PART I

In this article, I explain how the quality of our lives turns on how we manage our personal boundaries. Over thirty years of research and experimentation has led me to an important conclusion: The main purpose of our deeper intelligence is the dynamic management of our Personal Boundary – that’s how critically important it is. Of course, this begs the obvious question: Why are we not using our full set of marbles to manage our boundaries, and therefore our lives? Well, shock of shocks: It’s because of our strongest beliefs. Beliefs are not only the worst tool for managing our lives because of their incredibly poor computing power, they further dumb us down by blocking access to the actual thinking part of our mind – what I call our Common Natural Sense (aka our Onboard Personal Guidance System). To put this in perspective, take a moment to reflect on religious fundamentalism, political extremism, and the MAGA folks pushing so aggressively for a religious dictatorship in the U.S.A, yet with zero understanding of who is controlling them and for what purpose.  

~~~~~~~~~~~

If you like dogs more than people, you may have experienced one too many codependent relationships, which is why you might be single and very suspicious of your fellow human. After two of my own life-crushing humdingers, my philosophy became for a good long while: twice burned, forever shy. After all, healing from Relationship PTSD is no less a task than a veteran of war recovering from shellshock, and in my case included odd facial twitches and a spate of nightmares lasting years (not to mention a life-threatening brain hemorrhage and financial ruin times three). During those dark and horrid years my thoughts ran something like: Wtf is wrong with me? Oddly enough, a careful study of Nature set me on my own healing journey toward empowerment.[1]

Nature is literally everything around us, so why not listen and learn?

Prior to the grain elevator and the rise of civilization, our species paid respectful attention to Nature as a guide for living, and for good reason: Nature is super-intelligent and capable of moving smoothly forward in spite of ice ages, global flooding, volcanic catastrophes, and massive asteroids crashing down from the firmament. Remnants of our deferential relationship with the Natural World appear in the Far East in the form of Yoga and Tai Chi wherein the various poses reflect the ‘way of being’ of other animals – the downward dog, the cobra, the snail, the pigeon, the crane, and so on. Likewise, for over 40,000 years in North America, the First Nations paid close attention to the Natural World for insight and wisdom. That we are ‘of the Earth’ is indisputable, and being of the Earth makes a strong, simple case to humbly observe the Natural World – after all, how can we fit into Nature and live harmoniously and sustainably if we violate Nature’s basic principles? Given that our species is rapidly destroying the complex eco-systems upon which our own lives depend, it’s clear to me that something is seriously dumbing our species down – but what?

The pragmatic wisdom of a single cell

Not long ago I had an insight: Single cells are the building blocks of life. Could it be that everything we need to know regarding how to live our very best lives – even within the stresses and strains of modern civilization – can be found in the basic living strategies of a single cell? It’s amazing what comes of asking weird questions, like for example this intriguing bumper sticker: Everything I needed to know about life, I learned from a single cell…

I want you to imagine a single cell, yes, a single cell with all of its bits and pieces – from the cell membrane and its outward cilia, through to the cytoplasm, the microtubules, the Golgi apparatus, the centrioles, the lysosomes, the mitochondrion, the ribosomes, the chromatin… and finally down into the nuclear membrane and the nucleolus. Amazingly, a human body contains over 30,000,000,000,000 (that’s 30 trillion!) of these microscopic critters. While I hope you appreciate this Biology 101 refresh, my real point is that a single cell holds the simple secret to living optimally. What’s really cool is that you don’t have to know any Latin to cash in on these cellular secrets to life, though I must confess I have been studying Latin on Duolingo wherein everything is weirdly pronounced with an Italian accent???

