HOW IN THE WORLD DID I GET HERE?

Recently I shared with a group of my colleagues about the backstory to the
publication of my new book.  The responses were meaningful, touching, heartful.
People appreciated knowing something about the process that led me to
“birthing” How Did We Get Here?
I hope the backstory will be meaningful to you, too.

My first book, Power Abused, Power Healed, took 7 years to birth –
from my first sentence to publishing.
It was a learning, growing, profound sacred journey.
At the same time, it was a wild ride … and I was pregnant with my book for 7 years.
Near the birth I was saying “What being on the face of this earth has 7-year pregnancies?!?”

As our paths often unfold, all this time I was growing, developing, expanding,
deepening in ways I knew, and also in ways I didn’t yet know.

The book was born …
For the first time in my life, I had written and published a book.
For the first time in my life, I began doing interviews on radio shows
(and some tv and print media).
For the first time in my life, I became a trusted source for some media hosts.
I received lots of feedback about how down to earth and clear I could make my points –
and how delighted they were that I wasn’t speaking “therapese” to the audience.
I was moved.

And I was passionate about helping people see that we need to explore and heal
our own relationships with power.
And I was passionate about helping people see what is really driving us …
beneath what most people know.

How can we make changes we really need to make if we are unaware of
what is driving us to be the way we are?
How can we grow into who we were meant to be
if we don’t know where we have gotten stuck in our growth and development?
How can we heal from wounds and trauma we have experienced long, long ago
if we insist on keeping those wounds and traumas buried and held at bay,
so we can pretend – to ourselves and others – that we have moved on?

People kept asking me when I was going to write another book.
Regardless of how tactful my outer response was, my inner response was ‘no.’
The ‘no’ was really to another 7-year pregnancy.
But my muse and I couldn’t stop writing.
To that there was only a ‘yes.’
So I wrote my monthly blog from 2009 on.

As interviews and blogs unfolded …
As I witnessed what was going on in my practice,
in the lives of those around me, in our country and our world …
I began to see –
I had a gift in connecting the dots between our wounds and traumas as individuals
and our communal wounds and traumas as countries and a world …
between our healing as individuals and our healing communally and globally.
I began to see –
That this gift was developing as I witnessed and wrote and taught
and helped people heal.
And that this gift gave me a new way to help our world,
a way that was not available to me previously.

Then on May 15, 2018 …
A tornado hit my town, my neighborhood, and my home.
That experience opened me on a heart and soul level in ways I couldn’t have imagined.
Within a month and a half … My muse awakened me in the middle of the night,
“took me to the computer,” started “dictating,” and told me we were writing a book.

She didn’t say how long the pregnancy would be or wouldn’t be.
She called me, awakened me, and …
There was no ‘no’ at all within me. Only ‘yes’!

I witnessed as I surrendered to what was emerging …
Knowing that this was my next way to work to help us heal –
ourselves, our countries, and our world.

People all around me – up close and personal and media in all venues –
were asking how we got here.
And many were saying, “This isn’t who we are.”
I knew they were not aware of aspects of themselves and all of us
that were driving us individually and globally.
I knew they weren’t answering the question “How did we get here?”
at the deepest levels possible.
I felt I could help people understand on those very deep levels.

This has all come very quickly …
Much more quickly than I could have imagined!
I am sending both of my books to the Frankfurt Bookfair …
hoping there will be international publishers who will want to translate
both of my books into their language(s).
I’m also exploring how to get word out to major influencers, the media,
laypeople, the therapeutic community, and more …
so I can help my book have the greatest positive impact possible.
I welcome any inspirations, connections, networking you can share to this end.

Thank you for reading, receiving, and connecting with me through my blog …
and with me in relation to my book, which, as you can see,
is both very personal and very much a part of my passion
to help us all become more conscious …so we can heal ourselves and our world.

*****
The best way I can give you a brief description of my book itself …
is what is written on the back cover.

How Did We Get Here?
Our Refusal to Know the Truth About Ourselves

So many of us ask ourselves in these times, “How did we get here?”
So many of us even believe we know.
Sadly, when most of us try to respond to this difficult question,
our answers barely scratch the surface.
Few of us – far too few of us –try to go deep enough to see
even the barest roots of why our lives, our countries, and our world
are in the condition they’re in.

