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HEALING EMOTIONAL DAMAGE JESUS AND PSYCHOLOGY Masks
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JESUS AND
PSYCHOLOGY
Holy Spirit within, Books and More, Inc., P.O. Box 135, Manhasset, New York, 11030
jpalmer@holyspiritwithin.net
Our True Self INSIDE THIS SPECIAL ISSUE
Charles Whitfield Our True Self 1
Healing the Child Within
Our False Self 1
The Child Within refers to that part of each of us which is Tools for Transformation 2
ultimately alive, energetic, creative and fulfilled; it is our Real Self
– who we truly are. Many deny their inner child. Please Hear What I Am Not Saying 2
When this Child Within is not nurtured or allowed freedom of How Can I Draw Closer to God 3
expression, a false or co-dependent self emerges. We begin to live
our lives from a victim stance, and experience difficulties in Experiencing Hi Love 3
resolving emotional traumas. The gradual accumulation of A Personal Bill of Rights 5
unfinished mental and emotional business can lead to chronic
anxiety, fear, confusion, emptiness and unhappiness. This is
particularly true among children and adults who grew up in
troubled families where chronic physic or mental illness, rigidity,
By being real, it is free to grow. Our Real Self remembers our
coldness or lack of nurturing was common.
Oneness with others and with the universe. Yet, for most of us, our
Real Self is also our private self. We are private because of a fear of
Our Real Self is spontaneous, expansive, loving, giving and
being hurt or rejected. Some estimate that we show our True Self to
communicating. Our True Self accepts others and ourselves. It
others on average for only about 15 minutes a day.
feels, whether the feeling may be joyful or painful. It expresses
those feeling. Our real self accepts our feelings without judgment
When We are Our True Self, we feel alive. We may feel pain in the
and fear, and allows them to exist as a valid way of assessing and
form of hurt, sadness, guilt or anger, but we nonetheless feel alive.
appreciating life’s events.
We may feel joy in the form of contentment, happiness, inspiration
or even ecstasy.
Our Child Within is expressive, assertive and creative. It can be
childlike in the highest, most mature and evolved sense of the
Our Child Within flows naturally from the time we are born to the
word. It needs to play and to have fun. And yet it is vulnerable,
time that we die and during all of our times and transitions in
perhaps because it is so open and trusting. It surrenders itself to
between. We don’t have to do anything to be our True Self. It just
others and ultimately to the universe. It is healthily self-indulgent,
is. If we simply let it be, it will express itself with no particular
taking pleasure in receiving and in being nurtured. It is also open
effort on our part. Indeed, any effort is usually in denying our
to that vast and mysterious part of us that we call our unconscious.
awareness and expression of it.
It pays attention to the messages that we receive daily from the
unconscious, such as dreams, struggles and illness.
OUR FALSE SELF
Charles Whitfield
By contrast, another part of us generally feels
uncomfortable, strained or unauthentic. Our false perfunctory “I’m just fine.” This response is often
self is a cover-up. It is inhibited, contracting and necessary and helpful to defend against the
fearful. It is our egocentric ego and super ego, frightening awareness of the false self, which either
forever planning and plodding, continuously selfish doesn’t know how it feels or does know and has
and withholding. It is envious, critical, idealized, censured these feelings as “wrong” or “bad.”
blaming, shaming and perfectionistic.
Our false self tends to be the critical parent of our
Alienated from the True Self, our false self is other psyche. It avoids playing and having fun. It pretends
oriented, i.e., focuses on what it thinks others want to be strong or even powerful. Yet its power is only
it to be; it is over conforming. It gives its love only minimal or non-existent, and it is in reality unusually
conditionally. It covers up, hides or denies feelings. fearful, distrusting and destructive.
It may even make up false feelings as it does when
we consistently answer a “How are you?” with a
Please turn to See False Self on page 4
Page 2 Jesus and Psychology
TOOLS FOR TRANSFORMATION
Eddie Ensly – Prayers that Heal Emotions
How much useless energy is spent digging for painful memories,
when the real hunger is for loving affirmation that allows the hurt
we cannot access with all our searching and willing, to come to the
surface. The deeper reaches of our psyche won’t let go of the
tightly clung to hurt until confronted with love and nurture strong meditation takes our awareness to that place. The Kingdom of
enough to replace the hurt. Then, the inward parts of us that clutch God, Jesus said, is within us.
so tightly to pain begin to trust and let go.
