Success, Failure, And Toxic Shame The “I’m Not Good Enough” Program

by Grow Up Conference | Jul 30, 2023 | Media Partners, The New Agora

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Success, Failure, And Toxic Shame

The “I’m Not Good Enough” Program

By BERNHARD GUENTHER

The vast majority of people have internalized unconscious toxic shame. One aspect of it to avoid facing/feeling the pain within is creating a false personality, an “idealized self” in which one shows oneself to the world. It’s inauthentic and a lie to the Self [and others], but it is unconscious. Hence most people are not aware of it.

Most conventional self-help industry techniques showing you how to become rich, successful, attractive, etc., target this insecure false personality [trying to make it more perfect] that has been created based on internalized toxic shame.

Underlying this false self is an unconscious program running of “I’m not good enough” and tries to complete itself via external means, but it’s a bottomless hole.

A lot of highly successful people and entrepreneurs are driven by this internalized toxic shame to become “super-achievers” and workaholics [which is often praised as a “good virtue” in our society where pathologies have become normalized]

Many famous entrepreneurs, influencers, and celebrities, who people look up to as role models, are, in fact, deeply wounded individuals that use their work, achievements, and success to cover up deep-rooted insecurities based on toxic shame.

It is a trauma response. They need to identify with external success and the image they have built around it and do more and more in order to avoid feeling the pain of shame. Narcissism is also a trauma response based on the unconscious “I’m not good enough program,” needing validation from the outside.

But internalized toxic shame can also show itself in the “under-achiever”, the “loser” and addict in the alley, the person wallowing in misery, and victim/blame, projecting their suppressed shadow on anyone who is successful or wealthy, showing society the middle finger.

Super-achievers and under-achievers are two sides of the same “internalized shame” coin. They define each other and project on each other. Both are driven by the false personality.

As John Bradshaw wrote in “Healing the Shame That Binds You”:

“Toxic shame is unbearable and always necessitates a cover-up, a false self. Since one feels his true self is defective and flawed, one needs a false self that is not defective and flawed.

It is crucial to see that the false self may be as polar opposite as a superachieving perfectionist or an addict in an alley. Both are driven to cover up their deep sense of self-rupture, the hole in their soul.

They may cover up in ways that look polar opposite, but each is still driven by neurotic shame. In fact, the most paradoxical aspect of neurotic shame is that it is the core motivator of the superachieved and the underachieved, the star and the scapegoat, the righteous and the wretched, the powerful and the pathetic.

Alice Miller, in her powerful book, The Drama of the Gifted Child, has described the paradoxical fact that many highly gifted, superachieving, and successful people are driven by a deep-seated chronic depression, resulting from their true and authentic selves being shamed through abandonment in childhood.

More often than not, these narcissistically deprived [narcissistically wounded due to childhood wounding, absent parents or when shame-based parents where not able to meet the needs of their kids but tried to get their needs met through them] are talented, gifted, highly successful superachievers who have been praised and admired for their talents and achievements.

Anyone looking at them on the outside would believe these people have it made. They appear strong and stable and full of self-assurance. This is not the case. Narcissistically deprived people do well in every undertaking and are admired for their gifts and talents, but they have a deep sense of emptiness and aloneness.

The demand for a false self to cover and hide the authentic self necessitates a life dominated by doing and achievement. Everything depends on performance and achievement rather than on being. Being requires no measurement; it is its own justification. Being is grounded in an inner life that grows in richness. “The kingdom of heaven is within,” says the Scripture.

Toxic shame looks to the outside for happiness and validation, since the inside is flawed and defective. Toxic shame is spiritual bankruptcy.” [end quote]

Many of us also have internalized toxic shame. I would go even so far as to say that everyone has it to varying degrees, just like everyone is wounded/traumatized to varying degrees. In most people, it is unconscious.

They are not aware of it whatsoever and mistake the false self (trauma response) for the true Self and stuff any pain and shame deep into the unconscious while crafting a false personality mask for the outside world.

Social media is full of these artificial false personalities presenting a fake public image.

We also live in a world where pathology has become normalized. We worship, respect, and adore people who are “successful,” mostly in terms of money, power, and popularity/fame, engaging in positive shadow projections. We worship the false personality at the cost of Essence. Most people are more impressed by appearance than substance.

On the other side of the coin, many people also envy and are jealous of other people’s success, but they don’t want to admit that to themselves either because it would bring up their now suppressed shame and unconscious “self-hatred”.

Instead, they tend to gossip and talk s*it about successful people, engaging in negative shadow projections, which creates relief, a dopamine hit, and helps them to avoid facing the pain within. Usually, they are stuck in victim mentally, believe the world owes them, and blame others for their misery.

It’s the never-ending shadow dance until we take back our projections, face ourselves, and the shame buried deep under the false personality.