People have all sorts of explanations for how we got here – nationally and globally.

It’s financial. It’s political. It’s patriarchal. It’s prejudicial. It’s misogynistic.
It’s abuse. And more.
Each viewpoint can be discussed and seem to explain the cause
from a valid standpoint.
Yet … they are all accounts at or near the surface.
No matter how long we have believed the explanations …
no matter how deep they appear to go …
none of them reaches the roots of the way in which we got here.
None of them even alludes to the reality
that there are root causes deep beneath each explanation.
And none of them even hints at the central reality that underlies all the explanations.

So … how did we get here?

In our adult lives, whether we realize it or not, we re-enact again and
again the wounding and trauma we experienced as children.
More of us than we know were wounded long, long ago.
As a result, more of us than we can conceive are re-creating the trauma in our lives today…
affecting us, those close to us, our country, and our world.

Imagine if everyone made the commitment to explore and heal those roots in themselves!
Find out more and be part of the healing.

My heart is full as I share with you,
Hoping my book and I will be heartfully received…
Hoping you will utilize this post to help you become part of the healing …
Hoping if you are inspired, you will pass this along to others as a way to help in the healing.

Many blessings from my heart to yours …

Judith

You can order my new book now!

 

https://judithbarr.com/how-did-we-get-here/

You can order through my website
Or
You can order through Amazon  …
For best international shipping costs use Amazon: US | CA | UK | DE | ES | FR | IT

© Judith Barr, 2018

 

 

 

 

WHO’S MINING YOUR UNCONSCIOUS?

And Who’s Mining Your Children’s Unconscious?

Recently it was revealed that President Trump’s campaign data firm has been mining the unconscious of millions of people in the U.S. (and elsewhere) through data on Facebook (and perhaps other places, too) to impact election results. People at the top of this company, Cambridge Analytica, have been exposed on film in Great Britain as having the purposeful intention to find and exploit people’s inner demons, their deep fears and hopes – both the ones that are merely unspoken and the ones that are unconscious. The top people at the company actually talked about psychological profiling of people deeper into the unconscious than anyone else.  “There is no good fighting an election campaign on the facts because actually it’s all about emotion,” said one of the executives of the company. This company – or any other – can say that about elections, or about anything else that is truly based not on facts, but on emotions.

Mining people’s unconscious is not new in our world. Scam artists, snake oil salesmen, false prophets and more have existed since the beginning of time. Many years ago, ironically in 1984, there was a movie, “Dreamscape,” in which a government project tasked with training psychics to enter people’s dreams, purportedly to help them, ends up with a goal of assassination through dreams.

Although others mining our unconscious is frightening in any age and any form – and of course, it is frightening – more frightening still today is the part we ourselves have played in others mining our unconscious selves. Some may think our part is the outer participation in our use of the internet, and particularly Facebook.  But that isn’t the part that is of the greatest concern … for all of us.

The crucial part we have played is by our neglecting to mine our own unconscious selves. As time has gone on and we have been seduced into reaching for band-aids, trying to get rid of symptoms, looking outside ourselves, rising above ourselves, and ignoring the real deep roots of our problems, our pains, our unfulfilled hopes, our fears, our distress … we have become more and more disconnected from our own deep selves alive within our very own unconscious. As a result, we have cut ourselves off from the possibility of healing this disconnection.  And from the true help, the art, the skill, and the journey that exists to help us reconnect.

If we, the adults – the parents, the teachers, the leaders – don’t mine our own unconscious …
how are we going to teach our children to mine theirs?

If we, the adults don’t discover, face, and use for healing and growth our deepest demons, our deepest fears, and our deepest hopes …
how are we going to teach our children to do the same?

And what a setup it is for our children’s unconscious selves to be mined by others,
if we don’t help them learn to mine their own.

Mining our own unconscious needs to be part of the fabric of truth and love at the foundation of our work with ourselves and our work with our children.
Mining our own unconscious needs to be part of the fabric of truth and love at the foundation of our work in our families, our communities, our countries, our world.

This is core to what I help people do with themselves – for themselves, for the sake of their children, and for the sake of our world.

© 2018 Judith Barr