| The Law of Attraction |
Dr. Ray leads several groups in Santa Monica, Los Angeles area:law of attraction, singles and relationships, and a women and men's only support group.
At the law of attraction group, Dr. Ray discusses advanced principles from Law of Attraction and how they relate to all aspects of our lives. He combines the Western model with Eastern philosophy providing the bridge for metaphysics, spirituality, neurobiology, clinical psychology, science, and quantum physics.
Click Here to Join the Law of Attraction group today
Ray Doktor, Psy. D. also leads a singles and relationship support group. Dr. Ray lectures by using experiential exercises and examples to expand your conscious awareness about the psychology, neurobiology, and spirituality of relationships. He combines his clinical experience and spiritual perspectives when discussing issues. This group is designed to answer questions, provide exercises, and to share experiences. Topics include: sexuality, masculine and feminine polarities, attachment styles, communication, and the law of attraction.
Click Here to Join the Singles and Relationships support group today
The Spiritual Mens Empowerment Group is to support, guide, and educate renaissance men who seek deeper spiritual relationships, to understand the language of women and the feminine divine, including understanding their own feminine energy, to cultivate meaningful lives, to be in alignment with their purpose, to develop emotional intelligence and resilience, to be more grounded and PRESENT, to learn how to alleviate the stress and cultural pressures, to transcend beyond stereotypical male paradigms, to share gifts from the heart, to get out of the shadow of their parents, to transform their darker sides into love, creativity, and passion, to experience peace of mind, and to network and build friendships with other like-minded men.
Click Here to learn and join his men's only group
This WOMENS only empowerment group is to help guide women to cultivate their radiant, feminine energy, to better understand their bodies in relation to sacred sexuality and spirit, to help them feel more grounded and yet free, to liberate them from the collective consciousness of societal pressures and anti-feminine history, to develop healthy boundaries but remain vulnerable, to teach them how TO BE LOVE rather than always seeking it, to heal psychic wounds, to connect them to their powerful life force so they experience more meaningful lives, to help them become more creative and playful, and to bring more goddess energy to motherhood.
Click Here to learn and join his women's only group
All groups are in Santa Monica or the Los Angeles area. If you are interested in having Dr. Ray speak for a group, please contact him on the contact page of this website.
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How We Have Come To Be
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Why do we attract unhealthy relationships over and over again? Why do we feel like we are not good enough? Why do we feel like we are lacking something no matter how much money or love we receive? Why do things feel unfulfilled despite our accomplishments? Why do we develop unhealthy habits or addictions? Why is our behavior out of control sometimes? Why do we feel insecure even though we know we are loved or supported? Why are we always having health issues? Why do more obstacles seem to keep surfacing?
How We Have Come To Be
Introduction
Why do we attract unhealthy relationships over and over again? Why do we feel like we are not good enough? Why do we feel like we are lacking something no matter how much money or love we receive? Why do things feel unfulfilled despite our accomplishments? Why do we develop unhealthy habits or addictions? Why is our behavior out of control sometimes? Why do we feel insecure even though we know we are loved or supported? Why are we always having health issues? Why do more obstacles seem to keep surfacing?
Even though most of these questions may not be ones you ask yourself about your life, it likely you probably have experienced one of them. None of these questions can be answered concisely, nor is one answer applicable to all. There are many schools of thought about how we have come to be, but they are all still theories and hypotheses with no concrete evidence. Even though scientists cannot accurately measure these theories, people are living better and happier lives by applying and understanding them.
Why do we live and what do we live for?
All humanity has one basic cosmic motivational force – a tendency toward self-actualization, understanding, wholeness, and to love and be loved. We unconsciously gravitate towards people, relationships, and situations that give us the opportunity to learn, whether painfully or pleasurably. Unfortunately many of us end up taking the “victim” role during times of struggle and become stifled. The struggle keeps resurfacing in many shapes and forms creating a vicious cycle.
All of us have experienced suffering through facing life obstacles, problems, and pain. Suffering is not an illness or a reflection of bad karma, as some would explain it. It is a natural part of a life full of challenges that allows us to flex our psychic muscles. It is also the other side of the coin which we term as happiness. There is no struggle-free path to enlightenment and self-realization. There is no instantaneous access or a painless road to knowledge of the “self” even for spiritual figures like Jesus. Each of us is as unique as our thumbprint. To persevere and become enlightened – to feel complete and whole – and to understand the “self” is an unpredictable universal mystery in every one of us.
