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	Patrick Zeigler Founder of the All Love / SKHM system
Graham and Teresa have explored the world of SKHM to a depth that few have been able to achieve, and, most importantly, they have been able to share their experience with others through their words in the most beautiful way. Those who read about their experience will be initiated in a journey of the heart. I highly recommend allowing yourself to experience that journey.

How the past affects the present When I was eleven, my mother went back to work at sea. She was away for nine months of the year. She used to bring me presents, and tell me how much she had missed me, but when she went each time, I was still frightened that she might never come back. At times, I felt totally miserable, rejected and abandoned. If she loved me more, maybe she would not have gone away? Perhaps I had done something wrong. I would go to the docks or to the airport when she was flying out to meet the ship, and stand choking back the tears, waving until she finally disappeared from sight. It took me about twenty years to realise why, whenever I drove by the docks, or took someone to the airport, I would feel so desolate and lonely. Maybe it surprised my friends, that I would hang around with them in the check-in queue for ages, trying to put off the moment of saying goodbye, and then bolt away quickly with tears in my eyes. I thought I was simply upset at them leaving. But it was not really much to do with them at all, because at that moment I was a little kid crying for her mother. I just didn’t know that then. I didn’t know it because I had repressed the pain I felt as a child when my mum used to go. I had forgotten the child-logic which said, ‘She is gone so she can’t really love you. If she doesn’t love you, you are not lovable.’ I did not realise that, unbelievably, as an adult, I still believed it. I could not see that friends leaving brought back the feelings I had experienced when she had left. This is the essence of transference, one of Freud’s greatest concepts. It shows how we are prisoners of the past. And, it shows how the energy of old emotions stays with us, ready to be triggered at any moment by somebody or something vaguely similar in the present. Any of those times at the airport with friends, I could have asked myself simple questions about my own feelings. ‘Why am I so upset? Is this all about them?’ No, it’s about me. ‘Is this all about now?’ No, it’s about the past. ‘When did I feel like this before?’ When my mum used to go away. ‘How did I feel then?’ Lonely, frightened, rejected, unloved. Allowing myself to acknowledge and truly feel the pain of those repressed feelings, I could have given myself a chance to release and heal them. Our unconscious mind knows what we need to heal, because it knows what has hurt us in the past. It wants us to admit that we feel bad, find out what really hurts, and do something about that. It keeps giving us opportunities to do this, and we keep choosing not to take them. I missed the opportunity, time and time again, of healing that old pain. Transference affects all of our relationships. We think that what we are feeling is about this person, now, in this situation. In fact, this person is just the trigger that brings up the pain we have felt in the past, in similar situations, about other people: often our parents, but not necessarily. We forget that as children there were many things we just could not handle. Children feel small, powerless and vulnerable - because they are. They are sensitive to the emotions of the people around them, they often feel them - but they do not understand them. They have experienced so little; their frame of reference is so small. Everything that happens in their world has enormous significance, and they are bound to take everything personally. Mum says, ‘Don’t do that!’ Junior wants to do it. When he can’t, he gets angry. He is furious with Mum. ‘I am angry’ becomes ‘I am angry with you.’ We learn to project all our feelings onto others. I am upset because he said something nasty. I am angry because you will not do what I want. Feelings become seen as a response to someone or something external to us, rather than as an internal response to our own changing world, a way of registering what is going on inside ourselves. We attach feelings to others, but really, they are ours. They are not caused by other people. They are a whole range of inner experiences that we have never learned to properly interpret or manage; that we have never learned to take responsibility for. Each person is capable of feeling every single human emotion, from joy and love, to grief and hatred. We each have to find a way of experiencing feelings without being overwhelmed by them. To understand how they drive us, but not to be driven by them. Each of us has to find his or her own way of dealing with the sadness, jealousy, insecurity, fear, anger, loss, loneliness and disappointment that is part of being human, part of living in this world. Emotions are not unique to any individual; yet, each individual, eventually, has to learn to face them. We take everything so personally, yet these emotions are in a sense impersonal, they act within us all. Deep within us, in our unconscious mind, our intuitive wisdom, we know that this is so. Our unconscious mind keeps engineering situations that will bring those yet unresolved emotions to our conscious awareness again. It keeps giving us a chance to re-experience the pain that we have suffered, so that we can acknowledge it, heal it and let it go. We are drawn to situations in which these basic emotions and conflicts will be re-experienced. We are drawn to relationships that will bring up our unresolved issues repeatedly. At an unconscious level, we pick people who are going to trigger those emotions we have not yet learned to deal with. For instance, if I am a bully, I will keep being drawn to those who are unassertive. If I am insecure, I will attract those who are afraid of commitment. If I am afraid of expressing my feelings, I will seek out those who are also afraid. Until, finally, I overcome my fears and start doing the things I need to learn how to do. Of course, when these emotions re-surface, if we do not consciously decide to work on them, then we will just push them back down again, and pretend they do not exist. With no more conscious insight than previously, the unconscious mind has to deal with it in the only way it can, by compelling us to repeat the behaviour of the past, and by bringing out the pain again later, unchanged and still unhealed. This is Freud’s idea of the repetition compulsion. This cycle can only be stopped by a combination of the conscious and the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind brings painful emotions to the surface, and then the conscious mind makes the decision to stay with them and do something about them. Together, the conscious and the unconscious mind can then work on them. In this way, the emotions are released and transformed, and through this process, we are able to change and grow. It is wonderful, really; because knowing this gives us a choice. If we are not aware that this is what is happening, we probably will not learn as much as we could from relationships. We merely repeat old roles and behaviour patterns from the past; we experience the same pain and feelings of rejection, which then further reinforce our core beliefs about our own lack of worth. The painful feelings trigger the same old negative beliefs about ourselves— however, we do not try to explore the pain, and we do not challenge the beliefs. Feeling bad, and believing ourselves unlovable, we then behave in a way that makes it hard for other people to react positively towards us. We do not say how we feel, we withdraw and sulk or get angry and bully them into rejecting us again so we can say to ourselves, ‘Told you so,’ and feel even worse. So, what is the alternative? The alternative is to make a conscious choice just not to repeat blindly the past but to change and take control of our present experiences. This means —admitting our past and present pain (that will be upsetting); telling people how we feel (that can be uncomfortable); challenging our beliefs about our unworthiness (that is painful) and learning to like ourselves (that is hard work). If we can take responsibility for our own feelings rather than merely acting them out, then we are not so vulnerable to feelings of rejection, and other people are likely to react to us in a more positive and supportive way. If we are willing to explore the origins of our feelings, and are able to express those feelings, then we are in fact being given over and over again the opportunity to heal them, and to free ourselves from the pain of the past. Extracts from Energy Works! Initiation without a Master. Authors Teresa Parrott & Graham Crook. Foreword by Patrick Zeigler. ©O Books 2005