Robert Burney > Quotes

“Every obstacle is a gift, every problem is an opportunity for growth.”
― Robert Burney, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

“The inner child is the gateway to discovering our True Self - to reconnecting with the Great Spirit.”
― Robert Burney, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

“Then I could start to see that the "accidents" and "coincidences" are really miracles.  That the "mistakes" are really opportunities for growth.”
― Robert Burney, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

“Trying to get our emotional needs met through sex does not work. ”
― Robert Burney, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

“Unconditional Love does not mean being a doormat for other people - unconditional Love begins with Loving ourselves enough to protect ourselves from the people we Love if that is necessary.”
― Robert Burney, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

“It is only when we start understanding on an emotional level, on a gut level, that we were powerless to do anything any differently than we did that we can Truly start to Love ourselves.”
― Robert Burney, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

“It is necessary to take down the dysfunctional defense systems but we have to replace them with defenses that work.”
― Robert Burney, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

“The Aggressive-Passive person, or "self-sacrificing bulldozer," will run you down and then tell you that they did it for your own good and that it hurt them more than it did you.  These are the types of people who aggressively try to control you "for your own good" - because they think that they know what is "right" and what  you "should" do and they feel obligated to inform you. This person is constantly setting him/herself up to be the perpetrator because other people do not do things the "right" way, that is, his/her way.”
― Robert Burney, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

“What makes relationship break ups so difficult in a codependent society is not the pain of the romance ending - although there is certainly a lot of pain and grief about such endings - it is the shame that our disease beats us up with for:  being "failures;"  or for being unworthy and unlovable;  or for being so "stupid" as to make such a "wrong" choice.  Very often we hang onto a relationship long after it is empty and dead because we feel that ending it will prove that we were "wrong" - or that something is wrong with us.  This is especially true in instances where our family or friends warned us that the person wasn't good for us - then we have a great deal of ego investment in proving them wrong.  This kind of attempt to avoid "failure" - to avoid admitting "defeat" - has caused many a person to stay in relationships that were abusive long after they knew it was hopeless. The subconscious programming is so strong that it overrides common sense, intellectual knowledge, and conscious awareness - and keeps us putting a great deal of energy into rationalizing and denying reality.  It is that subconscious programming - which can not be substantially changed without becoming emotionally honest, which includes releasing the repressed grief energy from childhood - that makes us powerless to live life in any way except reacting to the extremes of codependency.  It is powerlessness over that programming that has caused us to be our own worst enemies.”
― Robert Burney, Romantic Relationships ~ The Greatest Arena for Spiritual & Emotional Growth eBook 1: Codependent Dysfunctional Relationship Dynamics & Healthy Relationship Behavior

“Discernment is having the eyes to see, and the ears to hear - and the ability to feel the emotional energy that is Truth.”
― Robert Burney, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

“Turn on your heart light," who is going to magically heal us all.
The only one who can turn on your heart light is you.
The only one who can give your inner children healthy parenting is you.
The only healer who can heal you is within you.”
― Robert Burney, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

“Codependence allows us to survive physically but causes us to feel empty and dead inside.  Codependence is a defense system that causes us to wound ourselves.”
― Robert Burney, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

“the feeling in my heart. It is the feeling of something resonating within me.”
― Robert Burney, Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light

“To learn to ask for help and guidance from people who are trustworthy,”
― Robert Burney, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

“Codependence is being at war with ourselves - which makes it impossible to trust and Love ourselves”
― Robert Burney, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

“This milestone was the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous in Akron, Ohio, in June of 1935.”
― Robert Burney, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

“But we cannot integrate Spiritual Truths into our day-to-day human existence, in a way which allows us to substantially change the dysfunctional behavior patterns that we had to adopt to survive, until we deal with our emotional wounds.  Until we deal with the subconscious emotional programming from our childhoods.”
― Robert Burney, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

“Thank God for Codependence, without it we would not be alive.  But now is the time to get things into balance - the time to bring ego-self into alignment and balance with Spiritual Self.
That is the transformation which is known as "the death of the ego."  To quote theSt. Francis Prayer, "It is through dying that we awaken to eternal life."  It is not referring just to physical death, it is referring to the death of the ego which allows us to awaken to the Truth of eternal life.”
― Robert Burney, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

“Recovery is a process of learning to trust ourselves.  Codependence is based upon not trusting ourselves.
The way the emotional defense system that is Codependence works is that we continue to repeat our patterns in order to reinforce the belief that it is not safe to trust.  Not safe to trust ourselves or this process we call life.”
― Robert Burney, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