Let’s examine our childhood
This is not a simple walk down memory lane of saying, “Oh, I remember my childhood, my father was never around, but I’m over it now,” or “I was adopted, so that’s why I have abandonment issues.” A deeper understanding of one’s childhood means exploring all one’s authentic feelings and emotions during both traumatic and enjoyable times. One should be aware of how one’s physical body was feeling and reacting to these situations (i.e., breathing, rigidity in muscles, clenched jaws or fists, or perspiration.) Many times we will reflect back on our childhoods and minimize traumatic events and situations because if the truth were to be revealed, we might feel overwhelmed. We also have a tendency to compare our experiences with others (i.e., “my childhood was not as bad as my cousins, my father only yelled at me, but he never hit me like my cousin’s father did.”) Comparing our childhood experiences with others is irrelevant because we all experience situations differently. Those assertions could be unconscious defenses against the shadowed truth. For those who experienced emotional unavailability, a lack of connection or nurturing parenting, may have habituated a role that minimizes the importance of interpersonal relationships and the communication of emotion.
The more conditional the love of parents, the more pathology is likely to develop. The pathological person is the one who has become stuck in the natural process of growth or maturation. Because of the need for self-regard, individuals begin to perceive their experiences selectively, in terms of their parent’s conditions of worth, which have been internalized. This incongruence between the “self “and experience is the basic estrangement in human beings. This is the core of psychological maladjustments.
It takes years before a child learns to make judgments which are not based on introjected standards that were given by his parents. Sometimes adults never cut the psychic umbilical chord. So thoroughly are the lessons of childhood learned that a child has difficulty separating his feelings from the attitudes impressed upon him by his parents. His reactions to tabooed and sensitive areas are sometimes retained throughout life. Even if he has consciously overcome them, they may return in stressful times or crises.
Where did it all begin?
Most people think that psychological damage comes from experiencing a traumatic childhood such as sexual or physical abuse, living with alcoholic parents, growing up with a single parent due to a painful divorce or death and other tragic events. However, even if you were fortunate enough to grow up in a stable, safe, and nurturing environment, you are still very vulnerable to endure hidden scars from childhood; because at the moment we are all born, we are complex, dependent organisms that constantly have needs from other complex, fallible organisms such as our parents.
A child may be sick for weeks without any helpful diagnoses to resolve his problem. The child’s parents are attentive, nurturing, and will extend themselves as far as they can to reach for professional help. Unfortunately, the child is still suffering and surrounded by doctors and other adults who are inevitably feeling helpless themselves. Even though a child is dependent, he or she is fully aware of distress and tension between the caretakers. The child feels that this sudden shift of personalities is because the universe evolves around him or her. There are no distinctions or boundaries yet. This vignette portrays the sense of helplessness even in a loving and supportive environment. We are not trying to vilify our parents. We are only trying to shed conscious awareness on the reality of childhood.
When babies are 1-5 months old, they are in a symbiotic stage. The mother and baby are a dual unity. Babies are not psychologically born and able to discern their affects states from mothers. They are not separate, autonomous human beings with an identity of one’s own. Mother’s world becomes baby’s world. Mother’s problems become baby’s problems even if they are concealed. Babies pick up on energy and vibrations. As the baby hatches out of the symbiotic stage, he starts his separation and individuation phase and starts scanning his environment. His interactions and influences from the outside world and people will further shape his personality.
Babies are born into the world dependent on specific stimuli (i.e., parent-child interaction) for further healthy development. The baby and mother or caretaker experiences an intimate connection that gives the infant a sense of security. This secure attachment is associated with a positive development outcome for children in many areas, including social, emotional, and cognitive domains. The type of attachment created in the parent-child relationship will shape children’s’ interactions with other children, their sense of security about exploring the world, their resilience to stress and coping skills, their ability to balance their emotions, their capacity to have a coherent story that makes sense of their lives, and their ability to create meaningful interpersonal relationships in the future. Attachment lays a foundation for how a child comes to approach the world.
When a parent is repeatedly unavailable and rejecting the child, a child may become avoidantly attached, meaning that the child adapts by avoiding closeness and emotional closeness to the parent. An ambivalently attached child experiences the parent’s communication as inconsistent and at times intrusive. The child cannot depend upon the parent for attunement and connection. When children’s’ attachment needs are unmet and their parent’s behavior is a source of disorientation or terror, they may develop a disorganized attachment. Children with disorganized attachment have repeated experiences of communication in which the parent’s behavior is overwhelming, frightening, and chaotic. The disorganizing experiences impair the child’s ability to integrate the functions of the mind that enable him to regulate emotions and cope with stress.
What happens when our needs are not met?