Let’s have a look at that single cell…

A single cell looking to hook up – hopefully with greater success after reading this article 😉

If you get rid of all the Latin mumbo-jumbo that describe a single cell, and boil everything down to its functional essence, you are left with what the cell as a whole does for a living: the cell intelligently manages its ‘personal boundary’ in relation to the world around it. In practice, this boundary management involves letting in what optimizes the functioning of the cell and letting out what would otherwise hamper optimal functioning, all the while keeping out harmful, extraneous things. In other words, nutrients are let in, the by-products of spent nutrients are let out, and certain things are entirely blocked from entering. The reason why the body can exist across time in a dynamic state of healthy equilibrium is because the vast majority of our 30 trillion cells are doing this simple in/out dance of energy, and with utter precision, meanwhile I can’t skip and chew gum.

At a much larger level than a single cell, our organs likewise have their own ‘personal boundaries’ and do exactly the same thing – they let in what is necessary and healthful and expel what is no longer of any functional use and might otherwise clog up the system, while at the same time blocking things that have no business entering. If we expand our analysis to the largest level of boundary management, we end up with the sack of skin that encases the full measure of our dynamic symphony of over 30 trillion cells. You can conceive of life, therefore, as one big onion possessed of layers and layers of flexible boundaries intelligently managed across the entire span of the Natural World. Yes, just imagine it: super-intelligent boundaries all vibrating in relation to each other in a magnificent dance of energy and awareness – which is why a person can suddenly kick their heels together and feel a big burst of joy, without consciously knowing why.

Here is the critical point: When a cell can no longer manage its own boundary, it becomes extraordinarily stressed and ultimately dies (sound familiar). In short, optimal health for all living things rests on the capacity to intelligently manage a ‘personal boundary’, whether this boundary relates to a lone cell (or one of those icky bits and pieces within a cell which likewise have their own boundaries to manage), a critical organ or a complete organism like a human being, or for that matter, the recently discovered Grimpoteuthis, or Dumbo Octopus seen here listening intently to a radio broadcast of Walt Disney’s Dumbo…

A Grimpoteuthis

All that said, let’s scale up this discussion…

Codependency in Humans: It’s all about the boundaries.

As I have been intimating, codependency arises out of a mismanagement of the critical interface that is central to everything we do: our personal boundary. In fact, whether we are stressed to the hilt or relaxed and ostensibly living the ‘good life’, our stance in life is determined in large part by our capacity to manage our personal boundary in a flexible and intelligent manner.

What this means in practice is no more complex than being able to authentically say ‘yes’ and authentically say ‘no’ in such a way that we feel little or no resentment. Think about this for a moment… If you really want to say no to someone or something, and you feel incapable of doing so, you will feel stressed; similarly, if you feel that you want something reasonable from someone (like greater intimacy from your partner, or a pay raise at work) and you just can’t advocate on your own behalf, you will inevitably feel stressed. Within the realm of our social relationships, what goes unsaid and unasked will fester as stress, and in turn, foster resentment.  

On the other hand, there are those among us who only think about themselves: Without a thought regarding the needs of others, they take way too much for themselves. Have you ever dated a narcissist, or watched the series Dirty John, or for that matter, paid attention to the corporate greed that is literally off the charts? I recently read that if a single monkey kept 90% of all the bananas to itself at the expense of their fellow monkeys, scientist would study this odd monkey in hopes of discovering what went so wrong; however, when humans do exactly the same thing, they make the cover of Forbes magazine. As we will see, taking way too much for oneself at the expense of others is a glaring red flags that screams, Disempowerment! Only our beliefs make us believe that such men represent power and success when in fact they are operating well below their full human potential. To illustrate the irrationality of the rise of the billionaire class, just imagine for a moment your heart becoming stingy with its blood and treated it like a miserly gold to be horded for the sole purpose of self-aggrandisement. How long would you live, or rather, how rapidly would you die?

Whether we give too much and take too little, or take too much and give too little, if we want to live in tune with Nature and extend our time here on Earth – and improve the quality of our collective lives – we have to listen to Nature. And Nature’s counsel is wise and simple for it counsels us to manage our boundaries wisely by giving what we authentically can and taking what we authentically need. In fact, we are designed by Nature to be not only content with very little, but joyful.  

