SECOND PART

CHAPTER 14

DIFFERENT SITUATIONS

Before beginning with the exercise, we wish to show you some other examples to give you a more comprehensive idea of how fear, rejection, promises and guilt act on the individual, weaving a spider’s web of lies and misunderstandings that confuse one’s mind and feelings.

You may identify with some of the cases presented here. If as you read you begin to feel uncomfortable, then please continue-your Enemy Within is trying to stop you from reading, making you feel that this information will not work or trying to persuade you that you cannot achieve your goal of emotional freedom; fight this, and continue.

Promises made before you were born:
Martha: I’m divorced, with an eight year old son. I was divorced when he was three. For the past five years I have lived with somebody that I don’t want to be with anymore, but I cannot find the way to get out of this situation. I’ve looked for work, but I don’t have the energy I need to work. I want to leave this man, and I need to work. I feel like I don’t deserve much. I feel guilty with my son because I have not been able to give him what I hoped: a stable family with all the basics. And even though we want for nothing, the relationship with my spouse is bad, for both me and for my child.
I have committed many mistakes in my life and that makes me very ashamed. I graduated from university but I don’t work my area of study. I know a lot, but I don’t feel capable of doing anything. I have nothing. I had a house, a car and money in the bank when I met my husband. I trusted him. I sold all my things and I loaned him the money without getting anything signed. The money I had in the bank also went to pay expenses for the house and others. I thought he would pay it back, but he’s not going to. He told me that he is not going to give me one cent. I feel used and stupid. He is passive aggressive, I’m afraid of him. I have seen that he has done dishonest things in his business. I don’t like it, but I can’t say anything. I don’t know what to do. I want to run away, but I have no place to go.
I live with the feeling that I am doing something wrong, I feel guilty about almost everything. I have no friends, relationships with women have always been difficult for me.

This is a summary of our first interview with Martha. For her the apparent reasons for her confusion and pain came from the situation in which she was living, the status of her life. She knew that she felt guilty about many things, which were the most relevant for her at that time.
In the second session Martha decided to follow the problem to its root, so I led her to her memories from when she was still in the womb:

I’m cold---my mother is angry, she doesn’t want to be pregnant, they want a divorce…they don’t want me. I feel uncomfortable, I want to return to where I came from but…I can’t, I have to stay here. I’m causing problems…I shouldn’t have come, it’s my fault that she is angry, she doesn’t want to have me. I promise to be good, to always take care of her…you’re going to be proud of me…

Martha understood that her guilt and her feeling that she was doing something bad originated in her mother’s womb. Her feeling of unworthiness is related to having a place in the family because they didn’t want her. Her mother didn’t want her, so in order to have a reason for living, she made promises.

During the following sessions she found that she constantly felt rejected by her mother:

I remember when I was a child she would get angry when I tried to hug her, saying, “Get away! Can’t you see that I’m busy? You are such a pest!”
That made me feel bad, it was as if I were doing something bad. Both my father and my mother always criticize me. They are perfectionists, and nothing that I do is enough. And if they do approve of something they still find some little imperfection in everything I say, everything I do or in the way I look. My father is very methodical. Anything that is outside what he believes is wrong. He criticizes my beliefs and way of living. My mother is not quite as difficult. She criticizes the way I dress, the way I comb my hair, the way I speak. For example when I am all dressed up and my friends think I look good, she always has something negative to say, “You look nice, but fix your hair. You’re not going out like that are you?”