There’s nothing wrong with success in the martial world, obviously, and I encourage everyone to create abundance, get out of the matrix poverty program [corrupted spiritual/religious teachings have contributed to the scarcity program over thousands of years], be creative, use your will and talents, and embrace entrepreneurship, take risks, self-actualize, and live an abundant and prosperous life. More power to you!

The question is only, where is the drive coming from, and how attached are you to it and identified with it?

People always say, just follow your “dream” and manifest your desires, goals, and aims. But rarely do people ask where their desires, aims, and goals come from to begin with.

Most of them are programmed/conditioned by upbringing, unconscious reactions to the internal parental image [Mommy/Daddy wound], social/cultural programming, media, what society tells you success is all about, and what you “need” or “be” to be “happy.”

In short, most of what people think they want are not their desires at all. And most often, it is a trauma response to cover up a hole within via external striving for “success.”

It’s like trying to fill a bottomless hole and a vicious cycle. A lot of [unnecessary] suffering is based on it, and it’s an epidemic – the dark side of the “self-help motivational entrepreneur” space that strengthens the false personality to be “successful” at the cost of the real “I”.

So the question is, who are “you” really? And what “I” wants this or that? Again, nothing wrong with desires, dreams, and goals, but where are they coming from? As long as they are based on the false personality, social programming, or as a trauma response, you will never ever find true happiness, fulfillment, or love.

As Bradshaw said, “Toxic shame looks to the outside for happiness and validation.”

As long as you look you externally for your happiness, fulfillment, and joy, you are acting from unconscious shame, disconnected from essence. There is nothing to be ashamed of it [no pun intended]. Facing it and owning it is the way the through.

I’m not taking myself out of the equation. I can see in my life how some things I did were driven by the internalized toxic shame I wasn’t aware of – a trauma response due to childhood wounding. I’ve seen myself fall into both roles at times: the underachiever and the overachiever. The only way out is to feel that shame and transmute the false personality in order to connect to the real “I”, which is the Divine/Kingdome within.

This process is not comfortable at all. It requires courage, vulnerability, and humility. It doesn’t happen overnight or over a few weeks or months, either. It’s a process, most often going over lifetimes, and it is part of the awakening and individuation process – an important step that cannot be skipped.

It is a descent into darkness and uncovers many suppressed emotions going back to childhood and even lifetimes.

But the only way out is in and through, according to the Law of Ascent and Descent.

“You must be willing to come out of hiding and embrace your toxic shame. If you refuse to admit your powerlessness and the unmanageability of your life you cannot find the inner strength you’ve been covering up because you feel flawed and defective.

Hell, in my opinion, is never finding your true self and never living your own life or knowing who you are. This is the fate that lies at the end of the journey of ever-deepening toxic shame.”

– John Bradshaw

On the other side of the coin, being “shameless” is also rooted in unconscious toxic shame, ironically. It is very important to note that there is such thing as healthy shame and even healthy guilt as an aspect of conscience stemming from the real “I.”

For more on this topic, listen to our podcast episode “How To Heal Toxic Shame And Not Feeling “Good Enough”

Godspeed.  Bernhard Guenther

The Way I See It by Elva Thompson

by Grow Up Conference | Jul 29, 2023 | Media Partners, The New Agora

www.heartstarbooks.com

The Way I See It by Elva Thompson

“Do not be misled by what you see around you, or be influenced by what you see. You live in a world which is a playground of illusion, full of false paths, false values and false ideas. But you are not part of that world.” Sai Baba

The Shift of Ages

A galactic wave is sweeping through our solar system ushering in the Shift of Ages.  A Shift that happens at the end of a 26,000 year cycle called ‘the grand year’. The old cycle ended on December 21st, 2012, and we are now beginning to see planetary changes in real time. The electromagnetic frequency of Earth is changing, our poles are shifting, and we are seeing ‘abnormalities’ not only in the ‘seen’ physical world but in our own consciousness. We are becoming aware of our spiritual nature and realising that we are more than the physical body, and the societal labels that define us.

How it starts

When we are born into this reality, the programming begins immediately and is re-enforced from the cradle to the grave. We are taught the art of separation and individualisation. We are given labels

and classified as male, female or other, we belong to a race, a culture, a religion, a political party, an income bracket and a profession.

Humanity has been engineered to self-identify with the labels of human life, and the labels given to them by society is the sum of who they are.  The 3D matrix feeds and re-enforces their bubble-ised sense of reality through its education systems, media, entertainment, religions, political thinking, and social mores.

When people self-identify with their labels and most people do…the ‘I am so and so’, they are limited in their awareness, and this limitation is expressed in a low vibrational state of consciousness. Aspects such as hate, arrogance, envy, jealousy, gossip, competitiveness, greed and the need to control others is a hallmark of a dense, slow, sense bound vibration.

