10 Essential Values
Hello! My name is Catherine and I am a recovering codependent.
Codependency is an acquired mental health disorder, based on social conditioning and upbringing.
At its core, codependency means that I don’t didn’t love myself. I was taught not to. Instead I was taught that to give of myself to others made me a good person, and keeping myself to myself made me a bad person.
I was taught that self-love is shameful; by people who themselves had been shamed not to love themselves.
I’ve had enough. By not loving myself I have treated myself and others badly. No more.
I now practice self-love.
10 Essential Values
I’ve been arguing with my spirit, who I call Being - for weeks now - about one specific thing. On every other level we’ve been getting along famously, but on this particular point my Human has been setting some boundaries with Being. To give you an idea of what’s been going on, I’ll recall some of our conversations:
I was moisturising my legs when Being said, “Write about the 10 highest values: acceptance, curiosity, faith, gratitude, love, play, sensuality, surrender, trust and willingness.”
“Dude,” I responded as I pumped more moisturiser, ”I have zero time to write today, I’ve received no inspiration and anyway - I told you I changed ‘highest’ to ‘purest’ and I’m still not happy with ‘purest’ because I said I don’t want to measure them, judge them, or give them more value than other values. My ego can’t handle it - I go all grandiose or worthless whenever I think about it, and I only want to go into a blog post with humility. Give me another adjective to work with.”
“That’s not up to me. I do the being, you do the thinking and feeling - together we do the experiencing. That’s how it works, remember?”
“Doing the brainwork is my honour. I remember. You insisted they get introduced in my last blog post and you’re adamant I must write about them - tell me why you’ve brought them to me. That way I can think of an appropriate adjective - only then will I feel comfortable asking All for the blog post to emerge.”
Being, “I don’t know yet why. All I know is that we need this work, Cath.”
“So you keep telling me! I won’t involve my ego and brain this stuff! It’s not for me to think up the meaning of this work! My brain’s just there to organise the words to create the system for the meaning to emerge through. I don’t know how to understand this any more than you do. Speak to All. How do we gain insight on this?”
Silence.
Another day, another conversation, this time while I was riding Deathtrap down Enlightenment Hill after therapy:
Being; “Ten Most Important Values?”
“Nope.”
“Ten Best Practice Values? Ten Greatest Values? Ten Most Valuable Values?”
Me, navigating the zig-zags below the plague hospital; “You’re still measuring them and judging them more highly than other values. I won’t participate in that. You do your job and show me why they are so high, pure, important, best and great to you and I’ll do my job and put that understanding into words. You’re in touch with All in ways that I can’t fathom. Find out why I need them and what I need to do with them. What sets them apart from other values?”
“No see, they aren’t apart from other values. They’re a part of other values.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere!” I shouted as my mind caught the scent of understanding.
(My apologies for startling the family of tourists who were climbing the hill. I hope Enlightenment Hill was as kind to you as it has been to me.)
For weeks now, a blog post has brewed in me, bubbling and simmering and occasionally throwing up tasty tidbits that hinted at what it may contain, but aggravatingly, it just hasn’t felt ready to serve…
FOR WEEKS. It’s been torturous.
I was locked in a limbo of a lack of understanding.
I craved the release of enlightenment.
Light Spoke My Name
On Thursday I was in a bad way; overwhelmed, exhausted, disappointed in myself and others and I was shaming myself for my naivety in dealing with others and trusting people too easily.
I climbed into bed with Teddy and allowed myself to become receptive to loving light. In this safe space I grieved my codependent dysfunctions, released my attachments to my codependent thoughts, beliefs and behaviours and acknowledged my self-created, masochistic exhaustion.
This act of self-love, faith and connectedness felt really good. I felt supported, held, cared for, cherished, nurtured, loved, wanted, admired, respected, enjoyed, honoured and safe.
Thank you.
I feel safe now to own my true self and be my true self: with all of my pretty and all of my ugly too…
I am grateful
that I may trust
that I am acceptable
and lovable
as I am.
