I was hungry for results dealing with an incurable disease, liver damage and the many consequences of my past behaviours. 

 

Along came a new language, words like " dysfunctional " " co-dependent " and " inner child " which asked more questions than they answered. One of the major tomes that became part of the regime I call " Airport Spirituality " was Scott Pecks 1978 trailblazer – THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED, an oft criticised landmark as being " too Christian " and too wordy. Airport Spirituality is what I call dip in, dip out working on yourself, as if snatching a spiritual best seller leaving Gatwick, to be read on a Greek beach in 40 degrees is the answer to the reason why you " need to get away " in the first place. It isn’t.

 

If you need to " get away " the best idea is often to stay put and work through it. Peck’s book challenged many ideas that people hold around the illusion of LOVE and the time spent leeching rather than loving. Whatever is unhealed we bring to the table and that platform of desire is riddled with remembered LACK than remembered MORE THAN I NEED – Abundance. If you felt you were dysfunctionally parented, then you will create the same kind of relationships as an adult. Peck writes,

 

A decade after Peck described " a passive dependent personality disorder " the personal development industry called it CODEPENDENCY, with Pecks illustration being just one symptom of " the disease of NEVER ENOUGH", that lay at the core of all addictions. Never enough LOVE, MONEY, Drugs, ALCOHOL, Food and yes, even SELF HELP BOOKS.

 

The affirmation " I AM enough, I DO enough, MY PRESENCE is enough . . .  is an instant pacifier for recovering Codependents, so stick that dummy in your mouth whenever a LACK feeling arises. Since many codependents think they gain LOVE through DOING, or gaining approval OUTSIDE of themselves . . . love, like charity begins at home, so check out the vision of love revealed in your early childhood years and work forward.

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysfunctional_family

 

 

Self help books suggest that our past creates the present, and the present can be changed, so the future is more fulfilling. Most people suffer from lack in some form, rather than abundance from family of origin, and in my case growing up after the war this was certainly true, when it came to influences and possessions. When pressed to remember such things, I just can’t. I found Rebirthing in 1988 because I couldn’t remember anything up to the age of 12, and I still can’t. I have done the trainings, the groups, the past lives throwbacks, the meditations and I still get the Angel " sod all ". 

So be it – acceptance is a wonderful thing. 

 

 

Surprisingly, a few decades on, my flat is now crammed with books and I’m a total magazine whore, I always thought it was my 25 years in Advertising that paved the way to overload but the real reason turns out to be PATIENCE STRONG. The cloud is clearing. Patience Strong’s poems were first published in the Daily Mirror in 1935 under the bi-line The Quiet Corner and for more than 35 years in The WOMAN’S OWN weekly magazine. Every week my mother would wait for the magazine to come out, and so did I. Patience was my Pin-Up. 

Dad’s TIT-BITS never did it for me for some reason.

 

Patience Strong spearheaded, quite unconsciously, my route into New Age, Self Help, Personal Development and Recovery. I had no idea of her influence, until recently.

 

This is a sample of one of her poems always laced in a garland pictorial border on the back page of The WOMAN’S OWN in the 1950′s & 60′s:

 

If You Stand Very Still by Patience Strong

 

If you stand very still in the heat of a wood

You will hear many wonderful things;

The snap of a twig and the wind in the trees,

And the whirr of invisible wings.

 

If you stand very still and hold to your faith

You will get all the help you ask;

You will draw from the silence

the things that you need,

Hope and courage and strength for your task.

 

As a child avidly waiting for mum to finish her mag, I always thumbed to the back page as if led by magic. We had no books in our house. 

Books were considered for other people but Dad subscribed to The Readers Digest each month and Practical Householder. Not much glamour there, but each Thursday we would trek to my mums friends house miles away. It was well worth it for the daughter got JACKIE. I was made up. The combination of Patience & Jackie unknowingly ruled my teenage years, until drink and drugs became the new heroes, my saviours, my inspirational gurus.  In recovery we need to constantly check who is influencing us, who we set up as saviours and what we read.  In the internet age we can easily become consumed and influenced by the latest, newest gadget and pass by the wisdom and simplicity of achieving bliss and peace of mind. 

