S2 EP176 – You Are Never Alone

Transcription:

Hi everyone. Dr. Margaret Paul here with the Inner Bonding Podcast. Today I want to talk about the fact that we are never actually alone, even if no one else is around.

How would life change for you if you knew that you are never alone – that you are always being guided by a personal source of spiritual guidance? If you knew and experienced this, you would undoubtedly feel safe and peaceful much of the time.

This guidance is here for each of us and all of us can learn to access it.

I was trained in psychology and practiced as a traditional psychotherapist for 17 years. I discovered in those years that I was not happy with the results of traditional psychotherapy. At some point in those years I realized that healing could not happen without a spiritual connection. Since then, I’ve facilitated much healing through helping people discover their personal spiritual guidance. This makes all the difference in the world regarding the depth and progress of their inner work.

Your guidance is here to support you in your highest good. The understanding of the way to access this guidance is simple: when your deepest intention is to support your own highest good – when your deepest desire in any given moment is to know what is truly loving to yourself physically and emotionally, as well as organizationally, relationally, and spiritually, and you are willing to take loving action on your own behalf – your guidance will show you the way.

The reason this is simple but not always easy is this: while you may consciously think your intention is to love yourself and support your highest good, your unconscious intention in that moment may be very different – and it is this deeper intention that actually governs whether or not you connect with your guidance. If your deeper, unconscious intention in connecting with spirit is to:

• Have control over blocking out or getting rid of your painful feelings,
• Have control over how others feel about you and treat you, or
• Have control over the outcome of things,

then you will not be able to connect with your guidance. When your deepest desire is to control rather than learn about loving yourself and others – and your intent is to get rid of your feelings rather than learn from them – you will not be able to access your guidance. We can’t fool spirit. We can’t get away with tricking ourselves or spirit. For example, one of my clients was having trouble connecting with his guidance. When I asked him if his true intent was to be loving to himself when he was attempting to speak with his guidance, he stated, “Of course I want to be loving to myself. Then maybe I’ll be healthy enough to meet the woman of my dreams.” In this case, his deeper intent was to have control over meeting the woman of his dreams. Until he wanted to be loving to himself with no outcome in mind other than the desire to be a more loving human being, spiritual guidance would elude him.

Connecting with your guidance is easy when your deepest desire is to evolve into a more loving human being – with both yourself and with others. When you have the courage to take loving action on your own behalf – such as standing up for yourself, telling your truth, taking risks to discover your joy, taking care of yourself physically through diet and exercise, feeling your painful feelings and learning about what you may be doing to create your pain – then spirit will show you the way. Spirit will find a way to communicate with you when your pure desire is to learn about love, starting with loving yourself.

Are you ready to practice Inner Bonding and learn how to take loving care of yourself rather than expect others to do it for you? Are you ready to practice Inner Bonding and take responsibility for your pain instead of blaming others for it? Are you ready to create your joy and self-worth, rather than relying on others to do this for you? When you are really ready to practice Inner Bonding and learn how to take loving care of yourself, then ask spirit how to do it and you will be shown the way. Your guidance is just waiting for you to ask, and when you learn to feel, hear, or see the answers from your guidance, you will know for sure that you are never alone.

One of the powerful experiences that can result from practicing Inner Bonding is a sense of inner, relationship, planetary, and spiritual oneness – a sense of oneness with all of life, which is a very blissful feeling.

Clients have often asked if Inner Bonding leads to separation or to Oneness. It may seem paradoxical that separating out the parts – wounded self, inner child, loving adult, spiritual guidance – eventually leads to integration and Oneness, yet it does. While there may be those individuals who attain enlightenment in a single instant (I’ve never met one personally), the rest of us need to be on a journey of healing our wounded selves and false beliefs and opening more and more to the love and truth of spirit.

We move beyond duality when our pure intent is to be loving to ourselves and others. When love is our highest priority, and we are fully committed to learning about what is loving and to taking loving action on our own behalf and on behalf of others, we experience a sense of oneness with the love that is God, and we know that we are never alone. Most of us are capable of being in the process of becoming a more loving human being and experiencing the incredible feeling of oneness.

I have met and worked with many people who were on a spiritual path, who could not understand why, with all the spiritual work they did, they were not moving into the experience of oneness with the love that is God. My experience is that many of these people were doing a “spiritual bypass,” that is, they were using their spiritual connection in the same way someone else might use substance or process addictions – to avoid responsibility for their feelings. I once did a workshop for 200 people at a spiritual community that believed that if you just pray and meditate and chant enough, your wounded feelings will be transmuted, and then you can transcend them. In the workshop we did the three-part Inner Bonding anger process, and I was astounded at the level of anger that exploded in that large room. Instead of the anger being transmuted by prayer and meditation and chanting, it was being repressed, which was causing huge problems in the community. No one was learning from their anger or taking responsibility for it, which was creating unexpected outbursts of anger in both work and personal relationships. 