The link between codependency and disempowerment          

The reason why codependency conjures such graphic terms as victim, perpetrator, savior, martyr, placater, blamer, narcissist, sociopath, and just plain ‘asshole’ is because it is the most strident bellwether of our own disempowerment. As I will explain, first comes disempowerment, then comes codependency as its stress-generating, self-sustaining boots on the ground.

Within the realm of the Art & Science of Belief, disempowerment shows itself as a failure to manage personal boundaries in a flexible and commonsensical manner that is respectful of both self and other. Being respectful of both self and other in our daily interactions sounds like a noble goal, something to which most people might wish to aspire, at least in theory. What, then, gets in the way of this simple, honorable goal of treating everyone fairly (including oneself) with empathy and compassion, but also with a respectful firmness when necessary – as in respectfully holding oneself accountable, and even disappointing others by refusing their demands.   

The inhibitor to this paradisal idea of caring well for oneself and others (including the Natural World) is a little known, shrouded struggle within each of us. This internal struggle rages between antiquated, inflexible, unexamined, irrational beliefs that direct us to give too much and take too little (or vice versa), and our deeper natural sense (or Common Natural Sense) that counsels us to give only what we authentically can, and in turn, take only what we authentically need. By not giving beyond our means, nor taking beyond our needs, Common Natural Sense (our deeper, connection-making intelligence) directs us to act in the most energy efficient and least stressful manner possible – a calming and inherently empowering strategy that is likewise respectful of self and other. Intuition, I discovered, is the voice of our deeper intelligence whose primary function is to manage our personal boundaries in a flexible, intelligent manner – an assignment of paramount importance.  

It’s no wonder that the Natural World works according to this strategy of energy efficiency; likewise, it begins to make sense that a walk in Nature restores and inspires; for example, being immersed in Nature allows us to feel the inherent balance of Nature which operates from a centerpoint of calm efficiency devoid of unnecessary tension and drama.

The obvious question, then, is what prevents us from using our Common Natural Sense to manage our personal boundaries?

After three decades of studying the effects that certain aspects of civilization have on our ability to process information – that is, use our deeper intelligence – it became painfully clear to me that strong beliefs are the ghost in the machine that easily eclipses our Common Natural Sense.[2] As I point out in The Secret Life of Beliefs, strong beliefs are created within the vertical power structures that define civilization; specifically, systems of beliefs are created by the ruling class to serve the ruling class by controlling the masses. What the people at the top have always known is that beliefs are far and away the best form of mind control ever invented because beliefs can make a person believe that black is white and white is black and 2 + 2 = 8, and I deserve all of this but you don’t. All you need is an authority figure repeating the lies over and over and over. Yet, even when we see ourselves giving into the political and the religious nonsense from above, at some deeper, much quieter level we know that what we are being told is complete shite.  

While beliefs are noisy statements of should’s and shouldn’t’s that hook us so deeply because they carry a punishment or a reward that puts us in a state of fight-or-flight, the voice of our Common Natural Sense (intuition) is but a gossamer whisper easily drowned out by the strident noise of our beliefs – and the stronger the belief, the louder the noise. Importantly, our Common Natural Sense is immune to reward or punishment and represents the most objective, rational and holistic level of analysis because it is the product of our deeper, layered, connection-making intelligence. This is why it’s critical not only to listen to, but actually follow its whispering voice. Of course, the high degree of fear set purposely within our beliefs convinces us that following onboard guidance is way too risky, too politically incorrect, too much against the current, and therefore, we all too often find ourselves merely delaying the inevitable ‘shit-hitting-the-fan’ melodrama that defines so much of the human world at every level, including the personal level.

My own life is the perfect example of this all-too-common, little understood drama wherein the noise of my beliefs prevented me from following my readily accessible onboard wisdom, which is truly the most helpful gift of Nature, a gift directly available to all of us. For me, not listening to my inner flatus cost me massively.