When we enter into depth prayer we are taken into the arms of
Prayer experiences feed deeper selves with affirmations, a God who will never forsake us from His embrace. As we
affirmations of God’s love, affirmations of the essential wholeness surrender ourselves to the power of another, to something
of each one of us. Prayer experiences instill hope. But not the greater than ourselves, a force is mobilized within that helps
shallow kind of hope that suggests we can avoid reality by thinking affirm our goodness and wholeness.
“nice” thoughts. Prayer experiences bring hope by filling the inner
recesses of our being with the central reality of faith – that a loving Yet many of us fear this opening to love. We know that as we
God who sent His Son to redeem us creates us. We are grasped by relax our guard and let love in we will feel the hurts we spend so
God’s affirmation. We experience His love at the very heart of much energy trying not to feel, and we fear these feelings will
things, a love that cannot and will not let us go. That love makes all overwhelm us. However the truth is, when our guard relaxes
things fresh and new. because love has touched us, it goes down at just the right pace.
Our pain didn’t come in an instant, our healing doesn’t come in
When we open our hearts wide to God’s caring, the deeper roots of an instant. Real and lasting healing resembles the gentle and
our nature find the permanent soil of infinite love. We find in the gradual changing of seasons, rather than an overpowering
cellar of our souls an ocean of infinite rest that gives meaning to summer and thunderstorm.
our seemingly endless activities. There is a place within where the
sea is always calm and the boats are steady and Christian We may never discover the origin of some of our pain, and that’s
okay. We don’t always need to know where it came from to let
Please Hear What I Am Not Saying go of it Each of us is a fathomless depth and only God can know
us fully. When we let God into our pain, His New Life takes over
By Charles E. Finn in us and emotional healing occurs.
Don’t be fooled by me. Don’t be fooled by the face I wear. For
I wear a mask, a thousand masks, Masks that I’m afraid to
take off, and none of them is me. I panic at the thought of my weakness and fear being
exposed. That’s why I frantically create a mask to hide
Pretending is an art that’s second nature with me, but don’t behind, a nonchalant sophisticated façade, to help me
be fooled. For God’s sake don’t be fooled. I give you the pretend, to shield me from the glance that knows. But
impression that I’m secure, that all is sunny and unruffled such a glace is precisely my salvation. My only hope and I
with me, within as well as without, that confidence is my know it. That is, if it’s followed by acceptance, if it’s
name and coolness my game, that the water’s calm and I’m followed by love.
in command, and that I need no one.
It’s the only thing that can liberate me from myself, from
Don’t believe me. My surface may seem smooth but my my own self-built prison walls, from the barriers I so
surface is my mask, ever-varying and ever concealing. painstakingly erect. It’s the only thing that will assure me
Beneath lies no complacence. Beneath lies confusion and fear of what I can’t assure myself, that I’m really worth
and aloneness. But I hide this. I don’t want anybody to know something. But I don’t tell you this. I don’t dare. I’m
it. afraid to. I’m afraid your glance will not be followed by
acceptance, will not be followed by love. I’m afraid you’ll
think less of me, that you’ll laugh, and your laugh will kill
me. I’m afraid that deep-down I’m nothing, that I’m just
Please see Stay on page 5
“He will heal you through the
Power of the Holy Spirit.”
I have come to bring you New Life.
Jesus and Psychology Page 3
How Can I Draw Closer to God?
By Eddy Ensley
This is a question that all of us ask. At times it throbs like a toothache.
At other times it lies buried beneath the clutter of everyday busyness.
But the question remains.
