Cut Cords of Attachment (26 page)

Always assume that your client is right. Helpers are only human. Their access to intimate levels within your client can lead to problems.

A healer’s good intentions, however sincere, can be seen differently when you discuss relationship patterns within a cord.

CORD SAMPLE: Why Doesn’t He Like Me?

Beneath his mask of professional detachment, Dr. D. wasn’t an especially caring psychiatrist. So Gabrielle wasn’t particularly surprised to hear about the following cord items:

1. The Psychiatrist: I will decide if you ever become healthy enough for me to approve of you.

2. Gabrielle: Please like me. I want a father figure who can really understand my feelings.

3. The Psychiatrist: Sorry, but you don’t meet my standards. You’re so arrogant. I get the feeling that you question my absolute authority.

4. The Psychiatrist: When you act smart, I become more aloof.

5. Gabrielle: Please nurture me. Give to me. Care about me.

Dr. D. might have called Gabrielle’s reaction a problem of transference. But cord dynamics have meaning outside the practitioner’s therapy model. Energetically, the “cure” component of this relationship may have been as bad as Gabrielle’s original “disease.”

My client had already released the cord of attachment to her biggest father figure, her own dad. Now she was more than willing to terminate the cord to her therapist. The insight she gained in Step 10 brought welcome clarity.

In Step 11, Gabrielle and I would discuss what needed to happen for her to recognize this pattern of power loss, since it often came up in her relationships with men.

Why choose men who couldn’t give to her, then blame herself? Too many men from Gabrielle’s past had made their aloofness seem like her fault. Gabrielle was being inoculated against repeating this pattern.

The Limits of Validation

Validation differs from fulfilling your client’s fantasy. He may expect you to tell him that because he had a cord cut to his girlfriend, the cordee will now love him or will apologize for everything she did wrong. Maybe she’ll suddenly pay back that $5,000 she borrowed.

Sigh! All this fantasy despite your previous explanation that cutting a cord only changes the dynamics of a relationship.

TECHNIQUE: Smash Fantasy, Fix Reality

Sometimes a client needs to be reminded again, during Step 10, about the consequences of cutting a cord of attachment. So discuss ideas like these, as needed:

1. The cordee’s behavior doesn’t change just because a cord is cut.

2. The cordee won’t be affected in any way, due to the process of Divine Homeostasis.

3. You, the client, won’t necessarily become closer to this person. Nor will you automatically become distant.

4. You will simply gain freedom. Energetically, you are no longer stuck in the past.

5. In future, you can freely choose what you want for this relationship. Use the appropriate social skills. If your first experiment doesn’t please you, explore other approaches until you find what does.

Pay Attention to the “Put-In”

Step 10 starts to create a link between spiritual healing and psychological healing. Your client’s new freedom can be directed toward psychological growth and rebalancing.

The healing model of Rosetree Energy Spirituality is 50% removing STUFF and 50% put-in. Put-in means:

• Adding new patterns, understandings, and concepts that are appropriate for your soul’s current level of consciousness.
  
• Exploring appropriate new skill sets of speech and action. Yes, that can be a very important part of the growth process, too.
  

Sometimes the put-in can be added easily, even joyfully. Less STUFF, better use of free will!

But what if put-in meets with resistance? What if you are not a trained psychotherapist and your commonsense conversation doesn’t seem to help?

Sometimes a client keeps slipping into fantasy, rather than accepting reality.

Or what if other aspects of the conversation during Step 10 make you wonder if your client is psychologically troubled?

Consider making a referral. Many clients will benefit from psychotherapy more than ever before, after cord cutting.

CORD SAMPLE: Can This Marriage Be Saved?

For decades, “Ladies Home Journal” magazine has run a feature called “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” In each issue, a marital therapist describes a couple’s problems, then reveals the impact of therapy. Every column features a fascinating new array of problems.

I believe that cutting cords of attachment can be a useful adjunct to marriage counseling. Unfortunately, the details might not make for fascinating magazine columns. Many cords about marriages are variations on the one I helped to cut for a worried wife whom I will call “Isabella.”