The clandestine workings of beliefs: Invisible Beliefs

Beliefs operate in clandestine ways far beyond the ken of our Waking Mind.[3] This is why the majority of people feel compelled to do things that can seem completely irrational, like stay in an unhealthy relationship, or do things within a relationship that are patently absurd, or for that matter, climb Mt Everest, or for that matter, be an avid consumers in a capitalist system that is powering the Sixth Greatest Mass Extinction. Likewise, my own life has been dominated by a good many Invisible Beliefs that I had no clue existed, let alone that I was their willing puppet on the twisting, turning road to perdition.

What follows is a list of the Invisible Beliefs that governed my behavior within those first relationships that I referenced at the beginning. I say invisible because all of the beliefs directing my behavior operated below my conscious awareness, much like a computer program such as DOS running invisibly in the background of Windows. In fact, beliefs work as a Mental Software, a psychological operating system that governs our behavior. Because of their basic structure and function, beliefs surreptitiously dumb us down by degrading how we are naturally designed to processes information; in effect, beliefs block direct access to our Common Natural Sense, leaving us with the less sophisticated level of our Mind that runs on Fight-or-Flight, Black-or-White, Right-or-Wrong, Friend-or-Foe. Fascist politicians and religious figures forever stoke fear and anger because it keeps people in the dumb side of their mind which turns them into weapons and monetary resources for the fascist or religious leaders.  

As an aside, because beliefs have this dumbing-down effect, whenever a person acts in an irrational way – all things being equal – there is usually a strong belief commanding them to do so (think war, hate, racism, sexism, speciesism, codependency and so on). Moreover, strong beliefs are fundamentally the mental armor we wield against feeling unsafe, unloved, and unprotected – negative, high-tension feelings that are likewise side-effects of beliefs. In fact, all of the high-tension, negative emotions that are assumed to be central to human nature (for example, greed, envy, jealousy, hatred, pride, shame, and so on) are in fact merely negative side-effects of our strongest beliefs, and hence, manmade. Because these tension-rich, negative emotions are a side-effect of our strongest beliefs, they cannot be resolved within the framework of strong beliefs (as Einstein said, we can’t solve a problem at the same level it was created). The Mental Software of beliefs is so chockfull of bugs and glitches, that it keeps us all in a profound state of disempowerment, an agitated state of fight-or-flight, which in turn drives all of our addictive behavior. As I will show, beliefs are the worst technology for managing our personal boundary, and they do nothing but reinforce our own disempowerment.

All that said, here is the list of the Invisible Beliefs that directed my first two relationships…

1. People can be very dangerous, and therefore a grave risk to me.
2. I am compelled to navigate dangerous people by placating them, being invisible, by seeing the ‘bright side’ and by distracting them (with humor or clever comments).
3. I do not have the power to say ‘no’, and therefore I am compelled to say ‘yes’.
4. I am responsible for other people’s emotions and therefore their wellbeing.
5. I have little or no power to change or direct my life (a deep sense of powerlessness).
6. I have the magical power to change other people into better versions of themselves by being loving and compassionate and nonjudgmental.
7. My needs and desires are always secondary to my partner’s needs and desires.
8. I must always be in a relationship with a dysfunctional person and live life through them, because, quite frankly, this is what was modeled in my home of origin.
9. To survive, I have to be hyper-vigilant so that I can anticipate any and all threats, and then defuse the situation.

As might be obvious, I unconsciously assembled this armamentarium of beliefs as a reaction to trauma, specifically, a home of origin that was violent, unpredictable, and lacking in the basic necessities of life. In other words – and quite ironically – I took on these beliefs as a way of being safe in an unsafe environment. Of course, within my home of origin, my irrational beliefs worked well because they were a rational reaction to an irrational, dysfunctional family.  

