Will you be my Valentine?

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So what will you be getting your loved one this Valentine’s day? Will it be the same as usual? The question is why are you doing it and what does it mean? February 14th is, we assume, a celebration of love, happiness and relationships. Or is it simply people buying cards flowers, meals and wine as a reflex action; is it just another habit in the year?

So, rather than the cards, chocolates, champagne and flowers that seem to have been the staple gifts for many years, how about we go back to basic’s and send a real valentine. A card that we make or write our self with our own message felt from the heart. This works both ways because, believe it or not, many men want some romance as well.

In the podcast this week we suggested that you ask each other certain questions and Ed has put some, links up that will help you do that. The aim is that you tune into each other all over again. Tuning into each other is what the practise of Tantra is really about. The word Tantra, much famed by Sting, with the promise of prolonged sex, means ‘woven together’. The act and purpose of foreplay is to tune into each other, this is the weaving of Tantra that leads to sensual and sexual pleasure. When woven together two people become one, they merge together in sensual bliss. Well, the best form of foreplay is communication. It is easy to say “I love you” but when did you last tell your loved one what you love about them and why you love them?

My suggestion is that you write your loved one a good old fashioned love letter, or you sit down and actually tell them why and how you love them. It might just bring you closer together.

Take care, be happy and make love not war.

Sean x

Long Distance Love

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Love is an energy that pulls things together just as hate is an energy that pushes things apart. For me love, like gravity, is the glue that holds the universe together. This attractive gravitational pull works at all levels big and small. It holds the moon around the earth and the earth around the sun. It holds the particles to the nucleus in an atom. At a social level it holds families and communities together and in intimacy it keeps couples together.

Whether we call it the law of attraction, the power of gravity or, the profundity of love, it is the infinite power that binds the whole of creation together. So, I think of love as elastic. Once we make a love bond we connect our emotional elastic to anther person. Once connected, we are pulled towards that person. If they move away we follow as the emotional elastic becomes stretched and we are pulled.

Living apart
The elastic is not dependent on distance. We may live very close to someone, in the same house and the same bed, and have little tension or pull in the elastic. We may live apart, either side of the earth and feel the exquisite feeling of the tension of love pulling us back together. The elastic of love knows no distance, but it does know vitality, health and strength.

The issues with couples is not usually the length of the elastic it is the colour or shape of the elastic, different needs create different elastic:

Physical elastic
Physical love may need a lot of physical, even sexual, contact for it to remain healthy. When people are dominated by physical need long distance relationship seldom work, unless the couple are able to anticipate the repeated honeymoon experience of coming back together after a prolonged absence as in sailors or off shore rig workers.

Sensual/Social elastic
May also require physical or sensual contact. However social media can support and maintain the social need in relationships and the idea of long distance sexual relationships, or cyber sex is no longer that uncommon. However, the sensuality of touch, from the held hand to the caressed buttock may be essential to maintain sensual elastic.

Intellectual elastic
At this point distance becomes less of an issue. Intellectual sharing of experiences, playing with ideas and concepts, the writing or reading of poetry and letters, enables the person at the other end of the elastic to become your inspiration and your muse.
I have come across many people who have maintained a loving relationship with a person they have never met and, perhaps never will meet. The extension of the pen pal, the person who writes to someone who is in prison who may never be released.

Emotional/Passionate elastic
Passion may involve physical, or emotional, contact, but the idea of ‘saying it with flowers’ or sending that expensive or seductively personalised gift can maintain and even strengthen the elastic.

Dutiful elastic
The love of rightness or to be righteous, the commitment to duty and fidelity, to being moral and correct is powerful in maintaining a strong elastic bond. This may be as true for the child sent to boarding school, the army officer, the priest, or the dutiful partner.

Intuitive/sensitive elastic
The deep intuitive emotions are about as near as we can get to unconditional love. At its best it is the clearest, purest elastic that requires nothing in return. It is the pure love of love. Its extent is limitless it power total.

Love at a distance
I guess what I am trying to say is that the ability to maintain a distant loving relationship is dependent on feeding the needs of your partner. If the elastic is well and appropriately fed it remains strong. The stronger it is the less likely it is to break.

Perhaps the question we should ask our long distance partner is, what do they need and how will they know that we love them? Once having sorted that out you should ask yourself the same questions and then see how they fit with our partners. The closer the match the better the chance of the relationship surviving.

