Love and the Infinite, Healing from Childhood

By Bill Dunn Jr.

In writing this book, the author's goal is to help people that have endured their own sufferings of abuse at the hands of another and to help them unravel any damaging and lasting effects that these early traumas have had on their subsequent adult lives. Damaging effects from early childhood traumas are very complex. The author gives people prac

• Language: English
• Publisher: William Dunn
• Release date: May 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781957378060

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LOVE

and the Infinite,

Healing from

Childhood

by

BILL DUNN JR.

Love and the Infinite, Healing from Childhood

Copyright © 2022 by Bill Dunn Jr.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

"Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible

(The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good New Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."

KJV

Cover image by Eric Coles

ISBN

978-1-957378-07-7 (Paperback)

978-1-957378-06-0 (eBook)

One way of perceiving Infinite Love is by visualizing the limitless Universe when you are outdoors on a clear night by taking a view upward into the vast Universe above your head—the stars, moon, planets, comets, nebulas and galaxies beyond—and imagine in your view another state of existence other than the physical state you’re viewing—an invisible (to the eye) spiritual constellation of stars, planets, and galaxies filled with the dimension of pure, unadulterated Unconditional Love, both surrounding and transcending an entire Infinite Universe with a creator of pure Infinite Love at the center of it all, but instead of this creator dwelling in an empty void of space, rather existing in a ‘home’ filled with unparalleled and unending Infinite Love, acceptance, warmth, compassion, understanding, joy, euphoria, and goodness, way beyond human possibility or comprehension, with the complete and total absence of anything evil, the ‘devil’ (Satan), or hell.

Table of Contents

Dedications

Acknowledgements

Statement of Responsibility

Going Forward and Introduction

PART I

My Background and the Science Behind the Causes and Effects of Child Abuse

Chapter 1 The Beginnings and Story of My Life

Chapter 2 What I Have Learned About Child Abuse and Mistreatment

Chapter 3 The Origin and Roots of

Negativism, Threat, and Fear

Chapter 4 Child Abuse and the Science Behind Its Effects in Adulthood- by Bruce Perry, MD, PhD.

Chapter 5 Works and Contributions on Child Abuse- by Alice Miller, PhD.

Chapter 6 Epilogue to Chapters 1-5- My Impressions

PART II

The Science of Healing in Adulthood from Prior Child Abuse

Chapter 7 Introduction to Part II, Healing- Thoughts on Healing Suggestions by Bruce Perry, MD, and Alice Miller, PhD

Chapter 8 The Real Story of My Past: A Beginning to Healing

Chapter 9 The Real Beginning of My Spiritual Reawakening

Chapter 10 The Background to ‘Reaching Within’

Chapter 11 Inspiration and Insight

Chapter 12 The Spiritual Doors Open

(A) Entering the Spiritual Zone

Chapter 13 Worldly and Spiritual Healing Strategies to Help Heal from Child Abuse Aftereffects

(A) An Inventory of Positive and Negative Memories and Behaviors Learned During Childhood

(B) Preface to Healing Strategies

(C) Worldly Related Strategies to Help Heal from Child Abuse Aftereffects

(D) Preface to Spiritual Strategies

(E) Spiritually Related Strategies to Help Heal from Child Abuse Aftereffects

Chapter 14 Epilogue on the Strategies from the Author’s Perspective- An Ultimate Healing Strategy

Chapter 15 Claiming and Building Faith in a Higher Power

(A) Discussion of the Phenomena of Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) as Proof of a Higher Power

Chapter 16 Meditation

(A) A-priori Discussion to the Science of Meditation- Equality

(B) The Science of Meditation

Chapter 17 The Actual Meditations

PART I – Getting Us in the Mood for Meditation

PART II – Meditations Dealing with Past Abuses Suffered

PART III – Meditations Dealing with Finding/Manifesting God and Love within this Life

PART IV – Meditations Dealing with the Power of Imagination to Change the Past

PART V – Meditations Dealing with the Power Within for Healing

PART VI – Meditations Dealing with Fear from Childhood Abuse and Trauma that Reappears in Adult Life

PART VII – Meditations for Finding Healing

Chapter 18 Final Notes

Afterword

Going Beyond

Additional References not listed in Footnote Section

Addendum # 1, Pages for the Reader’s Notes

DEDICATIONS

•To my two children whom I love dearly, but at times I did not treat well during their childhoods due to my distance and inattention.

