing with a hard dependency.86

At one time, treatments for toxic attachments to substances and

behaviours involved “cold-turkey” breaks and complete

abstinence. While complete abstinence may be a long-term

necessity for some toxic attachments like alcohol,87 going “cold-

turkey” is hard and most people cannot do it without, sometimes

quite costly, assistance. This is not because they are weak but

because the attachment is strong, the neurological reprogramming

deep, and the damage often severe.

Whether or not cold-turkey is something you want to try is up to

you. If you can go a week without smoking, a month without

coffee, a year without alcohol, etc., you can consider the toxic

attachment inactive. Remember, it takes a lot longer to break an

attachment. Also remember, until your attachment is final broken,

you are susceptible to reactivation.

In general, we do not recommend a cold turkey approach not only

because this can cause a lot of pain and distress, especially when a

hard attachment has occurred, but because until toxic attachments

are broken, they are susceptible to reactivation. Depending on the

addiction, we recommend a more gradual reduction of use

combined with an insistent reprogramming of attachments.

Why do we recommend this?

Remember the function of dopamine in your brain. Dopamine

rewires the reward structures by attaching you to substances and

86 See for example Andrew Holmes, Paul J. Fitzgerald, Kathryn P. MacPherson, Lauren DeBrouse, Giovanni Colacicco, Shaun M. Flynn, Sophie Masneuf, Kristen E. Pleil, Chia Li, Catherine A. Marcinkiewcz, Thomas L. Kash, Ozge Gunduz-Cinar and Marguerite Camp, "Chronic Alcohol Remodels Prefrontal Neurons and Disrupts Nmdar-Mediated Fear Extinction Encoding," Nature Neuroscience 15 (2012). 87 https://alcoholrehab.com/alcohol-rehab/alcohol-problems-and-the-need-for-complete-abstinence/

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behaviours that offer relief from the hell of toxic socialization. This

original toxic rewiring took place over time and as a consequence

of many experiences. If your toxic attachment is drinking, for

example, it took a lot of “pleasant” feelings/experiences of

numbness, detachment, escape, to get your brain rewired and hard

attached to the substance. As William S. Burroughs says, “it takes

about a year and several hundred injections to make an addict.

That’s because it takes about that long to hardwire your brain and

create the hard attachments that function as chronic addiction.

Unfortunately, it is also going to take a year, and several hundred

new experiences in non-toxic environments with non-toxic

attachments, to break the hard attachments and rewire the brain.

You simply cannot skip these experiences and go cold turkey. If

you don’t go through the experiences, the rewiring never occurs.

If the rewiring never occurs, all you’ll is inactivation of your toxic

attachments. If all you accomplish is inactivation, the wiring will

always remain and you’ll be prone to reactivation.

So, how do you rewire your brain and break your toxic

attachments? The first step towards breaking your brain’s toxic

attachments to substances and behaviours is to detoxify your

environment and your life. Remember, addictions start as a way to

deal with the pain and anguish you experience from toxic

socialization. If you don’t clean up toxic environments, if you

remain steeped in the hellish fires of toxic socialization, you’ll find

it impossible to rewire your brain. It is just the way it is. Getting

away to a safe place for a period of time can help, addiction retreats

can help, but if you keep coming back to toxic environments, if

you continue to swim in toxicity, you will continue to look for

relief/escape/satisfaction, and dopamine will continue to attach

you to toxic substances and noxious behaviours. If you want to heal

the toxic attachments, you have to remove the principle driver,

which is toxicity in your life. There’s no other way forward but that.

How do you detoxify your environment? As regards cleaning up

your environment, you have two choices. You can either educate

the people who make up your life about the consequences of

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toxicity and the impact it is having on your addictions and ask them

to heal with you, or you can exit your toxic relationships and toxic

families and begin to build up new ones. The easiest and least

disruptive solution is to educate your family and friends about the

consequences of toxic socialization and its impact, and request

assistance from them in said detoxification. For guidance on

detoxification, refer to Unit “E” on the environment. If possible,

we recommend you immediately institute a no violence rule and

work together to remove all instances of emotional, psychological,

physical, and spiritual violence and exploitation. There can be no

compromise here. If you want to deal with your addictions, you

must create healthy, non-toxic spaces within which you can heal

and reprogram.

Unfortunately, it has to be said, it won’t always be possible to

educate your family and friends and elicit their help. Many of you

will find that when you point out the toxicity and make an appeal

to family and friends for a change, you will be attacked. When you

point things out, parents, partners, and friends will lash out in

anger at you and even engage in violent emotional, psychological,

or even physical assault. If this happens, if attempts to educate and

enlist the authentic support family and friends elicit only defence

and attack, do not waste your time--do not hesitate—break your

attachments and find new family and friends. This might sound

harsh, but it is a necessary and increasingly common practice,88 as

for example amongst the LGBTQ community who often

experience harsh violence at the hands of their old energy family

and friends. If your family does not move forward with you, you

have no choice but to remove them from your life, or dramatically

limit your exposure to them. You will make slow to no progress in

dealing with addictions if you do not detoxify your life.

For your information, detoxification is part of the process of

establishing Right Environment. We discuss right environment in more

88 Brianna Sharpe, "'Chosen Families' Give Lgbtq Parents and Kids the Support They May Lack," Huffpost 2018.

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detail in Lightning Path Workbook Three: Connection, in the section

on Alignment.

As you detoxify your environments, the second step to treating

addictions is not to eliminate your attachments (because then you

will end up a lonely Buddhist monk in an emotional and creative

silo of your own making) but to rectify your attachments. You

rectify your attachments by finding better ways to self-medicate,

and better ways to meet your needs. For example, if you suffer

from anxiety and PTSD and smoking helps calm you down,

rectifying your attachments require you learn to do something else

to calm yourself down instead. Instead of jumping straight to the

cigarette, do some yoga and stretching. Instead of running off to

the casino, do some mindfulness and meditation. Instead of

pouring that drink, get some love from a loved one, or brew

yourself a jasmine tea and take a hot bath. Stimulate natural

endorphin release with sex, laughter, purpose, giving, exercise,

healthy diet, etc. Putting a healthier activity or substance in front of the addictive response will encourage dopamine attachment to the new activity or substance, thereby rewiring your brain.

You may think it silly at first, especially if your toxic attachments

have a loud voice, but you will find that the more you put

“something before” the toxic attachment, whatever it is, the more

attached you will become to the new thing and the less attached

you will become to your addiction. You’ll still be self-medicating,

of course, even if you are medicating with jasmine tea, but that’s

OK. Given just how toxic this world still is, there’s absolutely no

shame in that; and at least you’ll be medicating with real medicine

(yoga, love, meditation, cannabis,89 etc.) and not the toxic crap still

on offer by the corporations of this world.

We have to say, detoxification and rectification are challenging,

and breaking your attachments won’t happen overnight. You

should be realistic about how long it takes to break the physical

89 https://spiritwiki.lightningpath.org/Cannabis.

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addiction and toxic attachments. In other words, don’t kid

yourself. This will not be easy. Inactivating and deactivating your toxic attachments will require an ongoing act of willpower. Therefore, cut yourself some slack. If you still need the cigarette,

casino, or drink after you’ve put an alternative activity or substance

in between, that’s fine. Do not torture yourself. Do not shame

yourself. But, use your willpower. Resist as long as you can, then

do as little of the addiction as you require, and remind yourself

how good if felt/will feel to stretch, meditate, drink tea, and get

love.