Have a look at your love elastic and decide how it works for you.

Take care and be happy

Sean x

Memories

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Why Remember Anything?

What is memory for?
Memory happens in all sentient beings. It’s primary function is that of safety. Memory tells us what is safe and what is a threat. When we are able to remember we are able to survive in safety.

Over time we lose memory
Psychologically we remember things because we are emotionally connected to events. This means that the connection is relevant or important. When things or people cease to be relevant we forget who or what they are. This may seem difficult for the person who we forget, it may seem that they are now not important to us. Often the reason that we forget is overload and we have so much to remember that we forget who people are.

However, sometimes when we lose memory we have structural decay. The white matter in the brain is the tissue that connects the grey matter, which is the hardware of the brain. Issues of dementia are when the structure of the brain is breaking down.

How far back can we remember?
Our earliest cognitive memories go back to age 2 to 3 years old. Most of us can remember these early years. Prior to that age our memory is emotional. We may not be able to remember what happened in a logical or visual sense but we can remember what we felt at that time. Often this creates the foundation of later emotional feeling. Perhaps we feel generally anxious, or angry, sad or happy and we say that is just the way that we are. Well it is not. It is simply what we learned when we were little.

The structural memory of the cognitive mind is like an attic, that is full of boxes of memories. It is a repository of information. When the boxes get turned over there is confusion as the contents of the boxes become mixed up. People will actually say “a leopard can’t change it’s stripes”, this is confusion.

Hypnotherapy is the therapy that intervenes in memory. Aversive hypnotherapy is described as suggestive. What that means is the therapy is putting something into a memory box. If someone smokes cigarettes then perhaps we can include the memory of sweaty socks or burning tyres into the memory, so that every time someone put a cigarette in their mouth they experience that horrible taste in their mouth, they are averted from smoking.

Analytical therapy is about taking stuff out of the box. If people have inappropriate associations. perhaps rice pudding has been included in their sex box. This means that there needs to be rice pudding involved for them to become eroticised, then the therapy is about taking this out of the memory.

Advertising and propaganda are about aversive and suggestive memory. They seek to change the memories of the population.

Unwanted memories as intrusive thoughts or flashbacks can become problematical. Such emotional memories happen after trauma or post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. In this case memory is visual and emotional. Therapy involves desensitisation or rewinding of the problematic memory.

The last point is that we are each able to create our future memories, Thoughts become things. When we wake everyday we decide how the day will be. We are creating it in advance. This is forward memory. If we decide that the day will be bad then we are right and it will be. Equally If we decide that the day will be wonderful we are also right. In creating forward memory “thoughts become things”. We have a choice.

Take care, be happy and think positively about the day ahead…Thoughts become things!

Sean x

Why do we fear failure

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The Importance of Failure

We live in a world of opposites that are totally dependent on each other, one cannot exist without the other. Hot and cold, high and low, rough and smooth, light and dark, happy and sad, positive and negative, rich and poor, good and evil, the list is endless. Yet each of these symbiotic twins are relative to each other.

For example something will only seem cold if it is at a lower temperature of what we have labelled hot. Just as something will only seem hot if it is a higher temperature then what we have labelled cold. The difference between these twins is never an ‘actual’ measurement it is a ‘relative’ measurement.

Compared to the ceiling the floor is low. Compared to the sky the ceiling is low. Compared to the moon the sky is low. Compared to the Sun the moon is low. Compared to Alpha Centauri the Sun is low. It is all just the way that we look at it. Which takes me to the symbiotic twin that I want to look at, it is ‘success and Failure’. This has such a profound effect on our self esteem and our ability to function happily in our life.

Like all of these twins this is a matter of opposites. We could not have a concept of success without a concept of failure. Yet, because it is a relative relationship our experience and beliefs will vary.

My concept of success might be your concept of failure.

Let’s say your success is to have one million and for me five hundred would be my success, if you were experiencing my success you would be feeling your failure. I have often said that I see competition as a senseless waste of time. My example is that if nine people embark on the 100 metre dash only one person will experience success while eight people will experience failure.

Ed, and other competitive types tell me this is the wrong way to look at it because the eight that didn’t win the race may have succeeded in other ways. Perhaps the person who continually comes fourth managed to come third so this is a success. Or one runner improved their time and felt success. I guess that even to have competed at a high level meeting at all and to come last might be experienced as success.

