David W. Earle Quotes

Putting labels on others creates a black hole of disregard where judgment thrives and schisms deepen.

Being able to say, "No," is a necessary ingredient in a healthy lifestyle.

From our behavior, we obtain certain results, and these results reinforce our beliefs.

...the state of perfection is an elusive goal; demanding something so obscure as almost unattainable and can become a compulsive, crazy making squirrel-on-a-wheel way of living.

embrace the suffering knowing the grieving you experience is about having something you desperately want and lost or having something you never possessed and earnestly desire. That lack you experience is the reality of life.

Sitting on the hot seat of change requires much courage, patience, and persistence.

Before the magic of recovery, I thought a perfect weekend involved hiding from myself with all the distractions life provides.

Late one night, during a toss-and-turn fretful sleep, I pondered my crisis. No solutions were on the horizon. I, again, wasted my psychic energy with prayer. Nothing. No angel on a white cloud. No rainbow's pot of gold. No way to control the people I loved. As I rolled over and put the pillow over my head attempting to block all that was negative, I silently screamed for rescue. Then, in a far away and distinct part of my brain, a small voice said, "You have to do this on your own."

I thought, "Was that the best You can do?" This god, to whom I was desperately sending burnt offerings of my own humiliation, couldn't send an avenging angel or a wise man imparting wisdom? All You can give me is this feeble message of abandonment? At that moment, I quit believing in that god.

Addiction is a "shitty" disease

Often, we will stay in a miserable status quo until the misery finally exceeds the resistance to change. True wisdom is seeing the future: what will happen if change does not happen?

What are humans meant to do; why are we here? Are we a mutation on the earth destroying its host? Are we a cancer destined to kill what supports us? I think not. So exploring this question is a powerful exercise in meaning; what is the meaning of human existence?

When this low self-worth is hidden, one can understand why the person becomes hypersensitive to the opinions of others and has a great deal of difficulty accepting criticism no matter how warranted or gently said.

Being judgmental is a form of attack keeping others off balance.

Our minds have a great capacity for deception. This does not mean we are necessarily dishonest but if we are not careful, when our brains do not have answers, our minds will create them.

Mature adults gravitate toward new values and understandings, not just rehashing and blind acceptance of past patterns and previous learning. This is an ongoing process and maturity demands lifelong learners.

This woman's size protected her
from the hurts of the world
but it also imprisoned her soul.
As the merry-go-round revolved, she ate another French fry,as a silent scream frozen on her face.

Change is hard, difficult, painful, and often messy

There are two ways of thinking. One is living life based on fear. The other is trusting. Letting go and allowing trust to control our lives takes mental gymnastics.

Black and white thinking limits understanding and feedback, two necessary ingredients for successful resolution in creative conflict and successful understanding.

Teenagers can spot hypocrisy a mile away and here I was telling them how to cope when they witnessed the shambles of my own life and how I was living.

Rigid traditions capture souls
prisons of spiritual thought
man's religion has captured a god
grown too small and very weak.

My prayer is an attitude of pure gratitude for having the opportunity to experience life on this earth with all its pain, heartache, worry, and turmoil; coupled with this gratitude is the thankfulness for just having the opportunity to have lived. That is fairly easy on good days but difficult when life puts rocks and boulders in the road.

Since the discovery of the fermented grape, humans have experienced the pain and the frustration of addiction.

If we want to improve, first we have to recognize our own maladaptive coping skills, called codependency, then change.

When I looked at myself through the prism of awareness, great tears came as I connected with how this wounded child felt.

Often self-love is replaced with self- loathing, compounded by beating ourselves up. We become experts at putting ourselves down, judging ourselves, and finding fault. This creates deep shame that says "I am a mistake" instead of saying "I made a mistake.

Other people feel love when we listen without judging and accept them without demanding change. We all desperately require these basic needs. When we can do this for another, we are indeed that person's angel.

When we are not connected with our emotions, we are not connected to ourselves.

It was His gentle voice who called
and sent His angel pain to guide me,
through the long 'n dusty corridors,
and empty hallways of my soul.

As a little boy, when I would get angry, my mother would say, "Count to ten." Try as I might, I could not make this advice work for me. By the time I reached the number ten, I was madder than when I started!

People who are unwilling to talk about deep personal issues do not trust their own emotions.

As a parent who raised his children in dysfunction, I know the parental wounds my children received were not intentional; often they were my best expression of love, sometimes coming out sideways, not as I intended.

Swirling in a squirrel cage of perpetual motion, the head-committee meets, argues, votes out the guidance available from emotions, and successfully keeps serenity at bay and chaos close at hand.

Granted, anger can be misplaced and is often destructive, but anger generates passion, and that energy, if used correctly, can be highly constructive.

All decisions involve emotions,ignoring emotions decreases the quality of the result.

When you journey inwardly exploring yourself, a sense of personal trust begins.

The more dysfunctional, the more some family members seek to control the behavior of others.

Boundary violations are deeply experienced.

No one can make you angry! No one can make you mad! You get to choose.

Her screams are heard across generations who dared not scream
and died without joy,in silence and isolation.

Oh, because you're an alcoholic." Only when I heard those words did it filter through my own denial. Only then did I gain understanding.

