October Tidbit: Changing the Story 10/26/2011
Several years ago while facilitating a creativity workshop, I asked the participants to decorate a box for a group exercise. One client told me she could not do the assignment because she was not artistically talented. She knew this because a 2nd grade school teacher had told her so, correcting the colors she had used in her drawing of the sky. And for 30 years she did not pick up a colored pencil, or paintbrush or gluepot. By the time she came to my workshop, the belief in her artistic ineptitude had become her truth. When she finally broke the mental constraint and set herself free, she was able to create a beautifully decorated box... and know more about her self. We all have ideas about ourselves that are founded in the opinions of other. If a significant person tells you often enough that you are "lazy, crazy, bad, or ugly" odds are good that you will come to believe it. Especially if it is something you are repeatedly exposed to in your childhood when the doorways to the unconscious are more open and malleable. Whether or not it is grounded in truth is irrelevant, for once you come to believe and act as if it is true, it continues to manifest as your reality. Sometimes we have beliefs that are the result of a conclusion we made from an experience that we might not have interpreted correctly. Perhaps you failed at something, say hitting a softball. And because some ill behaved yahoos laughed, you decided that you were clumsy and would never be good at sports. So the more you thought about not being good at sport the more you missed the ball, the more they laughed, the more convinced you became, and the more 'true' that story became, eventually becoming part of your operating system. Once a belief is established in the unconscious mind and becomes part of the operating system that runs your programs, it can be challenging to change it. Hypnosis and the energy psychologies can open direct contact with the unconscious and have demonstrated good success in rewriting limiting beliefs. The practice of mindfulness and somatic awareness can also open access to the unconscious and effect significant change. Whatever path you choose, think about what would happen if you released the misinformation that the world has told you about yourself and changed your story. How would your life be different? Perhaps you would find yourself to be artistic, graceful, brilliant, happy and talented in ways you have not yet imagined. "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from out fear our presence automatically liberates others." Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love Add Comment Weekly Tidbit: Biography and Biology 05/19/2010
"Your biography becomes your biology -- you are one and the same with your life and your history. Events that you have not yet reconciled, haven't forgiven, haven't let go of, are carried in that debt in your cell tissue." Carolyn Myss, a medical intuitive and author, frequently talks and writes about how our experiences and the beliefs about those experiences affect our day to day living. Perhaps those chronic aches and pains, the stiffness in our joints are the result of cell tissue debt, of energy blockages that developed in response to unresolved stress or trauma. A long standing pattern of energy holding often manifests as chronic pain. Fibromyalgia, a chronic disorder characterized by widespread pain and fatigue, is an example of how disabling and isolating a collection of energy blockages can be. The word "fatigue" is often defined literally as a lack of energy. Fibromyalgia is controversial in that it does not easily fit western medical models; some people view it as a central nervous system problem, other see it as musculoskeletal, others as psychiatric. There is no easy cure because it needs to be treated as a whole person disease, a biopsychosocial approach that does not always conflate with the symptom orientation of western medicine. Most autoimmune disorders have puzzling and complicated components. Perhaps these "diseases" are asking us to look at the bigger picture of our lives rather than to dissect them. Let's say you are an organic system with a thousand units of life force energy flowing through your body. This flow of electromagnetic energy digests food and carries nutrients, maintains memories and thoughts, heals our cells, generates our activities, powers our heartbeat, moves our lungs... you get the picture. Many of our emotional structures develop at an early age, before we can really assess the truth or validity of their context. So if you came to believe that you were not good enough, not supported, not loved, or that the world was not safe, a significant amount of your thousand units of energy is diverted from the flow and goes into maintaining those belief structures. If you are financing resentments about things that happened in your life, another chunk of life force goes to keeping those programs alive. Indulging in stressful activities like overwork or smoking or drinking takes another chunk of energy units, as does feeling bad about those habits, past or present. Holding in your feelings or maintaining a protective defensive attitude drains still more. Like a computer burdened by out of date software, things slow down, systems crash. Not much energy is left for joyous exploration and celebration. Illness