As it is with early learning, this battery of beliefs fused into my psyche at such an impressionable age that when I was no longer in harm’s way, I still operated according to these beliefs. I call this Belief Inertia – beliefs in motion, tend to stay in motion unless acted upon by another force (such as greater awareness). Because of Belief Inertia, my early beliefs carried on well into adulthood, long after I had left the only arena wherein these irrational beliefs made any practical sense, and so for the largest part of my life, the deck was stacked against me, hugely.  

This is precisely why I was condemned to recreate the atmosphere of my home of origin as an adult – the Mental Software of my childhood knew only one kind of family, and only one kind of me and only one kind of potential partner – a dysfunctional, angry, unpredictable person who got there way with rage, with screaming and hitting and throwing things at me (and with the constant threat of these behaviors). The algorithms that arose out of my antiquated beliefs, therefore, had the effect of normalizing the abnormal behavior of both of my earlier partners to the degree I made excuses for them, and consequently, I never held them accountable (like having them seek therapy which I likewise so desperately needed).

The immense irony in all of this is that while my childhood beliefs did in fact keep me ‘safer’ as a child, as an adult they literally put me in harm’s way, especially given that I not only lost all of my earthly possessions thrice, but I also suffered a massive, stress-induced brain hemorrhage that so nearly killed me. Being told by an ER doctor that I had but hours or even minutes to live was definitely a wake-up call to change my life in a fundamental way; in fact, I took a necessary retreat and withdrew from life for two decades.

Taken as a whole, the medley of beliefs I carried from childhood made me the perfect codependent because I was the quintessential Savior and Martyr. This worked so well for my damaged partners that I was seen by both as their ‘soulmate’. In fact, from the very start I knew that both of these women had deeply rooted mental health problems, but I blindly believed that with an excess of ‘love’ and ‘caring’, I could ‘fix’ them into becoming better versions of themselves. Ha! Well, kick me in the ass and call me Socrates!

Of course, the burning question in all of this is where in the heck was my intuition within all of this melodrama?

During these two relationships my intuition was alive and well. For example, I always had this subtle ‘feeling sense’ that I did not want to get married at all, and on the wedding day, I had the recurrent, dizzying urge to leave the bride at the alter, especially given her multiple outbursts of purple-faced rage leading up to the wedding day (which I mistakenly rationalized). Long after the wedding and across the course of our 20-year marriage (f!ck!), that same voice forever counseled me to cut and run, especially after each and every one of her countless fits of rage.

But think about this for a moment. I was raised in an insane family from which I had no power to leave. Did I want to leave? Absolutely. But by virtue of being a dependent child, leaving was an impossibility, and so I had to resign myself to living in the family I was born into. As a consequence, I acquired a deeply rooted belief that I had absolutely no power to leave a bad situation, and therefore I had to make the best of it (see how we unwittingly create our own self-limiting beliefs, and then stick to them even as the ship is going down?). Moreover, I also acquired a deeply rooted belief that I had no power to act on my intuition. This latter bit – learning not to act on my intuition – is exactly what disempowered me because it effectively cut me off from using my inner guidance as a life-navigation system. 

The massive irony of my own sorry life is that across the span of 24 years of trying my hardest to be safe, I was strolling oh so blindly down the road to perdition, with my bastion of beliefs screaming ‘YES!’, and my intuition whispering, ‘Run for the hills…’. At a macro level, this is exactly what the so-called modern world is doing: We are on masse following the edicts of incredibly strong beliefs toward our own self-destruction as a species. Yet (and rather sadly) all we have to do collectively is upgrade our Mental Software, the details of which I outline in The Secret Life of Beliefs.

The clandestine workings of beliefs: Visible Beliefs

The list of my Invisible Beliefs logically implies a list of my Visible Beliefs, the beliefs that I consciously thought were motivating me. As you may have noticed, my Invisible Beliefs were nothing to brag about, given that they radiate disempowerment and general weakness, especially given the fact they were forged during a time when I was a small child who was completely weak and disempowered and subject to the vagaries of a family all jacked up on crazy. I would never, for example, wish to stand up in a room full of people and loudly and proudly shout out a list of my Invisible Beliefs, that is, had I any awareness of them. Instead, my focus for the majority of my life has been entirely on my Visible Beliefs and the boost they gave my ego, or False Self.

