May I ask for some help please?

[LindaM]

All my life I have been modifying myself in order to gain approval, conditional love and acceptance. it got to the point that by the time I was in my mid teens I had no idea who I was. I was totally lost. In my place was a girl who would be whatever was needed in order to feel accepted. If you liked rock and roll, I liked rock and roll. If you liked blues music, I liked blues. If you had a particular point of view on something, I agreed with it. Whatever it was, I modified myself in order to feel accepted.

Over the past 6 years, since coming to Divine Truth, I have been challenging that in a big way. I am slowly finding MY voice. I feel that I am now at the stage where I do not want anything to come between me and my relationship with God. This is still very tentative at this point but the desire is growing.

I have been a vegetarian for around 7 years and my family have tolerated this. I still feel lots of projections from the people around me who eat meat. For years I have refused to handle meat or prepare it for others to eat. I now want to step up and become more loving. I want to stand firm for the truth that eating meat is unloving and creates damage to the soul.

This year my family will be gathering at our place for Christmas and, after talking it out with my husband (who is not a vegetarian, although he rarely eats meat now) we have decided to have a vegetarian family gathering at Christmas. My children (25 - 31) have been particularly confronted by this and I am feeling attacked and judged for holding firm for the truth. I have been accused of judging them for their choices. To be honest, this may well be the case. Judgement is one of the most difficult emotions for me to identify, understand, and work through, particularly if I am judging others.

Intellectually I feel that I do not judge them but have compassion for their unloving choices. I am doubting my motives and unsure how to access the truth. I have been praying, crying and feeling into anger about this for the past few hours and it all feels hopeless. The main emotions coming up are ones around rejection, fear of being alone, fear of loss of family.

Does anyone have experience with working through judgement emotions? Both being judged and judging others?

Does anyone have experience with standing firm for truth and love and the reactions you got from that?

Any assistance or insights would be greatly appreciated.

thanks

Linda

[Laura Berry]

Dear Linda,

Am still going through understanding judgement so I don't feel I can advise you there, I did spend an hour writing something to you last night and when I read it back it was confusing so I decided to leave that.

I do have a tiny bit of advice and some reflections on experiences and reactions from others that happen when we act in love and truths for ourselves...

For me, the acting in certain love and truths I have found has automatically touched my fear and pain of judgement, attack and anger from others. The kind of things I have been attracting, received or been experiencing from others (may be different for yourself) are...

From Others

Belittling of my character and nature
Condescension
Degrading comments
People avoiding me
Ostracism
Judgement
Rejection
Exclusion from certain events and interactions
Criticism
Anger/Rage being projected
Loss of friendships
Not feeling loved by others
Betrayed
Not welcome
Mistrustful of others for lying about my character and person
Realising family only loved me when I gave them what they want

Writing that list helped me identify my fears and pain that I am avoiding and I collected that list whilst standing firm for the loving change I felt I had made for myself. After that list I wrote another about how I feel about myself when these things happen for eg.

How I Feel About Myself

I'm Rude
I'm Selfish
I'm Nothing
I'm Worthless
I'm Unwelcome
My voice isn't good
I'm Bad
I'm Ugly
I'm a problem
I'm Stupid
I will be alone if I make these changes
etc.

So when I act in love and truth and these judgements and attacks come up this is the pain I have been avoiding and if I don't want to feel these things in the two lists then I can compromise the love and truth I have found in favour of avoiding that pain.

I am starting to feel these beliefs will change the more I allow myself to feel this pain but until then I will keep attracting similar events to help heal these errors and eventually we will believe the opposite and when others judge us or project unloving things it will just pass through us and wont take hold and we will have the ability to love and assist others now we value and love ourselves.

For me it is massive low self worth and fear of the pain of that that can stop me from doing the loving thing and put God before this fear and pain.

The things in the lists have happened to me with my family and I have come to realise that I cant force others to change or agree or accept me and the changes I have made and I am starting to accept that and honour their freewill to not treat me well if they desire but also to value myself and the love and truth I have found by allowing what happens to happen and feeling the pain of that as best I can and working through any resistance I have to feeling that pain.

I thought this list writing might be of assistance to you and in helping connect you with how you might be feeling rather than how others want you to feel. That's the problem I have found with judgement, I can focus on them judging me rather than focussing on my feelings of how I see myself now as a result of that judgement. I am not sure if I am very clear.

I don't know if this was helpful, I hope so. It's just a potential starting point really.