1. Husband: I’m a forceful man. I know what I like.

2. Isabella: I’m not forceful. I’m not sure who I am. I just know that I want to please you more than anything.

3. Husband: I’ll push on you to see how much I can get. You’ll do anything I want, won’t you?

4. Husband: How can I respect you when you constantly grovel?

5. Husband: You don’t give me sex often enough.

6. Isabella: I want to be loved, not used. No sex until you recognize who I really am!

7. Isabella: I feel lonely and rejected.

8. Isabella: No matter what I do, it’s never enough. I give constantly. You never give back.

In Step 12, we’ll discuss homework related to cutting a cord like this. But appropriate put-in requires that Step 10 must come first.

It isn’t unusual for a client like Isabella to think she can continue to make another person responsible for all her problems. After validating the cord dynamics, don’t be too shocked to hear, “Now he’ll stop being so mean to me, right?”

“Wrong,” you will have to say. Sigh!

But there still is hope that this client can take more responsibility for her life, including that marriage. Go on to Steps 11 and 12.

Discuss Any Sexual Problems Delicately

Cords to sexual abuse are not the only cases where your Dialogue Box can include patterns that cause, or contribute to, sexual problems.

Sometimes the cordee will be heavily involved with Internet pornography. Sometimes cord items will suggest that the cordee had an affair.

Regardless of who was to blame, any sexual dysfunction in a cord can impact your client’s sex life.

Be especially tactful about discussing sexual problems related to a cord of attachment. Avoid jumping to conclusions. Cords reveal patterns of energy, not necessarily events, so the cordee’s “affair” could be emotional, not physical.

Either way, what matters is freeing your client from any deceptiveness, shame, sliminess, etc. that was repeating endlessly as a result of that cord.

When discussing cord items, invite your client to comment. For example, you might say, “Do you think it is possible that your ex had a problem with pornography?”

Clients usually find it a relief to have their suspicions validated. Sometimes they have been painfully aware of the problem. Typically, they will give a response like, “Are you asking, was there an affair? You got that right!”

Invite New Forgiveness

Courageous Explorer, be careful how you use the F-word. More than any other word, “Forgiveness” can trigger defensiveness in a client. Use that word carelessly and you risk having the client snap back, “I’ve forgiven him already.” Conversation over.

With Rosetree Energy Spirituality, you can bring new perspective to this tender topic. Many clients have worked heroically hard at forgiveness. Proof can be found right in your client’s aura, with traces at many chakra databanks, depending on how, precisely, your client suffered, then fought really hard to forgive.

So avoid innocent comments like, “You will finally be able to forgive the person at the other end of this cord.”

Until a cord of attachment is cut, complete forgiveness may be impossible. Occasionally someone makes a heroic leap of faith and fully surrenders the past wrong to God. Then old resentments physically leave the aura.

This degree of success seldom happens, unfortunately. Instead an aura will show signs of struggle, multiple scars that record how valiantly your client struggled, from many angles, with limited success.

What can we say, then, without using the F-word?

Praise the
effort
to forgive, when you find it in an aura. You might tell your client that his previous work on forgiveness has set the stage for today’s healing.

I also recommend substituting the expression “let go” for “forgiveness.” This helps clients to feel validated, rather than defensive. You can say something like “You may finally be able to let go what happened in the past.”

For your own benefit as a healer, note any lack of forgiveness in your own life. Think “letting go” whenever you find an emotion that won’t go away, or when you feel the need to keep retelling a troubling story, or—as the next example illustrates—you are suffering from slow-healing physical pain that follows a disagreement with a revolting space hog sitting next to you in a transatlantic flight and—Oops, let go, Rose!

Anyway, Courageous Explorer, you get the practical point. Even a small incident can lead to a cord of attachment. How inspiring that, now, you know how to remove it.

TALE: Grumbling About That Knee

This tiny tale of woe came from a 10-hour flight. Traveling back to Virginia from Japan, I was seated to the left of Clyde, a bulky, burly man with huge territorial instincts. Either that or he lacked the muscles that a normal person can use to control his arms and legs.

Settling into my aisle seat, I carefully placed my shiny new laptop under the seat in front of me. Clyde’s first act, after sitting down, was to sprawl past his allotted space and place his not-so-dainty shoe directly on my computer.