 

Spend a walk today in remembering the influences that shaped you, for good or for bad. Then look up to the trees and remember that help is still required.

 

 

 

Not many of you would know who James Hanratty was. I say was, because he was hanged in 1962, when I was 15 and he was our window cleaner. A nice enough chap, always with a fag on the go, a smile and an eye for the ladies. A bit too much of an eye it turned out, as he was accused of rape and murder by Valerie Storie, victim and only witness of the famous " A6 Murder ".

 

His family and eminent writers maintained his innocence for years but he was a gonna. Not so innocent was Cumbria’s Derrick Bird," Birdie " whose well documented rampage of resentment filled last months papers and gave brief attention to a selective huddle of " TV Psychologists " who told us bugger all we didn’t suspect ourselves, which is that " the quiet ones are always the worst". James Hanratty was a Londoner and went to my school, I remember petitions and whispers beside trestle tables placed outside Kingsbury Gaumont Cinema. How could our nice window cleaner murder someone, he MUST be innocent?

We didn’t have TV Psychologists on the NEWS in those days, not many of us had a telly, and to be frank it was all quite exciting thinking one minute he was polishing our windows, then the bakerlite transistor in the kitchen was telling us there was no hope from the rope. This was not the case in Cumbria as cameras offered a blow by blow account almost as it happened, complete with neighbours offering home spun accounts of " the quiet man, looking after his mother ". 

 

A phrase that I repeat & caught my ears as I trawled through my personal development was RESENTMENT KILLS THE CONTAINER IT’S KEPT IN. A telling story.

In my using days I came across as someone who wouldn’t hurt a fly, a humorous people pleaser. Yet one night I threw my lover James through a plate glass window and he ended up in intensive care for a week. The reason? Well two reasons actually, first jealousy and the other was he tried to strangle me with a telephone wire while drunk. 

I only released myself from the grim reaper by crashing a rare Susie Cooper cup on his head. I never forgave him for breaking that cup, and the main artery in my right hand, the scar still bears witness to the power of fury and the excitement of blood to this day.

 

The power of destruction is in all of us, perhaps not all with murderous intent, but self harm and the desire to harm others for revengeful spite can linger like beer on a pub carpet. In recovery terms it’s best to constantly check out those harmful practices that reside inside, the perceived attacks, the victimhood and unfairness of it all that justify acting out with intent. Our innocence will save us from hidden death, should we seek it. But innocence, like the face of a sleeping baby, is buried deep amongst the grief and escapades of survival that got us to this point of awareness. Getting even never works. Acceptance does.

 

Even Scott Peck’s opening line to The Road Less Travelled admits that " Life is difficult ", so accepting that betrayal, injustice and personal attack is only a perception of a situation is useful in exploring innocence. Separating ourselves from the perceptive thoughts of others is the key to inner solace. The drug of choice for many is being " nice " while harbouring agendas of attack.

 

"Not my stuff" is affirming lack of attack. The quiet ones who look nice and harbour revenge are aplenty in the codependent society we have created, who people please with murderous intent, who remember every grudge like a learned cleric quoting chapter and verse. The long term solution is to daily practice clearing emotional house, and as THE SHAKERS philosophy practiced " creating a house and mind ready for God to visit ". Now THAT is quite a task, but not impossible.

 

Let emotional house cleaning be the new OCD.

 

 

 

If you need any more evidence that Fergie is still a child living in fantasy land, hear this : Some 24 hours after being exposed as an aristo money grabbing compulsive, no different from a street junkie mugging a hit, she declares at a charity event in Los Angeles – " When I got on that plane tonight, I thought, phew, what a heavy day. But when the children’s choir came out tonight and saw their little faces, I turned round to my friend and said " You know what, I’m glad I did because it’s about the children", she added. " I learned today about making a difference. Most importantly I learned I hate grown-ups and I love children " she said.