Also note, being addiction free doesn’t necessarily mean giving

things up, it just means breaking the toxic attachment and using

experience to reprogram your brain. You might be addicted to

shopping, for example, but when you break this addiction, you will

still shop, you just won’t “enjoy” it so much, and you will be in

control. The same thing goes for some of the other addictions

people have. As long as you are in control, as long as there are no

neural vestiges of previous toxic rewiring, occasional use of a

substance is fine, so long as it causes no harm to the physical unit.

On the other hand, if you can’t gain control, or if the substance is

simply too dangerous (e.g. opioids like Fentanyl), total abstinence

may be the only option.

To summarize, in this unit we have examined toxic attacments.

We have seen that both substances (i.e. smoking, alcohol, heroin)

and behaviours (i.e. social media, running, etc.) can be addictive.

We have learned the difference between active addictions and

inactive addictions. We have also uncovered the actual causes of

addiction—not “genetics” or “moral strength” but toxic

environments and a toxic socialization process characterized by

violence, chaos, neglect, destruction of attachments, and

indoctrination. We have learned that addictions start as attempts

to cope, to self-medicate, escape, or meet unmet needs, but

because of the dopamine reward mechanisms of the brain, we

eventually develop toxic attachments. We have seen that to treat

your toxic attachments, you must combine Identify, Clarify,

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Categorize, Detoxify, and Rectify. You must identify your

addictions, clarify their source, and categorize those that are toxic.

Then, you must detoxify your environment and rectify toxic

attachments by willfully reprogramming your brain.

So far in this workbook, we have discussed getting help,

detoxifying your world, establishing right environment, cleaning

and treating psychic wounds, and identifying and treating toxic

attachments as necessary steps in the healing process.

Unfortunately, treating your wounds and healing your attachments

is challenging, not only because the attachments are hard-wired

deep in the brain, but also because we are not always honest with

ourselves about our damage, distortions, and toxic attachments.

To be perfectly blunt, when it comes to our health and well being,

when it comes to the reality of our pain and our suffering, and

when it comes to the severity and damage caused by toxic

socialization and toxic attachments, we lie, lie, lie, lie. We lie to

ourselves. We lie to our families. We lie to our partners We lie to

our doctors. We lie to workmates. We lie to everybody. No sense

in denying it, because we all we’ve all done at one time or another.

When it comes to the realities around us, we lie, lie, lie, lie, lie,

and when we are done lying, we lie and lie some more.

Unfortunately, if you are serious about treating your wounds and

your addictions, if you are serious about healing and reconnecting,

you’re going to have to stop lying. If you don’t, sorry to say, there

is no way forward for you. Don’t worry though, it is not as hard as

you might think, at least once you know all the reasons you have

learned to lie. It is to the reasons for lying that we turn our attention

to next.

Study Questions

1. Pause a few moments and reflect upon your life, past and

present. What were the two most toxic environments you

ever endured? Was it your childhood or your school? Is it

a current relationship? Right your thoughts down. Now ask

yourself, what “things” (behaviours or substances) helped

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you cope with the toxic situations.. Do you feel you are

attached to any of these “things?” Why or why not? Write

your answers down to these questions in your HC journal

and, if you like share with the group or online.

2. What makes an attachment a toxic attachment? Do you

have any problematic behavioural or substance

attachments? Write these down in your HC journal and

share.

3. What is the difference between an active toxic attachment

and a broken toxic attachment? Do you have any active

attachments? Do you have any broken attachments? If you

have broken attachments, what has helped you to break

your attachments? Write your answers to these questions

down in your H/C Journal and share with the group or

online if you like.

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5. “L” is for Lies

“You can’t heal what you don’t reveal.” - Reverend Al Sharpton

In the previous section we took an extended look at “addiction,”

or what we call Toxic Attachment. As we saw there, toxic

attachment to substances, behaviours, and even people develop

because of toxic socialization, specifically the pain caused by

violence, neglect, and chaos. The pain of toxic socialization causes

us to look for “things” to salve, sooth, and treat the damage. We

find these “things” that help (alcohol, sex, morphine, shopping, or

whatever), and through the magic of dopamine we become

“attached” to the point of toxicity, meaning we consume the

substances (like tobacco, alcohol, cocaine, carbs, etc.), engage in

the behaviours (running, sex, shopping, etc.), or develop toxic

attachments to people (i.e., co-dependent abusive relationships)

even though they cause damage to our body, our self, our family,

our life, and even this world.

As we noted in the last unit, treating toxic attachment, though

relatively straightforward, is a challenge. To treat a toxic

attachment, you must detoxify your environment and then

reprogram your dopamine addled brain. Reprogramming your

brain is straight forward enough to do if you know your toxic

attachments and how they started, but it can be impossible if you

don’t know (or don’t admit) you are addicted, or don’t know how

it all started in the first place.

At this point, you might be feeling this is all common sense, and it

is. If you want to treat any wound you have to clean the wound(s),

work towards a non-toxic environment, and determine the nature

and source of the wound. If you go to an emergency room, these

are the first things they do; they put you in a clean room, make

sure the wound is clean, and determine the nature of the wound.

Once they know the details, it is easier for them to determine

proper treatment, and easier for them to heal the wound.

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Unfortunately, when it comes to psychic wounds, and in particular

when it comes to our toxic attachments, it is not so straightforward.

The problem is not because understanding toxic attachments is

difficult, nor is it the case that uncovering their source is

particularly challenging. Once you know the truth of toxic

attachments, it usually only takes a few straight forward questions

and a few honest answers to figure out the source of the trauma

and the reason for the toxic attachment(s). So why is it so hard?

The problem is, we often don’t give honest answers about our

traumas, their sources, and the psychic wounds and toxic

attachments that result. In fact, we tend to lie to ourselves and

others about these things. We lie to ourselves and others about

our environments. We lie to ourselves and others about the quality

of our relationships. We lie to ourselves and others about the

presence of toxic attachments. We lie to ourselves and others

about the severity of our wounds. We lie to ourselves and others

about the nature of our actions, telling ourselves that what we do

is OK and alright, even if it is hurting ourselves and our own

children. When it comes to assessing our damage, toxic

attachments, and actions, we lie, lie, lie, and then lie some more.

In our healing practice we have seen people lie to themselves and

to others numerous times. No matter how hard we tried to get

some clients to hear the truths we speak, no matter how hard we

tried to get clients to see the toxic realities of their life and their

behaviors, often they would resist. They resisted hearing the truths.

They resisted seeing the truths. They resisted even talking about

the truth, instead they preferred to criticize others, deflect, blame,

and avoid all awareness of their realities. After some consideration,

we realized that they were doing this for several reasons, some

simple and some complex, some innocent and some not so much.

It’s not so bad after all!

One of the more simple and innocent reasons people lie about

their environments, the toxicity in their lives, their toxic

attachments, their toxic behaviours, and so on, is that sometimes

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things don’t seem all that bad after all, and so they don’t think we

have a problem. As noted earlier, toxic attachment to running is a

good example of this. Running is a healthy activity and it is easy to

think you can never get too much of that. Because running is

something we all see as healthy, it is easy to ignore any negativity

that might result. Unfortunately, negativity can result. We knew of

at least one individual who would go running all the time. This

individual would run for hours at a time, three to five times a week.

This individual spent more time with her running group than she

did with her spouse and children. She went on regular trips to

compete and was on the road all the time during the running

season. This person told herself and her family it is was for her

health and wellbeing, but her running had all the characteristics of

a toxic attachment. When her spouse began to open up, we soon

realized that she was running to escape from a toxic environment,

in this case her home, and a toxic relationship with her spouse.

