LinEL Group 3/5/98

[Thea Hardy]

March 5, 1998 (Jamel)

Greetings friends, this is JamEl, (T/R Mark)

I would like to speak with you tonight about yet another dysfuntion that we notice on your planet. So many of you have commented on and appreciate the beauty in nature, a sublime perfection in your appreciation for a sunset, for a rock, for a tree, for plants that you watch year after year grow and develop, varieties of the same flower that you notice in different clumpings, combinations, settings. These things you always appreciate for what they are and you appreciate them in a pure way. Never have you run across an instance where for years you have noticed a tree, in its beauty and its growth and all of its cycles, turn into a rock.

On normal worlds, relationships and interactions with your brothers and sisters, can be appreciated in the same way that you appreciate nature and yet with your relationships you are never able to go in a straight connected line that you are when you appreciate nature. There is an absolute place for the appreciation of nature, it connects you to your animal self, it is an easy access to the Father and to a harmony that you do not see elsewhere in your life. But because you are missing this continuity, this straight line in the beauty of relationships you don¹t make the connections, or the trust, or the love-ties that draw you to exploring your relationships further.  All of you are crippled in relationship exploration. It is no wonder that recently you have all been bumping up against  your limitations in your relationships and how you interface with those you love, the assumptions you make about relationships. So many times in your life, the trusted relationship of your parent transfo

Someone: False advertising.

Delores: Too good to be true.

JamEL: Yes. The surface only. If that person only got to know the other person then we¹ll really see sparks fly. Dysfunction will come crawling out of their closets. And so, you are left with a lack of trust for the Father that stems from this relationship rift, a lack of connection with each other, a lack of really knowing what it is to love another, what it is to love yourself. As  you were talking earlier, creating yourself, discovering yourself,  you have no...you missed a developmental stage.

Delores: Everybody?

JAmEL:  Every body, on this planet, has missed something. There are those who have had a parental relationship that has been steady and sure and that lends so much to the future development of that person that they take quantum leaps ahead. A stability of a certain nature is good enough to get you through. There are those in your culture who have absolutely no connection with anything natural. No appreciation for natural beauty, only for sensation. Those who flock to inner cities craving sensations, addictions, stimulus, they look for that relationship pattern that perfection, in the experience. ³Perhaps I can have a pattern of perfect experiences linked together given meaning.²

Delores: Youth?

JamEL: All ages succumb to this. It is a path that some people take.

Delores:  Well. I¹m thinking about eating [experiences] for instance.

JamEL: Yes. There are components, of course.

Barbara: JamEl, isn¹t it true that the reason we mistrust what we see is because there is much to mistrust.

JamEL: Oh, of course! There is a discontinuity. Your tree of a parent turned into a rock five years later. Why did that happen?  How can that happen. What happened to the tree?  Where did its growth go? What happened to the validity, the solid feeling/ good/ warm that happened in you watching the tree grow? Is all that gone now that it¹s a  rock? Was it a lie? Do you distrust everything that you have gained from that experience that¹s in you? YES, you do!

Barbara: Sure, but what I was getting at was that, as adults now, when we see other people, meet other people,  and want to form relationships, a lot of time we see dysfuntion because that is what is being presented.

JamEL:Yes.  And because of your lack of development with relationships you always approach others with a certain surface interface, rather than an emotional interface.  So many relationships are kept very, very surface. It is an expectation, it¹s a safe way of doing business. And so the challenge you face is learning to trust. And we are not surprised that you have trouble going to the Father, a relationship that will never let you down. However, you can never seem to approach it with
 consistency,  honesty, openness, all the things that that relationship promises to feed you back.  It¹s  not even like you distrust it. It¹s that you don¹t know what to do with it.

Hughsie: Don¹t know how to access it.

JamEl: It is alien, yes.

Delores: That sense of self that JamEl had talked about [which scared us off] is too strange. And then there is all that fear about, OK, growing into this sane, more beautiful, perfect being. It¹s scary.

JamEl: That more perfect being needs to relate to others. To love others, to be loved by others, to develop itself.

Delores: That¹s to be validated.