Sarah Margaret Ferguson, Duchess of York is 51. Time you would think to have processed out all the rejection issues in her life, the parents divorce when she was 13 and her mother leaving for Argentina with new lover in tow, the English Boarding School syndrome of rejected emotions and family ties, and living alone at 18. She has always said she lived simply in Clapham, South London but wondered how she would pay her bills, however she managed to scoot across to Swiss chalets often enough to attract paying partying boyfriends. Nothing unusual in that you might say, a pretty lively stump of a gal from aristocratic stock, up for a laugh. But when Mum rejected you at a time you need a mother and Dad rejected you through remarriage, then later on the new husbands Royal family rejected you for being "out of line", it’s easy to see how rejection is Fergie’s drug of choice. Records have it that her Mother-in-law The Queen has spoken to her once in 18 years. The Press rejected her, her body rejected her and eventually she rejected herself sky high from the ejecter seat on video. You Boob. One wonders why Fergie is the common denominator?

 

She must have had an awful childhood to have smothered her own children so much, to create them in her own image, to hostage their identities in such a chronic codependent fashion. Her own dependency on rejection in order to survive, means that she waits to be rescued, by anyone really, she doesn’t care. That’s why she keeps creating drama in order to be motivated by fear, to create more debt, deeper challenges, more mountains to climb. Fergie calls herself a survivor for a reason. She was rescued before when she ran up debts of over £4 Million at Coutts the Bankers, promising never to do it again, and in fairness she rescued herself into solvency. Though nobody rescued her from her childhood traumas, she was clearly poorly parented and relies upon, like Blanche DuBois " the kindness of strangers ", such are her victimized explanations of why a grown woman of 51 can’t keep house. She needs the love, you see.

 

Like a junkie whore she sells herself to the highest bidder while hiding behind the shields of royalty and charidee approval. Like Heather Mills, another fantasy merchant unable to take responsibility for herself, Fergie does charidee so she can think of the little children and remember a time of innocence and protection and be seen as responsible by adults. No wonder she loves kids and hates grown-ups, kids don’t send the bailiff in.

 

It’s true that many people doing charity work find it difficult to be charitable to themselves, in Fergie’s case she needs approval so desperately and loathes reality so much, that looking into the eyes of the under-privileged kids choir takes her away from her own stuff. All fine and good, we need a bit of comparison sometime to greet gratitude in the face, but greeting bills in the face and un-opened brown envelopes is the most charitable thing we can do to ourselves, to do the detail, to own the compulsive spending, the unconscious credit card abuse and lavish lifestyle demands described by Benjamin Fry. Awareness, surrender and courage have always played the musketeer to win respect.

 

 

In truth she would rather put up with the drama, the denial and the rejection than look at herself. Having pointed out that if she leaves the marriage and the garden she would be saner, she refused to hear it. Like Fergie clinging on, she refused to let go. Coming clean to ourselves about our behaviors is a First Step to recovery, avoid denial at your peril, by observing The Duchess’s plight you may avoid your own.

 

As London deals with political change, CON-DEM love-ins and Tory principles of austerity we think back to Prime Minister John Major with his BACK TO BASICS campaign in 1993 which resulted in all manner of jiggery-pokey after Black Wednesday the previous year. Yes, we had to pull our belts in, address moral principles and recover. Thankfully Major had already had the 4 year affair with Edwina Currie while married to the opera loving Norma, the coda shield of family values, but one would like to think that as a young married MP, Major – like any student – enticed Edwina into his room with the seduction of a promise, the promise being a Fray Bentos Steak & Kidney Pie. Now you’re talking.

I have found myself in a few dire situations in recovery but going into a Homeless Hostel 11 years clean was one of the lowest moments on the personal failure scale of things. They say darkness is before the dawn, but the sun really did come out when I was offered a flat for life by the local authority a few months later in 1994. I call my flat ‘gifted’ social housing and boy did I earn it. Ten years before, listening to Louise Hay meditation tapes, I laughed out loud as Louise blessed her refrigerator every night, thinking it ludicrous. Now I bless my flat every day in gratitude. We laugh & learn. Once I got in the flat I had no furniture except a 1950′s formica kitchen table, no chair, one single bed, an oven and telly from a friend. Home Sweet Home.

