Managing Emotional Responses with NLP

Managing Emotional Responses with NLP

bJules Collingwood NLP Trainer

Contrary to popular belief, NLP is not a therapy, although therapy practitioners who use it get spectacular results. It is not a sales training programme, yet sales people who use it also get spectacular results. It is not a personal development medium, yet personal developers who use it get spectacular results too. And it is not a suitable subject for home study. It works too well to be safe in the hands of the untrained, and is best learned with experienced and qualified NLP trainers. Would you attempt to learn scuba diving from a book, or from your neighbour who did a week end course in the local swimming pool? This article offers insight into one of our cultural assumptions and ways, using NLP information, to learn to manage it ourselves.

NLP studies how we put our thoughts together, how we know what we know and how we construct our own experiences. And yes, our own subjective experiences are different from everyone else's. And everyone else's experiences are different from each others'. All of our thoughts, emotions, memories and imaginings are made from pictures, sounds and sensations. The differences between our common experiences come from the myriad sequences and placings we can make with sounds and pictures and sensations and in the choice of subject matter that attracts our attention.

Many people in the west find it easy to see their mental pictures and the rest can be taught quite easily. Everyone makes mental pictures; it is just that some people have not yet learned to notice them. Think about your own mental pictures of something you enjoy, for a moment. Are they coloured or black and white, still or moving, are they close to you or far away, large or small, portrait, landscape or wraparound? Which parts are in focus? Are you watching the scene as if it were live, or are you watching yourself in it, as if on video?

These are examples of how we can do the same thing differently from each other. You can change the meaning of an experience by changing one of these options. If you have chosen something you enjoy, find out what happens if you bring the picture closer to you, or make it bigger. You can move mental pictures simply by intending to do so. If you like the result, keep it. Otherwise put it back as it was and find out what happens if you intensify the colour. Make one change at a time. And remember to put it back the way it was between each change. If you find one or more changes that you like better than the original, keep them. Be careful to keep track of the changes you make to your pictures. If you do anything that you do not like, reverse it immediately. Ensure you finish with an experience at least as pleasant as when you began.

For most westerners, pictures are the easiest sensory representation to notice and alter deliberately. You can learn to make similar alterations to the sounds you hear and the sensations you feel just as easily. Move sounds from where they are to another location; changing the speed, the tones, the volume, as if you had a sophisticated mixing desk. You can increase or decrease the intensity of sensations, change the texture, heat them up or cool them down, slow the rhythm or speed it up, move them around, make them bigger or smaller or disappear completely.

You may have noticed that if you change a picture in one specific way, the sound and feeling change too, or if you change a particular aspect of the sound, the picture and feeling shift simultaneously. These are known as 'drivers'. You will also have found that other elements change alone. Finding your particular driver differences is a quick way into your least easily accessed system (sight, hearing or feeling). For example, if your picture is moderately exciting, and it felt more exciting when you made it bigger, you changed the sensations by changing the picture. If your picture were fuzzy and it had distorted sound and scratchy sensations, would the picture come into focus if you clarified the sound and could the sensations become smooth through changing the sound?

There is a commonly held belief in western society that sensation cannot be changed at will and neither can emotion. There is a related myth that anyone who can change their emotions is faking, shallow, uncaring, or untrustworthy, unenlightened, repressed or 'not ready' to be 'authentic'. Most cultures believe that one system (sight, hearing and feeling) is outside their control, but not all find feeling the most difficult. For example, Native American culture has a reputation for changing feelings and sensations with facility.

For Native Americans, visible mental pictures are equated with visions from their gods, and therefore given religious significance. The Sun Dance and Vision Quest rituals are specifically designed to heighten the chance of mental pictures becoming visible. Both rituals involve the initiate in extreme discomfort to a level that most westerners would find unacceptable. For Native Americans the pain control they practice during these rituals shifts their attention and alters their mental state sufficiently for them to see pictures. It works by overloading their preferred system (feeling) for normal purposes so that they have to do something else; in this case, see. As the ritual is framed as religious or spiritual, it is culturally encouraged for them to see mental pictures in that context.

The western equivalent is the personal development market, bungy jumping, adventure training, drug use and religious ritual. Westerners rate peak experiences by the intensity of sensation they experience at the time whether the vehicle is secular or religious. Some call it emotion, but the structure of emotion is ... pictures, sounds and sensations, and the most convincing of these in the west is sensation.

