The Birds are singing, the sand is perfect under your toes and the waves lap by your feet, delivering the perfect combination of both warm and cool. The summer breeze is gentle, blowing at your back, the sun rays comfort you perfectly, the blue sky is radiant and the sound of the waves, hypnotically soothing. All your senses are filled with pleasure and joy.

It begins with you as an infant. Walking down the BEACH of LIFE: You are the essence of Innocent; open to all of our senses; pure; a tablet that is unwritten upon, yet with deep survival instincts

Your whole focus is gone from joy to focus on the pain Suddenly and alarmingly, the wind, the sun, the breeze, the birds, the sounds of the weaves lapping on the shore all disappear. Your whole focus is on the pain in your toe. You don't know what to do. You are frightened by this new, overwelming and painful sensation. You start to cry in desperation for help, for your caretakers to come and help you. Survival is upper most in your mind. It is all that is on your mind......

Good News! Your caretakers, ever vigilant have seen the whole thing and swoop in, pick you up comfort you and take care of you

They lovingly and quickly clean off the toe, put Neo-Sporin on it and cover it with a band-aid. And Voila . . .

The birds suddenly reappear, the waves are lapping again, the sun is magnificent, and your senses are filled again with the pleasure of life. "Up you go my little courageous warrior" and down the beach you go again. Life is good again, down the glorious Beach of Life you go with your senses filled with relaxed joy... but

The Beach being the beach and you still being young, You inevitably stub your toe again. However, each time is less alarming, if your cartakers are there.

However, each time is less alarming, if your cartakers are there. But this time, and each succeeding time therafter, of which there will be many, a magical phenomenon takes place. Frightened though you may be, each new time you begin to want to learn, to be helpful and participate in your own project of self care, more and more. It's natural. You want to do this project with your caretakers, and your sage caretakers know to be ever so slow, paced perfectly and exquisitely wise, they let you f

You are now learning to take care of yourself, with your caretakers, ever so wisely and gradually allowing you to take over. Just enough so that you are not overwhelmed and maintain your enthusiasm, nor too little as to be encouraging and inspiring for you. It is a perfect balance and relationship of growing ever more independent and capable.

Then you grow up and find a mate and begin the process all over again with your own child! And the circle of life finds you as the caretaker.

You reach the perfect balance of harmony in your life and you return to being Relaxed and Joyful

HOWEVER............ Not everybody had capable, attentive, caring, available, nurturing, devoted caretakers. Imagine that!! Maybe your caretakers were busy with another sibling, or too busy with their own parents, or at work, or gone, or dead, or divorced, or drunk, or drugged out, or in jail, or haven't grown up yet themselves, or too tired, or ignorant, or wrestling with the absence of caretakers in their own life.

For whatever reason, when you were on the Beach of Life crying and scared to death about your stubbed toe with no skills, knowledge or confidence to take care of yourself, your caretakers were not responding to your time of need and maybe they only eventually, after a painfully long wait came to your aid, or maybe they never came to your aid at all.

You say to yourself, "How am I going to get the attention of my caretakers to drop what they are doing and take care of me?" That is when Survival Instinct kicks in, In this Nano-Second of panic, turned into a solution, you resort to the only skill you have - attracting your caretakers.

Here is whereyour life's game, routine, pattern, your approach to getting what you want/need is born. Your only and most important skill, to figure a way to attract your caretakers to come to your aid, was given your support and devotion. "I have got to figure another way to get those buggers to come over here and take care of me. After all, I don't know how to do it myself and I fear I may die if they don't. This is now my life's work," say you to your primitive but totally survival oriented.

So you try different techniques: crying excessively, being annoying or perfect, throwing a rock at them to make them mad, being amazingly kind or really mean, being funny or sullen, being aloof or stupid, being needy or beleagured, being loud or quiet, being really smart or pathetic, being strong or weak, or being any one of many personnas that you think will attract your caretakers.

You will find one or two or even three of them that seem to get them to stop what they are doing or bring them from where they are otherwise engaged and pay attention to you. You grow up believing it, that your chosen method of tricking caretakers into giving you aid, is your only skill and answer; and moreover the only way to get what you want. It becomes part of your character, of who you are as you try your adaption to life, repeatedly, each time that you feel hurt, abandoned or afraid.

adly and tragically you will keep this coping technique, if you stay unconscious about it, for the rest of your life. Most times we find a mate who will, for their own adaptations, at first appear to be a soothing antedote to this poison, only to later be repelled by the notion of responding to your methods of getting what you want. Thus the birth of discord, disharmony and the contemplation of divorce.

The odd thing is that sometimes, it stops working, or becomes less effective at an "attractent" and you resort to more and more gamesmanship to get less and less of what you think you need. You try to find, and often do, a person with whom your game will work. For awhile. and then it doesn't anymore. If you change partners, without changing your methods, you will end up in the next relationship, at the same place and feeling the same disappointment.

If your caretakers weren't there you never learned to put the band-aid on yourself and are under the mistaken illusion that your only skill to keep yourself alive is to attract others to take care of you, believing erroneously that you can't/won't do it yourself. You may spend your life trying to get a partner to come to your aid, in the same way your caretakers did not.

Ironically, we pick such an authenitc substiture caretaker, that they themselves have their own issues about why they are not available to come to your aid. Then you spend your entire relationship trying to trick them into caretaking. Yikes, it is frought with disaster and dysfunction. But I don't need to tell you that, because you probably are experiencing this first hand. So....... This will be your most important work; learning your inner power and competence.

When you do, you will be Free at last, Free at last, thank God Almighty, Free at Last! To Enjoy the Beach!