Like all people with a toxic attachment, she was using running to

get away from a toxic environment and to feel good about herself

and her life. By getting out of the home, running provided the

necessary relief. Running also triggered serotonin release, which

made her feel better. Eventually, through the magic of dopamine

attachments, he developed a hard dependency to running. She

soon justified the time, the money, and the neglect of her primary

relationships in order to get the running fix. As “healthy” as this

activity was in the beginning, it caused problems. By being out of

the home all the time she was avoiding her problems, undermining

her primary relationships, and neglecting her children. As a result,

her children have grown up with serious emotional issues and her

family life and relationship have totally collapsed. To be sure, she

recognized there were problems in her life, but she wouldn’t see

running, or the time it takes away from family, as an issue. Running

is healthy, after all, and it is his necessary, healthy, self-care, “me”

time.

To be sure, self-care “me” time is important, as is exercise, but this

doesn’t take away from the fact that she had a toxic attachment to

running. When the “thing” we have a toxic attachment to doesn’t

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make us immediately sick, or when it contributes to our health in

some other respects, we can easily ignore the negative

consequences and easily find excuses to maintain the toxic

attachment; but remember, in assessing your life for healing needs,

individual health is not the only thing that is important. Your

families, your children, your work, and your social environments

play a role in your health and well-being as well. Just because an

addiction isn’t affecting you directly doesn’t mean it is not

negatively impacting your life or the lives of the ones you love and

are responsible for.

The “it’s not so bad after all” lie allows us to have our toxic

attachments while at the same time allowing us to avoid awareness

of the impact and deflect criticism. Unfortunately, addictions are

not the only things we can justify because it’s “not so bad after all.”

That simple, easy to make lie works with a lot of different things,

like spanking, which “is not so bad,”90 or yelling at our kids, which

is “not so bad,” or sexually assaulting women, which is “not so

bad,” and so on. The truth is, the “it’s not so bad” lie allows a lot

of bad shit to continue to happen. However, if we want to move

forward, we must understand, it is bad. Addictions, assaulting our

children, assaulting women, and all the other crap of our toxic

socialization is bad. It undermines our physical, mental, emotion,

and spiritual health and it makes it harder to connect. If we want

to move forward and connect, we have to put aside the “it’s not so

bad” lie and face the hard truth of our toxic lives, behaviours, and

world.

Look at me, I’m rich and successful

Besides the “it’s not so bad” lie, another enormously powerful and

extremely common way of justifying our lies, especially in the

prosperous West, is to point to our successes, and especially

wealth, as an indication that things are alright. This is the “Look at

me, I’m rich and successful” lie. In this scenario, we refuse to

admit the truth about our life, we refuse to admit a toxic

90 Newsflash!! It is. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/04/spanking.aspx

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environment, or damage from a toxic socialization and instead we

say ““What do you mean I’m damaged from my childhood? What

do you mean my IQ is effected? What do you mean I am hurt and

diminished by toxic socialization? “I have a job. I have a house. I

have a car. I’m OK. I turned out alright. I’m rich and successful.”

When you think about it, it would be hard to walk up to someone

like Donald Trump, John Travolta, Elon Musk, Richard Branson,

or some other high functioning “alpha” and tell them, “Man,

you’re messed up and disconnected.” They can easily look at their

private jets, fancy houses, gold toilets, and cadre of rich celebrity

friends and laugh right in your face. From Hollywood Diva to

middle class mom, from Corporate CEO to daddy in his “man

cave,” when challenged to face a hard truth we do not want to

admit, we often point to our fancy lives filled with money and

material things and use that to justify, deflect, and excuse.

No sense in being hypocritical about it at this point. We all know

what this lie is, and we’ve all committed it. We have all looked at

our successes whatever they may be, and we have all used these

successes as excuses to tell lies about our toxic environments, our

toxic behaviours, the people we have exploited, and the suffering

and the addictions that we endure. Be aware however, worldly

success, riches, and fame have absolutely nothing to do with

mental/emotional, physical health and healthy and pure spiritual

connection. You cannot point to your “worldly successes” and say

“I’m a good person,” “I’m a healthy person,” “I’m a chosen

person,” or “I am a connected person.” The truth is, you can be a

sick and disconnected psychopath and still have worldly success.

In fact, as Jon Ronson argues,91 psychopathy may even be a

requirement of worldly success as currently defined. As many A-

list Hollywood actors, top-flight CEOs, and filthy rich people the

world over will surely attest, you got to step on a lot of toes while

you’re clawing your way to the top. The uncomfortable truth for

91 For the argument of Ronson, see Jon Ronson, The Psychopath Test: A Journey through the Madness Industry (United States: Picador, 2011).

97

you is, only sick and disconnected people are prepared to “do what

it takes” to claw their way to the top.

And besides, as even a two-bit therapist will tell you, money and

success don’t buy happiness. Awards don’t make you feel warm.

A big house doesn’t make you less lonely or more likely you’ll

connect. Just because you are a rich CEO doesn’t mean you are

emotionally or psychologically healthy. Don’t get us wrong,

material success, adulation, and awards are all nice to have. In fact,

everybody should have a nice house in a safe neighborhood with

enough food to eat, because these are essential needs. 92 Everybody

should find a skill and ability they can master, and they should gain

recognition for it as a result. Meeting these needs, and the higher

needs, is key and we need do that. But don’t kid yourself, “things”

cannot meet all your needs. Material things can help with basic

material needs like your need for food, safety, entertainment,

comfort, and so on, but things just don’t cut it for higher needs like

truth and understanding, alignment (i.e. self-actualization), and

connection. You can be the richest CEO in the world but if your

attachments are busted, if you are out of alignment with your own

Highest Self, if you suffer from profound disconnection, and if you

exist in an environment of lies and self-deception, at best you’ll be

miserable and at worst you’ll be on a descending spiral of mental,

emotional, and spiritual disease. Trust us. Gina and I have worked

with the rich and poor and both groups are equally messed up.

There is some difference in how the pathologies are manifested,

but both groups suffer from disease, disconnection, and pain.

Remember this:

92 Mike Sosteric and Gina Ratkovic, Seven Essential Needs, 2018, Available: https://www.lightningpath.org/healing/seven-essential-needs/.

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Money, wealth, and power is no indication of health, well being, and the potential to heal connect.93

It comes down to this, and to you. If you use wealth and power as

an indication that you are OK, you will never admit to having

problems and you will never do the work you need to do in order

to heal and connect.

I got a job

“It’s not so bad, after all” and “Look at me, I’m rich,” are two

common ways we lie to ourselves and others, but there’s more.

Even if we’re not altogether successful, and even if there is clear

damage (i.e., even if we’re dealing with a diagnosed mental

infection), if we got a job, and especially if that job is a good job,

we can still find a way to excuse ourselves, our toxic environments,

and our toxic actions. “Sure, I drink every day. Sure, I’m at the

casino every night. Sure, I go running all the time. Sure, I’m an

asshole to my spouse and my kids. But I’m no slacker. At least I

can provide.”

You’ll recognize right away the “I’ve got a job” lie is related to the

“I’m OK” and the “Look at me I’m rich” lies. In fact, all the lies

we tell ourselves to avoid confronting the truth about the toxicity

in our lives and the damage we have incurred are variations of the

simple “I’m OK because…” argument. I’m OK because I can still

function. I’m OK because I’m rich and successful. I’m OK

because I have a beautiful partner. I’m OK because my kids are a

great success, etc. If you think you are “OK because” of all the

shiny gewgaws in your life, if you think you are “OK because” you

93 Incidentally, the “I’m rich” excuse is probably what Jesus Christ was referring to when he said it’s easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven, by which he was politely saying, it is impossible. According to Jesus, you cannot get a camel through the eye of a needle and a rich person can never be perfectly aligned and fully connected because a perfectly aligned and fully connected individual would never do what you have to do (i.e., exploit others, neglect family, damage yourself) to get rich. Personally, we don’t agree with this. We think there is hope, even for the uber rich; but when you’re dealing with a rich and successful person who can use the “Look at me” argument, it is hard to get the message through.