The ability to feel what we want to, when we want to is a very useful skill. It frees us from the expense of seeking repeated peak experiences. One exposure is sufficient to use as the beginning of a personal library. After that you can alter it, intensify it, customise it in any number of ways by playing with the pictures, sounds and feelings that first went with it. Or you can build your library from scratch, using attractive bits of ordinary pleasure and enhancing and mixing them to your liking. The way in, as described above, is through pictures and sounds. Simply remember a pleasing occasion and make it big, bright, life-like, and maybe slightly slower. Step into it and turn up the sensations. Through practice you can increase your facility with sensation and learn to turn it up and down directly.

The next stage is literally managing emotion. There are two immediate ways of doing this. The first is good for neutralising unwanted emotional responses. If you are laughing at a funeral, crying at work or angry with an innocent person, to neutralise any of them, move the picture a long way from you, or shrink it down to the size of a postage stamp. You can always come back to it later if you want to regardless of what is in it. Make it small enough, or distant enough and for most people it will become less intense.

To invoke a particular emotion you want to display, remember or imagine a time when you would do that, and make a big, bright, close picture. Then step into it. This is great for thanking a special person for an awful present, or for producing remorse when you break someone's favourite ornament that you have hated for years. Have you ever wished you could be more patient when training a child or an animal? Do you want to say 'No' to someone and mean it? Find a picture in your memory that has the quality of emotion you want. Make it big, close, bright and life-like, and a suitable state will follow.

The second way to manage emotion involves the feeling more directly. Leslie Cameron Bandler lists seven changeable parts to any emotion in her book 'The Emotional Hostage'. These include rhythm, tempo, intensity, time frame, and personal involvement. Like the changes we made to pictures at the beginning of this article, Cameron-Bandler suggests making similar changes to the feeling of emotions to change them directly. For example, anxiety commonly has a fast, uneven rhythm, and is always concerned with the future. If you slow down the rhythm to an even 120 beats per minute, the feeling changes to something more comfortable. If you imagine being in a time after the event, anxiety vanishes. Remember a previous occasion when you were anxious about something and how much less alarming the event was in retrospect.

Guilt and shame require personal involvement. Guilt happens if you offend someone else's values and it matters to you. Shame happens if you offend your own values, without recognising the more important value that you kept. If you imagine you are back before the event, there is no guilt or shame, because you have not done the deed yet. Alternatively you can reduce the intensity and change the rhythm. You may discover that you acted on another value of your own, or that you made a mistake. Mistakes are feedback to learn from. The consequences may be sad or irreversible, but they can become acceptable if you can consider them. For any emotion that you want to change, take the most obvious feature and alter it. Find out what happens. To enhance an emotion, take a feature and increase it. You may build a peak experience all by yourself. Wouldn't that be something?

nlp.com.au

EGO--The False Self

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Ego - The False Self
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What is ego? I'm not going to define it or debate it, I am going to tell you outright what ego is: ego is the false self we build up from the day we are born. It is a character, or a persona if you will. It is not "real" or "legit" or "authentic"....

Let me explain...

When you are born, you are innocent, trusting, requiring nothing more than love, nurturing, and care. As you grow up, your family, eventually your school and friends and society around you, help you to shape your personality...

Imagine for a moment, that you grew up completely differently than you did. Imagine you were rich, if you grew up poor, or that you were black if you are white or Asian or Latino. Imagine that your childhood was completely different than it was in your memory, and then ask yourself "Would my personality be the same?"...

Of course not. There would be different factors, status-wise, heritage and culturally, societal. You would be a completely different person on the "inside" if your outside circumstances were different than they had been for you...

So now come back to you - who you believe yourself to be. You can probably define yourself in a few words or statements, such as "I am strong" or "I am compassionate" or "I am depressed", right? You can sum up your personality, your persona and character. This is because you have finely tuned, honed and perfected your persona as the years have gone by. You have been told by family and friends "you are so funny!" and so you continue to be funny. Or you were told in school "you have a learning disability" so you continue to perpetuate that disability upon yourself. You may have been told "you are ugly" by someone in the past, and that has sat eating at your confidence for years later...

All of these things, these definitions and labels, are nothing more than collected information of a "past you" which is not real. The past is gone. So should be the "you" who you identified yourself being in that past. Hold on to the memories, for they are part of your whole heritage in this lifetime, however, let yourself be liberated of the stereotypes, labels, and stigmas...