It would certainly be wonderful if spirit took away our wounded selves, our egos, leaving us fully connected with the love that is God.

But since that is unlikely, we can facilitate the process of reaching a sense of oneness by taking responsibility for healing the fears and false beliefs of our wounded selves, by staying conscious of our intent, and by choosing moment by moment the intent to learn about loving ourselves and others. We will progress rapidly when we choose to lovingly learn about our wounded selves, instead of ignoring or judging these parts of ourselves. If you practice Inner Bonding, instead of ignoring your painful feelings with a spiritual practice or addictive behavior or judging yourself when you become aware of your controlling behavior, you will find yourself in more and more moments of peace, love, and joy. And, after all, isn’t this what the spiritual path is about – being in peace and joy and oneness and knowing that you are never alone?

Our feelings of love, and peace, and joy let us know that we are on the right path, and our feelings of anger, fear, anxiety, depression, guilt, and shame let us know we are on the wrong path – off the mark. The literal translation of the word “sin” in the Bible is “off the mark.” The love that is God lets us know directly when we are off the mark by our painful feelings, and when we are on the mark by our feelings of peace and joy and oneness. So, whatever works for you to bring sustained peace and joy is what you need to be doing for yourself, and Inner Bonding is what works for me!

My clients often ask me, “If I learn to love myself will I end up alone?

I had been working with Kathleen for a few months when we had the following discussion:

“I know that the Inner Bonding process really works to learn to love myself,” Kathleen said to me. “It’s really helpful to me when I do it, but I find myself being very resistant to doing it, and I don’t know why.”

“There must be a very good reason” I said. “What are you afraid will happen if you learn to love yourself?

“I think I’m afraid that I will end up alone,” she said.

Kathleen was in her late 30’s and was very desirous of finding Mr. Right and starting a family.

“Why do you believe you will end up alone if you practice Inner Bonding and learn to love yourself?” I asked her.

“I’m afraid that a man will not be attracted to me if I’m really together and not needy,” she said.

Kathleen had been in numerous relationships that did not work out. Invariably, the man would withdraw, and she would feel devastated.

“Kathleen,” I said, “all of your relationships up until now have been about finding a man to make you happy. Coming from a needy and empty place within, you are looking for a man to fill you up. The men who are attracted to you are also in the same place, since we come together at our common level of self-abandonment or self-love. So you want him to fill you and he wants you to fill him, and when you pull on him to fill your emptiness and make you happy, his fears of engulfment get triggered and he withdraws. This has happened over and over, and it will keep happening until you learn to love yourself and are no longer needy.”

“Well,” Kathleen asked, “why would I even need a relationship if I love myself and I feel happy and whole?”

“When you feel happy and whole, and are filled with love inside,” I said, “you will want to share your love. You will want to learn and play and create with a loved one. Sharing love is the most wonderful experience in life. And when you are healed enough to want to share love instead of get love, you will be much more likely to attract a man who also wants to share love. Granted, the world is not filled with men wanting to share love, but these men do exist, and you will have a much better chance of attracting a loving man when you desire to share love rather than get love. And you will be far better off than you are now when you learn how to love yourself and you feel happy and whole within, and you don’t feel empty and alone inside and you know that you are never alone in the universe – that your higher guidance is always with you.”

Kathleen could see that if she learned to love herself and make herself happy, then at least she would not be miserable and waiting for Mr. Right to make her happy. She decided to renew her commitment to practicing Inner Bonding and see what happened.

After a number of months of practice, Kathleen started to notice a change. While she still really wanted a relationship, her reasons for wanting it were changing. After not dating for a year, she signed up on a dating website and started dating again. She was quite surprised at the responses she received, which were much greater than the last time she had tried online dating.

“I’m wondering why I’m attracting more and different men this time?” she asked me.

“As I told you,” I said, “attraction is based on our common level of woundedness or emotional and spiritual health. We might not be consciously aware of it, but we pick up others’ energy, even through the Internet. By practicing Inner Bonding, you have raised your frequency and so you are attracting men with a higher frequency.

Kathleen did eventually meet Mr. Right. She and Nathan both practice Inner Bonding. They have one child and Kathleen is pregnant with their second. They both work with me when the need arises.

Obviously, practicing Inner Bonding and learning to love herself did not lead to ending up alone!

Have you ever had an experience of Divine love?

Connor, a man in his late 40’s, has achieved everything he ever thought he needed to feel happy and secure. He owns a successful business, has a wonderful wife and three children, and a beautiful home. Yet, when you are with him, he doesn’t seem happy. He seems empty, with no sense of vibrancy about him.