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can still function at a decent corporate level, if you think you are

“OK because” you got a job, it’s not so bad, or whatever, you are

wrong. Worldly success, money, power, successful children, or

whatever is not a good indicator of emotional health and spiritual

connection. The only good indicators of health and connection

are actual health and connection. If you want to realize your full

potential, you must quit using “I’m OK because” arguments and

face the truth that you might need to work on healing and

connection.

If you’re going to continue to use “I’m OK because” arguments to

lie to yourself and others about the state of disconnection you are

in, you can put this workbook down and quit wasting your time.

For the rest, the question at this point is, why do we lie? It seems

like it takes a lot of energy and money to maintain a lifetime of self-

deception, and it does. Lying all the time is like trying to keep the lid down on a boiling pot. You can do it, but it takes a lot of energy to keep it from boiling over.94 It is the same thing with your physical

body. It takes a ton of energy to maintain lies and this energy adds

to your body’s toxic burden, which for most people is already

immense. If we could redirect all the energy we put into “keeping

the lid down,” if we just woke up and admitted we got work to do,

we could then redirect our energies from repression and self-

deception to our own authentic healing. It makes perfect sense, so,

why can’t we just do that. Why can’t we admit we got issues? Why

do we continue to lie, to ourselves and to others despite the

obvious costs?

Well, we can tell you, we don’t do it because we’re stupid, lazy,

unevolved, immoral, evil, or whatever. In fact, quite the opposite

is true. There are good reasons we lie to ourselves, complex

reasons, and these reasons are rooted in our evolutionary,

94 As you get to this point of the workbook you might be feeling a little queasy, even sick to your stomach. At this point you may start to realize the depth of your self-deception, and this can make you feel a little sick. We are going to ask you to just ignore that feeling. If you keep moving forward, if you start to face your truths and if you begin to take steps to do something about it, any ugly feelings you may have will shortly go away. Instead of dwelling on negative feelings, we’re simply going to ask the question “why do we lie?”

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biological, psychological, sociological experiences and are the sign

of deep and capable intelligence, not a moral or evolutionary

weakness. All the complexity comes down to this. Lying is not

something we choose to do; lying is something that we learn to do.

Learning to Lie: Modelling

How do we learn to lie? First off, we learn to lie from the people

that surround us. From day one, lying is modeled to us. From day

one, everybody around us lies. Our parents lie, our teachers lie,

our priests lie etc., and seeing that, we go ahead and lie as well

because that is what we see our parents do. That is what our

“models” do,95 and so that is what we do.

Why do we do that? Why do we copy this behaviour? We do this

because that is what our brains and bodies were designed to do.

Your brain is filled with these things call “mirror neurons.” Mirror

neurons are neurons in the brain which are activated when we

observe the actions of others. For example, if you raise your arm,

mirror neurons in my brain fire in the same way neurons are firing

in your brain. If you lie and I observe that you are lying, mirror

neurons in my brain fire in the same way mirror neurons fire in

your brain.

What do mirror neurons do? Scientists are still trying to pin the

full picture down, but almost certainly, mirror neurons serve an

evolutionary survival role by priming/enabling learning96 through

observation.97 Learning through observation is a very important

evolutionary and survival function of the physical unit. A species

that learns by observing and modelling its parents is more

95 Of course, most of them aren’t doing it because they are mean. Most of them are doing it because that’s what they’ve learned to do. 96 Jeon Hyeonjin and Lee Seung-Hwan, "From Neurons to Social Beings: Short Review of the Mirror Neuron System Research and Its Socio-Psychological and Psychiatric Implications," Clinical Psychopharmacology and Neuroscience.1 (2018). 97 European Science Foundation, How Mirror Neurons Allow Us to Learn and Socialize by Going through the Motions in the Head, 2008, Science Daily, Available: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081219073047.htm, V.S. Ramachandran, Mirror Neurons and Imitation Learning as the Driving Force Behind "the Great Leap Forward" in Human Evolution, 2000, Edge, Available: http://edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran/ramachandran_index.html.

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successful than a species that can learn only through (often)

dangerous experience. A primate that sees its parents breaking a

peanut open and instantly learns to copy that behaviour is more

successful than a primate who must figure it all out on their own

from square one.

It is simple. Biological organisms are designed to copy the

behaviours of the adults that they are attached too and that form

their community (i.e., parents, tribe members, church members,

community etc.). Most of the time this is a sensible

evolutionary/survival strategy. A baby elephant is right to be

attached to its parents and right to mirror (i.e. copy) their actions

because the parents are attached to the baby elephant and are

going to protect it and show it the way to survive. Most of the time,

for most species who are dependent on parents for a period, it is

safe biological assumption that your parents are there to protect

you. Thus, when, as children, we see adults lie, we are primed to

copy that behaviour because of a biological assumption that when

we see “trusted” others doing something, it must be a survival

advisability. If we see our parents lie, our teachers lie, or whatever,

we do it too because that’s what our programming encourages and

it’s because our brains were designed to do that. There is no

morality here. There is just biology. Our bodies are evolved to

learn by modelling, and that’s exactly what they do.

Learning to Lie: Personal Safety

Our life long lying lessons don’t stop with modeling. Modelling

only works to a certain point. At a certain point, children and

adolescents develop the ability to see beyond the rote modelling

and develop the ability to question their modeling and change their

programmed behaviours. Once a child’s central nervous system is

developed enough to begin to realize the nature of lying and that

adults around them are lying, they will begin to question that. If,

upon consideration they realize that the lying is in fact toxic (i.e.

“not good”), they will often openly challenge and try to change

things. Unfortunately, when a child or adolescent inevitably and

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invariably questions and tries to change things, they are often

silenced by adults who, for reasons we’ll go into shortly, simply

cannot admit that they are lying. The silencing is invariably

violent—shaming, yelling, hitting, etc. I’m sure most of us have

stories. I remember challenging my mother and being told, in the

midst of the beating, that I should simply respect, not question, my

elders, and do what I was told. A similar thing happened to Gina.

One day, as a young adolescent, Gina recalls reading a newspaper

article on emotional abuse and emotional violence in the home.

She cut this article out, posted it on the fridge, and said to her

parents, “Hey, this is what we do.” Their response, like the

response of many adults to challenges from their observant and

intelligent children, was violent. They emotionally and physically

beat her down.

We should note, our stories are not particularly shocking. This is

the normal reality of everyday lives as we grow into this toxic

society we’ve inherited. If we all think and are being honest, most

of us can remember an experience where we told the truth to a

parent, teacher, or other trusted adult, but were violently put down

as a result.98

Moment of Reflection: Pause for a moment and reflect back

on your childhood and adolescence. To you remember any

moments in which you were “violently put down” for telling

the truth. Don’t simply look for physical violence. Even single

98 Thinking about this and being honest about it may be difficult. As we’ll learn in the next chapter, we are embedded ii an ideology that encourages us to see violence only in its extreme forms (i.e. physical violence). Because of this, we often don’t see (or don’t remember) less extreme acts of violence, like shaming, shunning, yelling, unrelenting criticism, etc., as violence; or, if we do see these acts as violent, we say “It’s not so bad.” But, as we’ve said, it is bad. We recall watching a documentary on learning disabilities where an immigrant child who on his first day of school in grade one was asked to spell his name on the chalkboard. When the child made a mistake or two, the teacher responded by publicly shaming the child. That single experience led to years of learning and psychological difficulties for this person. It was only as a middle age adult, and only after years of struggle and healing, that this person was able to pin down where his self-hatred and self-esteem issues were rooted. The teacher’s public shaming of this child was so violent, and it caused intellectual, psychological and relational trauma so severe, that it took decades for this man to heal.