The Spirit - the truth of who you Are, is God. The Universe. Oneness. Essence. Light. Call "it" what you will, but in the grandest scheme of all things - you are the only One of you there is. Beyond your mind. Beyond your identity...

When you realize that the ego is nothing more than a collection of responses, insecurities, fears, and doubts, you can then easily shed it, watch it fall away and reveal the true Self. The ego is a character in a play - the true self is the Author...

It is natural to identify with your personality, in fact I was quite attached to mine for a very long time, having an internal struggle of faith based on my fear of letting my identity go. But I eventually realized, I am not letting go any of the beauty I love about "my Self"... rather I am stripping away the false layers of ego (pain) by revealing the truth of Self - One...

Ego will fight to remain as you...

Ego is nothing more than a tool - created at a very early age to help you relate and identify in your human body - conditioned by all around you to behave the way it now does. And when you really grasp within your heart that it is not "real", it will rebel. That is a wonderful thing to move through, because it gives you opportunity after opportunity to re-align your thoughts to those of your truth, and to put ego in it's place - which is nowhere...

Ego is not real. It is a character on stage. Nothing more. Scripted - and scripts can be re-written...

Let the Author be the star on the stage ..

As for the ego of other people - you can not change them. You can only accept that they are letting the character on stage call the shots, and you can love them for being lost in the illusion of the performance, and you can see within them a reflection of yourself...

Because we are all One outside of the ego game...

I hope this is helpful to anyone who is reading it...

With much Love,
Dee

....awakeningstarseeds. com

DON'T WASTE YOUR LIFE!

DON’T WASTE YOUR LIFE

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DON'T WASTE YOUR LIFE
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Don't waste your life. Whether you're just starting out, or nearing the finish line, don't waste your life. It's a gift, a possibility, that deserves to be released into the world. It's a responsibility, an obligation, that demands to be met head on.

There's a thousand reasons not to live, to exist without being you:

The danger of trying to attain a dream and failing, of finding out you couldn't, rather than protecting your self-image with infinite postponement;

loyalty to those who are not in touch with your soul and its imperatives; the desire not to disappoint, offend, or let down the unenlightened;

ideals of self-sacrifice, nobility knocked off course; sometimes fear disguised as nobility, a palatable excuse for hiding from yourself;

fear of rejection, misunderstanding, opposition, hatred, jealousy, ostracism or harm; fear of being trampled underneath the social stampede, drowned in the sea of the beaten multitudes which have been conditioned to pour over any reminder of their own surrender, to wash anyone still left fighting; fear of doing something different, of catching the eye of the hunting lion and being singled out from the rest of the herd;

a dread of the stress of standing on the mountain top - what if you fall, what if someone wants to throw you off?; the ease of living "below yourself", of betraying the soul that no one else has peered into, by pretending its purpose is not there, that you, too, were meant for nothing, born to waste away in the arms of frivolous pursuits; the comfort of vanishing into utter passivity, of accepting someone else's existential priorities and justifications for living so that you will not encounter social resistance or be challenged to carve out your own place of meaning in the chaos; the exhalation of everything you are, in order to be less; "letting it go", sometimes disguised as wisdom.

Don't waste your life!

A thousand reasons not to be you cannot stand up to a single reason to be you.

Don't deny the fabric of reality the color that you can bring. Others need the beauty you can manifest; and sometimes, they need you to step on their toes. People rise to new heights when others don't bow down to them. Don't discount the little ways and perhaps the great ways you can make the world better; and don't undervalue the importance of your happiness: the kind of happiness that is not anxious with evasion and flight, as it tries to cover over abandoned parts of yourself, but the kind of happiness that is rich and fulfilling with the knowledge that it grows from who you are; the kind of happiness that resonates with your soul, that both motivates and rewards.

Don't crush the pieces of your ego that you need to do your soul's work, the little bits of self-indulgence that can give birth to a mountain range, or put a star to see by into the sightless wall of the night. Don't cut yourself off from the joy that feeds the greatest triumphs of human energy; don't freeze the vulnerability that drives you, the trace of self-absorption that builds the temple of concentration where creators of beauty and usefulness worship (even so, don't be afraid to be not useful); don't surrender ambition to enlightenment, unless you have truly become a Buddha. (There is nowhere more dangerous to be than the place that is one notch below enlightenment.)