————————————————————————————
I believe the value I experienced is called
belonging
Thank you All
After about 30 minutes of experiencing belonging, I compassionately recognised that I’d been pushing myself too hard recently and decided to take the afternoon and evening to relax - something that I haven’t allowed myself to do in a while. I decided that the next day, on Friday, after I’d done some paperwork in preparation for my upcoming Maltese citizenship application, I would let go and let God, ask for what I needed in order to start this blog post over the weekend and welcome blessings and miracles.
I woke up on Friday morning with the sense that massive shifts had occurred, connections had been made and All is as it is meant to be; including me behaving less wilfully. I realised that I am starting to internalise the belief that no matter what happens in my life - I am okay because All loves me.
I am lovable and loving.
I am loved.
I ask you to play this music
from one of my favourite YouTube channels, Shivelight,
while you read on…
WRITE HERE.
WRITE NOW.
I’m applying for my Maltese citizenship, looking for a decent job, reducing my hoard of accumulated stuff, running my four blogs front and back end, going to kickboxing classes, following a strict diet plan that involves a lot of food prep and food journalling, gymming and doing therapy work and working a twelve-step program. Thursday’s mini-meltdown was a sign that I also need to make time for practicing acceptance, curiosity, faith, gratitude, love, play, sensuality, surrender, trust and willingness - the ten values that I most easily embrace simultaneously while doing something creative; like writing.
After gathering official documents and visiting a lawyer in preparation for the citizenship application, buzzing Deathtrap up to the police station for a police conduct certificate and printing some other documents I decided on Friday afternoon that enough’s enough.
I craved my ikigai.
I opened myself to my higher power and surrendered my will. I put on some music - what you’re listening to now - made myself a cuppa rooibos, fresh ginger and coconut milk, changed my bra and readied my laptop on the couch to allow this blog post to flow. I sat down and stood back up in one motion, driven by the desire to add an extra layer of sensuality with my aromatherapy diffuser to help induce my flow state. I explored my box of aromatherapy and essential oils and it was as I held up to my nose the two little bottles of clary sage and pine together to smell what they’d be like when combined that I… well, I suppose I inhaled an epiphany.
Enlightenment filled my senses, my body and my brain and I felt euphoric, uplifted, buoyant, and ecstatic.
“YES!” trumpeted Being as I giggled like a tickled toddler, “The 10 Essential Values!”
Me - awed, grateful and bursting with love as understanding entered me; “Oh wow, Being, this is SO COOL! Do I really have the honour of writing about this? Me?”
“YOU, darling! HAVE FUN!”
The 10 Essential Values
Acceptance
Curiosity
Faith
Gratitude
Love
Play
Sensuality
Surrender
Trust
Willingness
Keep It Simple, Sweetie
Values are either essential (pure, unmixed)
or compound (composite, mixture)
★ A compound value is made up of essential values. ★
Here are some examples of compound values:
Adaptability
Empathy
Ambition
Intuition
Calm
Humour
Authenticity
Mindfulness
Sharing
Grace
Responsibility
Humility
Welcoming
Imagination
Spontaneity
Chivalry
Creativity
Respect
Enjoyment / joy
Loyalty
Control
Patience
Determination
Sharing
Compassion
Friendship
Honesty
Loyalty
Professionalism
Stewardship
Teamwork
Gentleness
Don’t Overthink It
Life is simple. Recovery is simple. Whenever I get too much into my head - whether it’s in my life dealings or in my recovery process - I end up miserable. When I try to brain my way through life, or my therapy and 12-step work, I don’t get anywhere.
I can’t keep moving forward if I keep holding myself back with overthinking.
I am learning how to behave differently from how I have behaved all my life. I’m changing habits of thinking and patterns of behaviour that I’ve developed over decades. I need to give myself some credit that even when I’m having a hard time with my recovery; I’m still in the game.
I won’t give up on me.
Learning to have values and principles are important in my spiritual recovery from codependency. Reading about values, listening to people talk about values, discussing them with my therapist and in my online recovery meetings is all super useful, but it’s the practical application of values that are teaching me how to have values.
I’m practicing having values in order to have values to put into practice.
Let’s PLAY…
Click the symbols to figure out this pallindrome:
∃ ∞ φ ∵ φ ∞ ∃
It used to be that when I got stuck in my head and was engaging with overthinking the future or having obsessive thoughts about the past; I’d backslide, spiralling deeper and deeper into misery. My thoughts would drag down my experience and I’d twist myself into a depressed, exhausted, overwhelmed, tangled mess with psychosomatic body pain and chronic fatigue.