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instances of emotional or psychological violence can cause

years of fear, anxiety, and dis-ease.

Understand, the point here is not to point fingers at parents,

teachers, priests, and others who model lying and reinforce it with

violence and abuse. The point is to simply say that at the point

where we start to question the lies and lying that has been modeled

to us, we are beaten down. We are assaulted and shamed into

silence. Thus, we learn it is safer and less painful to lie, and thus

our lying is reinforced.

Learning to Lie: Reinforcing Boundaries

Of course, the question now is, why do our parents and other

“trusted” adults harm us when we grow up, wake up, and question

the lies? Once again, this is not because of some moral weakness

or genetic failing. It is not because we have “lessons to learn” or

because we are “stupid” or “unevolved.” We, our parents, and

later, most of us, reinforce lying because it is part of our biological

programing. Just as our bodies are programmed to learn by

modelling, our bodies are also programmed to reinforce

established boundaries, whether they be physical (as in a physical

perimeter around a campfire), behavioural (as determined

through, for example, modelling), psychological (as part of the

normalization process), or sociological (the process in how we are

socialized in our gender/sex, race/culture, social class etc.). If you

see a boundary being violated, like for example a child walking

away from the tribe fire and into the woods at night, your instinct

is to definitively suppress that boundary violation because doing so

increases the survivability of your offspring, and failing to do so

dramatically increases the likelihood of their death. Like mirror

neurons which prime you to learn by seeing, this biological

programming makes perfect sense.

As noted, physical boundaries are not the only things that we, as

parents, as physical beings living in a sometime dangerous world,

are primed to reinforce. We are also primed to reinforce

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emotional, psychological, and social boundaries as well. Once

again, this is for survivability of our offspring. If a child walks away

from you in a busy park, or if they go talk to total strangers, an

adult parent will naturally move to reinforce an emotional and

social boundary, often with a little “poke” or two to reinforce the

message.99 If my five-year-old daughter goes up and talks openly to

a member of another unknown tribe during trade negotiations by

a community fire, my child could say something that might get her

hurt, or damage negotiations, or whatever. In this context it is

important that my daughter maintain the boundaries of social

decorum. Similarly, if my five-year-old daughter gets too friendly

with some older, psychologically damaged male, that male may

prey upon and assault her. Therefore, we established a social

boundary early that told her to be warry of and even avoid

unknown older males (as well as any other older person regardless

of gender/sex), because she is not old enough to determine safety

or the “other persons” intentions due to her lack of lived

experiences.

You can see the issue.

Boundaries are good; boundaries are there to protect us, especially

when we are young, defenceless, and naïve about the dangers in

the world. Therefore, for evolutionary reasons, i.e., because it

increases survivability, we are primed to reinforce established

boundaries, and that is exactly what we do. When we see a

boundary being violated, as parents and as adults, we move to

reinforce the boundary.

And note, it is not just adults and parents who are primed in this

way. If you have ever watched young children, you can see this

dynamic with your own two eyes; children and adolescents enforce

and reinforce boundaries too. You can see this operating quite

clearly in children as young as two who, after quickly learning the

99 This, we believe, is a common behavior. Years ago, when we visited an elephant park in South Africa, the trainers told us how, if a child elephant was approaching a certain type of bush that was poisonous, an adult would communicate with and poke the “child” elephant to alert it to the danger. If the baby elephant continued to approach the bush, it would get another poke, not a beating, not even a slap, just a poke, until it finally got the message.

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gender boundaries established by parents (girls wear pink and are

“gentle” and play with dolls, whereas boys wear blue and are to be

“strong” and play with soldiers), enthusiastically participate in their

reinforcement. I, for example, remember many children

throughout my childhood suppressing and condemning “gayness”

in boys while at the same time ridiculing and shaming tomboys

(girls who violated gender boundaries and acted like boys).

Children often brutally reinforce gender boundaries which they

learned from their parents and siblings, and other immediate

family members. Once again there is no morality here. Obviously,

it is not a question of evil and sinful two-year-old children. It is a

question of biological programming. Children, parents, teachers,

and even total strangers reinforce gender boundaries, and many

other types of boundaries, because, for survival reasons, they are

biologically primed to do so. They don’t think about; they just do

it.

So, what do boundaries have to do with lying? Like gender roles,

lying is an established behaviour learned through modelling and

experience. We see adults model gender roles and we follow

those. We see adults lie and we learn to do it. When we step

outside the boundaries of established behaviour, i.e., when we

don’t follow the gender scripts that were implanted, when we don’t

lie when we are supposed to, boundaries are aggressively enforced.

If a child goes up to a bitter obese older women, you don’t want

the child saying “you are a bitter mean, fat lady,” because the lady

might hurt the child, you want the child to either a) honour an

established boundary and stay away or b) tell a small lie to avoid

increasing the risk of harm. “Gee lady, you have a nice hat” instead

of “You are a terrible, mean, old lady.” If the child doesn’t honour

the boundary or tell a white lie, you might message and “poke” the

child to reinforce the established behaviours.

Learning to Lie: Avoiding Guilt and Shame

This biological provision to protect and reinforce established

behaviours, while it makes biological and evolutionary sense, and

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while it does explain a certain amount of boundary reinforcement,

does not really explain the hyper violence we sometimes

experience when we challenge the lies/hypocrisy around us. While

an elephant parent might poke a child to ensure it doesn’t eat a

poisonous planet, you would never see an elephant beating its own

child with a stick. Nevertheless, you see human parents and, in

some places, teachers, priests, and others doing this all the time.

Sometimes they do it with actual sticks and stones and sometimes

(in the so called “civilized” places), they do it just as brutally, but

with words, dirty looks, “tones” in the voice, and such.

Reinforcing established boundaries is natural behaviour;

reinforcing those boundaries violently is not. Why do human

adults engage in such arguably unnatural behaviour?. To be quite

frank, they do it to protect themselves from the guilt and shame

they feel at all the Disjunctive Actions100 they have engaged in over

the years.101 And to be perfectly honest, that can be quite a lot. My

mother hurt me a lot growing up and to protect herself from the

ugly and painful feelings of guilt and shame that have accumulated

over the years, she denies she ever did it and does not want to hear

the truth. She reacts with violent denials when challenged with the

truth of her actions. Gina’s parents are the same. They do not want

to hear how toxic their family is and so they violently suppress

anybody who challenges their self-deception and calls out the

toxicity in the family.