•To my lifelong friend ‘Perry’ who back in 1963-4 got me enlivened to the subject of spirituality.

•To my current dear wife who suffered extremely under the yoke of an abusive mother; to all people, particularly children of the world who have suffered any kind of sustained abuse, may this work provide healing; and for all, may it lead to better, more realizable world peace.

•Besides my wife, for all others who have suffered brutality at the hands of their caretakers.

•My dear wife once asked this: ‘how could we believe in an all-good and loving God when there are evils such as what I suffered through as a child’. For all victims, there is healing, have faith and believe it!

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to acknowledge the many authors and thinkers with their thoughts mentioned, quoted, or referenced in this work. I am particularly grateful to the following authors for their writings that I have reviewed or quoted in my work: Dr. Bruce Perry, MD; Alice Miller, PhD; Uell Anderson; Neville Goddard; Ascended Master Saint Germain; Wayne Dyer, PhD; Florence Shinn: Anita Moorjani; Eben Alexander, MD; Betty Eadie; davidji, and Theolyn Cortens. I am also grateful for utilizing contributing thoughts of Father John Bettridge from Australia, and Brother Andre of Montreal.

Their ideas are included as an excellent backdrop for the reader to understand: (1) the background of child abuse, its ravages through history, and its after-effects on child abuse victims in their adult life; (2) positive thinking modes and themes the author feels are necessary to help past victims to successfully prepare to heal from abuse after-affects; (3) worldly as well as spiritual strategies that transform healing from past abuse into actuality.

Within this work, the thoughts of the above authors as well as my own form a mosaic of ideas and concepts which provide the tools necessary to help people to heal from past abuse. Besides this, it is hoped that the work will facilitate world-wide education to prevent these tragedies from occurring to all infants and children in the future.

STATEMENT OF RESPONSIBILITY

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or mental problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help the individual in their quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event that the individual uses any of the information in this book for themselves, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for their actions.

GOING FORWARD AND INTRODUCTION

Today I am spending a few quiet hours in a public library near the town where I live, collecting my thoughts to begin my first book. I ask for inspiration from the Almighty, my only Source, to begin this quest and hopefully to eventually compete this work. To help people is my chief goal, rather than to gain accolades as an author or person or to earn a lot of money from writing. My life and particularly my spiritual quest have indeed been lengthy, but I trust that together they have resulted in rich rewards. Those rewards have resulted in greater awareness of human resources available, along with our spiritual Source (God), which will hopefully offer hope and relief for those in need from early-in-life sufferings with their follow up adult after-effects described in this work.

I reflect on the human birthing process, and our evolution into this life from the Infinite, perfect spiritual existence into a physical bodily life consisting of the five senses, nine human emotions, and ego, with all their manifestations resulting in both good and evil acts in this life. We all supposedly came from a perfect, Infinite existence in which we were loved unconditionally, could do no wrong nor be punished mentally and physically, and then were suddenly thrust into this physical body and life where we were challenged with all sorts of sensory and emotional ‘challenges’ and ‘traumas’, particularly early-on in our lives.

The ideas and creativity I desire to offer others reflect on the effect of traumas suffered by many early-on in their lives, which aim to suggest strategies that will help people that have endured these sufferings to unravel any damaging and lasting effects that these early traumas have had on their adult lives. Damaging effects from early childhood traumas are very complex. I would like to offer some concrete science behind the background of child abuse, as well as realistic and simple to understand healing solutions for any of these damaging effects. There are solutions, other authors have suggested them, and I am writing this work to offer what I feel are helpful suggestions from their standpoints as well as my own to give people practical and simple guidance toward healing.

The suffering wrought on so many children in the world at the hands of parents or caretakers renders unconscionable and dramatic effects that are often life- long. The tragedy of these effects is that with most people’s lives there is often no exit from the damaging, negative effects from these early sufferings throughout their adult lives. This work will offer strong hope that healing solutions do exist, along with exits from current damages in peoples’ lives as the result of early-on in life mistreatments.

From the indicative words of Jesus: Suffer little children to come unto me, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven¹⁶⁸…..Along with this, the Lord’s promise to children: Take Heed that ye despise not one of these little ones, for I say unto you that in Heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father, Matthew 18:10 (KJV).