As a result of generational conditioning, we no longer see ourselves as eternal, divine beings that are everything that exists. Instead, we are myopic mice fully absorbed by ‘I am’ and its labels and its world. The more we focus on our labels the more disconnected we become from the spiritual world and expanded levels of consciousness.

The threefold nature of man

Man has a physical body, a soul and a spirit.

In metaphysical understanding, the body and soul are experiences in the third dimension. What we call the soul is the energetic record of debt from the lives we have led in the flesh. It is our personal akashic record that is recycled through reincarnation. Energetic debt is what keeps us chained to the wheel of rebirth…. life after life in this cruel programme.

Fear

Fear is the fundamental of this third dimension of fire. It is what keeps us alive in this reality, but it is also a weapon that allows others to control us.  Fear rules the simulation and when we leave the body…die in a fearful, depressed or violent state, the frequency of our perception, our personal resonance pattern prevents us from leaving the matrix and its levels. As a result, we keep recycling from one level of the simulation to another.  We are locked in.

Getting through the ring pass not

Earth is encircled by radiation belts called the Van Allen Belts. The ancients called this barrier The Ring Pass Not, symbolised by the worm Ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail. NASA has admitted that they cannot pass through the

Van Allen belts which puts everything about the moon landing and visiting other planets in the impossible category!

The Ring Pass Not is a vibrational fence that surrounds the planet and has the frequency of visible light. If we are not in an elevated state of awareness when we die, if we are not vibrating faster than the visible light spectrum then we cannot get through the frequency barrier. This esoteric fact is symbolised  by the worm Ouroboros. This shows us the never-ending cycle of re-incarnation.

The agenda of the satanic elite is to keep humanity in an instinctual, low and fearful vibratory state so that when the Shift takes place: the evolution of the life waves, billions will not be able to take part because of their discordant resonance patterns. They will just be recycled for the next round in the conflict zone…but most people welcome the idea of reincarnation. Their self inflated ego cannot bear the thought of its own annihilation. These folk are the ‘hive mind of the matrix and are well adjusted to the sickness called human life.

Right is might

In this day and age our society is concerned with martial values, the glorification of war, the playing on instincts of aggression and the acceptance of cruelty as a valid way of getting needs met. It is cruelty towards others and the kingdoms of nature that is dragging down the spiritual evolution of the human race.

72 billion animals and 1.2 trillion aquatic animals are killed each year for their flesh, glands and hides. Creatures that are often boiled alive. Others housed in overcrowded filthy, inhumane conditions.  Cruelly treated by their licensed torturers, never seeing the sun or green grass.

Surely, the flesh of such creatures is a poison to the human spirit saturated as it is with fear and suffering.

Some people tell me that the animals they eat are grass fed and killed humanely. Can murder ever be humane and free from fear? I don’t think so.

Massive karmic debt

Mankind is loading upon itself a karmic debt of enormous weight and proportions by its collective treatment of the animal kingdom. We will eventually learn from personal experience that we cannot hurt the One Life without bringing retribution upon ourselves. Such is the Law of Return.

Man digs his own misery pit…

“Nothing so endangers the fineness of the human heart as the possession of power over others; nothing so corrodes it as

the callous and cruel exercise of that power; and the more helpless the creature over whom the power is cruelly and callously exercised, the more the human heart is corroded. John Galsworthy.

Metaphysical understanding. Who are the animals?

Sir George Trevelyan introduced me to a concept, a new biology which changed my perception of animals and the natural world.  The first creation story in Genesis tells us that god created all the physical form of animals, vegetables, birds and fish before Man appeared on the scene. Man was the finished product, the symphony of all created life. The microcosm of the macrocosm.

Human embryos go through the fish, bird and mammal stage in their development. I think that is evidence enough to see that the human archetype contains all life forms.

There is only One Life.

Here is what Sir George has to say.

“Thus the ruminants may be seen as the digestive system externalised. The lion seems to be the chest in specialised development, the rythmic system of heart and lungs. How slight are its digestive organs, how powerful its mane and thorax. The eagle, representing the bird kingdom, is seen as a metamorphosis of head and larynx. It has no great intestine, its body is a system of warm air sacks to keep it floating in the air. Here are the beasts of the Evangelists, bull, lion and eagle, the fourth being the Angel Man, the Archetypal Idea. The understanding is that every animal species is a part of (man) externalized and specialized before the central being of Man became fully embodied.” Sir George Trevelyan.

Waking up to the One Life

Spiritual truths can only be apprehended with intuitive awareness, and as we refine our consciousness we will discover the divinity within all created things, and our connection with all life. We will come to understand the real meaning of That Art Thou. Of our connection to the One Life and our responsibilities to it. Animals, birds and fish are truly our greater body. We are related to all of life and their secrets lie within us.