Being vegan now for example, isn't such a big issue as it used to be. I got anger, judgement, that I was being awkward, expectation I should eat eggs if I went to someone for dinner and they thought I could eat them and when I said I wont eat it (lovingly I wasn't upset) I got all sorts of projections, ungrateful, cant I overlook it this once etc. But i stood firm and over time it is now more accepted by family and I don't feel guilty about it anymore. Everyone knows if they want me to cook it will be vegan and if they want meat or dairy they can bring their own and when I go to theirs I take my own food with me if they feel uncomfortable cooking for me. So it feels much better now but it took them 2 years to accept that one change in me.
I have changed 3 things with my family mainly, 1, Being vegan, 2 , Asking for notice for visits and 3, I have some self worth about being heard when I used to be talked over and the results unfortunately have been that my family have largely rejected me and some have ostracised me from their lives, have been defriended on facebook by them, talk behind my back and judge me a lot etc. I trust that I will reconnect with them in the future from a more loving place but I have started to attract new people who treat me better the more I grieve these pains with my family. The family façade is really disintegrating due to those changes we make and unfortunately for the first person in any family who makes changes is going to get the most blame and unlove from other family members. But I trust it is all good in the end!

Such simple changes in families can trigger so much unfelt pain and addictions for everyone and it is not really to do with the loving choice you have made for yourself, but other pains that get touched through it.

This might have just been waffle but I hope it has helped a little. My advice is keep stepping forward in the truth and love that you have found and allow the consequences to happen and allow yourself to feel the pain that comes up. It is a beautiful opportunity really for emotions to come up and be healed for the whole family.

I wish you well and healing,

With love, Laura B

[Eva]

Hi Linda,
I would suggest that you simply ask yourself "Why?"
Why do you want to host a christmas gathering with people who apparently not want to be loving to you?
Why are your grown up children welcome, when they actually are hostile towards your endeavours to create a welcoming and loving family meeting?
What would happen if you do not invite these people, your family, for christmas?
What would it feel like to instead invite your husband to a christmas holiday stay at some nice resort?

The fear of loss of family is a fruitless fear but as always you need to feel it. The truth is that you have already lost your family, since they never even wanted to get to know the real you in your childhood and youth. The same probably goes with many people we call our friends and also our partner in a relationship, like our marriage. I am slowly and so far more intellectually than emotionally, realizing that my brother and sister are both angry with me and they don't really love me, my mom does not want to meet the real me neither does my dad (who passed a month ago), I don't have any friends any longer - as those I used to call my friends were addictive and codependant relationships. I am though, still together with my husband, and we are slowly, slowly working our way through lots and lots of errors, false beliefs, emotional pains and fears.

It is difficult to both eat the cake and keep it, - it is very hard to both be in truth and at the same time keep old relationships untouched. I would say it is impossible. But my very small experience is actually that by being firm to truth one may gain some respect in the end from some of the people who now reject you.

With love
Eva

[Justin Crick]

Hi Linda

This is not a direct response to the issue that you have raised, but it offers a slightly different viewpoint. At the assistance group last year Jesus drew a diagram on the board during the Repentance and Forgiveness session. The diagram related to those who have caused us harm that we need to forgive, and those who we have caused harm to, which we need to repent towards. Generally speaking those that are younger than ourselves, we need to repent towards, and I feel that this is even more so when they are our own children.

If my children are angry at me, then there is a good chance that they are angry because of a belief system that I taught them, and that this is the first thing that I must have a look at within myself. It may well be the case that they are being unloving towards you, however as the parent, my feeling is that until we have repented for what we have created, we are still coming from a space of trying to control their behaviour instead of learning about love.

My suggestion would be to start in the repentance space and see where that goes.

Cheers
Justin

[Eva]

Dear Linda,
I wanted to apologize for my post as an advice when you were asking for help. When re-reading it on the forum I realize how angry I am myself towards my own family on the same issue. So I would be the last one to be able to offer any help on this matter. I have hurt you, and I am sorry for that.
Thank you Laura and Justin for your loving posts, they helped me see myself.
Eva

[Nicky]

Hi Linda

I feel you need to be more honest with yourself about a few things.

You wrote:

My children (25 - 31) have been particularly confronted by this and I am feeling attacked and judged for holding firm for the truth. I have been accused of judging them for their choices.

AND

Intellectually I feel that I do not judge them but have compassion for their unloving choices. I am doubting my motives and unsure how to access the truth. I have been praying, crying and feeling into anger about this for the past few hours and it all feels hopeless. The main emotions coming up are ones around rejection, fear of being alone, fear of loss of family.

I feel that you are wanting to receive sympathy from others here for your situation and that you feel you are being "targeted" unfairly by your children for standing up for "truth."

I feel what Justin has mentioned is excellent advice and it seems that you are now experiencing the painful effects of the Law of Compensation related to the damage you were partly accountable for in your children.

I feel that the emotions you have listed above (that I have put in bold) are actually self-deception based emotions which explains why you feel as though you are not getting anywhere because, as of yet, you have not seen the truth of what is happening.

I reckon if you were to start looking at the process of repentance in regards to the damage you partly caused in your children, it will really help your situation. In your post, you do actually very briefly appear to go down this track however not in earnestness so far I feel.

Hope that helps.

Nicky

[LindaM]

Thank you all for your assistance. I will definitely re-visit the session on repentance and forgiveness. There is so much to learn and to feel that at times it does get very overwhelming. I really appreciate having this forum available to help with my growth.
Thank You.