Life Isn't Fair!--but I Can Help You Win Anyway: self help

By Carroll Straus

For those whose path has been rocky and unfair, but who are willling to use it all to win.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carroll Straus
• Release date: Oct 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393773665

Carroll Straus

Who Am I and Why Am I Qualified to Teach You Anything? I was an early adopter of alternative healing—both for myself and in my calling as a lawyer. I have been a lawyer 27 years and I have studied energy healing and taken “human potential” healing and spiritual classes for most if that time.  Is this “normal” for a lawyer—NO.  Is what “normal” lawyers are are doing working? NO! Healthwise (as a nation) we are getting sicker. And courts are  clogged with “pro se” litigants and even the “lawyered up” ones are UNHAPPY after their brush with the legal system. If this was the NHS it would be an epidemic. So I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest—WHATEVER YOU DO WITH ME WILL BE BETTER THAN WHAT YOU DO THE “NORMAL” WAY!

Book preview

Prologue:

This book has been gestating in me for many years. It is ironic that over 30 years have passed since I learned the laws of the Universe (also know as how things work in the real world, it our belief systems) in the Human Potential Movement.  I started that journey just after I was admitted to the Bar as an attorney in California.

I could not talk about what I learned there among my employers or my fellow lawyers back then—even the few of us who took part in that seemed to split themselves when they returned to law. I watched as they acted as though the same rules did not apply in both arenas, but I knew better then to speak up.

My colleagues seemed to pretend that the formula of what is often called karma—what you put, you get back, sometimes in spades (their version of the law of consequences)—was not operational as long as they did it at work, in court, outside the Summit Organization building—or away from the eyes and ears of our trainers. (Group coaches.) This made no sense to me. Me, I was using it all everywhere I went—and getting results. (When I did, the lawyers I worked for tended to look at me blankly, or ask why I had not done better. But it always made more sense to me to deal in truth. In what is rather than what should be.

Now, 36 years later, I understand that they simply did not see what I saw, and thus my miracles (or hunches or perceptions) did not exist for them. Fortunately for my clients, these worked, anyway. I strongly suspect the level of commitment to the truth (and to them protected) me from blowback. In any case, I became less and less able to live with the split between my core values and a system which violated them, and so I left a well paying job at a law firm to follow my heart and seek to establish a more whole way of doing law—in particular divorce. It has been a long journey and one which costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Emotional Intelligence is not but in which I have become more and more while and society has become more and more receptive. There is much more to do—it is my hope this book will help.

Then, I remained silent and more then a little frustrated, unable or unwilling to risk speaking what I knew was true. Since then, the movie The Secret (however slickly hyped and grossly oversimplified) has made open discussion of these truths—this ancient and universal wisdom— possible. Nationally syndicated television exposure on Larry King Live and Oprah has finally made this (metaphysics) fairly mainstream. That said I assure you lawyers are not openly integrating this... yet. But I have bided my time until it was safe to boldly go where no lawyer has publicly gone before in integrating science, physics, mind/body medicine and perennial wisdom into what the soul and the family experience in divorce. One hopeful note—a colleague recently stated on a public website that since he learned to be empathetic his practice has doubled. Emotional Intelligence is gaining traction!

Dedication: For David A Rosenthal, who left the mortal realm March 16, 2007 after a 5 year battle with cancer. He was my soul mate, my friend, my teacher, my healer, my beloved. My relationship with him started my career as a writer: recognition of my gifts—and many of my wounds—was born in relationship with him. My respect for his courage made many things possible—including this book. Requiescat in Pacem.

Purpose: This purpose of this book is to fill a gaping hole I have seen for the last 35 or so years:  a (otherwise missing) resource to help people live through and heal from the experience of court—a system essentially built on lies. I intend to be a witness—to stand at the foot of the cross for people, (divorcing partners—on both sides) and to help them recover. This is a mess NO ONE has a voice to speak about. It’s invisible. There are literally millions of people who have been unwilling participants in someone else’s drama, and received injustice at the hands of the legal system—people who are up against forces far larger than they can overcome. This deep trauma is not recognized in our society.

Many of these divorcing