Now, when I find myself spiralling backwards; I refer to the ten essential values and choose one of them to practice with my thoughts and behaviours, because generating just one of those values makes it so much easier to generate the others. (Gratitude, love and sensuality have become my go-to values when I need to make a quick attitude adjustment.)
Once I have added some of these essential values to my experience, I find they naturally combine to create compound values which add further value to my experience of life. Adding these values to my experience uplifts me and enlightens me so that I can enjoy an upwards spiral, and the view’s much nicer when seen from the atmosphere of faith and mindfulness than it is from down in the mud of hopelessness and shame.
My perspective is something I’m allowed to control.
I am free to choose
my thoughts and behaviours
because of my beautiful gift from All:
my free will.
Core Values
Values aren’t selected; they’re discovered. We don’t choose our values. Our values reveal themselves to us.
Recently my therapist sent me some materials about values and asked me to name the one value that is most important to me. I responded immediately, “My most important value is my curiosity.”
I’m still learning about values myself, so I won’t profess to have any great knowledge about them. I can only speak to my experience of values. The core values that I have currently identified in myself are:
Curiosity, faith, love, acceptance, joy, play, humour, forgiveness, grace, self-love, peace, warmth, honour, sensuality, openness, spirituality, sharing, connectedness and gentleness.
Some of them have been with me for years, some of them have replaced others, some of them are new to me. Practicing the principles I set for myself in my Code of Honour are fostering behaviours and attitudes that nurture values in me. The pattern of my growth in my self-love journey resembles the Spiral of Development as proposed by Clare Graves.
Read this graphic about Spiral Dynamics, starting at the bottom of the spiral.
(Click on the image if you’d like to open it in a new tab in a slightly larger size. This is the best-quality version of this graphic that I could find.)
Clare Graves' Spiral Dynamics - using the golden spiral to explain how humanity’s value systems have advanced over time.
History of Man and Art
When I was fourteen, my history teacher announced that our end-of-year mark would comprise of 200 points each for our end-of-term exams and 200 points for the end-of-year oral. The subject of the oral could be anything as long as it was history-related. Groans and gasps filled the room as the kids who didn’t dig public speaking envisioned their imminent demise.
I’d been slouched in my chair, the base of my skull hooked over the top of the back rest, my tail bone perched on the front edge of the seat, my legs stretched out in front of me and crossed at the ankles. At fourteen I didn’t sit in chairs. I perched, lay or curled up in chairs like a cat, pixie or gargoyle.
As the teacher announced this wondrous news, my body moved itself of its own accord. By the time the teacher had finished speaking, I was sitting upright, turned in my seat to face him and smiling broadly, my hand in the air to ask a question.
“So we can give an oral on anything history-related?” I asked eagerly when he nodded his permission for me to speak.
“Yes, anything history-related, for a full half hour. We’ll be doing the orals over three weeks, two students per day,” he said and quirked his head at me. I think he was surprised that this normally disengaged and bored-looking student was suddenly taking an interest in his beloved subject.
“Aweh my bru,” said Being.
“Kiff!” I replied to her, “This is what that idea’s for, right? What a relief it’ll be to let it out… Thank goodness!”
Courage
On the first day of the history orals I was nervous. I was having second thoughts. I wondered if the whole class - teacher included - would think I was nuts. Maybe the teacher would tell me off for bringing my own personal philosophies and my own ideas into the speech, instead of just paraphrasing out of history books like I’d seen all the other kids doing to prepare their orals about past wars and notable figures.
200 points, a fifth of my end-of-year mark, 20% of the total mark that would go on my report card was on the line… Eek! I worried I’d buggered up.
I went and stood outside the prefab classroom five minutes before the end of break time. I leaned against the wall beside the door, closed my eyes and zoned out. The best way I can explain it is that I zoomed my perspective out and saw myself standing on a pretty November day, just a tiny figure down there on Earth. I made myself really tiny, just a dot, as I zoomed out even further. I stopped hearing what was going on around my body and sucked in the quiet of the atmosphere.
Camps Bay High School, seen from above.