 

Prime Minister Harold Macmillan famously said in the 1950′s " You’ve never had it so good " – and the truth is that under 11 years of Labour we have prospered individually like no other time, it’s easy to forget this, but like Churchill saving us from the Nazi’s, the nation quickly forgot as they binned him, tossed aside like an old worn glove.

 

We have become obsessed with change for changes sake since then, as politics becomes reliant on media personality spin instead of policy. Press the RED Button is all people can muster holding the remote, as the right wing press and TV stations manipulate our fears and intentions.

 

Having lived through Thatcher and numerous recessions, austerity holds no fear. Having survived bankruptcy, addiction, homelessness, AIDS, Agadoo and death’s door I am primed for the worst case scenario even though cutting back is not a natural act for this Londoner. It’s been worse than a hung parliament and I survived it – there was a time when I had to face my demons head on or die. I had 5 years living with no credit in the ’80′s but I managed to travel and be well turned out. Most of this was due to knowing someone in the BBC Wardrobe department, in fellowship, who dressed the stars then dressed me with their cast-offs. How that man saved my dignity, when I had no dosh, I will always be grateful to John dumping black bags in my direction after a meeting. " Who are you gonna be tonight ?

 

" Well, Matthew – STARS IN THEIR EYES – Tonight I’m gonna be . . . " 

 

On another occasion I bumped into Roy, a friend from way, way back carrying two black sacks to OXFAM. Naturally I enquired whether he was having another clear-out and he said yes he had more at home, so I asked whether I could view it before he chucked out. The next night he watched me sprawled on his lounge floor searching through his old jumble with the same dexterity as a child on a Mumbai rubbish dump. " He watched and said " How can you do that? . . . sneering as if I had done a poo in a public place. "Roy", I said "this is treasure". He didn’t get it, but I did, as I walked away with a few chosen designer pieces in a carrier bag.

 

One of the seminars I have created since then is called RECYCLE YOUR LIFE – Everything Is Valuable, and I illustrate how we need to cut back, reduce and recycle, re-brand our thought patterns and relationships. We also need to re-brand our thinking on austerity. This subject has been glossy mag fodder since the World Bank crash, calling second hand – Vintage and phrases like Charity Shop Chic. There is no difference in borrowing a friends jacket for the evening and finding a charity bargain except inflicted shame. Roy felt shame FOR ME as I ruffled through his throw-outs, knowing that he could never do it. We all have to watch this transference of shame from others, this dictate of power, this tool for making people feel inadequate. Families, employers and friends do it, often unconsciously, in their acting out of unhealed codependency.  On a prosperity workshop in the ’89 recession an LRT ( Loving Relationship Training ) participant needed money to get back to Poland so she asked her friends to donate their old clothes to her. She created enough money to return AND come back again. I always think of her shameless creativity as I still wear on occasion the Gautier T shirt I bought from her. Worn once and too small for one of her friends it provided me with more TREASURE . . . but this was before ebay, which is a whole new blog in itself.

 

Today’s exercise is to plan to ask all your friends for old cast offs and hold a selling event with a purpose. Become your own charity, they will give more if you have a goal in mind. Turning your home into a shop is the new restaurant in your own home idea, as austerity becomes chic again. If you can’t stomach this, brave the mullet for a bet and laugh all the way to the bank. Black Lace with Agadoo did.

Most people are so distracted by their thoughts, so identified with the voices in their heads, they can no longer feel the aliveness within them.

As you may have noticed I’ve taken a month off from writing, for no particular reason except I just needed a break. There are times when you don’t need a reason. 