Part I

My Background and the Science Behind the Causes and Effects of Child Abuse

Chapter 1

The Beginnings and Story of My Life

I suppose that my beginning was not much different than any other. Trauma covers all births to some extent, but my birth and probably pre-birth came at a price, as my mother did not enjoy (unlike many other women with their pregnancies) her pregnancy with me because she suffered a lot both mentally and physically during that nine-month period. I have heard that a vast majority of women suffer some discomfort, but otherwise, this time proves to be one of the more enjoyable and rewarding experiences in their lives. For my mother though, this clearly was not the case.

Pediatricians and other medical experts indicate that a carrying mother, always in a constant crisis mode such as my mother was, creates trauma for her fetus with possible lasting deleterious effects to the infant after birth. I was born with stooped shoulders which I have had all my life, and wonder whether the traumas suffered by my mother during her pregnancy with me might have had something to do with this, creating a life-long lasting physical defect. I wonder if lifetime angst and impatience for me also connects with the same fetal stress. I remember throughout my childhood of intense criticism by both parents about my poor posture: I felt an intense negativism then from this criticism, and now I am even more convinced that this constant criticism was unjustified and unfair.

Since my mother’s suffering had dramatic effects on my life from the outset, I have pondered a lot over the years as to what prompted her suffering. Was it her small anatomy (body frame), poor health, or otherwise? Since my parents and relatives (mostly born in 1900-1920 era) were very secretive particularly on relationships between the parents, I had few clues until very recently. To make a long story short, my awareness over the years has revealed that my father (a very well-groomed and dressed man) was likely a philanderer with females outside of the marriage with my mother. My father, a career airline pilot, was extremely attractive to stewardesses who attended his flights. He had a relationship with one, which might have resulted in a child (a half-brother or half-sister to me), but I presently have no clue as to the reality of this, and if so, the present whereabouts of this person.

From past informational inferences along with more recent awareness, I can only speculate that since divorce back in those times was not in vogue and very rare, that my mother simply (or not so simply) internalized these realities. The result was that her pregnancy with me as well as with my sister who followed nine years later were wrought with mental and physical suffering due to physical symptoms of the pregnancy itself on her, perhaps coupled with the marital indiscretions by my father.

I was raised in a seemingly normal Catholic middle-class home and family in Massachusetts, near urban Boston. My father worked as an airline pilot (a captain) for a commercial airline. I never lacked for material wants or necessities. But I was emotionally starved and deprived: clearly something was wrong. I remember that my parents often argued and fought, with my father at times using a metal pancake turner to ‘spank’ or ‘paddle’ my mother. For me, there was an almost constant atmosphere of fear and punishment. My parents seemed to be fearful folks themselves, and as it turned out probably had been brought up in the same fearful, punishing environment. Because of their fear, strict discipline was the order of the day, with spankings and thrashings carried out by my father under ‘orders’ from mother.

I was shuttled between schools: back and forth between public schools, military schools, and various catholic schools. During the fourth grade I was sent away to a boarding Catholic military school run by the Sacred Heart Brothers, where corporal punishment was the ‘regular order of the day’. I once asked my folks why they sent me there, and they simply answered that besides a poor attitude and grades in school, I had stepped out of line by breaking two small empty clay flowerpots that belonged to the neighbors next door. For years during my youth, summers were spent in various boarding camps and military schools, for what reasons I never really knew, except that ‘it was good for me’, or ‘I was fat, lazy, and slovenly’, or ‘because I was a bad boy’. I hated all these experiences, and never understood the basis for my parents sending me to these places other than being given their several proclamations mentioned above.

The ‘strictness of structure’ declaration was regularly preached by my folks, which became the order of each day. My father constantly threatened me with sending me to ‘bad boy school’. Yet I was in no way ever in trouble with any of the school or law authorities during any period during my childhood. In addition, my parents often went away for several days and left me with many different babysitters over the years; one of which sexually assaulted me on at least several occasions. When I told my folks about this, they practically disowned me, as they clearly did not believe me. Two words summarize well the collective feelings from all my childhood: total humiliation.