Failure could be the mother of invention

I am reminded of Eddison and his quest to invent the light bulb. His problem was finding the right element that would glow without burning out that would create light. He tried over 2000 different elements before he found tungsten that worked. That is over 200 experiences of failure, or was it. I have often thought about his tenacity. At what point would I have conceded failure and given up. Was it that each element that failed spurred him on to try the next in his determination to succeed?

I suspect that it is this concept of failure that is vitally important to our achieving our success. Just as there is no up without down, and there is no success without failure. The point from which we start anything is the down point and the goal that we are aiming for is the up point. When we look up to where we want to be we are setting our goal. Achieving our goal is our success and this is often tied up with our self esteem just as not achieving our goal is our failure and leads to a loss of self esteem.

Learning from our failures

My experience, both personally and working with others, is that that the pain of failure is the spur that creates the energy that drives us towards success. A business person can learn from a bankruptcy so that it never happens again, we come out of a failed relationship with the knowledge that allows us to succeed next time, the injuries that we experience in training enable us to adapt to succeed in the race.

When failures become learning points we learn and grow

I want to challenge the concept of failure and the idea of success. In this world of twinned opposites we need to continually learn from one to achieve the other. So, I prefer to think of “failure” as an opportunity. We don’t have failures we have learning points, that, if used consciously and creatively enable us to move towards our success. In that sense there never are problems only opportunities.

Planning our success

Ok, so if we have a starting point and we have a goal we need to make the journey from one to the other. Most people set the goal too high and then don’t reach it. This is then labelled failure. To make the journey it needs to be broken down into achievable steps that create the path to success.

Forward Base you success

Forward basing is an exercise that I use with individuals, couples and teams who need to achieve a goal. You can do this right now in your kitchen, If it is a team I use a gym hall. On one wall I stick a big sheet of flip chart paper. On this I write where we are up to in the NOW. On the opposite wall I put another sheet of paper. On this I write where we want to get to, this is the GOAL.

The next job is to put sheets of paper on the floor that become the stepping stone from now to the goal. This is the plan. Each step is set at an achievable distance so that with each step there is the feeling of success. Once the steps have been set out we create a timeline along the wall, so that we have steps to take set in a time frame.

None of this is set in stone. The time frame can vary and the steps can move. If one step is not completed we go back to the previous step and either try again or adapt or change it. The point of forward basing is to create a flow on continued success that build self esteem and drives us on to our goal. When we forward base we are able to use success rather than failure as the drive towards our goal.

1. What do you consider to be your failures?
2. How can you turn these into useful learning points?
3. If you were to forward base what would you right on the NOW sheet and what would be on the goal sheet.
4. From this you can create your steps and your timeline.

Failure, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder only you can define your failures and acknowledge your successes. In my own life I have had many learning points. The only failure that I would Identify is when I didn’t attend to the learning points and needed to repeat the lesson. I also acknowledge that I have had many, many successes which makes me a happy person who feels successful.

Take care, be happy

Sean x

Humour and Offence

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In the light of recent events in Paris we thought that it would be timely in this weeks podcast to address the issues of humour and offence. Which I guess begins with the idea of what is humour and what is offence? So I thought I would follow up with this blog.

Humour
This is a natural human emotion that is shared by all people in all parts of the world. Humour is often an emotional release typified by the fact that as a response to laughter our brain secretes happy hormones that will make us feel good. In many situations humour has a stress management function that allows for the release of tension. In some areas that are particularly stressful such as operating theatres, accident and emergency departments and ambulance or police response teams the humour may become very dark. If this humour is heard by people outside of the ‘group’ it may well be experienced as offensive, yet its function for those within the group is vital, it enable them to function.

Physical humour is often about laughing at other people’s physical misfortunes. The programme ‘You’ve Been Framed’ catalogues people falling off things or having accidents in ways that are seen by the viewers as funny. The fact that the incidents can be seriously damaging or life threatening is not taken into account. There is something about other people getting hurt that many of us find endlessly funny.

Social humour is the one that seems to create the most offence. This can become problematic because social humour tends to identify different groups as ‘us’ and ‘them’ but on the basis that one group is denigrated. When I was young the common joke was based around “There was an Englishman, a Scotsman, and an Irishman…” the punchline was always that the English man came out on top while the others were depicted as being stupid or as coming off worst. I don’t know if in Scotland the jokes were told with the roles reversed as in “there was a Scotsman, and Irishman and an Englishman…” but it was the Englishman who came off worst? I hope there were/are.