Spiritually awake people do not gorge on the corpses of spirit infused beings.

Esoteric history has a name for dead flesh eaters.

It is GHOUL.

Until next time, Much love.

About the Author

Written by ethompson

Elva Thompson was born in England in 1947 and moved to Rosebud Lakota reservation in 1987. She is the author of the Heartstar Series; Book One: The Key made of Air, Book Two: The Gates to Pandemonia, and Book Three: Walking In Three Worlds. Her other interests include organic gardening, ancient phonetic languages, sonic sound and their application in the healing arts. She is also a medical intuitive and teaches sonic re-patterning using sound, colour, and essential oils. Elva Thompson is on Amazon Author Central @ amazon.com/author/heartstar

Are you awake? What is “awake”?

by Grow Up Conference | Jul 29, 2023 | Media Partners, The New Agora

Are you awake? What is “awake”?

by Tom – MofWooFoo

Did you ever think that there is no one who knows anything for sure? It can seem for sure, but one must always be open to the possibility of delusion and that it is seemingly impossible to have all the facts, with the emphasis on “all”.. This might be the first real step to “waking up”. When you realize that there is nothing solid to cling to, and knowing this, we all need to loosen our grip on our beliefs and “let go”. Accept that you are floating in the “unknown” with everyone else and that everything relies on improvisation, responding to each moment genuinely, honestly, and openly. Become innocent, drop all desire for absolutes and recognize that they don’t exist and enjoy floating with the flow of unknowing, with a courageous faith like a newborn who can only flow with the flow. This is waking up, becoming innocent once again with genuine humility, meaning feeling no better or worse than anyone else, and enjoying the end of comparing and competing.

Realizing the hopelessness of certainty, of never truly knowing something 100%. We all can unite, and transform our time to one of innocence, humility, and compassion. How sweet life is in such an environment. Opening and deepening the exploration of freedom, how to live freely, being the pioneers, the first or one of the first to live in real FREEDOM. Freedom must be responsible, used only for good. Freedom is a force for “good” or it isn’t freedom, it is nihilism.

That being said, perhaps it is necessary to realize that the human species is insane. Making the same mistakes over and over is what is one idea of insanity. And that is what humanity incessantly does, is doing. It explains to some degree, how humanity has come to the brink of extinction. And it implies that a lot of people should be considered insane, and explains why so often their decisions are faulty, and how there are people who will kill others. But I suppose for the sake of clarity we should agree on a definition of “insanity” or “santiy”. Excuse me while I google. After googling about it, I discovered that there is no definitive definition that I could find. So, it seems I must supply my own definition, which is “crazy”, or when someone does or is doing something that seems to make no sense (faulty reasoning) or doing something that undermines the quality of one’s existence. So, smoking cigarettes is a form of insanity, as well as any compulsive habits, if the results are detrimental. To be “sane” would be to always be behaving in one’s best interests, that is, genuine best interests, or one could say, to always attempt to satisfy one’s needs. Now, I will google it. (You can see that I am letting you see my every move. I have no secrets, I am transparent, vulnerable, nevertheless, I am a little bit mysterious) Soundness of judgement, reason, soundness of mind is sane. Ok, now we all know what we are talking about.

In our small pueblo, with its constant invasion of foreigners, nestled in the Andes, deep in s. Ecuador, the locals pretty much unanimously agree that the gringos or extranjeros are for the most part “loco”. And who would dare argue that? It might be insane to try. Regardless, what we need to recognize is that to “wake up” is to realize that we are all dealing with an “insane situation” with many insane people. I have a tendency to treat everyone as if they were “normal”, but this is proving to be a disastrous mistake. Now, imagine a world where everyone is insane, it would definitely be different than the one we know, because in our world, people can carry on, as if they were sane, for the most part, like a politician or a soldier, so it can be tricky to perceive, especially if you happen to be lacking a very refined sensing ability to sense insanity. It is not easy, considering everything that we have been considering.

It follows that no one can know if and/ or how insane or sane one might be. We only have what other people reflect back to us and maybe how we are doing as far as getting our needs met, and how we are feeling now and most of the time (our “default” feeling). One can see that it is virtually impossible to assess our own sanity with 100 % accuracy, which takes us back to one of the opening premises, that there seem to be no absolutes that anyone can know for sure.

This, I believe, is perhaps the first step to “waking up” and it leads to an individual who is humble, open minded, compassionate or empathetic, and self confident all at the same time. With this combination, one can begin to “let one’s light shine”, and to shine it more and more, making one’s good vibes more and more apparent, penetrating, powerful, and far reaching. Emoticono smile It creates the possibility for unity and harmony while removing those obstacles which keep us divided.

Image from ‘Unsplash’