Our Visible Beliefs work as a gilded wrapping paper for our Invisible Beliefs – they are the puffed-up version of the fear-based beliefs that are actually driving us, but in secret. To shed more light on this, let me lay out what my Visible Beliefs were at the time of those earlier relationships.

1. I am much stronger than my partners, and I can put up with anything they dish out.
2. I am so strong and so wise that I can fix my partners – I am here to change them.
3. I am highly loving, compassionate, and empathetic toward my partners.
4. I am a very loving, kind and forgiving person.
5. I am in love with my partners (note: being ‘in love’ and being codependent are mutually exclusive; in fact, across our cultural landscape, both past and present, love and codependency have always been conflated, the classic example being Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet which merely legitimizes and extols codependency).
6. I am needed by my partners, and I need my partners.
7. I know that our situation will magically improve, and all will be well – I just need to be patient.
8. I have to excuse all of my partners questionable behaviors because I know they both have experienced childhood trauma, and being so much stronger than them, it is my responsibility to help them to heal.
9. I am a very sensitive partner who is therefore able to sense all of my partner’s needs and weaknesses and intervene as appropriate.  

As is obvious, the list of my Visible Beliefs (though still rather weird) is much more acceptable than my Invisible Beliefs. This is exactly why my Visible Beliefs were so incredibly motivating, and at the same time debilitating. 

I remember watching Bullwinkle as a child. In one episode the arch villain Boris Badenov carries out a mission of ‘sabotage and camouflage’ wherein he fiddled with this and that as a way of discombobulating Bullwinkle and his sidekick Rocky the flying squirrel. Our Visible Beliefs do exactly that: They camouflage our Invisible Beliefs while sabotaging our lives. My problem, then, was that I fought vociferously on behalf of my Visible Beliefs which gave me a romantic and caring allure, when in fact, I was merely a slave to my Invisible Beliefs and beholden to all of the fear and weakness they implied and that were reflective of my traumatic childhood.

Meanwhile, I was laying the groundwork for my own personal Armageddon.  

While ‘self-destruction’ sounds rather ominous, there is a silver lining; for example, by experiencing the negative side-effects of our bastion of beliefs to the extreme, that is, by hitting rock bottom, we can potentially create the opportunity to shed the very beliefs that put us in harm’s way in the first place. What is exciting about The Art & Science of Belief is that it is a pragmatic framework to increase our awareness to the point we can shed our irrational beliefs (an external system of control) in favor of our Common Natural Sense (an internal system of guidance) – without burning down the house.

Do take a moment to reflect on the Visible and Invisible Beliefs that have informed your life and consider how they might relate to your home of origin and the trauma you experienced. Keep in mind that we normalize our childhoods by virtue of the fact our childhoods are the only ones we have experienced; moreover, because they are familiar, they have a weird sense of security redolent of the Stockholm Syndrome. In fact, to one degree or another we have all been taken hostage by our beliefs, and we all too easily fall in love with our beliefs and defend unto death. For example, think of the J6 assault on the U.S. capital.

End PART I  

---

[1] As you read this article, please keep in mind that codependency and empowerment exist on opposite sides of a continuum. Given that we all live on that continuum, our task is not seeking some highfalutin concept of enlightenment but rather, maximizing our level empowerment while minimizing our degree of codependency.

[2] See The Secret Life of Beliefs for my full exposé of the side-effects of beliefs.

[3] Within the framework of The Arts & Science of Beliefs the ‘Waking Mind’ is the term I use for what has often been referred to as the ‘conscious mind’. The reality is that the conscious mind is anything but conscious and is in fact dumb-as-a-bag-of-hammers.