Self Denigrating humour is often used as form of bonding that intensifies our connectedness with the group. Older people may make a joke out of their poor memory or inability to do something which is another stress management function that others in the group can identify with.

As a child I heard a lot of Jewish humour. There were jokes told by Jews, about Jews, to other Jews, example.

Mani visits Isi who is stripping the wallpaper.
Mani asks “Isi my boy are you redecorating”
Isi looks puzzled and replies
“No I’m moving”.

Intellectual humour is clever, may be sarcastic and often rude. It involves playing with ideas in a unique way.

The once was a man from Porthcawl
Who had a Hexihedronical Ball
It’s molecular weight
Was Pi over eight
Multiplied by the root of F**k all

Offensive humour is when something is designed to put down or hurt other people. Accepting that this may happen accidentally, offensive behaviour is really when it is intended. It is important to realise that we cannot be offended without our permission. Undoubtedly if we are the minority and the majority go out of the way to poor negative humour over us on a daily basis it will wear us down and would be describes as abuse, harassment or bullying.

Learning not to be offended is something that happens with maturity. When an individual, organisation, group, or sect are immature they have thin skins are unable to take or understand the humour that may be aimed at them. As groups mature and feel more confident in who they are, and what they believe, they are able to allow the humour to flow over them or even enjoy and appreciate it.

It is important that we do not go out of our way to offend others, yet we must also ensure that we do not allow others fears or immaturity to stop the magic of free speech. Intolerance, whether it is based in religion, dogma or ideology, if not confronted, will crush the freedom that allows for the development of human evolution.

Not sure who said this but I agree with it.
“The only thing that we should be intolerant of is intolerance”

Check out the link for some more interesting quotes

“Tolerance of intolerance is cowardice.”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali

“Declare your jihad on thirteen enemies you cannot see -egoism, arrogance, conceit, selfishness, greed, lust, intolerance, anger, lying, cheating, gossiping and slandering. If you can master and destroy them, then you will be ready to fight the enemy you can see.”
― Abu Hamid al-Ghazali

Finally, laughter is good. To be able to laugh, lovingly, at yourself and your fellow human beings is a gift. Be mindful and try not to offend others and remember that if we all look after each other we can have heaven on earth right now.

Take care and be happy

Sean x

What is Karma?

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Karma is the process of learning

What goes around comes around.

Everyone gets theirs in the end.

Concepts of Karma are those of the consequences of action. Karma acknowledges that the things that we do have an effect, this is the consequence. Attached to that is our responsibility for what we do and the effect that it has.

Often karma is mistaken as a law of retribution. But like most laws in the universe karma is neutral it is not concerned whether or not the effects of what we do lead to good things or bad things. Just like gravity, which has a universal effect on all things, karma is always in operation. It is true that if we treat others well then the likelihood is that they will treat us well in turn, this is good karma. If we are treated badly because we have treated others badly, this is bad karma.

But we have a choice to allow the negativity of others to flow by so that we do not become attached to it. This is letting go of emotional negative attachments or the forgiveness as described in step one of the Live In The Present book. We have a choice as to whether or not we become involved in karma’s. In this way we are responsible for how we feel about all that happens to us, even the most horrible and dreadful things.

When things happen to us rather than seeing them as hurtful or bad things, perhaps we should just view things as a neutral event. Or might even see them as useful things from which we might grow.

We don’t have problems we have learning opportunities

Often, when I work with people who are in difficult circumstances, the therapy is about them realising their own responsibility that they have for their situation. Many of us want to blame others for how we are. It will always be true that the things that we experience will have an effect on us, but we have responsibility as to what that effect is.

We are never effected by events, it is our response to those events that is the effect

Because of this we are intimately tied up in our own karma and can never really blame others for how we feel or for what has happened. However we can choose to get our own back, get involved in retribution and vendetta. By doing this we feed and build our negative attachments or karmas.

We are all the sum total of the habits that we have accumulated since our birth. This is our karma and magically we can change it in the blink of an eye by changing our habits and our responses.

Take care, be happy and let go

Sean x

New Beginnings Require Endings

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Our collective psyche is filled with the idea that one thing follows another, when someone dies and then a baby is born we see it as an ending and a beginning. We say things like ‘when one door closes another one opens’. The magical idea of endings and beginnings is with us throughout life. In the past, I feel, that we were better at marking these rites of passage as we moved from one stage to another in life.