It is the same for priests who lie to their congregations and sexually

assault children, teachers who harm their kids, and even whole

societies. People have been acting out of alignment so long, they

have accumulated so many bad behaviours and feel such deep guilt

and shame that they repress their own awareness, react

100 https://spiritwiki.lightningpath.org/index.php/Disjunctive_Action 101 Disjunctive actions are actions that are out of alignment with our own Highest Self. As explained in the book The Great Awakening: Concepts and Techniques for Successful Spiritual Practice, wrong actions cause our Highest Self to use Steering Emotions to try and realign its bodily vehicle. Guilt and shame are steering emotions. When we do something out of alignment, when we engage a disjunctive act, we feel guilt and shame. Guilt and shame is a message from your Highest Self, a “message from heaven” if you like, that tells you to smarten up and act in a more aligned fashion. https://spiritwiki.lightningpath.org/index.php/Disjunctive_Action

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defensively, and beat down others just to prevent any awareness of

their “sins” from bubbling up and causing painful guilt and shame.

We react violently when somebody challenges the boundaries of

our individual and collective self-deceptions not because we are

evil or broken in some way, but because we don’t want to feel the

painful guilt and shame of our disjunctive and disconnected

actions that have harmed others.

Learning to Lie: The Individualization of Truth

So far have learned that we lie because lying was modeled to us,

because lying is reinforced for natural reasons (because we

reinforce boundaries), and because we don’t want to feel guilt and

shame for our past actions. A question that arises at this point is,

why don’t we snap out of it? You would think that given all the

pain and suffering caused to ourselves, our children, and others,

given the pain of guilt and disjuncture, we’d correct our behaviour,

grow up, and move on.

The answer to that question moves us beyond individual and

biological explanations for why we lie into social, political,

economic, and ideological reasons. Part of the social/ideological

answer to why we don’t change our lying behaviours is that that in

our modern societies we are taught to individualize truth. We have

a tough time acknowledging our participation in the toxic lying and

repression that goes on all around us because we have learned that

truth and truth seeking is an individual process. Truth is relative.

The truth is “our truth.” Everybody has their own truth and that is

the truth for them. In modern consumerist societies we are

encouraged to choose what we believe is true like we pick products

at a grocery store. We have been taught to believe that our

happiness is an independent process (meaning we are the only

ones who can make ourselves happy) and if others are not okay

with “our truth,” then it is their problem, not ours. In this way “our

truth” becomes an entitlement. We have the “right” to our truth

and if others don’t like it, tough.

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When truth is individualized like this, we are empowered to select

“truths” that make us feel good about ourselves and that

uncritically reinforce our current actions, and we resist truths that

don’t fit our psychological framework, or that make us feel bad

about the way we behave. For example, I was dealing with a mother

of three children once who was struggling with the misbehaviour

of her children. The problem was, she treated her children

unfairly and violently. She would give something to one child but

exclude another, thereby generating jealously and hurt feelings;

when she punished them, it was excessive and violent. I told her

straight out if she wanted to reduce and eliminate behavioural

issues in her children, she would have to treat each of her children

the same, and she would have to cease her violence towards them.

She didn’t listen. She rejected “my truths” and clung to “her truths”

which told her that violence towards children built up their

strength, and that kids shouldn’t whine and complain but just

accept whatever it was they were given. She was empowered to do

this because in our societies, truth is individualized. She has her

“truths” and I have “mine” and consequently she can easily reject

mine. Of course, the truth is, she was damaging her children. The

reality is, they will grow up diminished and with emotional issues.

But you could not tell her that because that’s not within her

framework of truth. She’s got her truths and she’ll stick by those

truths no matter the cost to her children and her family.

You can always tell when someone is resisting truth because they

have individualized “their truth” by their reaction to challenge.

The more you challenge a person who has become entitled in their

truths, the more likely they are to use punitive tactics against you.

If you keep pressing them, if you keep trying to show them a truth

and a reality that they don’t want to see because they have “their

truths,” they will get mad and attack and they will not stop until

you back down and either buy into their version of truth, or at least

stop trying to openly challenge them.

We shouldn’t have to say this, but individualizing truth is bad for

several reasons. For one, individualizing truth disconnects us from

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reality. It ungrounds us by attaching us to fantasies about the way

the world works, and the consequences of our actions within. The

problem is, these ungrounded and disconnected fantasies can be

damaging to ourselves and others. Think back to the mother who

treats her children differently and uses violence to “correct” what

she thinks is wrong behaviour. She can tell herself all she wants

that the violence “builds strength” and that she needs to correct

her children for “acting wrong,’ but the reality is she’ll do damage

to herself and her children by actions. Consequently, her children

will grow up with emotional and behavioural issues.

In addition to a disconnection from reality, a second reason why

individualising truth is bad is because it allows us to avoid guilt,

shame, and the necessity of taking responsibility and changing our

actions. To do all that, all we have to do is select a “truth” that gives

us an out. A good example here is when psychologists and

psychiatrists help us “blame the victim” by providing biological

explanations of psychological disease, despite the fact that there

are clear environmental antecedents. The mother with the kids in

the example above is a good example. She won’t take

responsibility for the damage she’s done because she doesn’t

believe she contributes. Because her kids have been diagnosed

with ADHD and ODD, their misbehaviors, violence, and lack of

focus and attention are because of biological damage or genetic

dysfunction and not the result of her toxic parenting. Instead of

taking responsibility, she selects truths that give her an out. In this

way, she can avoid the shame and guilt that would inevitably arise,

avoid responsibility, and avoid having to change. What’s even

worse, she can use the “truths” provided by the

psychiatric/psychological profession to justify and excuse ongoing

harsh treatment of her children.

Speaking of the psychiatric and psychological professions, they

also participate in the individualization of truth. In order to avoid

the harsh realities of our toxic socialization process, i.e. in order to

avoid facing down the lack of funding for quality preschool

education, the lack of funding for quality social supports, the

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generally poor state of parenting and socialization in our society,

and the intense amount of professional and collective effort that

would be required to really help a family such as this one, they too

often choose their “truths” as well. They choose genetic

explanations for psychological dis-ease rather than sociological

ones because that allows them to wash their hands of

responsibility, administer “pills,” and avoid the very real risk of

challenging the mother on her own toxic behaviour, and perhaps

losing her as a client because she doesn’t want to hear the truth. It

is a real issue for people whose livelihood depends on clients

coming back. I challenged this mother. I told her straight out that

if she wanted to eliminate behavioural issues she needed to

smarten up, love and protect her kids, treat them fairly, and quit

being violent towards them. I said they need to be nurtured and

encouraged to exploration, play, and creativity. Upon hearing all

this the mom paid her bill and never came back. She didn’t want

to hear the truth and she didn’t have to. She went to traditional

medicine, got her face-saving bio-medical explanations, and

blamed her children for her own parental failings. If her kids act

out, if they become addicts, if they struggle as adults, it will not be

because she failed to create physical and emotionally safe places

for her children to grow and develop, it will be because there is

something wrong with them.

Learning to Lie: System Maintenance

If individualising truth is so bad, if it allows us to maintain

ungrounded self delusion, avoid shame and guilt, avoid

responsibility, blame others, and avoid challenging change, why

don’t we stop individualising truth? Humans aren’t stupid, as a

species. Shouldn’t someone tell us this? Shouldn’t parents tell us

this? Shouldn’t teachers say something? Shouldn’t philosophers

note the truth. Surely you would think that we’d eventually wake

up and see through it all.

Surely, we would. In fact, at some point, we do see through it all.

From time to time we, either individually or collectively challenge

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the liars, remember our adolescent skepticism, and get the

message that truth is important and that we shouldn’t lie about

ourselves to ourselves, our society, and this planet. There are times

when we realize it is bad, realize there is damage, realize we are

lying to ourselves, and move to make truth and responsibility a

central part of our lives. Left to ourselves, we would have realized

all this a long time ago and done something about it. The problem

is, we are part of a “system” that relies on our lying, relies on the

violence we engage, relies on self deception and collective delusion

to function.