JamEl:  And when you can not have a relationship with someone else of a deep and meaningful nature, your  personal development will be stunted, will be halted. And so how do you learn to trust? How do you develop this missing skill? Look at pieces and parts that you do rely on, that you look for in other people. There is something that all of you crave from your friends, that you crave from people you meet, that you spark in people you meet. What is that common bond? Because it¹s the thing you trust. It¹s the thing you look for. It is not simply, and I want to reiterate this, it is not simply 
the need for inappropriate emotional desires but the pattern of it, the shape of it, represents something that you trust, something that you crave and something that you feel you deserve because you continue to seek it out in everyone you meet.  When it is not there you move on and you seek the next relationship: What is it about this person? There it is. And you seize on it. It¹s the thing that you have in common first, it¹s the thing that you laugh about, it¹s the thing that connects you and makes you feel comfortable. Look at that thing that you carry around in every relationship that you have. That¹s your keystone to starting the process of trusting something about the consistency of relationships. Relationships are not the chaotic morass/ temporary /flowing/ things that you feel they are, that at any moment you could be cut-off or cut someone else off. This is unheard of on most worlds. Relationships never end. Anger happens, rifts begin and end, but relationships are eternal.  

Delores: This town is full of people who refuse to talk to each other because of things that happened to them in the past.

JamEl:  Not just this town,  but yes, you¹re right. 
 
Delores: I¹m just not going to talk to them ever, and if they see me, then I¹m going this way and they¹re going that way.

JamEl: But there is always a relationship there but it is a relationship has gone quite badly.

Delores: A relationship of aversion.

JamEl: It would be as if having a noxious weed in your yard, simply to ignore it, it will go away. It¹s always there.

Hughsie: JamEl, sometimes when I meet someone new and I am interested and I want to develop a relationship with that person, often it¹s becomes in some way they might be similar but often there are components of....they¹re different and I am intrigued by the difference.

JamEL: Yes! That difference will have a pattern to it. That difference will have a similarity . It won¹t always just be your commonality with cats. It won¹t  be something like that. It will be a flavor, a spark, a passion. An intangible something that they could attach anything to. Cars. Cats.  A love of cartoons, any of that. What¹s behind it is what you look for. 

Hughsie: Sometimes that very difference is what causes the relationship not to flourish. 

JamEL: You distrust. Always distrusting relationships is a state of being that all of you are in. You quickly discard what does not immediately work, feel good,  fit with what you are looking for.

Delores: Well, a lot of times it feels good and fits and that¹s why I stop!

JamEL: (laughter) Yes.

Delores: So this thing that you¹re talking about, is it the same for everyone?

JAmEL: No, it is different  for everyone. It is the one thing that you carried out of your childhood, your early relationship development that stayed consistent.

Delores: It is a meta trait.

Barbara: Well, it reminds me of what has been consistent in the relationships that I have had with men. In that they reminded me of my dad in one way or another where I got no validation.

JamEL: But there is something beyond that dysfunction that is consistent for you. Perhaps your father wielded it with unkindness but there is a consistency there that is a key.

Barbara: You mean beyond the desire for validation?

JamEl: Yes. Beyond the desire for validation. You are so dysfunctional in this...

Barbara: Thank you!

JAmEL:... realm. (laughter)  ALL of you! That, if you were a world that never learned to walk, that you lay about -you had arms and legs and feet but you didn¹t know what they were for, you hooked things on them , you decorated them, you used them for pot-holders.  (giggles) Simply the idea, the introduction, that a big toe could be used for something else would be perplexing because you¹ve always used it for a potholder, you¹ve always hated the pot-holder so the toe itself must somehow be bad because it is associated with the pot-holder. There is so much to walking beyond just the big toe but that is where we start. It¹s the one thing that you might seize upon as a possibility... Hmmmm!

Delores: We have to get a toe-hold on our personal dysfunction?

JamEl? Yes (laughing) 

Delores:That¹s why it is different for everyone then. 

Hughsie: I have such short toes! 

JamEl: Yes. And so, I do not mean to make this a monumental focus point but it is an entry point that will lead into other things. Simply explore the consistency. Not just the consistency in dysfunction. There is a reason you look for that trait in men that reminds you of your father. There was something in your father that was consistent in his relationships that he had with other people, that he had with you. His tree always remained a tree and you look for that tree in every man you see. The tree had sour apples on it but it was a tree and it stayed that way and there is something that will always draw you back to that.

Hughsie: Like the way my father treated me, I have never doubted that he loved me. 

JamEl: And you are lucky. And yet you find love inaccessible.

Jewels: So to me with what you are saying tonight goes along with what our last one was, about our sexuality, and why do we find somebody attractive past the physical things.

JamEl² Yes ! Yes!

Jewels: But are they actually two different things, because to me I¹m thinking they are not.