Don't make excuses for surrendering to the power of the generic life. You are unique. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. Don't throw away what you were meant to bring!

Don't waste your life!

In his 1996 bestseller, The Soul's Code, psychologist James Hillman seeks to legitimize the concept of a "soul purpose" or a "soul mission" within the context of modern-day psychology. He seeks to transplant the idea of "personal destiny" from spiritual and mystical realms into the realm of Western materialist thought, and to enrich the idea that who we are is but the product of nature (genetics) and nurture (our environment), with the idea that we come into the world with a sort of cosmic quality that both defines us and gives us a unique life purpose.

We are not mere offshoots of our parents' DNA and child-rearing techniques, but beings far more deeply connected to the Universe than that, who come through our parents and forbears, but whose ultimate reality is not determined by them. For Hillman, the mainstream psychological paradigm teaches us to fixate on our relation with our family, at times to turn ourselves into permanent victims of our upbringing; trapped in endless replays of our childhood dramas, and self-limited by them, we distract ourselves from greater callings, shut ourselves off from the potential of forces that are greater and beyond what was done to us. To heal, to be free, to spread our wings, we need to be conscious of those other powers that have shaped us, to find them and reenergize our lives with them.

To wield this concept, Hillman returns to the ancient Greek word "daimon", which refers to a kind of spiritual "soul-companion", or driving force that links the individual with his destiny, leading him towards the place where he fits into the cosmic order; you could consider the daimon to be a form of inner mystical knowledge of one's capabilities and the openings which exist for those capabilities in the world; an ability seeking a matching need that pushes the individual along through life towards where he is "meant to be", unless he, himself, silences that inner voice through inattentiveness, fear, or overreceptivity to the opposition or indifference of others. Not quite the same as "the soul", the daimon is that part of the soul which recognizes the individual's place in the "grand plan", and drives the individual towards full participation in that plan. The Soul's Code abounds with examples of well-known people who evidenced the presence of this daimon in childhood, including Judy Garland, RG Collingwood, Josephine Baker and Ingmar Bergman. In the same way that Dr. Ian Stevenson considers the strongest claims for reincarnation to come from the memories of children, who have had less time to be socialized and have the raw material of fantasies planted into their minds, so Hillman seeks childhood proofs of calling to support his theory of the daimon: incidents in which young, relatively unshaped minds display a surprisingly powerful vision of what they must do with their lives. It does not come from the parents, says Hillman, but from something else.

Although we are all endowed with, or accompanied by, a daimon of our own, Hillman writes: "A calling may be postponed, avoided, intermittently missed. It may also possess you completely. Whatever; eventually it will out. It makes its claim. The daimon does not go away." [1] Obviously, the world goes on whether we miss our calling or not; is the Universe's plan amended by our reticence to show up, or is that part of the plan? Are we needed, or only insurance against the failure of others? Arguments on this terrain could go around in endless circles, without ever reaching a conclusion. We simply don't know the answer. The mystery deflects us. Somehow, though, I believe we all lose something precious when a fellow human being chooses not to listen to his daimon. [2] The world loses a color; the weight of its potential drops ever so slightly, though sometimes greatly, in the scales that measure the meaning of our lives. What does seem clear beyond a doubt is that, for the individual in question, disconnection from his daimon and evasion of his purpose, are painful and debilitating experiences. Like many other sources of frustration and conflict which can potentially lead to depression, illness, or neurosis, the avoidance of one's life purpose may lurk below the surface of the conscious mind, never detected, never explored, yet powerfully hurtful from within its hiding place, strangling one's sense of worth in secret until one is broken, seemingly without cause; creating a sense of emptiness that no distraction or consolation goal can completely cover over. We come into the world for a reason; when we jettison that reason, we lose our right to be here, and we know it. We feel like parasites (no matter how hard we work for someone who is not God); like traitors, like cowards. This is the poison that seeps into the water of everything else we do and think.

For those who are young, the message is clear:

Don't waste your life!