If I am at my ideal weight and working out, my mother will say, “You should go on a diet. You’re fat.”
And as for my father, when I don’t agree with his ides about life or work, he will say things like, “I don’t understand you. Your ideas about life are very strange, you’re never going to grow up ..., you’re a misfit…, you would make anyone crazy…”
My mother used to tell me that she would have like to have studied in the university and studied piano as well as work. She tells me that I am very lucky and she would have like to be in my shoes. Sometimes she has even said that she is envious of me in a good way. When I was a child she would say, “You should be thankful for what we give you. I would have like to have the opportunities you have had. I never had what you have.”
She never asked if I wanted to study piano or not, she just made me go. Actually I never liked it, I continued playing to please her. Once I received a prize (nothing important) for the way I played at a recital, but my mother instead of congratulation me said, “You played well, but your shoes didn’t match your dress, and it was very obvious when you were sitting at the piano.”
She was the only one who didn’t like them…As hard as I try I can never make them proud of me. My grades at school and in the university were good, but they were never enough. They constantly reminded me that my brother had better grades than me and that I should be like him. I could do nothing right.
I don’t know why I couldn’t satisfy them. I feel like a loser. I try to overcome this, but I can’t. One thing that always happens is that just as I am reaching my goal, something happens or I simply walk away from I have worked so hard to achieve. I walk away from everything…I don’t finish anything, I lose interest. I always feel like a failure. I always think, “What would my parents say?” I’m afraid of their criticism, their shame and blame. I would like them to be proud of me, but I just can’t achieve that.

We must remember that one of the promises that Martha made to her mother when she was still in the womb was: “You are going to be proud of me”. Her failure to fulfill this promise makes her feel that she is failing in her false reason for living, since her promise made her believe that she was born to satisfy her parents. Martha will never be able to please her jealous mother-her mother is filled with the desire to do many things like those Martha does, and this makes fulfilling her promise impossible.

When I started university I stopped living with my parents. I started to study but I was lonely. I felt guilty because of the enormous economic sacrifice my parents said they made to keep me in the university. I visited them every weekend. I always had the feeling that I was doing something wrong by being away from home, it was as if I hadn’t asked permission.
I graduated and came back to live in the same city, but I didn’t move back home. I was somewhat successful and could have been even more, but I didn’t believe in myself. I was offered various jobs…I was so afraid of not being able to do them that I turned them down or simply didn’t go to the interview. The job I took was mediocre and I knew it. Even though my bosses congratulated me on my work I was very harsh with myself and I was never satisfied with what I did. I have never believed in myself.
My parents did not like the man I married. We worked together. I knew that he was as mediocre as I was. I thought he was the perfect match. Even though physically I didn’t like him we got on very well. But we were becoming alcoholics, we drank every day. Our relationship started to fall apart, and we were divorced shortly after my son as born. Once again I felt like a failure and ashamed. I knew what my parents were going to say, “We told you not to marry him …”
For the first time I felt like they were behind me, they let me move back home. I worked all day and my mother took care of my son…He stopped calling me Mom. I was angry, but felt guilty because I thought that our staying with my parents was a burden on them. I also felt guilty with my son for leaving him without a father, so I let him call my parents Dad and Mom and I let him call me by my name.”
Years later I met the man I live with now. I feel lost with him. My parents love him but I can’t take any more of him. He criticizes me all the time, he’s arrogant-he is a lot like my mother-he has taken all my possessions, and even the little dignity I had. My son does not like him. I’m afraid to leave him because I don’t know what my parents will think. I have nowhere to go and I would have to back with them. I don’t want to because I know they will be very disappointed-once again their daughter is a failure.