There are times of “close encounters” where you experience His Peace
and His Love. These times tantalize us, tease us, make us hungry for
more. They put us in touch with dimensions of our life that are missing; For Baptism to be fully released,
parts of ourselves that we know were there all along, but had lost
contact with. you must have a breakthrough
experience
In Christian meditation we unlatch the doors of our hearts so Christ can
fill us with His Gospel and His Love. We can open this door countless
times. We can open the doors to the endless beauty of our Eternal IMAGINATION – A DOORWAY TO THE HEART
Lover. Meditation is prayer that sinks below the surface of conscious
thought. It is what is mean by the phrase, “praying with our whole
hearts.” We think mostly with our heads. We leave out our heart, our inner
cover. As a result, our world is fragmented, partial; things just don’t
The Real us lies below the surface. Here are stored old memories, good come together. Meditation, in a large part, means learning to think, to
and bad, the fresh bright wonderful memories of early childhood and pray, to experience again with our hearts. We don’t abandon thinking
traumas buried so deep we wall them off from awareness. Here resides with our head, we bring head and heart together. We become whole.
our sexuality. Here is the buried sublimity of our higher self as well as You begin by using the language of the heart, the language of
the cesspool of our darkness. Meditation is letting prayer sink to these imagination. The language of the subconscious is the language of
hidden parts. images, symbols and imagination. Heart and head belong together.
With the logical part of us we comprehend and understand ideas about
“If your faith is grounded in the sub-conscious mind, it will sustain you God; with the intuitive part of us we apprehend and experience him.
through any crisis. If it no deeper than your conscious mind, it will Imagination is a forgotten art. Imagination once functioned as a means
desert you in the moment you are off guard. Its God-given power is of evoking religious experience. Words conveyed the pictures that
amazing. Jesus Christ knew all about the subconscious mind and the would evoke the experience of God. In the last centuries we have
part it played in our lives.” lived in an abstract and labeled world, a world in which words no
longer have the same ability to usher us into experience. Christian use
of the imagination in prayer can carry us even further than these
modern psychotherapeutic rediscoveries.
Please see Draw Close to God on page 4
Experiencing His Love
By Eddy Ensly He asks us to risk opening our hearts, our being and our everyday life
to the God who loves like the God who reveals Himself thorough
God’s love is boundless. It is an eternity of caring. God is Love. His Jesus. We have no other choice but to struggle to love like that.
Love must be fleshed out, become everyday, approachable and Every time we open ourselves up to that love, that love prods us on,
incarnate. This is what happened in Jesus, In Him the endless love challenges us to begin, even in some small measure, to love in the
that is God became touchable, approachable, real. Infinite ineffable same way. We know that if we open ourselves to His love, we open
love became an everyday love. He came to know that the love he ourselves to change. When we let Him hold us close, we find that he
called “Daddy” was also His own innermost identity. Through the needs us as much as we need Him, and this scares us. He needs us to
earthy, concrete stores He told, and through the story that was His be agents of His Peace in so far as we weep with those who weep and
life, He made that love real for us. He showed what God was like, greet Him in the least of our brothers.
reaching to people in the deepest level of their wounded ness, loving BARRIERS TO EXPERIENCING HIS LOVE
the undeserving. He promises a future in which this loving God will
win our hearts, will have the final say over the forces of The images of our world do not reinforce the idea that we are the
dehumanization, destruction and fear that are part of the lives of children of a loving father who holds us tenderly in the palms of his
each one of us, and part of the life of our world. hands. So if we are to experience God’s Love we need to expose
ourselves daily to the reality of that love and the reality of our daily
The stories Jesus told and the story of His life are full of earthy need for that love. Christian prayers, meditation, the Eucharist,
ordinary details of everyday life, the details of business, finances, Scripture reflection, loving connections with other Christians, are all
farming, sickness and death. That’s the world in which we live our pathways we can open daily. They are pathways for the sunlight of
lives. God’s love can come to us in this ordinary, everyday world. God’s love to reach the cellars of our being.
When we are filled with self-doubt, when some of our projects have
failed, when our stomach aches with disappointment, we need a God Another barrier is when we conceive of the experience of God only as
who sees right past the layers of falsity and fear in our personality to an emotion. We think we’re experiencing God’s love only when we
the wonderful unique creature that is our real self. feel it. Yes, there will be times when our emotions vibrate like violin
strings from the touch of His hand upon us. And such times should be
He greets us with the good news that we are loved, and accepted. graciously received for these are mountain-top experiences that help
His Love speeds us along the journey to wholeness. His Love is there us see the whole of our lives.
to challenge us every time we decided to receive it.