Boundaries represent awareness, knowing what the limits are and then respecting those limits.

When someone obtains peace and serenity, this shines a bright spotlight on others' own unhappiness making their discomfort even more apparent.

People build defenses around a weakness, not around strength. Where self-esteem is strong, a defense is unnecessary.

Consider letting go of the barriers between yourself and others, let go of the definition our culture has inflicted upon us and allow the best part of ourselves to connect with the wondrous parts of others. Allow yourself to connect in a deeper and more profound way.

In order for a person to be able to "turn our lives and our wills" over requires something very difficult for a spiritually wounded person to accomplish - Trust. Yet, to accomplish this step, trust of the spirit must be present.

Shame is a powerful feeling. There is a tremendous difference between making a mistake and believing you are a mistake...If I don't see myself as being a mistake then it is I who must take responsibility and I am not ready to accept that.

Others hide from being real by filling the air with words; the more words they throw out, the less actual communication happens and they are left with only an illusion of connection. This is the intimacy they so ardently seek but with these coping skills find so elusive.

Crossing the Ring of Fire is..moving from the emotional shutdown of numbness through the flames of fear and entering into the healing arms of change.

To de-escalate a potential conflict, one method is to take a step backwards.

For example, I can doubt that 2 + 2 = 4; however, my doubting does not change the equation. When I test out that formula and find that it is true, then that becomes my reality. How can anything become real until it is tested in the crucible of doubt?

Thinking about anger in positive terms is alien in most people's experiences. However, a healthy expression of anger is a component for building and maintaining successful relationships!

Children naturally believe without question and absorb knowledge at an incredible rate; since there is no other frame of reference; they believe their parental reality, true or false.

What is the largest addiction in the world? Looking good and being right!

Under this aura of perfection he knows how flawed he really is but his intact denial system keeps this awareness suppressed in the far recesses of his mind.

Chaos limits the free-flow of love and becomes a roadblock to what family members want most and sadly, it becomes the normal for the family.

We can be safe and live with other defined truths exemplified by a capital "T" or we can change and with our limited time experience truth with a small "t," seeking our own understanding, which can change with new awareness.

Many people look at their past and bemoan their mistakes. Those errors in judgment, behavior, hurting others, and the wrong decisions may be what consumes them now. It does not have to be that way, for recovering from a traumatic situation is all a matter of how we think about what happened. It is not so much about what happened to us as what we make of the circumstance.

When we leave this life, we only get to take two things: the love we received and the lessons we learned.

Until I face the emptiness in my soul
and know this spirit within me,
I have not yet begun to live,
nor touched the face of God.

When I learned about the gray existing between the black and white of absolute terms, I began to experience more peace. The more I expanded my gray areas (more than 50 shades), the more peace I experienced in my life.

I, like you, was not depraved or defected before birth but created to be magnificent, a wonderful and freeing realization - simple but explosive.

People do not build a defense around a strength but around a weakness. Regardless of the magnitude of this mighty defense, part of the addictive personality desperately wants to escape.

For many years, I searched for this connection outside of myself but always to no avail. It was only when I turned inward did I find this power.

If you are looking for love under rocks or bringing home water moccasins, you might be confusing love and pain.

Acceptance is the most beautiful word in any language; this beautiful concept can only exist when you allow other people to be who they are and do not imprison them with your definition of what is right, proper, correct, or other limiting criteria. Decreasing the black and white in your thinking allows for an expansive area of gray, allowing you to live your life and others to live there life. Acceptance sets us all free! This simple change of thought creates a wonderful space for happiness to thrive.

Only then can I fly.
Only then can I be free -
when I
let go of me.

If one looks at a balancing scale putting "fear of change" on one side and "status quo" on the other, they are often in balance. Change is hard. We tend to accept our condition and no matter how painful, we will not change until the balancing scale is tipped - only when the discomfort becomes greater than the fear of change does the scale tip.

The more severe the dysfunction you experienced growing up, the more difficult boundaries are for you.

Is God like the Greek god, Zeus, sending down lightning bolts to cause catastrophic events? Does God decree when tragic or untimely deaths occur? Does God have a list and when your time is up, you die? Is it "God's will" these events happen? On the other hand, do tragic events happen because of laws of nature or the law of averages?

If there were two doors, one labeled, Door to Happiness, and the other labeled, Committee to Study How to be Happy, most of us would attend the committee meeting.

Listing someone else's faults is taking someone else's inventory, and usually starts conflict.

Change is threatening to the status quo.

When you wear a mask, you are not real.

Why would God create a defective product? Why would a God who gave me free will require any certain belief? Why would a God powerful enough to create the universe need me to justify His existence? Why would He want me seeking favor with Him to manipulate my entrance to some afterlife?

Many of the habits of dysfunctional families use are not from the lack of love but are the result of fear. Knowing the love-limiting habits and behaviors of dysfunctional families is a wonderful beginning to lower the fear, allowing us to be real, allowing us all to learn how to love better.

We violated each other's boundaries with verbal missiles of anger disguised in the pretense of "just kidding.

Your feelings do not lie to you;
however, they may be based upon a false thought,or a true thought, or based upon incomplete information.

When anger is used correctly, it can have positive results!

Anger has two benefits: it provides a warning and the necessary energy for change.