Now, after all these years, my awareness clearly tells me that the reason for all of what has been described above was primarily due to their relationship problems. My mother once told me when I was about 10 years old that she really did not love or respect my father anymore. She did not give any reasons. At the time, I was totally left in the dark. In my family, as well as with many families during the 1940s-1950s time-period, parental relationship problems were often discretely hidden away from the children. Now I realize that my father was unfaithful in the marriage, and this caused intense angst for my mother, and was the probable underlying cause for much of her emotionally abusive behaviors towards me during childhood.

In 1961 when I was 16 years old, the family moved to Miami, Florida supposedly ‘to get a new start’ in life. My father’s airline base of work was transferred there. My parents finally made a good decision on my situation and schooling: I was to attend a day Catholic high school for two years in the Miami area, operated by the Marist Brothers, from which I graduated in 1963. In short, this was the best experience as far as schooling, in fact the best overall experience during my childhood.

I attended a State University in Florida for the next six years, where I completed the Bachelor and Master of Science degrees. For the next 50 years after that, I pursued an essentially environmentally related professional career, which included: 10 years of college and community college teaching, 2 years of social rehabilitation work, and 39 years as an environmental scientist-planner for a state environmental agency. I have been married twice, and have two grown children from the first marriage, each of whom developed successful work careers and family-related lifetime partners.

Yes, I have been a parent too, and will briefly and very honestly describe that experience here. After undergraduate school, I got married to my first wife, and subsequently had 2 children, a girl and a boy. Both of my children are well grown now: my daughter in her late forties, and my son in his early forties, both having been college educated and beyond, with each having embarked on successful work careers. I have been divorced from the first wife for 32 years now and remarried to my second wife for 30 years. I can honestly say that despite my somewhat tattered upbringing with many of its negative effects carrying over into my adult life, both my children have been highly supportive of me and in frequent touch with me over the years, for which I am constantly amazed and thankful.

How do I currently grade myself overall as a past parent, particularly considering all my recently developed awareness about child abuse and mistreatment? Satisfactory or passing at best, but I could have performed far better had I known then when I was actively participating in raising them what I know now about abuse, and how it carries down generational lines from one set of children to the next. The frequent emotional abuse and poor treatment I received from my own parents dramatically affected my first marital relationship, as well as how I treated my own children. The after-effects from abuse during my upbringing were the prime reason in causing the failure of my first marriage, but I never realized that then. But now, I know this and can readily admit to this.

Perpetuation of physical violence was very fortunately not what I most often carried from my own upbringing into my first marriage and children: rather the effects from my childhood onto my first family were a clear and distinct desire for detachment on my part (or passive-aggressive behavior as my first wife often coined it) from being emotionally involved with my first wife and children at that time. I would sometimes get involved, and at other times draw away into a corner out of sight from the rest of the family with its normal daily affairs. At times, I just wanted to be alone to myself, not bothered with the daily business of dealing with everyday issues such as discipline of the children or taking care of the family. This behavior alone constituted a form of abuse toward my wife and children.

Also, I would also occasionally engage in anger outbursts, resentment, impatience, and voiced-out emotional abuse, particularly toward my first wife. My children were clear witnesses of this nonchalant or poor behavior on my part. Clearly at that time I did not realize why I felt and reacted in these ways. Discipline and dealing with my children were not my ‘cup of tea’. I was afraid of taking the lead on this, and my first wife often had to pick up that slack and step in to provide these measures when they were necessary. I was totally confused as a husband, at the same time as a parent, and had no clue at that time as to why. Numerous counselors and therapy sessions during that time-period did not provide much help for me either.

I am very sorry and express this now, or as Alice Miller suggests in her works on how to best deal with past abuse and its effects on others, is for the former abuse victim (namely me) to partake in the process of ‘mourning’ or ‘grieving’ over what caused these past behaviors on my part from my childhood with the resultant negative carryover effects on my own family and children, and recognize that all of these things cannot be fixed because they were in the past.¹ However, now I can see clearly why I behaved like that, or as Wayne Dyer (whom I very highly respect) titles his latest book, I Can See Clearly Now, the words of his book title happen to exactly describe my own current insight and understanding into my own past abusive behaviors towards wife and children during the first marriage.

Although there may have been other individuals associated with the care of my children who endured mistreatment at the hands of their caretakers in childhood that might have spilled over during their adult lives to affect my children, clearly it is my own past with the abuse I suffered and how it affected my own behavior toward them that concerns me the most at this stage. At least now, I know and can honestly say why my own behavior was like it was towards them.