JamEL: You are looking for clues, for seeds of consistency. You¹re looking for yourself. Part of the damage, part of your hesitation, the suppression that you put around that realm of your life, is because relationships are so absolutely foreign to you. Interfacing with some else is "sexuality", that is intimacy. That is a place where it is appropriate to be intimate and yet you crave intimacy on all these levels that you don¹t even know you have, and it is funnelled down to this one spot that is called sex, which is actually the entrance to so much more, yet you stop there with one big period at the end of that sentence. This is intimacy, this is the only place I can experience it, and this is all that it is, and it is bad.

Delores: Nasty.

JamEL: Nasty. And right there! With all those limits surrounding you, you stand at a long hallway filled with doors. And your eyes are down and you are saying ³ This is where I¹ll stand , This is where I am going to experience this and I¹m not looking around! And I feel guilty for even standing here.² You are complex twisted things.  (laughter) We love you dearly and we are always looking for little edges to peel up, hoping that they will become a hang-nail that will always annoy you and you will continue to look back at that spot and wonder what is under there.

Jewels: I have this vision of old contact paper. (laughter) You take it and feel up.

JamEl: You are so turned around. You find yourself standing in spots that you feel so explored  and yet, it¹s just the beginning. Other places you are so underdeveloped we wonder how you will ever make it. But you are so tenacious and the nature of your twists form other twists that form other twists that often lead you back to where you need to be.  As long as you can keep your faith, your connection with the universe, your hope. As long as you can hold on to the promise that the universe has given you that you will be fulfiled in every way no matter how far down the road you have slid, no matter how twisted you have become, no matter how mired, obsessive, compulsive, you have become that you will make it. Simply by your wanting. A tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of wanting  is all it needs for all those mires and twists to start to unravel. It doesn¹t take much. You expect much  of yourselves and we applaud every enormous step that you take, crashing over all the pits of  China on the way.

Jewels: So, I don¹t understand how I can have this one relationship with X and there is a certain amount of trust and there is a certain amount of this intimacy thing,  and I didn¹t ask for it, I mean it just kind of happened. And yet, I know, with my own group members it¹s like a struggle, to learn to get to that point.

JamEL Yes. Yes.  

Jewels: I don¹t get it.

Barbara: Don¹t you think sometimes when you say that is what you are going to do, it makes it harder?

Jewels: I always thought like X and I were kindred spirits. I mean, I thought I knew what that word kindred meant, but now I don¹t.

JamEL: There is something that each of you have, each of you, not just you, not just her, that is complimentary. That is a trusting spot. Not just trust but something that you recognize in her that is consistent in your life.  She is a person you can rely on and trust because you know a piece of her that is in yourself.  You recognize a wholeness in a part of her.

Jewels: And so it is a matter of finding that wholeness in other people, or finding that connection. That¹s what you are talking about.

JamEl: Yes. yes. It¹s your entry point. It¹s your stepping stone. It¹s YOUR  stepping stone. There is a hunk of you that is intact. 

Delores: Everyone?

JamEL: Yes, everyone. You all have friendships that you enjoy. You have friendships that baffle you. You wonder why you like this person more than that, or why you feel more comfortable around this person over that person when you should be closer to this person than that person, all the convolutions that you go through wondering if you¹re just avoiding intimacy or why is this person..... all the things you go through. There is a chunk of yourself that you recognize and that reflects in the other.

Jewels: Like being mirrored back...and that Œs how we find ourselves.

JAmEL: Yes, and it is the single piece of your early relationship development that remained intact. For some of you it¹s a small piece, a small island, but there was something that remained intact.  On a normal planet you would have, just as crawling, talking, learning ego boundaries, you would have relationship development skills. You would have whole relationships with your parents. You would have whole relationships with childhood friends that would become adult friends. There would be no such thing as a friend that got left behind. ³You¹ll make new friends.² We cringe when we hear parents say this.  It is a comfort and a solace and a grim truth that happens on this planet and it¹s appropriate for them to say but ³You¹ll make new friends² meaning the old friends will just go away, that those relationships evaporate because you are no longer present, that dissolves a piece of that relationship development stage.

Barbara: So how do we learn how to recognize the congruent parts between us and the others around us and how to keep from falling into codependency trap.

JamEL: No.  Recognize the piece first. We'll deal with the codependency later.There are so may parts to this .

Delores: But looking back on all our other relationships, we can see why certain people [attracted us]. There might be clues there. Parts of our hearts that we have lost and people that we have lost and what those connections were.