Please see Experiencing His Love on page 4
Page 4 Jesus and Psychology
See False Self from page 1
Because our false self needs to withdraw and to be complete, whole or sane. At one level or another, we
in control, it sacrifices nurturing or being nurtured. sense that something is missing.
It cannot surrender. It is self-righteous and attempts
to block information coming from the unconscious. Paradoxically, we often feel like this false self is our
Even so, it tends to repeatedly act out unconscious, natural state, the way “we should be.” It is our
often painful patterns. Because it forgets our attachment to being that way. We become so
Oneness, it feels separate. It is our public self who accustomed to be our false self that our Real Self feels
we think others, and eventually even we, think we guilty, like something is wrong, that we shouldn’t feel
should be. real and alive. To consider changing this problem is
frightening.
Most of the time, in the role of our false or co-
dependent self, we feel uncomfortable, numb,
empty or in a contrived state. We do not feel real,
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Experiencing His Love from page 3 Just notice and acknowledge them. Then, give yourself to God exactly are
However, we can experience His love even when we don’t feel it; you are at that moment. Pray this prayer or a similar prayer of your own.
even if our feelings are as dry as the sands of the desert. “Here I am Lord.
God’s Love is no constant high. Rather, we open ourselves to the
presence of one who steadily loves us. We flower. We look upon This is me right now.
the world with a loving gaze. Compassion takes root deep within I place myself as I am
us. We have our painful times and our joyous times. We go
through the journey of our lives with the deepening knowledge before your all caring and all forgiving love.
that we go through that journey with the steadiness of the Eternal I open myself to your healing touch.
Lover beside us.
When you come before God’s Love, take time to relax and be still. I open myself
Let your attention move over your body. Notice any tense or tight to the unfathomable mystery of your love.
muscles. Notice any physical pain or discomfort. Become aware
of the emotions you are feeling now. Feel them. What fears, guilt, I allow you to love me.”
anger, joy, love are you feeling? What are some of the thoughts
you are thinking? Don’t judge or try to change what you are Rest in silence several moments in the sunlight of His love. Pause in
feeling or thinking. silence before God’s Love
Draw Close to God from page 3
If you, for example, while in prayer, visualize a large ray of soothing
healing light shining down on you, that visualized light can energize you,
comfort you and tell you of God’s love in a way deeper than words. Use
that image when your mind wanders away to negative thinking. Imagine
“The outpouring is a God is that Light showing you the way to His Peace and His Love. You will
subjective and spontaneous – find that light will touch your imagination in ways you cannot explain.
Many people imagine healings as having occurred and then act as if the
not sacramental- confirmation healing has occurred. They experience healing.
in which the Spirit acts not
Use your imagination to give yourself daily Gospel commercials. Take the
from the power of the truths and power of the messages of Scripture and Christian Tradition and
sacramental institution but use them to fill your inner self with powerful and strength. Those images
will help you to know the power of God’s love, help you to open the
through the power of His free deepest doors of your heart to the penetrating light of that love. Scripture
initiative and the openness of Commercials help you to know that you are like the baby in Our Father’s
arms, to help you to know His caresses, His loving caring, his tenderness.
the person.” They lead us to spend ourselves in serving and loving others. You begin to
integrate your personality around these images.
.”
Jesus and Psychology Page 5
Stay from page 2
no good, and that you will see this and reject me. into feeling you can breathe life into me. I want you to know that.
So I play my game, my desperate pretending game, with a façade I want you to know how important you are to me, how you can be a
of assurance without and a trembling child within. So begins the creator – a honest-to-God- mcreator- of the person that is me if you
glittering but empty parade of masks and my life becomes a front. choose to. You alone can break down the wall behind which I
I idly chatter to you in suave tones of surface talk. I tell you tremble, you alone can remove my mask, you alone can release me
everything that’s really nothing, and nothing of what’s everything, from my shadow-world of panic and uncertainty, from my lonely
of what’s crying within me. So when I’m going through my routine, prison, if you choose to. Please choose to. Do not pass me by.
do not be fooled by what I am saying.