 

A few years back I was asked to speak in Milan about Motivational Coaching. Confronted with 50 faces staring at me in anticipation, I could see the faces change when the translator spoke my last sentence" I haven’t been motivated for 6 weeks ". I might as well fessed up that I had sex with animals, such was the shock. I then explained that it’s unnatural to be motivated all the time, driven to succeed as if your life depended on it. When you work an Inspirational path, ambition is defunct. All in God’s time, as they say. Wotever.

 

Living your vision, living your dream, and focusing on your SUCCESS WHEEL that all the self help tomes suggest you roll out daily is exhausting to watch, let alone participate in. Marianne Williamson in her book A RETURN TO LOVE reminds us that " God’s plan works – yours doesn’t.  It’s good to have a plan but unhealthy when the plan becomes a route to over-achievement and end-game disappointment. An exercise I often refer to is to put a cross over an event or appointment in your diary over the next month that never materialised. This way you can see over the criss cross board, that life has a habit of not matching your intention and that focusing on the moment is more useful than focusing on the future. When we reach for the stars, we miss the ground we are standing on, the reality that holds us together in order to dream and be visionary in proportion. Over achievement is big with addicts of all kinds, from sports champions to gamblers, but so is procrastination and procrastination has a place too – whether it’s can’t be arsed, not bovvered or simply resting. Procrastination or lack of motivation is no big deal unless it goes on for too long, and like beauty, too long is in the eye of the beholder, depending on your personal pain or love level. FEAR is a great motivator and I suggest you avoid it.

 

Taking time out from plans and expectations is seen by some as failure of direction or laziness, when in fact life itself interrupts plans via illness, financial insecurity or other peoples demands until we get it. Everything is a learning laboratory. Remaining on vision with a project involves waiting time and this is all a spiritual route is. The inspiration comes from not opposing it. Learning to wait and not worry is a sign of maturity and masterhood of a spiritual path. Spirituality has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with TRUST. So it’s easy to live in the world of whatever happens once you have mastered this reasoning and that mastery comes from living in the moment, not living in the world of projection. Yes we need to do the footwork and plan with gusto but the moment we delete destination we really do reach for the sky.

 

The best deal you can give yourself is to live in the world of WOTEVER . . . whatever happens  . . . I will be fine. I will learn, grow and learn to trust more. The ego won’t like this route but the heart will love you more. Those involved in 12 Step rhetoric will see this as Steps 3 or 11, a willingness not to be in control . . . and remember . . Motivation comes from a feelings bank not a broadsheet and Intuition is the most portent drug to partake and deal in for peaceful longevity.

 

These wise words of Christina Grof from her book "The Thirst for Wholeness – Attachment, Addiction and the Spiritual Path" emphasise the loss of the authentic self associated with addiction. In the end we believe our own Press Releases, what our head tells us. Fairy tales become truth and judging by the PR lies spun to us from Governments, Corporations and inevitably the Media, truth is as becoming as the whereabouts of Lord Lucan.

 

Richard John Bingham, the future 7th Earl of Lucan was born 18th December 1934. He went to Eton where he discovered the great passion of his life – gambling. In 1953 he joined the Coldstream Guards, where he spent much of his off-duty time playing poker or visiting casinos. After leaving the army he joined a Merchant Bank, but by now, gambling was his first priority. One night, after a substantial win at chem-de-fer he decided to quit his job and become a professional gambler. His gambling nickname was " Lucky".

All addicts think they are lucky in the beginning. They think they will get away with it.

 

Bankruptcy forces one to be authentic very quickly – luckily I was 18 months into recovery when I faced the music of my £38,000 Personal Debt that was instrumental to my fake identities ( about £120,000 in today’s money ). In 1984 I stood in the dock in the Law Courts in The Strand to agree with the judge that I had led an extravagant lifestyle on other peoples money and that I had lied to obtain 5 bank Accounts and 15 credit cards. However due to my surrender wake up call in 1982 I contacted all my creditors, told them the truth about my addictions and began monthly repayments to all. Consequently no creditors turned up for my hearing and Harrods sent a personal letter to the Court declaring that they wished to be removed from the Creditors list as " I had behaved like a Gentlemen ". Because of this and having taken swift personal responsibility around debt the Judge wrote the whole lot off, leaving me with no credit anywhere for 5 years. I didn’t get away with it, for the toxic shame lasted for years.