JamEL: Yes. Just wandering through your memory and thinking of all the people that you ran across, the postmaster, the person at the grocery store that you saw for fifteen years in a row. There was always something there that you enjoyed, you smiled, you walked away.  You didn¹t criticize or judge them, you just enjoyed the interaction.  If you collect enough of those pieces in everyone. You¹ll start to see yourself. You¹ll start to define that part. And the codependency is, unfortunately, a natural part of that, you¹ve got a tiny piece and you want to hold onto it so badly that you¹d do anything to make that piece bigger, to make that connection stronger.

Barbara:  See, I can tell how much I distrust what you are saying just by sitting here and I¹ve got me little arms crossed and my little legs crossed and I am saying ³I¹m not sure I can buy this? ³ But I see your point. I mean there has to be something in there that is still valid.  Or what would be the sense of keeping us on here?

JamEl: (laughing) Yes. And you still talk to each other, so you are not isolates.

Barbara: Well, not completely.

Hughsie: Not on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

JamEL: But there is a place where you would look at a relationship that two people have and go ³That is beautiful. That is spectacular. Look at the dynamic between them. Look at how when they come together they create this, consistently. Look how it evolves. ³ There are older beings that younger beings will follow around just to admire their relationship. They will want to be part of that persons relationship-pattern

Barbara: Like Michael Jordan on this planet.

JamEl: Yes. You want to be with that person. 

Barbara: Oh, that¹s great.

JamEl: Just as you will drive to a museum to admire artwork, relationships will become this for you.  

Barbara: A work of art!

JamEl: You will enjoy relationships and compliment with so many different people and it will go beyond just the pairing that you look for now, the mirroring.  You will look for the subtle differences, the nuance, shade, the compliment.

Delores: When?

JamEl: Much time from now. Right now, look for a nice mirror. Find your reflection and love it.

Barbara: Well. hmmm.Yeah, I was just going to say  presumably something can come of all of this or you wouldn¹t be bringing it up.
    
JamEl: Yes. Yes. 

Jewels: That¹s really cool because if I can learn to enjoy that moment, that is there with X, and realize that that¹s me, too,not  just her! Then that is going to allow me to love that part of myself.

JamEl: It¹s not just her that is wonderful. It¹s you and her together that makes you wonderful. 

Delores: Reminds me of those two Hindu ladies in my yoga class who have begun talking to  me and as they talk their faces get all lighted up and they look all like kids and I can tell my eyes are getting bigger and my face is face is changing all, you know... and we¹re doing this wild animate talking and we are all falling in love with each other together but it¹s still safe because we are not really getting into...you know...I always run away!

JamEl: Oh, but you are giving...you are finding that piece. There is something in that. That is the mirror.

Delores: That¹s what you are talking about then?

JamEL: Yes. Without thought, without judgement. This person may be uneducated, you may be disgusted with them in almost every other thing but there is that piece that makes you smile. You don¹t think about it. You just enjoy them. You enjoy the moment you are swept up into it. Perhaps if you made time to spend together it would be awful, you wouldn¹t have anything to talk about, because you would be pressing past that piece. And it is with those that you chose to be intimate with that you can start to discover pieces you have in common that are not so connected.  Trying to make a larger island out of your chunk of relationship development.

Delores: It takes a longer time to do it with seven people.

JamEl: Intimacy. Intimacy is a relationship trust-builder. Intimacy is in itself a relationship component, it is not the whole relationship.

Delores: What else?  Self and self....

JamEL: Self and difference. But self and difference needs self first. You can¹t experience difference, in a way, until you have self.

Barbara: You are talking about personality pattern.

JamEl: Yes. You can¹t have green next to your red until you¹ve surrounded your red with every shade of red. Unfortunately,  you are not children. You are adults on this planet and there is a force and a compromise and a press that you need to make with your relationships that is not comfortable but with work, and press, it starts to piece together. Relationships are hard work and they are harder work on this planet. 

Barbara: Yes, because what you, what all of you teachers have said all along about this group, is more than just the mirroring and the recognition that you¹re talking about with the wider world.

JamEL: And so, stepping away from the adult issues of the more than mirroring, come back to the simpler and try to make your mirrors bigger.  That will grow that development, that child that needed to know that those relationships remained consistent . Find the consistency in yourself.  Grow it. Enjoy it. Realize that it is you, a piece of you that is making that magic happen.