“Then I could start to see that the “accidents” and “coincidences” are really miracles. That the “mistakes” are really opportunities for growth.”
― Robert Burney, Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light

“A large part of what we identify as our personality is in fact a distorted view of who we really are due to the type of behavioral defenses we adopted to fit the role or roles we were forced to assume according to the dynamics of our family system.”
― Robert Burney, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

“As a child, I learned from the role modeling of my father that the only emotion that a man felt was anger.  From my mother, whose definition of love included the belief that you cannot be angry at someone you love, I learned that it was not okay to be angry at anyone I loved.  That left me with very little permission to feel anything.”
― Robert Burney, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

“The original wound, the genesis of all the pain in the human experience, the original cause from which Codependence emerged, is the illusion that we are separate from God, from our Creator.
We are not.  We never have been.  But due to planetary conditions it felt like we were.  It felt like being human was a punishment.”
― Robert Burney, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

“One of most important steps to empowerment is integrating Spiritual Truth into our experience of the process.  In order to do that it is necessary to practice discernment in our relationship with the emotional and mental components of our being.”
― Robert Burney, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

“it is necessary to do our grief processing, to feel our feelings.  It is necessary to go through the black hole.
That is the reason we came into body in this lifetime - to go through that black hole, to do this healing!
The time has come for you to remember that.  This is your wake-up call.  It is not the first and it probably will not be the last.  But it is not an accident or a coincidence that you are reading this today.”
― Robert Burney, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

“As was stated earlier, our perspective of life dictates our relationship with life.  This is true for all types of relationships.  Our perspective of God dictates our relationship with God.  Our perspective of what a man or a woman is, dictates our relationship with ourselves as men or women, and with other men and women.  Our perspective of our emotions dictates our relationship with our own emotional process.
Changing our perspectives is absolutely vital to the growth process.  And the process of enlarging our perspective can sometimes convert that which seems to be very complex and totally beyond our understanding into something that is simple and understandable.”
― Robert Burney, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

“It is letting go of the dream, the idea / concept, of the relationship that causes the most grief in every relationship break up that I have ever worked with.  We give power and energy to the mental construct of what we want the relationship to be and cannot even begin to see the situation and the other person clearly. Far too often - because of the concept of toxic / addictive love we are taught in this society - it is the idea of the other person that we fall in love with, not the actual person.  It is so important to us to cast someone in the role of Prince or Princess that we focus on who we want them to be - not on who they really are.  In our relationship with our self, we attach so much importance to getting the relationship that we are dishonest with ourselves - and with the other person - in order to manifest the dream / concept of relationship that will fix us / make our life worthwhile.  Then we end up feeling like a victim when the other person does not turn out to be the person we wanted." - The True Nature of Love - part 4, Energetic Clarity”
― Robert Burney, Romantic Relationships ~ The Greatest Arena for Spiritual & Emotional Growth eBook 1: Codependent Dysfunctional Relationship Dynamics & Healthy Relationship Behavior

“The way we do that is to change the attitudes and beliefs within us that tell us that we are not Lovable.”
― Robert Burney, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

“Once I began to become conscious of the emotional messages I was getting from my body instead of just trying to figure things out in my head, then I had a choice to follow the guidance I was receiving.  I could let my gut reaction choose the books I read.  I could let my heart guide me to the talks or workshops that I needed to attend.  I realized that if my attention was drawn to  something - an author, a workshop, a certain type of healing therapy, a psychic, a gathering, a movie, anything that caught my attention on a feeling level - three or more times from different sources in a short time span that the Universe was probably sending me a message.”
― Robert Burney, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

“The cause of Codependence, the cause of the dysfunction that exists in the human experience, is that humans (due to certain planetary conditions which will be discussed later) have been perceiving, and doing, "human" backwards.  We have beenreversed in our perspective and in our interactive dynamics - our relationship - with this human life experience.  The world is a mess today because we have been perceiving this human business backwards.
This "reversity" begins with the basic premise of who we are as beings.  We are not weak, sinful, shameful human creatures who have to somehow earn the right to become Spiritual.  We are Spiritual Beings having a human experience.  That is a 180-degree swing in perspective.  It changes everything!
As John Lennon said, "Imagine."  Imagine a world based upon this knowledge.
The belief that there is something inherently wrong or shameful about being human is all-pervasive in human civilized society.  It is woven into the fabric of civilized societies around the world.”
― Robert Burney, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls