“Climbing the Mountain”

This is an Intermediate Topic written for the public-facing website.

Future You

Following the Ten Steps to Intermediate Status means you have met intimately with your Inner Child first thing every morning for 30 minutes, AND you have allowed your Inner Child complete freedom to say whatever it likes about anything it wants. AND you have said TYICFTMT every time. Finally, your Inner Child has begun to believe that you will always be there, as opposed to the way you were before, either discounting or ignoring its genuine voice.

You are now firmly an Intermediate SELF-Parenting Practitioner. As an Inner Parent, you have learned how to truly listen and not respond back with dysfunctional roadblocks as acquired from your forebears. You can now stay on your side of the relationship seesaw. This is an excellent place to be.

The next step in your SELF-Parenting journey, should you chose to accept it, is that of “Climbing the Mountain.” Until you crossed the raging river, it’s not even worth talking about this because you just won’t be able to understand.

“Climbing the Mountain” is the phrase I use in the SELF-PARENTING Program to describe becoming fully conscious as an Inner Parent. This journey is the second stage I’ve mapped out and is a more involved than “Crossing the River.” Many practitioners over the years have crossed the river but very few have climbed the mountain. It’s not really that hard, you just need to start the journey and keep going. And I’m happy to be your guide.

This represents a deeper commitment to your growth as the Inner Parent. The practice is the same, still 30 minutes per day, as soon as you wake up, following the 23 Tips, etc. But what happens is now you start gaining some altitude and the view changes. You begin to leave outer world’s concerns, as you look more deeply into your relationship with your Inner Child.

“Climbing the Mountain” is just another way of describing YOU becoming as conscious as possible and even more skillful as a loving, supportive, and nurturing Inner Parent. The path up this mountain begins with a gentle incline that is well-defined and marked. You could almost say there’s a rope-like handrail along the whole trail. When you get to the top, we could say that you will “have or be showing a rational, modern, and well-informed outlook” which is one of the dictionary definitions of enlightenment.

Let’s take a closer look at this term enlightened. There are two definitions.

• 1) having or showing a rational, modern, and well-informed outlook.
• 2) Spiritually aware.

For the purposes of this discussion, “climbing the mountain” represents definition one. With dedication and conscious SELF-Parenting, we can reach this state to a high degree and reside there, if not permanently, close enough to be happy most of the time.

There are so many factors that involve gaining this awareness and it is certainly the goal of many philosophical, mental, and spiritual systems. As it turns out, with a conscious loving Inner Parent and a motivated energized Inner Child, this state can be achieved quite naturally. And by keeping your Self-Parenting Sessions attuned to these next Intermediate to Advanced Ten Steps you be working on the most important prerequisites.

The first step will be upgrading your role as the Inner Parent. You are now going to take a more proactive role during your SELF-Parenting sessions. You start with the Dialogue Templates Module which teaches you how to practice positive ways to respond, from your Inner Parent side, during your half-hour sessions. As you become comfortable with these positive methods of communicating within your sessions, your IP begin to apply them outside in the “real world.”

After about two months when you have begun integrating these templates, you would then ascend to the next steps.

• There are deeper and higher modes of Self-Esteem to explore.
• When you read the “blue book” you are going to get a lot more out of it.
• Inner Conflicts will eventually be gone forever.
• You will learn about “addictive demands,” ultimately an Inner Parent issue
• You will explore core life concepts
• Discover and practice How Relationships Work.

You can think of this as getting to the Self-Parenting base camp much like Everest base camp where hikers go to acclimate to the altitude and prepare logistically for their ascent to the top of Mount Everest. All this is in preparation for the SELF-Parenting Style Module.

The SELF-Parenting Style Module is the crown jewel of the SPP system. This will give you a very clear and deep understanding of YOUR Self-Parenting Style and what needs to be done to correct and perfect it. In fact, you’ll be correcting it as you go through the module.

Moving from Intermediate to Advanced Practitioner is a major undertaking. “Climbing the Mountain” could be treacherous in parts (not so much physically but psychologically) and it’s a tad difficult to get there without a guide. This is YOU engaged in your Inner Parent’s karma/task of cleaning up whatever is wrong with your life, your Inner Child, and what goes on between you two.

Of course, this will be vastly different for each practitioner, but each of us gets what we need to work on. It’s a fact that our life experience gives us unalterably what we need work on for whatever is best for us. You will meet and defeat your own deepest/worst and/or highest/strongest personal barriers (as determined by you.) From this point of view it is the same goal that philosophy, psychology, and religion present in terms of becoming “enlightened.”

From the Self-Parenting perspective this means YOU, the Inner Parent (known as the ego in psychology), will be as clear, happy, and free of “mental problems” as possible. “Crossing the River” convinced your Inner Child to believe and trust that you would continue Self-Parenting sessions. “Climbing the Mountain” is both inner Selves engaged in your karma/task of cleaning up whatever is wrong with your life, and what goes on between the two of you.

Once these issues are confronted and worked out, you will have defined strategies and have made many decisions between you and your Inner Child that will strengthen your ability to deal with life’s travails. Once you’ve completed these Ten Steps to Advanced, you will have all the needed tools, to explore your deepest levels of awareness and use these tools to uncover and remove any blocks of karma keeping you from doing whatever you like in this world.

Then you will ready for “Trekking the Foggy Plane.” Here you will be working on the second definition of enlightened, as in Spiritually Aware.