“It’s out of my hands now,” I told Being, “It’s too late to change my mind. I’m as prepared as I can be; just gotta express the ideas in the order that you brought them to me.”
Practicing surrender, acceptance, willingness, trust and faith.
“Take your Peace Flame with you,” replied Being.
“Thank you Being. I love you.”
Gratitude and love.
I believed that if I sat and watched other kids giving their orals I’d end up wretched with nerves by the time my turn came, and because we were doing these orals over the course of three weeks I believed I couldn’t survive my nerves for that long, so as the teacher opened the door to the prefab classroom, I put a big smile on my face and said loudly, in a sing-song voice so all my classmates could hear; “May I have the honour of going first please, sir?” (play - arousing curiosity in others to feed my own, resulting in my own curiosity about How engaged can I get my audience to be? How can I involve them so I’m not alone and separate up there? How can I capture and keep their attention?)
He blinked rapidly and said, “Sure, go right ahead.”
By engaging my essential values I’d generated the compound value of courage.
While my classmates settled into their seats, I became familiar with my space (sensuality). With relaxed and confident movements I stood my six pictures (A3 printouts glued to cardboard) in a row on the chalk holder of the chalkboard and used some chalk to loudly write Prehistoric Art, Archaic Art, Medieval Art, Renaissance-Romantic Art, Abstract Art and Surrealism Art above each relevant printout, with the dates of these art movements. On the right-side of the board I wrote with the side of the chalk, still making lots of interesting noises and big, eye-catching movements; “Periods of Development in an Artist” with an arrow pointing to the pad of paper on the easel. I dragged the easel with its giant pad of paper and marker pens backwards towards the chalkboard so that I’d have lots of room at the front of the class, and flipped to a fresh page, making my movements as big and slow and relaxed as I could, allowing the paper to make deliciously reassuring paper noises.
After seeking permission with eye contact and a comedically broad gesture, and receiving a permissive nod and an amused smile in return from the teacher, I fanned out my set of colourful prompt cards on the corner of the teacher’s desk with a dramatic flourish. I knew I wouldn’t use them. It was part of the show to make my audience wonder what’s on them, why isn’t she holding them? When’s she going to bring out the colourful note cards? It was a magician’s trick - distracting the audience from my nerves by putting the crutches of oral-giving - the notes - aside. I detached both myself and my audience from my nervousness with that simple, symbolic act.
And then I stood in amongst all this comforting stationery - the trusty, faithful tools that allowed me to express myself with words and art - and settled into the moment with long, slow breaths.
Compound values of mindfulness and preparedness: achieved.
I took a long minute and waited quietly as my audience settled. I met the eyes of every student and nodded at each of them, gaining their individual attention and focus. When all 30 of my classmates were sitting still and listening with their eyes as well as their ears, I said, “My oral is called, The History of Man and Art. It’s about the similarity between the historical stages of mankind’s artistic progression and the stages of development of artistic skill from childhood through to adulthood, or in a beginner artist to an experienced artist.”
Someone said, “What?”
I replied, “Don’t worry, I brought pictures for the slow kids. The rest of you - do try to keep up.” I handed the first of my printouts to the what kid as his buddies laughed and reached out to give him playful shoves. I told him to examine the cave painting of bushmen hunting bison and pass it around.
Humour, engagement, connectedness.
Having successfully captured my audience’s interest, I turned to the easel and started drawing a giant, childish stick figure. It had too many fingers and toes. Hair stuck out crazily. Next to one foot I drew a lopsided flower, leaving off half the petals as though I’d grown bored with the task of petal-drawing. Over one shoulder I drew a mad sun; a mess of spirals and pointy bits. Kids sniggered and chuckled, just as I’d hoped.
As I drew I spoke in lilting, singing manner, “The figure you’re looking at - not this handsome fellow I’m drawing here; I’m talking about the hunky dude on the printout - was painted 10,000 years ago during the Prehistoric Era. Mankind was still in it’s artistic infancy at this time. Their focus was more on eating and not getting eaten than on making art. The figures in that cave painting are as rudimentary as a drawing by a five-year-old.” I stepped to the side of the easel and with my left hand I slapped a flat palm against the stick figure I’d just drawn, opening my posture to the class by holding the marker away from my body in my right-hand; a magic wand.