In looking back over my past life, up to the time that my second wife contracted a serious illness seventeen years ago, I had absolutely no realization that my own upbringing had consisted of anything related to substantial abuse or mistreatment. It was my wife’s illness and realizing that it had probably been brought on by her own severely abusive childhood experiences that got me to thinking and realizing that I too had suffered my own set of negative childhood experiences. During my adult life I would occasionally have temper tantrums, and this dramatically affected the family involved in my first marriage.

At that time, I never inquired into the possible reasons for these outbursts, but now I realize that the seat of these emotions came from the pain of repressed feelings as the result of physical and emotional abuse I encountered during my own upbringing. It was not until the juncture of my second wife’s bi-polar illness seventeen years ago that there developed in my mind a clear connection that her illness and childhood upbringing with abuse related to the fact that I too had suffered abuse in my own childhood. Further, that this abuse was directly related to why I manifested certain negative adult behaviors towards others, particularly toward my first marital family.

My present impressions about child abuse began from a startling awareness developed seventeen years ago when my second wife was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward due to a bi-polar (manic-depressive) disorder. I slowly began to realize from my college courses and readings in child psychology as well as other lifetime experiences that ‘early-on’ life experiences with my wife’s parents had a lot to do with bringing on the bi-polar condition that emerged at that juncture of her life. Her mother had repeatedly abused her with severe whippings and abandonment in the early years, and these traumas had lasting effects on my wife’s mind and body psyche well into her adult years, right up to the moment she was diagnosed with depression and bi-polar. Repeated traumatic experiences suffered by the child particularly in the very early-in-life years have definite negative and lasting effects in the developing child’s mind, which have lasting consequences and effects well beyond childhood into adulthood.

My impressions and power of imagination pressed on. In review of my own history, as well as viewing the history of many others, including acquaintances, colleagues, and neighbors that I have encountered over the years, that the many strange and destructive behaviors I have observed with people probably tie-in with and relate to carryovers from ‘early-on’ childhood experiences encountered at the hands of their parents or caretakers. Many of the early-on experiences seem to clearly have been in the ‘abusive’ category, which haunts and effects these individuals during and throughout their adult lives. I have witnessed many people’s negative actions and behaviors, and wondered, but only have become clearly cognizant as to the ‘whys’ of many of these behaviors in recent years. It also appears that many of these same individuals who were affected by early-on abuse were, (and still are), totally unaware that these ‘early on’ abusive experiences in their childhoods would ultimately have negative consequences in their behaviors towards others later-on in their adult lives.

Also, I have developed awareness from experience that many professionals and writers in the growth psychology and counseling fields steer pretty much clear of discussing the raw facts about child abuse. From the literally dozens of these authors’ works that I have read in the past decade, although they may make mention of ‘early childhood traumatic experiences’ as having possible effects on the child, little is discussed on how these traumas relate to possible ‘carryover’ consequences of abuse towards others during their adult lives, nor the causes for the abuse, nor the responsibility placed on the perpetrators that caused the abuse. It is like the perpetrators (or parents/caretakers) are left off the hook for any responsibility, with quite a few therapists, authors, as well as the general public suggesting that the victims of the abuse, i.e., the children themselves, are actually to be fully blamed for having created the causes for the abuses and not the parents. I feel that clear foundation of the fact for the blame must be established and placed on the perpetrator (the parents or caretakers) before forgiveness can possibly be given by the victim. Any blame on the victim (the former child) just does not make the grade!

Cover-up of child abuse, with blame for it projected on the child instead of the parent, has been a world-wide phenomenon involving all cultures and classes of people. Is it the Fourth (4th) Commandment, ‘honor thy father and thy mother’, that insulates parents or caretakers from identification as abusers? Or is it the authority of the Church? Or is it the stigma in most all world cultures that the parents/caretakers and whatever they do to children (i.e., power of authority) is ‘protected turf’, that parents can do what they want with their children? Or is it the simple fact of raw biology, that we are constituted as a biological fusion from a set of parents/caretakers, one male and one female, with this forming a bond based upon biology or legality that cannot be broken despite whatever mitigating circumstances of abuse are perpetrated by the stronger (parent/caretaker) on the weaker child? Or is it the basic fear of people in general throughout the world that the family