Just One Look Forum Archives

Hi everybody, a lot has happened since my last update here. I had done the looking last April, and quickly went into recovery, without any "honeymoon." Since then it's been a long struggle trying to let go of old spiritual beliefs that I now believe not only didn't help me, but actually hurt me over the years. I have been dealing with chronic physical problems for many years, which I have suspected are psychosomatic, and since I hadn't found any relief, I got into a lot of psychological stuff digging, too, which messed me up even more. At the time it seemed that JOL and SDA couldn't possibly be enough to resolve these complicated mental and emotional traumas and difficulties, but now I finally get what John has said about there being no need to delve into all of that, because the root cause is the fear of life. So it always gets back to that one basic thing. I'm glad that during all of my periods of vacillating and doubting, I kept up pretty well with the SDA. I discovered that if I tried to stop I'd feel even worse, so that was motive enough to keep going!

Anyway, I feel now that I've made a definite shift. I've finally dropped all my fruitless searching for ways to "fix" myself, and I'm just living my life, observing what comes up during recovery, learning a lot, becoming more self-reliant and focused, and actually starting to feel some genuine satisfaction with my life, even though I'm still somewhat disabled and basically housebound. I can feel myself improving, though, without any special effort on my part. I'm able to do more things than I could a couple of months ago, which is a good feeling. But the important thing is that I'm not bothered by my symptoms and limitations anymore... they seemed to have moved into the background.

I'd love to tell everybody just to give JOL a try, but I hold my peace about it. If somebody asks out of curiosity (I put a JOL banner up on my Facebook profile), I'll be happy to say a few words and then steer them towards John and Carla's website.

Oh, something I forgot to mention. A lot of my recovery seems to go on in my dreams. They're not nightmares, but are very dense, busy, and kind of claustrophobic, and I often wake up in the morning feeling exhausted. Has this happened to any of you?

Yes! For many months and years. They started as nightmares for me and I had intense insomnia, then they moved to the kind of dreams you describe. Now they are just rather amusing, inane dreams. Not sure what it means other than we work things out and change conditioning on many levels? Ultimately we do heal.

It was the same for me. Really weird, surreal nightmares for a few years, then it all calmed down. Insomnia too. Over time I learned to not pay attention to them. Just like with any other disturbing thought. Many people here and other places have reported the same thing over the years.

Yarp - weird, surreal dreams..Last night/this morning it felt like I would imagine it would if I were to take LSD or something - Extremely strange.. Sometimes I'll wake up yelling at something.. But I forget it all soon after.. Just really surreal and strange!

Thanks, Carla and Jack. I am also experiencing insomnia, nearly every night. I figured these things were probably part of the recovery. Glad to hear you find the dreams amusing now, Jack...humor is always a life saver for me!

Hey jr, you know I just realized I think there must be a direct correlation between SDA practice and dreams. After you wrote me last week about your current experiences with JOL, I decided to 'update my game' and go back to doing the SDA 2-3x a day. And that's when these dreams started and got even more intense and strange than usual! To me it's a good sign because it means there's some movement/activity happening in all of this, especially dreams, which can be associated with releasing 'pent up' emotions/feelings.