When I asked him to move, Clyde seemed puzzled. When I repeated my request, he grew annoyed. For the rest of our very long flight, we played territorial footsie. I kept pushing my short right leg against Clyde’s long left one. “Back, back to your seat! Back! Quit the sprawling already!”

After our flight, I felt knee pain for the first time in my life. Six weeks later, I still couldn’t do my usual yoga stretches. When would the pain finally stop?

Lamenting this one morning, I wondered, could a cord of attachment have been forged on that flight? Duh!

Soon as the cord was cut, I felt relief. The knee took another couple of weeks to heal completely, but inwardly, I knew that recovery started right from the moment I cut that minor but irritating cord.

Who can fathom our past-life connections to people? Perhaps Clyde and I had a stormy history dating many incarnations ago. In this lifetime, it sure was ridiculous how I couldn’t let our footsie game go. On the flight, and afterwards, too, I had tried joking, praying, forgiving, forgetting. But nothing worked until I removed the cord of attachment to my one-time seatmate.

Never underestimate the power of energy endlessly replaying its struggle within a cord. Even if you stopped at Step 10, you (or your client) would receive lifelong benefits from cutting a cord of attachment. But Step 11 will add greatly to the results of the healing you have set in motion.

Chapter 13
Impact Other Relationships

12 Steps to Cut Cords of Attachment

Step 1. Create a Sacred Space

Step 2. Make an Energy Sandwich

Step 3. Activate the Aura

Step 4. Choose Which Cord to Cut

Step 5. Locate the Cord

Step 6. Give Permission

Step 7. Remove the Cord

Step 8. Bandage to Rebalance

Step 9. Write the Dialogue Box

Step 10. Discuss the Client’s Logical Consequences with the Cordee

Step 11. Discuss the Client’s Logical Consequences for Other Relationships

Initiate Change

Discuss Logical Consequences Related to Session Intention

Discuss Logical Consequences as Put-In

Consider Cord Dialogue from the Cordee

Help to Finalize Divorce

Search for Missing Social Skills

Encourage Assertiveness

New Stories Can Be Another Logical Consequence

Separate Strengths from Illusions

Teach Lotto for Grownups

Release Other No-Win Relationships

To help clients:
Stay Clear

Step 12. Assign Homework

LET’S GET PRACTICAL

Wow, Courageous Explorer, you have arrived at Step 11! And if this is your “Official Reading” of this chapter you are also cutting your fifth minor cord. The process is becoming easier, isn’t it?

Doing Steps 1-10, you can refresh your memory of the Steps with our summary here.

Check previous chapters at will.

Emphasize going through Step 11 slowly.

Step 12 will be quick and easy, given all you know now.

Initiate Change

Behold the jewel in the crown of cord cutting. Maybe your client brought an ambitious intention to this session, maybe not. Even if your client didn’t dare hope for much, now she will receive something big. Step 11 supplies insights into logical consequences beyond those related to the cordee.

Step 11 is when you guide a client (or yourself) to understand how cutting one cord of attachment can improve
all
relationships. Who will describe that practical vision? Both of you—starting when you, as facilitator, take the lead.

Of course, whenever cutting a cord for yourself, you will need objectivity. Now, as in Step 10, switch roles between being an outside observer, “The Healer,” and reacting as a person in touch with your inner truth, “The Client.”

Cutting a cord of attachment has cleared old patterns with the cordee. This brings freedom to change behavior. Your client needs a vision of possibilities for change. So, at Step 11, move the conversation toward
action,
based on the
validation
already given during the Step 10.

TECHNIQUE: Discuss Logical Consequences Related to Session Intention

1. During Step 10, was there discussion about logical consequences with the cordee? (Of course, there would not have been this sort of discussion if your client no longer has any relationship with the cordee or the cordee is deceased.) If so, During Step 11, can you extrapolate to
similar dynamics in other relationships?
Discuss these first.

2.
Review individual cord items
with significant implications for change in your client’s personal state of mind. Raise the possibility of a related logical consequence. For instance, “You may have less anger now.”

3. Look at
sequences,
or patterns of cord items, that are gone now. Raise the possibility of a related logical consequence. For instance, “After being scolded in Cord Item 5, you felt guilty in Cord Item 6. So one logical consequence is that, from now on, if someone scolds you, you may respond with reactions other than automatically feeling guilty.”