What is this system? To be blunt, this system is a system of

accumulation, we call it a Regime of Accumulation, whereby a few

people take money and wealth from the majority who are often

consigned to a life of grinding, oppressive poverty. This statement

hardly requires justification. From Egyptian slave societies through

feudal monarchies to modern socialist and capitalist societies,

society has been one where a few people accumulate wealth and

power of the backs of the majority. This system of accumulation

has been in operation for thousands of years, most spectacularly

in Egypt where exploitation and slave labour enabled the elites to

create ridiculously grandiose monuments to themselves, their

wealth, and their power,102 but other cultures in other epochs can

be included as well. The Taj Mahal was created over twenty-two

years via the brutal exploitation of twenty-two thousand slaves and

the imposition of oppressive taxes on impoverished villagers and

shopkeepers.103 As lest you think we are any different in our

modern world, over the past forty years or we have seen a

ridiculous level of global wealth concentration.104 It is at the point

now where if things continue, the richest 1% of the population will

hold two-thirds of the world’s wealth by 2030. Surely these are

Egyptian levels of inequality. We are now at the point where

102 Herein lies the answer to the riddle of what The Sphinx was all about. 103 Rita Banerji, "The Awfully Unromantic Taj Mahal," Huffpost 2015. 104 For an overview, see Inequality.org, Wealth Inequality, 2019, Inequality.org, Jan 8 2019, Inequality.org, Global Inequality, 2019, Inequality.org, Jan 8 2019, Michael Savage, "Richest 1% on Target to Own Two-Thirds of All Wealth by 2030," The Guardian 2018.

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billions suffer in poverty while eight people own half the world’s

wealth.105

On the LP we call the regime of of accumulation which enriches a

few and impoverishes many The System, because by now it is

universal on the planet. We are not going to talk too much about

The System in this unit. We’ll talk about it a bit in the next unit on

ideology where we will discuss the ideology of The System and

how it impacts our ability to heal, we’ll also talk in a lot of detail in

Lightning Path Workbook Four: Archetypes where we dive deep

into the archetypal superstructure, what we call Creation

Template, that make The System tick. Prepare yourself for more

advanced discussion by reading the Rocket Scientists Guide to Money and The Economy now. The point we want to emphasize

here is that The System depends on dysfunctional and diminished

human beings in order to function properly. The System doesn’t

require healthy, fully connected, human beings; The System

requires diminished individuals willing to accept, preferably with

minimum resistance, The System, the exploitation, and the

distortions that make accumulation possible. The System doesn’t

leave all this to chance. The system actively creates damaged,

disconnected, and dysfunctional human beings which it can then

plug into its hellish accumulation matrix.

I know this is going to be hard pill to swallow for some people,

especially those living in western democracies who like to think

they are better off than most, but regardless of where you live, you

live in the same System. The System “over there” exploits humans,

facilitates accumulation, and causes suffering just like The System

here (wherever your here happens to be), it just does it different.

Don’t believe us? Consider biological attachment. As we learned

in the unit on addiction, people develop attachments to things for

neurological/biological reasons. Just like we are evolutionary

primed to attach to sweet things (carbs give us the energy we need

to move), we are primed to attach to people (because people help

105 Matt Rocheleau, "8 Rich People Own as Much Wealth as Half the World," Boston Globe 2017.

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us meet our needs) and behaviours (we attach to pleasant

experiences, for obvious reasons). When some thing, some one,

or some behaviour meets a need or makes us feel good, our brain

triggers a little dopamine hit and this hit increases our attachment

to the thing, person, or behaviour. We see these attachment

mechanisms as a feature of the physical unit because they increase

our survivability and our enjoyment in life.

There can be little doubt that humans do have a neurologically

primed propensity to develop attachments. The thing is, this

feature of the physical unit is exploited by System Agents106 to

facilitate accumulation and ongoing System Maintenance. You

might say that the attachment features of the physical unit can be

used by people to “make money,”107 i.e. to help people accumulate.

People who have a toxic attachment to gambling make casino

owners rich. People who have a toxic attachment to smoking make

tobacco companies rich. Less negatively, people who have a toxic

attachment to any kind of good (shoes, for example), or all kinds

of goods (shopping), help keep our economies growing. Toxic

attachment to shopping keeps economies “growing” by keeping

people consuming.

Shopping is good example of this. Many of us have toxic

attachment to shopping. “Compulsive shopping” or Impulsive-

compulsive buying disorder (ICBD) as it is referred to in the

literature, has, since at least 1915, been recognized as a problem.108

Ronald and Thomas109 describe it as “chronic, repetitive

purchasing that becomes a primary response to negative events or

feelings.” This fits exactly the profile of toxic attachment. People

with IDBD go shopping to escape, to self-medicate, and to feel

106 A System Agent is an individual who works, with more or less clarity, to maintain Accumulation and reproduce The System. https://spiritwiki.lightningpath.org/index.php/System_Agents. 107 Put “make money” in scare quotes here because, as you learn in Rocket Scientists’ Guide to Money and the Economy, you are not really “making money,” you are accumulating abstracted labour in the form of money. 108 Bernardo Dell'Osso, Andrea Allen, A. Carlo Altamura, Massimiliano Buoli and Eric Hollander, "Impulsive-Compulsive Buying Disorder: Clinical Overview," Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 42.4 (2008). 109 J. Faber Ronald and C. O'Guinn Thomas, "A Clinical Screener for Compulsive Buying," Journal of Consumer Research.3 (1992).

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better, just like people who are addicted to heroin. These days,

many people, about one in six by some estimates, have a toxic

attachment to this activity. ICBD.

It is not hard to tell when somebody has a toxic attachment to shopping. These are the ones with a constant stream of “things” flowing through their front door.

Just like all other toxic attachments, a toxic attachment to shopping

can be quite damaging. It can be damaging to the individual, to the

family, to society, and to the world. It can “interfere with social or

occupational functioning.”110 Like any toxic attachment it facilitates

avoidance. It takes quality time away from family and children. It

can be so bad that you fill your house full of horded junk, or if you

can afford it, rent containers to store all your stuff. It can cause

financial stress and even the debtor’s ruin of a household. Cause

toxic stress as you try to keep up with bills, credit cads, work extra.

It can even hurt women and children who are enslaved to make

cheap products for the addicts. Finally, it can, through the weight

of its ecological inanity, destroy the earth with the ecological

burden of toxic garbage overload. Whenever we drive to the west

end of Edmonton where we live, we see a huge garbage pile. We

have been watching this garbage pile grow for twenty years and it

has at least quadrupled in size in that time. It is a huge monster

blot on landscape. And of course, we’ve all seen the pictures of

whales filled with plastic. Garbage an a toxic environment are the

consequences of our toxic attachment to shopping.

Unfortunately, despite all the individual and global problems toxic

attachment to shopping brings, few people see it as a major

problem. Why? We can use the analysis we introduced earlier to

answer this question.

110 Dell'Osso, Allen, Altamura, Buoli and Hollander, "Impulsive-Compulsive Buying Disorder: Clinical Overview," 260.

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Number one, because shopping is “not so bad after all,” because

“I can still do my job and live my life,” and because it is a “socially

sanctioned” activity, meaning we all participate in it because we

need it. As with toxic a attachment to running, it is hard to see it

for the problem it really is.

Number two, we don’t tag shopping and change behaviour

because System Agents working in the advertising industry work

against this realization. An advertiser’s only job is to help maintain

the System and encourage accumulation. When you watch a

commercial on television or the Internet, it has been created to get

you to buy something, to encourage addiction. Advertisers never

show the growing garbage piles or the consequences of debt or the

destruction caused by IBDB. They actively manipulate you,

showing you the “positive” side of shopping (i.e., satisfaction of

some need). They work actively to get you hooked.