It is impossible for Martha to succeed at any job because that would make her mother jealous. (Remember that the girl or adolescent-negative-part that feel jealous or envious of their children makes the child feel guilty and believe that he is doing something bad). Martha’s guilt, together with her promise to be good, made it impossible for her to succeed at anything because this would make her mother jealous. Her mother criticized her, making her feel guilty and a failure as her false purpose for living-her promise- was not being fulfilled. As a result Martha believed that she did not deserve to be happy and successful.
On the other hand, Martha’s promise to always stay with her mother made it impossible for her to find good jobs that would prevent her from being with her mother. She subconsciously chose to marry a man she didn’t like; first because she didn’t deserve anything better since she had failed to keep her promise, and secondly because this person’s “mediocrity” (as Martha termed it) guaranteed an eventual break-up of the relationship so that Martha could return home to care for her mother. In addition, leaving the spouse that her mother would have wanted left her free of her mother’s envy.
Finally Martha’s inability to make her parents proud of her led her to believe that she was unworthy of anything. She allowed her son to stop calling her Mom and she found a second spouse who took everything she had. Martha allowed this as a punishment for having failed to keep her promise to be good, for getting divorced and again failing to make her parents proud of her. Her punishment for this bad behavior was to choose her second spouse who took all her possessions and made her afraid. Martha’s Enemy Within led her to believe that she deserved nothing, not even her freedom.
Martha was trapped. She would never be able to keep her promise to make her parents proud of her. If Martha excelled at any activity and thus fulfill that promise, she ran the risk of making her mother jealous; as a result her mother would be unhappy, meaning Martha would have failed in keeping her other promise to be good. Martha could only fail to keep her promises, leading to guilt and punishment.
When the individual fails to fulfill his false purpose for living (promises), he often has a fantasy of dying. The Enemy Within through the Lying Mind, hands down its final sentence: The purpose for which I was born is to please my parents and I have failed. As such I am going to die.
But who wants to die? Nobody! Fortunately we cling to life. Our Superior Being invites us to move forward, even as the weight of our unfulfilled promise continues to remind us that we are bad. So we negotiate with life: punishment instead of death.
Innumerable punishments, both large and small, are chosen as payment for our right to live. How many people laugh, enjoy speaking of their illnesses or accidents, and feel better after having survived a surgery, broken bone, or after a bad accident? This is because we have paid the quota of pain for the false evil that allows us to continue living.

Promises made after birth:
Lilly: I was six years old when my older sister, a daughter from my mother’s first marriage, died in childbirth. We were at home when my mother received the news. She cried so hard, I asked her what had happened, and she said, “Your sister has died and I have died with her.”
I was very frightened, and said, “No, don’t die! I’ll do everything you say, I’ll be good, I’ll always be with you and take care of you. Don’t leave me!”
She dressed in mourning for three years and constantly reminded me, “If it weren’t for you I would die. How I wish you were like your sister!”
I always did what she wanted. I studied Law like she asked me. Finally I got married. She didn’t want me to, I don’t know why. It was as if I were still living with my parents. I went to see them every day and spent the afternoons with my mother. When I got pregnant she was furious, and said, “Why did you get pregnant? Children only make you die.”
I lost my baby in the fifth month of pregnancy. I was hospitalized for a week, between life and death. Three years later I got pregnant again, and I almost died during childbirth.”

The main promise Lilly made was related to total obedience, a strong promise. One of her mother’s wishes was for Lilly to be like the older daughter who had died. While Lilly was with her mother and wasn’t married she did everything her mother said. However the moment she married she broke her most important promise, “I’ll do everything you say…”. Even though she somewhat kept her promise to take care of her by visiting her every day and living with her as she had when she was single, she married against her mother’s wishes. The moment she got pregnant without her mother’s approval she again broke her promise, and Lilly’s Enemy Within took her mother’s message, “Children only make you die,” and put it together with Lilly’s promise to do what her mother said. As a result Lilly tried to please her mother by fulfilling one of her mother’s wishes, to be like her older sister and put her life in danger. Fortunately Lilly is a very strong woman, and managed to defeat her Enemy Within by not dying like her sister as a result of her pregnancy.

Lilly continues:
When my son was four years old I was divorced. My husband wanted us to move to another city to live and I refused. He didn’t want to change his job but I couldn’t abandon my parents. They needed me! So I was divorced. I went back to live with my parents and later bought a little house next to theirs. I always took care of them.
Years later my mother got sick, she had a weak heart, and from that time on I took care of her. When she died my brother blamed me, saying that I didn’t do my best to save her. It wasn’t true; I took her to the best specialists but they couldn’t do anything. I was depressed for two years after she died. I had just enough energy to go to work; as soon as I got home I would go to bed and sleep. I didn’t want to do anything. Shortly after that I developed coronary problems and was operated on. Since then I feel like I am dying.