All of our old wounds will shape our survival patterns. Those patterns will be set forth in order for us to exist. Since we are not born with the tools to discriminate between conditional love and unconditional love, we usually end up bargaining for whatever love and attention we can get even if it’s abusive. We forget about the “self” and sacrifice our needs to avoid further emotional injury. Basically we compromise our feelings in order to survive. Infants are very dependent on caretakers in order to survive. Since it has no way of taking care of itself and no sense of delayed gratification, it believes that getting the outside world to respond instantly to its needs is truly a matter of life and death. At an early age, an infant learns how to get what he needs. Initially he may be limited to crying, but eventually a he learns how to please mom and dad by smiling, laughing, walking or saying words, like “Mommy.” Children cleverly adapt to their caretaker’s moods, reactions, and responses to get attention. They eventually learn if mommy is happy they will have a better chance in getting what they want even that if that means surrendering their power. If they were to speak their “truth” they would be rejected.
Rejection is like annihilation, which might unconsciously feel like death. As children, we learn that we are measured and loved for our appropriate behavior and how that makes are caretakers feel and not for our individuality and emotions. A parent gives attention and positive regards to his child because the child did something that made the parent happy. On the contrary, the child is ignored or punished when the child doesn’t please the parent. It is the rare parent who validates a child’s anger. To be a “good” boy or girl, you had to psychologically cut off or disown that part of yourself. The ultimate price of obedience is a loss of wholeness.
What happens to the self?
Author Harville Hendrix describes this dysfunctional “self” in three categories:
1. Your “lost self,” those parts of your being that you had to repress because of the demands of society.
2. To fill the void, the child creates a “false self,” a character structure that serves a double purpose: it camouflages those parts of his being that he had repressed and protects him from further injury.
3. Now the child is caught in a bind. He needs to hold on to his adaptive character traits because they serve a useful purpose, but he doesn’t want to be rejected. This creates the “disowned self”, which are negative parts of your false self that met with disapproval and were therefore denied.
When we become adults it’s no wonder that we are so easily shattered when someone doesn’t agree or criticizes and possibly doesn’t like us. No wonder why we are devastated when our significant others leave us. We become crushed and panicked when we lose our jobs even though we hated what we did for work. Our marriages fall apart when our kids leave for college. We lost “ourselves” long ago in our childhoods and don’t know who we are unless we have a label or someone to tell us who we are. The “self” has vanished and we have become identified with our jobs, with our spouses, with our kids, and with our communities. We are defined through the eyes of the external world. We are falsely defined by others, but will adopt an appearance in total position to that false definition. We create “idealized” images, for example, the best parent in the world, the ultimate host or the most attentive lover. In our hearts, however, there may be little or no emotional conviction in that role.
Parents have a concept of what the perfect child would be – the perfect athlete or perfect scholar. The parents are trapped by this ideal, and their whole life is centered around performance. Of course, we as children are willing to participate because we seek their love and approval. Our natural being becomes repressed when performance becomes everything. We begin to live for an ideal because there’s nothing else to live for. But if we are living for an ideal, and driving ourselves as hard as we can to be perfect – at our job, as a mother or a wife, we lose the “self.” We become addicted to perfection, drugs, sex, and even pain – when what we are looking for is right here, inside everyone of us.
More questions
Once a person understands all the dynamics of his childhood, it will be easier to answer the question “why.” Even though person may understand his personality and how he has come to be through his childhood, the questions that may arise are: How did I end up with my parent? Why was I born in these circumstances? Did old karma play a role in my challenge? And what about the soul? A deep understanding of our childhood helps create a road map to travel beyond psychology and science. There is a bigger picture outside our third dimensional comprehension. However, some people try to skip Earth and escape the lessons here to be in other realms. This is not an easy task to do because we are still humans with human scars. These scars will keep pulling us back into our bodies until they are healed or resolved.
Gary Zukav, author of “Seat of the Soul” gives an insightful aspect of the bigger picture:
“The lifetime of your personality is one of a myriad of experiences of your soul. The soul exists outside of time. The perspective of the soul is immense, and the perception of the soul is without limitations of the personality. Each personality contributes, in its own special way, with its own aptitudes and lessons to learn, consciously or unconsciously, to the evolution of its soul. The life of a mother, a warrior, a daughter, a priest; the experiences of love, vulnerability, fear, loss, and tenderness; the struggles with anger, defiance, emptiness, and jealously – all serve the evolution of the soul. Each physical, emotional and psychological characteristics that comprises a personality and its body – strong or weak arms, dense or penetrating intellect, happy or despairing disposition, yellow or black skin, even hair and eye color – is perfectly suited to its soul’s purpose.”
About the Author
Ray Doktor is a clinical hypnotherapist, master past-life therapist, spiritual counselor and life coach based in Los Angeles. He can be contacted at his website http://www.wholeminds.com
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| Locations |
Ray Doktor., Psy. D.
2511 S. Barrington Ave. Suite 100
West Los Angeles, CA 90064
1128 7th St. #303
Santa Monica, CA 90403
Phone:
310-692-4866
Call now and receive a free initial consultation
This includes:
Intake and interview
Assessment for addressing issue
Education and preparation
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ABOUT RAY
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