So here we are at another New Year, another new beginning, it is 2015

Happy New Year!!!

To get into, and to get the most benefit from 2015 you will need to let go of 2014 to enable you to move onto your desired present. Too many of us drag our negative baggage around year after year, long after we should have just let it all go. The bottom line is that baggage wears us down, saps our energy and our joy and stops us moving forward. Holding onto the past often creates a state of depression.

So my suggestion to you, is that before you step into the New Year, take some time and review all that has happened in this last year. Acknowledge it all. All that was good and all that was bad. Don’t question it or worry about it, write it down, a list of the goods and a list of the bad. And then with as much love as you can muster let all the negative stuff go. You might need to burn the list and watch it turn into smoke.

It is useful, though often difficult, to appreciate that even the worst possible disasters and traumas that we endure teach us things and enable us to grow. If we have the ears to hear and eyes to see things all that we learn is never bad, they are all ways of us learning about who we are and what we need. In that sense nothing bad can ever happen to us, unless we allow our self to see it that way.

So before you even think about New year resolutions and what you will do in the future, how about you make a decision to let go of the past. Time to put it down?

Ok, so now you can step into the New Year, into your new future, unencumbered by the past.

Happy New year.

Take care

Sean x

Pause for thought!

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Our collective psyche is filled with the idea that one thing follows another; when someone dies and then a baby is born, we see it as an ending and a beginning. We say things like, “when one door closes, another one opens”. The magical idea of endings and beginnings is with us throughout life. In the past, I feel that we were better at marking these rites of passage as we moved from one stage to another in life.

When I am working with people, I see it as so very important that they are able to let go of what has been, to enable them to move on to their desired present. Too many of us drag our baggage around year after year, long after we should have just let it all go. The bottom line is that baggage wears us down and stops us moving forward, and creates states of depression.

So my suggestion to you is that, before you step into the New Year, you review all that has happened in this last year, acknowledge it all, the good and the bad, do not question it or worry it, just let it go with as much love as you can muster. Even the worst possible disasters and traumas teach us things if we have ears to hear and eyes to see, and things that we learn are never bad. In that sense, nothing bad can ever happen to us, unless we allow it to.

So before you even think about New Year resolutions and what you will do in the future, how about you make a decision to let go of the past. Time to put it down and Live in the Present.

Happy New Year. Let’s make it a belter.

Take care,

Sean x

The True Meaning of Christmas

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Christmas is here – bring on the light

What will it be like for you this year?

Is it a religious commemoration, a coming together of family and friends, a joyful time for children and young people, a time for giving and receiving, time to let your hair down and have a jolly? Office parties, champagne and chestnuts roasting on an open fire?

For some it may not be such a good time. Perhaps we have the awareness that there are those who are no longer with us. Christmas can be a time of loss and bereavement. It may be that there is really no one left and that you have no choice but to spend the day alone. Christmas can be an unhappy time.

For Christians Christmas is the festival that commemorates the birth of Christ, hence the mass for Christ. However, the previous belief systems had festivals that were celebrated at this time of year and existed long before the birth of Jesus. The festivals at this time of year were acknowledging the end of the longest night and the start of the lengthening day. It is the concept, often referred to is both religious, and psychological texts, as a time when we are coming out of the darkness into the light.

These celebrations of the darkness of winter turning toward the light of spring was the solstice for the Druids and Yule for the pagans. Though the timings are slightly different the same concept is there for Hindus in Diwali, the festival of light, and in Islam there is Ramadan and Eid.

Christianity piggy backed on the Solstice festivals to create the celebration of Christmas. Most authorities suggest that the birth of Jesus was actually later than December 25th.

But, whatever you are celebrating at this time of year, it may be a religious or pagan or simply the celebration of the coming together of family and friends, not unlike the gypsy horse fair, it is a time for the connection of people and the acknowledgement of society, community and, humanity.

Getting into the spirit of good will

At this time of year in the run up to Christmas people tell me how they will be required to spend the day, perhaps sitting around the dinner table, with people that the don’t like. This is where the good will comes in. It may take all your powers of forgiveness and your ability to live the law of allowing. That is, allowing people to be what they are and not needing them to be different or what you want them to be.