Lilly got a divorce because she didn’t want to live far from her parents. Her promises were too strong for her to leave them. She fell into a deep depression when her mother died, because she lost her false reason for living when she lost her mother. Another promise was to always be with her and take care of her so she wouldn’t die. When her mother died, Lilly’s Enemy Within gave her the way to always be with her mother: she developed coronary disease. Although the causes were completely different from those of her mother--according to the doctors, Lilly’s problems were due to chemical substances that Lilly worked with-she was operated on just like her mother. According to the promise, the next step would be to die in order to be with her, as she promised. And this is why since her mother died Lilly has felt that she is dying.

Paullina.- Since the time she was married, Paullina’s sexual relations have been very painful due to very little lubrication. Despite medical treatment, pain is always present.

When I was ten years old I heard my mother tell my sister, who was 15, that the only thing a man wants is sex, and that women have to be careful and never do anything we might regret. I promised myself that I would never have sex, because I didn’t want to be bad.
Years later I was married, with my parents’ permission, in the church as well as in a civil ceremony. But I always felt bad and guilty after having sex. I felt that I was doing something wrong and forbidden; I felt dirty.
I have constantly suffered small vaginal infections, problems with lubrication. I didn’t say anything to my husband because I didn’t want to hurt him, but the truth is I always blamed him because the only thing men want is sex.
Now I understand that it was my mother’s words and the promise that made me feel guilty. I promised myself that I would never have sex, to do so would be bad. And since I now have a sexual relationship I am bad and I am punishing myself with vaginal problems.

Promises made as an adult

April 7:
Ben: From the time my mother died, ten years ago, I began to put on weight. I gained 50 pounds. I have tried all kinds of diets and I cannot lose weight. I don’t feel comfortable, she always hated it when I was overweight.
My mother loved her younger sister, Lucille, like a daughter. Even when she was married she was always worried about her. It seems her husband mistreated her and my grandfather said that his son-in-law would be the death of her. I think that that is why my mother was always so worried about Lucille.
When she was dying my mother asked me, as one of her last wishes, to take care of Lucille. I didn’t object; I have always loved my aunt very much, she’s like my second mother.
For many years Lucille and her husband lived alone. They only had one son and he lives in a different country. So I decided that the best thing would for her to come and live with me. Her husband was very stubborn and refused come for a long time; I was very worried because they were almost 80 years old and had no one to take care of them. In addition I lived far away from them, too far to be constantly visiting. I didn’t know what to do.

August 19:
Lucille and her husband have finally come to live close to me. Their son has moved into this area and they have agreed to live with him. For a while I was not as worried; they are closer to me and I can visit them more often.

November 26:
Finally I’ve beaten the old coot! Even though it’s only his remains I have finally got them to come with me! I offered to bury him in the family plot with my grandparents and my mother. They accepted because he loved my grandparents. At least dead they will be with me. I immediately tried to convince Lucille to live with me, because I don’t think her son can take care of her.

January 8:
I can stop worrying now. My cousin, Lucille’s son, is moving out of the country and I have convinced her to move in with me. I am so happy! This takes a real load off of me; I’ve been trying for ten years to get her to move in with me--I thought I would never make it.

April 5:
I’ve done it! Lucille is living with me. I feel so much easier, less stressed-I’ve kept my promise. From the time she arrived she has watched my food, and in only three months I’ve lost 35 pounds.

Ben had a list of promises that he prioritized. The promise that we described was reviewed at the end of his treatment, it was more his luck that everything worked out so that he could keep it.
Ben’s mother did not accept her son being overweight, she disliked it very much. As such when she died and he could not keep his promise to take care of Aunt Lucille, he began to gain weight as a form of punishment. Finally, when Lucille decided to live with him and he could finally keep his promise, he rapidly began to lose weight and stop punishing himself.