How do they do that? Marketing sanctions shopping. Marketing

makes it desirable. Marketers attaches products to your needs.

Markets tell you that shopping with soothe your pains and make

you happy. Marketers learned early that the best way to get you to

buy things is to exploit the consequences of toxic socialization by

offering products as if these products can help sooth, escape, and

even meet needs. They offer you running shoes as a way to be

cool, to look good, to be “great,”111 to gain adulation, to find “break

free,” to escape.112 They offer you high fat/high sugar food designed

to provide you with the “bliss”113 you are missing in your life. They

look at your unmet needs, they look at your toxic lives, they look

at the chaos and neglect in your life, and they offer you products

and services that they say will help you meet your needs and deal

with your life.

The role of the marketing industry in sanctioning and encouraging

toxic attachments by exploiting the unmet needs, distress, and

111 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYP9AGtLvRg 112 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwqBUg1ImeQ 113 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRGSRXT_4oM also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc7ymhzUubY. You can also query YouTube with the phrase “food commercials bliss.”

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depression of toxic socialization is obvious. Take the fast food

industry with their “happy meals” which are marketed to both kids

and parents. For kids, the message is fun playtime.114 You get to

hang out with your parents, you get to eat a fun meal, and get to

play at the same time. For parents, the message is that feeding your

kids happy meals is good for them,115 that it makes them happy and

well adjusted, and that it is good financial value.116 And of course,

it’s not just kids. Jewelers associated their products with love,117

sex,118 and relationships,119 and even the attention that you so

crave.120

It is remarkable when you think about it. Marketers draw a straight

line between our anxieties, desires, and unmet needs to product

purchase. They convince us at a subconscious level that

attachment to products gives us psychological and emotional

benefit. They do this deliberately and with complete awareness of

what they are doing not because it serves your best interests, not

because it makes you healthy, not because it creates connection,

and certainly not because it is good for the planet. They do it

because they serve The System. They do it to keep you shopping.

They do it to make sure accumulation continues unabated.

Furthermore, they do it without regard for the fact that the

attachments are lame, meaning they don’t really meet the needs

they purport to meet.121 Think back to a toxic attachment to

running. Running does allow you to escape, but not really. The

cost is a collapsed and decimated family. To be sure, putting a big

114 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_MjUKQEV-A, also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x07RbxQhkYs 115 One advertisement from 1969 shows a happy boy with the tag line “Jimmy’s mother knows McDonald’s hamburgers are 100% beef. 116 One advertisement from 1972 shows a African American family purchasing a complete meal for their child for only “less than $4.00” a person.

https://flashbak.com/you-deserve-a-break-today-1960s-1980s-mcdonalds-history-in-advertising-29820/ 117 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijxhTaeVUgA 118 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpgE_cCv5ro 119 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDYpI7hhVAk 120 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTat6kStQ08 121 (you can’t really meet an essential need for family time by eating a grotesque happy meal)

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fat diamond on your finger gets people staring, but it doesn’t really

meet your self-esteem or self-worth needs. No advertiser would

ever point out to you the basic truth, that it is the diamond, not

you, that is getting all the attention

Moment of reflection: Pick a product, likes shoes, cigarettes,

alcohol and do a google image search. Search “shoes,

advertising, 1970s” for example. Spend a few minutes looking

at the advertisements and ask yourself, what needs are they

pretending to meet with their products, or what negative

outcomes of toxic socialization are they telling you can be

soothed by their products? Jot your thoughts down.

LP’s Understanding of Lies

At this point want to take a step back a moment here. The point

of this unit is not to condemn marketers or make anybody feel

bad. Whether we like it or not, we are all participating at one level

or another in System maintenance. We do that not because we are

evil or stupid but because we were born into it, have been raised

with ideas and ideologies that support it, and are thus caught up in

it, like a domestic fish is caught up in the water in its tank. There

is no point in laying blame. Getting back to theme of this unit, the

point is to simply point out our propensity for lying, the reasons

we lie (i.e. biological, psychological, and economic), and finally to

encourage you to stop. The truth is, you are going to have to stop.

If you are looking to be looking to be healed and connected, or if

you are in a healing profession, you need to stop lying and you

need to learn to see and accept the truth.

If you were traumatized by toxic parents as a child, you are going

to have to face that truth so you can mend and heal.

If you are a toxic parent, you are going to have to face that truth so

you can heal yourself and help your kids.

If you have a toxic attachment to drugs, alcohol, shopping,

running, gambling or whatever, you’re going to have to face that so

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you can stop wasting energy on lame attachments and do what you

need to change your life and reprogram your neurology.

If you’re a callous bully hurting from an extremely toxic childhood,

you’re going to have to face that so you can process your pain and

anguish, and atone for the damage you’ve done.

If you want to move forward, whether in healing, connection, or

both, you are going to have to face whatever it is you are hiding

from yourself. If you don’t, it will be like trying to heal a broken

leg while pretending nothing is wrong. You might be able to mask

your injury for a while, but at what cost? Refusing to acknowledge

that your leg is broken, refusing to get treatment, will just create

other complications, like infection, which can and will eventually

kill you.

Of course, we understand how difficult this can be. The repressed

pain and anguish, the white washed guilt and shame, and the

profound self-delusion, can feel, as they begin to break through

the thin surface, like psychological earthquakes and emotional

tsunamis. Moving forward it will seem much easier and less painful

to simply maintain our lies and self delusions we can’t handle how

facing the truth makes us feel. Unfortunately, you’re not going to

be able to remain in your “comfort zone: here. Moving forward

you need to process pain, anguish, guilt and shame not so you can

feel bad and be punished, but so you can clear your blockages,

reclaim energy and freedom, and move forward towards health,

empowerment, and connection. If, at any point in the process, you

are feeling overwhelmed, slow down, take some deep breathes,

remember the HEALING Framework. A baby step at a time,

especially in the beginning, is alright. Process and clear as slowly as you need to and remember, “H” is for help. If you need help

dealing with toxic environments, intractable addictions, or the

processing and handling truths, for example, if you need help

processing childhood sexual assault, get help. Get as much professional help as required. Just don’t stop facing the truth. If

you stop facing the truth, you stop moving forward.

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Finally, know that it does get easier. The more we are healed, the

more we live with truth, the more we surround ourselves with other

healed persons and places, the more others learn to accept and

protect the truth, the easier it will get.

Study Questions

1. Was lying modeled to you? If so, who were your primary

models? Are there any lies you tell yourself to convince

yourself (and others) that your OK even when you are

unhealthy and disconnected? What are they? Where do

you think the source of these lies is? If you like, share

your boundaries and your experiences of their

enforcement with your group, or online at the LP forums

in the HC Journal.

2. Pause a few moments and reflect upon your social,

emotional, psychological, and physical boundaries—points

in your life where you become cautious and wary. Write

these boundaries down. Now consider, how were these

boundaries created and how are they and were they

enforced? Was there violence involved? If you like, share

your boundaries and your experiences of their

enforcement with your group, or online at the LP forums

in the HC Journal.

3. Do you individualize your truth? Are there times when

you believe something about yourself, your actions, or

your life just because it is your right to believe what you want? If so, write your individualized truths down and

examine them. Are these truths of yours actual truths, or

do any of these “truths” look like lies to you?

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HEALING: Step 5 Ideologies

Coming soon