Brianna also has everything she ever wanted – a husband, children, financial security, successful work, and a beautiful home. When you are with her, you experience a person filled with aliveness and vitality, friendliness, and joy. 

What is the difference? Why are these two people, who each have the same outer things, so very different in their energy?

The answer is that Brianna knows and experiences that she is never alone. She has a strong connection with a higher source of love, while Connor has no spiritual connection at all. Brianna experiences Divine love and Connor has never had this experience.

The longer I’ve worked as a facilitator, the easier it has become for me to tell the difference between people who know and experience Divine love and people who don’t. It is the difference between Connor and Brianna. It is the difference between being full and vibrant within or inwardly flat and empty.

It’s not that Connor doesn’t want to experience the love that is God. He says he really wants to. He sees the difference between him and some of the people he knows. He sees his parents as empty and he says he doesn’t want to end up like them, with no sense of passion or purpose in life.

Yet Connor does not experience a higher source of love, and the reason is simple: he places a higher priority on having control over money, employees, what people think of him, his wife, and his children, than on being a loving human being. He is afraid if he is loving to himself and others his business will suffer, he will have less money, and he will lose friends. His ego wounded self tells him that if he is open and loving, he will be taken advantage of, and that’s the last thing he wants. So his primary intention is to protect against what he fears rather than to be a loving human being.

God is love, the spirit of love, the energy of love. That love is always here for us.

Our heart opens automatically when our intent is to learn what is loving to ourselves and others rather than protect against what we fear with our controlling behavior. To know God is to know Love. To know Love is to know God.

At those times when Connor’s wife looks at him with love, Connor feels afraid and turns away. If he opens to her love, he fears he will be vulnerable to being hurt. Maybe she won’t like what she sees if he is open and will reject him. Maybe she wants more than he wants to give. Maybe she just wants to suck the life out of him like his mother did. Protecting against his fears is more important to him than being loving and sharing love with his wife, and his marriage is in trouble because of this. Connor complains that he doesn’t feel good a lot of the time – he feels empty and alone. He avoids his emptiness with work, food, and TV, which doesn’t bring him joy.

Connor complains that he doesn’t know how to experience the love that is God. I tell him it’s not about how, it’s about intent. When his deepest desire is to be loving rather than controlling, and he is willing to love his body enough to eat clean, organic healthy foods to keep the frequency of his body high, he will easily and naturally experience Divine love. It’s all about intent. Our intent is what we have choice over. Our intent governs how we live, who we choose to be, how we behave. Our intent to love and learn about love opens our heart to the experience of Divine love and it’s this experience that lets us know that we are never alone. 

If you feel empty and alone, consider that it may be more important to you to control than to love.

If you know others who appear to be empty, consider that it may be more important to them to control than to love.

Opening to love does not mean that we will be vulnerable to being hurt, manipulated, or taken advantage of. In fact, the opposite is generally true: in experiencing the power and wisdom of our higher guidance, we receive the wisdom and strength to know what is good or bad for us, what is right or wrong for us. In practicing Inner Bonding and opening to our guidance, we discover what is in our highest good. It is far safer than relying on our wounded ego self. Opening to the love that is God through your intent to learn can bring you the deep sense of oneness, fullness, and safety for which your heart and soul have always yearned.

One of the things I’ve learned to do is follow the directions my guidance gives to me. This has led me to have an amazing life that I love. But since I know that there is always more to learn, I’m always asking my guidance to tell me what else she wants me to focus on.

A while ago, she gave me three instructions that I want to share with you, because over time they have brought me deep and sustained joy and bliss and the beautiful feeling of oneness.

The first instruction she gave me is to let go of all background negativity.

I had thought at that time that I had released the negativity of my wounded self, but my guidance told me that there was still some quiet subtle negativity going on, and that I needed to tune into it any time I felt anything less than inner peace and joy. I was actually shocked to discover that the negativity was mostly minor complaints, such as, “I don’t feel like un-stacking the dishwasher right now,” or “I wish I had more time today to work on my new book.” Even these minor complaints were lowering my frequency and taking away some of my joy. As soon as I became aware of these background complaints, I consciously stopped them, and replaced them with gratitude, which was the second instruction she gave me.

She told me to be more consistent with my gratitude and to say it out loud. 

I had been focusing on gratitude for a long time, but she told me I still wasn’t doing it enough – that I needed to do it out-loud for every little thing, such as, “Thank you that I have a dishwasher to un-stack and that I’m able-bodied so I can do it,” and “Thank you that I’ve been contracted to write a new book that I’m so excited about!” and “Thank you for the healthy food I have access to,” and “Thank you for my art studio,” and “Thank you for Inner Bonding.” She clearly told me that I needed to feel the gratitude within my heart and soul – to the point where saying it brought me the kind of joy that makes me smile – which was the third instruction she gave me.