It will not be easy for you. A long conviction of worthlessness builds
Please listen carefully and try to hear what I am not saying, what strong walls. The nearer you approach to me the blinder I may
I’d like to be able to say, what for survival I need to say, but what strike back. It’s irrational, but despite what the books say about
I can’t say. I don’t like to hide. I don’t like to play superficial man, often I am irrational. I fight against the very thing that I cry
phony games. I want to stop playing them. I want to be genuine out for. But I am told that love is stronger than strong walls and in
and spontaneous and me, but you’ve got to help me. You’ve got to this lies my hope. Please try to beat down those walls with firm
hold our your hand even when that’s the last thing I want. Only hands but with gentle hands for a child is very sensitive.
you can wipe away from my eyes the blank stare of the breathing
dead. Only you can call me into aliveness. Each time you’re kind Who am I, you may wonder? I am someone you know very well. For I
and gentle and encouraging, each time you try to understand am every man you meet and I am every woman you meet.
because you really care, my heart begins to grow wings, very small
wings. Very feeble wings, but wings! With your power to touch me
The secret of renewal, which is also the secret for
holiness, is this balance between enthusiasm (or
abandonment to the action of the Spirit) and
active, personal commitment.
A Pronal Bill of Rights
By Charles Whitfield
As we recover and heal our child within, we honor my own priorities.
can put together our personal “bill of 10. I have the right to have my needs
rights.” The following is a compilation of and wants respected by others.
rights that several groups have created. 11. I have the right to terminate
conversations with people who
1. I have numerous choices in my life make me feel put down and
“Come, Holy
beyond mere survival. humiliated. Spirit.
2. I have a right to discover and know 12. I have the right not to be Fill the hearts of
my child within. responsible for others’ behaviors,
3. I have a right to grieve over what I actions, feelings or problems.
the faithful.
didn’t get that I needed or what I 13. I have a right to make mistakes and Enkindle in them
got that I didn’t need or want. not have to be perfect. The Fire of Your
4. I have a right to follow my own 14. I have a right to expect honesty
values and standards. from others.
Love.
5. I have a right to recognize and 15. I have a right to all of my feelings.
accept my own value system as 16. I have a right to be angry at
appropriate. someone I love.
6. I have a right to say no to anything 17. I have a right to be uniquely me,
when I feel I am not ready, it is without feeling I’m not good
unsafe or violates my values enough.
7. I have a right to dignity and 18. I have a right to feel scared and to
respect. say, “I’m afraid.”
8. I have a right to make decisions.
9. I have a right to determine and Please see Bill of Rights on page 6
Bill of Rights from page 5
Holy Spirit Within, 19. I have the right to experience and then let go of fear, guilt
Books and More, Inc. and shame.
P.O. Box 135, 20. I have a right to make decisions based on my feelings, my
judgment or any reason that I choose.
Manhasset, New York,
21. I have a right to change my mind at any time.
11030 22. I have the right to be happy.
23. I have a right to stability – i.e. “roots” and stable healthy
E-mail address relationships of my choice.
24. I have the right to my own personal space and time needs.
jpalmer@holyspiritwithin.net 25. There is no need to smile when I cry.
26. It’s OK to be relaxed, playful and frivolous.
27. I have the right to be flexible and be comfortable with
doing so.
28. I have the right to change and grow.
29. I have the right to be open to improve communication skills
so that I may be understood.
30. I have the right to make friends and to be comfortable
around people.
We are One in The Spirit 31. I have a right to be in a non-abusive environment.
32. I can be healthier than those around me.
33. I can take care of myself, no matter what.
34. I have the right to grieve over actual or threatened losses.
35. I have the right to trust others who earn my trust.
36. I have the right to forgive others and to forgive myself.
We’re on the Web! 37. I have the right to give and to receive unconditional love
Visit us at: You may wish to consider whether you have any of these rights.
My belief is that every human being has every one of these
Drvc.org
rights and more. As we transform we begin to integrate our
transformations into our lives.
Holy Spirit Within,
Books and More, Inc.
P.O. Box 135
Manhasset, New York,
11030