If you haven’t already go onto YouTube and listen to “Dominique the Donkey”. It might make you laugh or get stuck rattling around your head like a pea in a tin. When you are with someone who is driving you round the bend just sing it to yourself in your head and smile.

If you can, have a good one.

Take care

Sean x

What to do when you’ve been betrayed

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The concepts of betrayal come from the idea of trust, which we have spoken about before. Trust is, at least for me, a concept that cannot be maintained. Trusting people shackles them to a set of behaviours and the assumption that they will never change and be forever constant in what we want them to be, this is seldom possible. People change, develop and grow with time and are never the same from one day to the next. The people that we trust the most, and therefore assume that they will not let us down are family and friends.

If you have been following our work at Live In the Present you will understand our emphasis on the need for forgiveness to minimise the negative effects of when trust breaks and people let us down. Though, for many, it can be hard to let go of negative attachments especially when the person has been close or is family.

“It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend”
(William Blake)

Betrayal is loss of trust with knobs on. Betrayal seems one whole size bigger than trust, in that, the word betrayal suggest, to me, that someone has deliberately gone out of their way to do something to me that is injurious to either me or my reputation.

Betrayal can be totally destructive and is something that we might expect from our enemies but not from our family or friends. When the betrayer is close to us the effect is all the much greater. Many people that I work with, often when going through a relationship break up, would say that the only true betrayal is from someone that has been loved, cherished, respected and trusted.

“The saddest thing about betrayal is that it never comes from your enemies”
(daily quote)

Betrayal, in the sense of being let down, or letting down, comes in a few varieties. (thefreedictionary.com)

1. Treason is to aid an enemy of one’s nation, friend, family, company and so on or to be a traitor or to betray one’s country. In many countries treason remains a capital offence. The phrase “My enemies enemy is my friend” suggests to me that treason is in the eye of the beholder in the same way that “one persons terrorist is another persons freedom fighter”. It depends which side you are on as to whether you feel that the person is either a traitor or a hero.

2. The role of the spy is always that of betrayal, depending on which side you are on they will be hero or foe. The spies role is in discovering or handing over information or, to expose, a nation, company, or a friend, treacherously to an enemy. This sounds very grand and a bit 007, but treachery can be equally true of the gossip network in any group. Back biting and “stabbing people in the back” can be found in many social settings and are often the negative reactions of opposing group as ‘us’ and ‘them’. Do you belong or don’t you? Are you in or out? Once social groupings are established “Those who are not for us are against us”. Gossip often includes sharing secrets and confidences behind someone’s back which is often seen as betrayal and treachery.

3. To have an affair, or to engage in other infidelities, is to break a promise that has been agreed between us. It is to be disloyal to the trust that has been placed in us by our partner. Those relationships that are “solemnised” in Church or Registry Office are recorded contracts accompanied by verbal declarations and promises of intent. To break the terms of such contracts is a legal matter, marriage is, after all, a legal business, but the betrayal that is so painful is emotional and may never be resolved. Perhaps our partner strays or leaves us for another unintentionally, it just happened like in the song “Twenty Four Hours from Tulsa”. Deliberate seduction is a different matter.

4. To seduce someone and then forsake them is more common than we think. Seduction is not just a sexual event. It is what happens to us when we visit the car showroom and walk out with the car that we never intended to buy. The sales person made us feel, if only for a while, that we were so important and had the knack of making us feel so good that we fell in the heat of the moment and was consumed by their passion. Of course once we re-enter the showroom and they have had their wicked way with us and have nothing more to gain, we are treated completely differently we have ceased to be their love object we have been rejected in their betrayal.

5. The “let down” is when someone has disappointed our expectations. Perhaps they promised us that they would do something for us, complete a task, look after us in some way and then we find that they have not done it. What they said, what they promised was all hot air and, worst of all we discover that they never intended to do it in the first place. Just like the perfect conman they looked us in the eye and with total narcissism they lied and we believed them. Where I came from this was described as “being taken up the cleaners”.

I could go on and on but I think you get the point. For me betrayal is distrust with intent. The person meant it to happen it was a deliberate act that was designed for either their gain or our loss. Betrayal is the ultimate act of hurt and hatred, (is “hurtred” a word? If not it should be).

Anyway, if you go back to step one in the Live In the Present book it begins with forgiveness. The only way out of hate and hurt and the after effects of betrayal is forgiveness. It is then that you can let it go.

Take care and be happy

Sean x