Expressiveness, playfulness, assertiveness.
I spoke for four to five minutes about the similarities between art of the prehistoric era and the art produced by a person during the early days of learning the skill, as a child or adult who has just taken up art for the first time. Then I moved on to draw similarities between the stiffness and insecurity of Archaic Art and pre-adolescent art (or a beginner artist’s attempts).
After about five minutes I moved on to the similarities between Medieval Art’s graphic-style iconogoraphy and every adolescent artist’s obsession with comic-style drawings (or a beginner-intermediary gaining skills through tracing). I matched melodramatic art from the Rennaissance to Romantic eras with angsty teenage art (and an intermediary artist’s combined frustration and growing confidence), Abstract Art’s adventurous nature with late teen art’s adventurous spirit (competent artist’s search for their personal style) and Surrealism art’s questioning nature with the art of a young adult artist exploring their artistic potential (accomplished artist’s sense of satisfaction plainly visible). By the time my imaginary artist had become a fully-fledged adult artist, they were specialising in a chosen art form that allowed them to express the ideals and concepts of Contemporary art; expressing the human experience as an advanced, expert artist.
In closing, I informed my audience of my belief that anyone can be an artist, as long as they are willing to put the time and effort required into growing and maturing as an artist by experiencing and exploring these six stages of personal and artistic development. I expressed my belief that the entire history of mankind’s artistic development can be integrated by any one of us, at any age, in as little as 6 years, with dedicated effort. Anyone can be an advanced artist. (I still believe this.)
I gave a bow and received an applause, which was an enjoyable and flattering surprise. And then people raised their hands to ask questions. This I hadn’t prepared for. I swallowed down my dismay and fear that they hadn’t understood my nonsense ideas, and bit back my worry that I was going to get cornered with questions I couldn’t answer. It turned out all of the questions were along the lines of, “Where’d you get the idea for your oral?” and “How are you staying so calm?”
After I answered the questions, before I cleared away my other presentation materials, I handed my stack of “notes” to the girl who was sitting in front of the teacher’s desk. She read the first one and laughed and passed it over her shoulder, reading, laughing and passing until the cards were travelling the room and getting chuckles wherever they landed. I’d used six cards, and written a joke on the front of each one with the laugh-line on the back. The jokes started out simplistic and childish and became more and more complex. The last card held a riddle in place of a joke.
Faith doesn’t need crutches.
Codependent Consequences
Over the next three weeks, half a dozen of my classmates asked me for help with their orals, and despite it being exam time, I helped every single one; taking time from my own studies to assist them.
Why?
Because I was codependent - even back then.
After presenting an oral that got me full marks; I felt ashamed of myself for doing something good for myself instead of focusing my efforts on doing good things for others. I felt I needed to make it up to the world for behaving badly and selfishly with acts of selflessness towards others.
I felt shame for having my easy courage while others struggled to find theirs. I felt ashamed of having the gift of the gab and a natural flair for showmanship. I felt guilty for my joy of entertaining while others struggled to stand up and speak in front of people. I shamed myself especially for the self-serving nature of how I’d behaved. I beat myself up a lot over the remaining month of the school year for what I viewed as the most hatefully and disgustingly selfish thing I’d done all year.
I didn’t know back then that selfishness is actually a good thing; a compound value.
It’s also known as:
SELF-LOVE.
I am the Divine Consciousness expressing themself.
The Divine Will is love:
SELF-LOVE.
I am an expression of
GOD loving GOD.
The Value of Self-Love
Self-love is both an essential value; a form of love, and a compound value, because the practice of self-love very often necessitates the involvement of other essential and compound values.
Self-love is synonymous with selfishness. The term self-love just hasn’t gotten a bad reputation like selfishness has. Selfishness only has a bad reputation because it is often mistaken for self-absorption; which is a state of self-centredness and apathy that excludes any thought for the needs and wants of others.
Selfishness aka self-love is not apathetic towards others. It is actually a very empathic state; fostering a level of intuition that can’t be found in apathetic states of ego dysfunction like self-absorption.
Self-love as a value is powerful because it connects me with my higher power quickly and easily.
The primary purpose of my most important relationship; my relationship with my higher power, is:
For me to learn how to love myself,
Share my journey with others and