4. Whatever you say, describe it in conjunction with cord items that have been released. Discuss each point in a way that empowers your client.

5. Conclude by relating at least one of these logical consequences to your client’s
intention
for the healing session.

Q&A About These Logical Consequences

Why bother to discuss these logical consequences? Won’t good results happen automatically, just because a cord has been cleared?

Maybe. Results would be slower, however.

Besides you, or your client, might not make the conscious connection between this healing and random improvements in life.

When I get an energy clearing from my bodyworker, it’s easy-breezy. I don’t have to think about garbage like feelings. I thought your cord cutting would just be a more efficient version, so I don’t have to go back every week to get all my cords cut. Do I really have to think about these logical consequences? Can’t I just skip Step 11?

Personal growth is optional in life. Rosetree Energy Spirituality gives you the chance to evolve more rapidly on your personal path... even going all the way to spiritual Enlightenment.

• If you want to treat yourself like a physical machine and just get clearing...
  
• If you want to ignore emotions...
  
• If you consider feelings a form of garbage...
  

You really aren’t ready for the 12 Steps to Cut Cords of Attachment, whether for self-healing or to help anyone else. My recommendation? Put this book away and take it out again when you feel ready for emotional and spiritual healing.

But perhaps you were joking, Courageous Explorer. You know that permanently removing a cord is a big deal.

The best part is how new behavior—the put-in—becomes possible as never before. This opportunity will be squandered without the encouragement of Step 11.

I do want to grow. I want to take responsibility for my life. However, I don’t see how cutting a cord to Person X would have logical consequences for my relationships with People Y and Z. Aren’t I cutting just one cord of attachment?

Contents of a cord of your cord of attachment to Person X used to go through your subconscious mind at least once daily, every day of your life. And often far more frequently. For instance, with the cord to your mother, Mary:

• The cord would go through once daily, just because all cords of attachment do that.
  
• It would have activated any time you heard the name “Mary.”
  
• Plus every time you hear someone use words like “Mother,” “Mom,” “Mommy”
  
• Plus every time you saw a mother on TV
  
• Or read about a mother in a book
  
• Or eavesdropped on a conversation about a mother
  
• Or saw someone with physical resemblance to your mother
  
• Or heard someone with a voice like that of your mother
  
• Plus any email, text, Facebook reference, or tweet, to anyone’s mother.
  

But what do repetitions of a cord in your subconscious mind have to do with patterns of your conscious thoughts and behavior?

It amounts to a kind of interior brainwashing, pulling you into the past.

Once that ends, you gain new freedom and flexibility. How will you use it? That’s the purpose of Step 11. It could be considered the most important part of all 12 Steps to Cut Cords of Attachment.

Discuss Logical Consequences as Put-In

With Rosetree Energy Spirituality, you are not just clearing away energy. You are not vacuuming your aura to make it bright and shiny, like some kind of energetic carpet.

Give yourself credit, and credit to your aura as well. Your aura contains patterns about soul expression, the complete story of your personal development emotionally and spiritually. All that is what you are improving, potentially, when cutting a cord of attachment.

Courageous Explorer, you are not simply removing STUFF, important though that is. A full 50% of Rosetree Energy Spirituality is the put-in: New behaviors, understandings, habits that are more aligned with your client’s current level of soul development.

Often a person works hard to evolve spiritually and emotionally, yet neglects to balance inner change with outer action, expecting spiritual miracles to turn literal with neither personal responsibility nor speech nor action being required.

Here at Earth School, spiritual changes do automatically result in outer changes. Only they happen naturally in the fullness of time. Well, sometimes a person gets fed up with that fullness of time.

You want results now? Take action now. Nothing can stop you except little things like confusion, inertia, or not knowing how to take responsibility in a pro-active way.

When you do Step 11, after discussing logical consequences, it can sometimes be just the time to consider action steps, doing things differently.

Thus, practical discussion can become part of the put-in during Step 11 to Cut Cords of Attachment.

CORD SAMPLE: An Invisible Man

Why did Danny feel like an invisible man? Read the answer in the Dialogue Box from Danny’s cord to his father.