 

Without throwing dice I had in fact gambled as openly as Lord Lucan at the tables, robbing Peter to pay Paul every month when it came to flying by my pants in order to keep up appearances. I soon learnt that the GUCCI Belt I had bought at Bal Harbor in Maimi, months before I stopped using, only held my trousers up, nothing more, even though the bag and the wrapping it came in offered great promise to my fake identity of success. I regularly read Andy Warhol’s INTERVIEW Magazine along with the fashion glossies convinced I was somebody who mattered, when what really happened was that I was living in a flat later deemed by the Environmental Health Department " unfit for human habitation ". Denial was not the word.

 

NO, we’re not talking about the X Factor Geordie, getting lippy 3 seconds after the tape at the Brits, or the fact that she needs to be surrounded by several thousand dancers to avoid her less than honed floor shapes being noticed – it’s worse than that.

 

 

Soon we will be sniffin’ cheap Cheryl cologne from Superdrug in honour of her pain and instead of feeling the pain of others in a coda way, women everywhere will smell it and identify with the betrayal, coming together as one, bruised and battered by modern illicit mobile texting.

In fact, that would be a great name for a cologne, why hasn’t Calvin Klein worked that one through? Yes, she’s wearing BETRAYAL.

 

Anyone who thinks a man will be faithful is bonkers in the first place, let alone a football hubby bringing in from footy alone – £86,000 a WEEK and a fiercely flirty reputation to boot. But our Cheryl, bless ‘er, our sensitive Newcastle lass, appears to have a very working class coda approach to marriage and it’s romantic fairytale expectations of a lifetime partnership.

 

Fight for this love, even if the obvious is staring you in the face. It’s called denial pet. Bad boys huh? Even Alexandra Burke knows they’re not good for her.

 

Talking of Tiger Woods, how about about focusing on another ploy connected to doing the right thing, deleting the scent of deception. In my experience of working with compulsive sex addicts, the majority are in a committed relationship, be they straight, gay or bi. The quest for relationship acts as " the front " that all is well, plus the belief that having a relationship will stop the compulsive acting out, but the cause remains to fester. The usual excuse of being " over-sexed with a high sex drive" is an indirect way of blaming the partner and not taking personal responsibility for feelings and emotions. If only the partner could keep up with their demands they wouldn’t need to wander. 

The transference of guilt is silent. The codependency is rife.

Cheryl’s vision of holding a man down for life is not uncommon nor the notion that all we need is each other in coupling, as friends and other interests dwindle away to feed this desire for oneness. A healthy relationship is not about ownership, entrapment and control and I would guess that Ashley Cole and Tiger Woods have been controlled by their parents, coaches, talents and aspirations since early childhood. Hardly surprising that those with an obsessive personality desire escape routes from satisfying the demands of others, while hopefully other sportspeople coached into stardom may develop less harmful outlets of retreat.

 

Woods appearance yesterday echoed his background as he mumbled through a chronically controlled, amends ridden, script written conference speech to the nation. You can hear the commercial advisors wincing "Don’t mention sex addiction, it’s bad enough using the B word – Buddhism. Think about the damage ".

 

On a metaphysical level we attract what we need to heal. Poor Cheryl . . . now poor poor Elin, the missing wronged wife, will haunt us for months and the debates go on as to whether she stands by her man or leaves like Heather Mills in full calculated fury, clutching and stripping herself of respect. Heather never got what all the fuss was about, still believing her own press release, so who do you feel compassion for : Cheryl, Ashley, Tiger or Elin? 

 

This is today’s meditation exercise and how similar experiences have informed your life and corrected the error of your wrong thinking. Check progress and give yourself a press conference. We all need to examine the standards of perfectionism we thrust upon ourselves and others.