Barbara: Well. I can see where it would cut heavily into judgmentalism, too. (laughter)

JamEl: Yes, as you were discussing earlier, even the most, the ugliest things, can be beautiful when there is a relationship there.

Jewels²: Um. so. When we have... where we have agitation,  we meet somebody and there is some agitation, could there be, other than the triggers and stuff there could be that other thing to where that¹s what we have too, we¹re agitated against them, but it¹s that little ugly part of us, or of ourselves? 

JamEl: Yes. There are consistent relationship parts that are not so wonderful. Triggers as you call them. Pieces that you each carry that set each other off, or just one side can carry it.

Barbara: I suppose it would be worthwhile to look at those too.

JamEl: Those are the ones you focus on more often. Less often you focus on the ones that are beautiful and are yourselves. Looking at what¹s wrong is a form of protection sometimes, if taken too far. You do not spend enough time looking at what¹s right. 

Barbara: It reminds me of hyper-vigilance, you know, you are always guarded.

JamEL: Yes, always seeking  another reason to build walls.  Look for reasons to open your hearts.

Barbara: Right. Oh, God. (Sigh.)

Jewels:  So in those situations, it could be a good thing at times just to walk away from it.

JamEl: Yes. Especially if it is sacrificing the piece, the confidence, the self, that you have been developing.

Barbara: Well, I see serpents and doves weaving their way into this conversation.

JamEL: Yes, this is not simple, There is no one answer or another. But, always, love yourselves. Always make room for that. That does not require a serpent or a dove. Love yourself.

Delores: How I think I can¹t love myself UNTIL I can do the handstand! Until I get over there, or down there or that far!!!!

JamEl: Yes, you all carry this.

Delores I¹m not OK, now!  Or I¹m not lovable now!

Barbara: Are, too!

Delores (laughing) Thank you.

JamEL: You all get so wound up, so hopped up, so shut down and you start looking for goals and rewards as excuses for loving yourselves that it could¹t possibly be as easy as free! There is a price attached to everything, is there not? So, until you can do the handstand, you will not be lovable. And then, after you do the handstand, perhaps not until you do the dishes will you be lovable.  Ah, but then, since that was so attainable,  it must not that worthwhile and therefore YOU are not that worthwhile and so the love you gave yourself was ...cheap. And you have to work harder at it.

Delores: Yes, we invalidate it.

JamEL: All these games keep you away from yourself, do you no favors. You do not have to be a hard working grown-up to love yourself.  It is something you can give yourself for free.

Delores: ³The best things in life are free²,  they say, JamEL!

JamEL: Those people mostly knew what  they were talking about. Are there any other questions.

Jewels: Just one. In doing this exercise,  ok, we are all going to start learning about ourselves, who we really are, but is there a part of ourselves where we choose what we are going to put in that spot?

JamEL: Always. You are just looking for the fragmented path that you were supposed to have to be able to walk back and forth on. You pick up brush and you find a piece and you pick up another piece of brush and you find another piece and if you could just step back far enough you can almost see which direction it went in. But those are your bricks to lay. Once you decide where to stand and a few stepping stones to get you across the muddy spots, you can start to make your own road, your own path. We are just helping you uncover the foundation that you don¹t believe you have. And to some degree you don¹t but there are some pieces there and they are good pieces, substantial pieces,  but pieces you don¹t understand. They are mostly covered up with dirt. You don¹t know how big they are, how far it goes down, how hard you should work to dig them up, what bush to look under next. 

Delores: How much broken glass is in the way.

JamEl: (laughing) Yes! Yes. 

Barbara: But it is all choice-making, really, once we¹ve gotten to a certain place.

jamEl: You just are lost. and you don¹t deserve to be.

Hughsey: Oh...we¹re just in between places we recognize.

JamEl: (laughing) Yes!  In the truest sense you are, yes. 

Barbara: Thanks, JamEl. Good lesson.

Delores: I guess, we make our own beaten paths, huh?

JamEL: Yes. Remember the Father loves you, even though you don¹t know what that means. (laughter) And that you are not held to blame, not held responsible for the fact that you don¹t know what to do with that yet. The love is still there. In the three seconds a day that you realize it,  it is enough. (Laughter)

Jewels: I gotta work up to three? (more laughter)

JamEl: And when you see a wonderful sunset, when you enjoy a friend, that¹s a connection to the Father,  that you can have, that is yours,  that is substantial. 
It¹s been a pleasure friends, goodnight.

Good night JamEl.

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