is not always bad. It is often our best and most appropriate teacher, just as pain is a tremendous motivator for change. Please don't blame yourself for "creating a disease"; you are only sidetracking more of your life force energy into stagnant resentment against yourself. What if you choose instead to see your history as an opportunity to gain freedom, to create a flow of energy that allows you feel more alive, to identify with your life force rather than your wounds? In our culture, we seem overly identified with our injuries, our illnesses, and an astoundingly huge part of our economy is dependent on disease and pain. Despite our claims to desire health there is sometimes an unconscious resistance based on fear that we will be alone and apart from society if we no longer have our wounds to talk about. We want the pain to stop, but we are entering the realm of the unknown if we let go of all these familiar thoughts and patterns and step outside the consensual reality of suffering. As Carolyn Myss said, "We don't know yet what it's like to have self-esteem in such a way that we celebrate our strengths, celebrate our creativity. We still go at it through our wounds. We still don't know what it's like to feel healthy without feeling embarrassed by our strengths. Until we develop a model of health that says we can have pride in being creative, strong, and intelligent without apologizing, without feeling shame, we will use our wounds as a privilege." One way to step in a more positive direction is simply to do more of what makes you truly feel good, of what gets your juices flowing. Choose to consciously direct energy into joyous exploration and celebration. Do yoga, sing, ride horses, dance, make music, smile, and above all learn to forgive and let go; resentments are perhaps the biggest and most dangerous of energy suckers. If you need help to further this shift towards living well, email me to schedule a free half hour phone consultation. As someone who once suffered from chronic pain and an autoimmune disorder, I understand what it is like to feel stuck and at a loss for direction. “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love Weekly Tidbit: Accepting Others 02/24/2010
Marrianne Williamson in her book, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles, writes about accepting people as they are. "In the holy relationship, we don't seek to change someone, but rather to see how beautiful they already are. Our prayer becomes 'Dear God, take the scales from in front of my eyes. Help me to see my brother's beauty.' It is our failure to accept people exactly as they are that gives us pain in relationship." One would think it might be easier to accept something than to expend effort to change it, but that does not seem to be the case in most of our relationships. Why do we want others to be and act a certain way? And what creates our expectations about how they should be? Ego often oversteps its role of differentiation and says: I know what is needed in this situation. I know how others should act. I want them to do what I want them to do because it is the right way to do it. It suits my purposes. And if they act the way I want them to I don't have to deal with my own emotional response patterns, my own fear, loneliness, or anger. Many of these conversations (and others about safety, familiarity, duty, and security) are beneath our conscious awareness and are more potent for being so. It was in the rooms of Alanon that I first recognized how much easier it was for me to focus on someone else's issues than to look at my own. Putting my attention on others gave me the illusion of being right and powerful, or conversely, the self pitying comfort of being a victim. And the key word there is 'illusion', because trying to control or change others is very much like spitting against the wind. Change is an inside job and putting all our energy into to trying to do it outside of ourselves distracts us from our true point of power: our ability to interface with divine forces and change and grow into our full potential as a spiritual being in a physical body. "It is not for you to judge the journey of another's soul. It is for you to decide who YOU are, not who another has been or has failed to be." Neale Donald Walsch in Conversations With God, Book Two. I have heard spiritual progress described as a detoxification process: things need to come up before they can be released. A holy relationship is one that grants a safe place to be who we are, to allow our stuff come up and our dark places be seen, knowing we will not be judged, but instead offered compassion and forgiveness. And without the distraction of degradation we are able to learn to change what we can change ... ourselves. Part of that healing change is in response to the supportive environment, and the internalization of that experience leads us to practice love and forgiveness with ourselves and others. We come to understand relationship as a context for healing through mutual forgiveness. A significant aspect of that healing process is the recognition and appreciation of the divine spark that is in all of us, linking us together as one. Weekly Tidbit: The Power of Emotions 03/25/2009
| AuthorCharly Hill is a Life Skills Coach and Self Empowerment Teacher. ArchivesDecember 2010 CategoriesAll |
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