I will alternate the cord items with Danny’s reaction to hearing about them.

1. Danny:
I’m wrong again. Nothing I do is good enough.

Was that a familiar feeling for my client when dealing with his father? Absolutely. Danny said it felt like the story of his life.

2. Father, taunting:
You got that right.

Danny described this taunting as “Being kicked when I was down.” Even if a situation didn’t start as a contest, Dad would turn it into one. Eventually Danny always expected to wind up as a loser, so why bother to talk in the first place?

3. Father:
Being good means that you do what I want when I want it.

That sure was recognizable. Danny felt this cord item explained a lot about how his desire to be good alternated with an urge to rebel.

I reminded Danny that every adult has the right to do for himself what he wants when he wants it. While he still had the cord, however, Danny was subconsciously programmed to do whatever his father wanted, automatically.

4. Father:
What you do is never good enough. I’m especially annoyed that you have so many opinions and ideas. Even before I hear what you have to say, I know that you’re wrong.

I asked Danny if he had always been a lot more cerebral than his father. “Well, yes.” The idea that his father felt jealous was new to him, but it made sense. Ever since childhood, Danny had been called wrong for supposedly being “too smart.”

5. Danny:
Confronted, I become invisible. There’s only room for what the other person has to say.

This may have been the very worst cord item in this Dialogue Box. Danny confirmed that he often felt invisible while arguing with his father. During Step 10, we discussed that feeling in some detail.

When we moved to Step 11, we considered the implications even further. In love relationships, for instance, did Danny have a history of feeling invisible once there was conflict? “Definitely!”

That pattern in all his relationships was about to change because we had removed a significant cause. This change could be an extra benefit of cutting the cord to Danny’s father. A benefit for all of Danny’s relationships.

Over the years, Danny followed up with some additional sessions, a small number compared to the typical number of visits involved in conventional psychotherapy.

His life altered significantly for the better. Even the timbre of his voice changed: During this first session, he had one of those highly intellectual voices that seems disconnected from the body. Soon his voice became more vibrant, stronger, the voice of a confident man.

Take Pro-Active Responsibility

Encouragement at Step 11 can make the difference between longing for a better life and making that great life happen.

The following technique will help you or a highly motivated client to become pro-active as a change agent, stop waiting and start moving. (For your own sessions, continue to alternate the roles of Healer and Client.)

TECHNIQUE: Aiming

Position consciousness purposely and productively with this simple technique.

1. After you state a logical consequence, encourage your client to think pro-actively. Ask questions, like “Now that you don’t have that old pattern of feeling intimidated by conflict, what could you do differently?”

2. Now your client is free to experiment with new behaviors, evaluate what happens, then try something different if necessary.

3. Help your client commit to action by asking him, “What would you like to try first?”

CORD SAMPLE: What Matters Most Here?

Courageous Explorer, I have an assignment for you. While you read through the following Dialogue Box, consider what you would emphasize if Wayne were your client. Remember, each cord item released can bring change to all other relationships. Wayne had asked to cut the cord of attachment to his mother.

1. Wayne: I feel so sorry for my mother. I want her to have a better life.

2. Wayne: By giving a lot of my energy to my mother, I can help her become more awake inside.

3. Mother: I constantly worry about small things. I feel frustrated, too. This keeps me from noticing how I’m cut off from my emotions.

4. Wayne: When I give Mom extra energy, she stops being so gloomy. But soon afterwards she falls back into dullness.

5. Wayne: Picking Mom up again and again is exhausting, like trying to teach a rag doll how to sit on her own.

6. Mother: I’m not sure whether or not I like to receive all this energy from Wayne. I only like to feel better for a short time. It feels weird, being so awake inside. So I’ll resist, and quickly fall back into the kind of consciousness that is more natural to me.

7. Wayne: I feel exhausted. How come I never get anything back from this relationship?

Which theme did I choose to emphasize during Step 11? Codependency.

We discussed it in general, then specifically as related to Wayne’s former cord of attachment.

Codependence is a complex problem that can manifest itself in many ways, and this Dialogue Box had a piece of the puzzle. With his mother, Wayne was trying to fix someone who didn’t believe she was broken in the first place.