She told me to smile! 

Research indicates that smiling has a very positive effect on how we feel. Smiling releases feel-good neurotransmitters in our brain that make us feel happy. I discovered that the more I expressed gratitude for everything, the more I naturally smiled, and that smiling is contagious! Recently I was in a market, and I noticed people smiling at me. At first, I didn’t know why they were, but then I realized that smiling had become so habitual to me that they were returning my smile!

The reason Step 1 of Inner Bonding involves being present in your body with your feelings is because this is how you know the minute you are allowing any negativity from your wounded self to limit your peace, joy, and feeling of oneness, as well as your ability to manifest. Spirit is always here supporting us in manifesting our heart’s desire, but it can’t when we are allowing our wounded self to lower our frequency too low to manifest. By staying present with your feelings, you can instantly notice any negativity, and shift into gratitude.

You won’t know the power of this until you are willing to try it. While I experienced much joy before my guidance gave me these directions, the joy I’m experiencing now is often over the top!

I hope you follow these directions!

How often do you feel filled with inner peace, joy, and love – apparently for no reason? There is a reason, but it’s not about anything external that’s happening. For me, I have this wonderful experience when I am very connected with spirit and in deep surrender to my guidance. This wonderful, blissful energy of love, inner peace, and joy fills my being to overflowing. At these times, I can’t stop smiling. Love pours out unendingly, and everything makes me giggle. Things that are not particularly funny to others strike me as hysterical and I laugh until my stomach aches. It is the very best feeling in the world! Sometimes I’m laughing and I have no idea what I am laughing at! I feel so blissful, joyful, and peaceful at these times!

This is causeless love, causeless joy, causeless inner peace – causeless bliss.

It is called “causeless” because it is not attached to anything in the world.

It is not about something good happening, not about an event or about a person. It is not about getting something like approval or attention or money. It is not about winning or achieving or how you look.

It is causeless in the terms of the world, but it is certainly not causeless in terms of the love that is God. In fact, it IS God. It is the experience of God within that occurs when we completely surrender our control and open to the love, peace, joy, truth, and wisdom that IS God. It is the state of bliss that occurs when love is our highest priority, and when we are fully present in faith and filled with gratitude for our life and for all we have. At those moments, we fully experience that we are within God and God is within us. We are one with God and we know for sure that we are not alone. Nothing is better than this experience!

Happiness is different. Happiness is the momentary experience of something good happening externally, but our society doesn’t understand the difference between happiness and joy. We think we will be happy when we find the right relationship or the right job. We will be happy when we have enough money or enough love from someone we value. We will be happy when we live in our dream house, have our dream car, have children, or lose weight. Yes, for the moment we are happy. For a week or two. And then what?

I can tell you from having had all these things that the happiness that comes from having these things is nothing compared with the joy and inner peace I feel when I experience oneness with the love that is God. There is just nothing that comes close to it. Over the years of practicing Inner Bonding, I now experience this much of the time. This is how I know that Inner Bonding really works! 

It’s so simple yet not at all easy. It is not easy to let go of control over others and outcomes.

It is not easy to truly open to what is in our highest good instead of trying to manifest our own agenda. It is not easy to focus on loving action for ourselves and toward others, instead of trying to get love, avoid pain, and feel safe. It’s not always easy to be present with gratitude. But as challenging as it is, there is no experience in life that comes close to the inner peace and joy you will feel when you have surrendered your individual will to the will of your higher guidance.

I know that when I am not in this joy, I am thinking or behaving in ways that are not in alignment with my soul. Through Inner Bonding, I can discover where I am off base, what the truth is, and what the loving action is. Once I get this and take the loving action, I am back in the experience of causeless inner peace, joy, fullness, and oneness. I am back in the light, experiencing the knowing that I am never alone.

If you bring Inner Bonding into your daily life, you will get there. Is there anything in life more important than this?

I invite you to learn to connect with your spiritual guidance with my 30-Day video home-study course, Unlocking Your Inner Wisdom.

And you can learn so much about loving yourself and creating loving relationships from my recent books:

• Diet for Divine Connection: Beyond Junk Foods and Junk Thoughts to At-Will Spiritual Connection

• The Inner Bonding Workbook: Six Steps to Healing Yourself and Connecting With Your Divine Guidance

• 6 Steps to Total Self-Healing: The Inner Bonding Process

• And, How to Become Strong Enough to Love: Creating Loving Relationships Through the Six-Step Pathway of Inner Bonding

And we have so much to offer you at our website at https://www.innerbonding.com.

And, if you enjoyed this podcast, I would really appreciate it if you tell your friends about it, and if you give it a review wherever you heard it.

I’m sending you my love and my blessings.