It is fitting that you should seek, within yourself, the purpose of your existence, and seek to live in accordance with that purpose. This fervent exhortation, which I give to you from beside the crater of my own unlived life, is not meant to be a "pied piper's call" to self-destructive romanticism. Prudence and care are most often needed to prevent the unique personal impulse we all carry within us from floundering on the rocks of prematurely high expectations; as any strategist, study your environment; don't succumb to it, but don't discount it; sheathe your visions with an understanding of reality; run away with your inspirations, but don't burn the bridges behind you; audacity without stamina is nearly always fatal. I remember once, in a chess match, I had a wonderful attack set up and ready to unfold, I could not wait to make the board blossom with it; but just then my opponent got in the way, by launching an attack of his own! After briefly studying the situation, I realized that he had the advantage in tempo and that, much as it grated on my personality, I must temporarily put my offensive on hold, and carry out a series of defensive maneuvers in order to ward off his assault. I successfully did so, whereupon I was finally able to manifest the (somewhat altered) attack I had so carefully constructed before. In this case, I lived for my desire, but my desire did not cut the tethers that bound it to a working strategy. I give this example, not to glorify my mediocre chess-playing abilities, but to emphasize that meeting your daimon, and following his lead, is not the same as thoughtlessly jumping, lemming-like, into the sea. (Some souls die by running with the lemmings; some, by trying too hard not to be a lemming, perish in a sea of their own making.) Give your daimon armor, it's not an easy world for dreams!

For the young, I say, "know thyself." If you are not yet there, seek to get in touch with your heart, and your soul; knock on the door of the house where your daimon lives, and ask him to show you the journey that awaits you. Do not throw preparation to the winds, do not put the gun of all-or-nothing to your head; but neither lock yourself into the cage of a life that's not your own. Eighty years of living your life on the wrong road is the same as dying young, though you may not realize it until you're old.

And what about us, who've already stood our daimon up; who've limped through the long years alone, secretly knowing that we collapsed along the way, though no one else discerns the real core of our catastrophe? What about us who've survived the danger of our glory by being faithless, who've eaten the bread of not being ourselves and lived in the house of the Universe without paying the rent of being true to who we really are? Are we doomed, damned, forever lost? Fugitives from God? Ghosts?

In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare has Brutus say:

There is a tide in the affairs of men

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries. [3]

Are we truly defeated, without redemption, because we missed the moment that had our name written on it, gave up the years that were supposed to be ours? Are we out of sync with time, out of step with the rhythm of our dance with the Universe; forever cursed to dance alone with who we might have been and what we might have done; exiled from our destiny, shorn of hope, condemned to die in a foreign land? The whole world is a foreign land for one who has failed himself and God. Are heartbreak and nostalgia all that men such as us have to look forward to?

Make no mistake. It is better to begin young and to never lose your way. And yet, Fate rarely writes history or life without the input of the human Will. Sometimes the value of what has been thrown away is only appreciated once it's gone, and the longing which that rekindles creates another chance. There is rarely one turn of the wheel in a man's life, which means that there is often another opportunity to accept one's Destiny, after one has learned the bitterness of living without it. What one can accomplish this time around may be altered, it may be diminished, but within what is possible, enough of the original essence remains to excite the soul and give it one last chance to achieve meaning, and to perform its divine duty. It is crucial for those who have reached this point, not to let the wheel go by again without stepping aboard the life that is meant for them.

Sometimes, fixated on the past, frozen in mourning, the wounded fail to notice the offerings of the new day. Sometimes, demoralized by yesterday's passivity or by the "bad breaks" they could not overcome, they lie down to die, vanquished by themselves, unable to rise again. Sometimes, self-hatred engulfs them, they despise themselves so much for what they did or did not do one day, that every other day grows beyond their reach. The wheel comes back to their soul, but they have nothing left with which to answer the generosity of God. Again they let it go; because instead of recognizing their longing, and empowering it with lessons learned, they struggle helplessly on the flypaper of believing it's all over. The strong can be broken more than once; true lovers of beauty, let beauty give you strength! And what is more beautiful than a human being who is true to himself?

It is important to be kind to oneself when a thwarted life unfolds in one's mirror. Most often, we are not as worthless as we think. At times, our blunders and our evasions put us more in sync with our life's purpose than we believe. They build our frustration to the "breaking point", until the motivation we need to succeed finally pops out of apathy; until fatalism is felled by Will, and pretenses of wisdom are swept aside by the life force which knows better. They save us from premature deployment and hold us in reserve for the day that is really ours; they prevent us from being mauled by our immaturity, and season the dream with failures that turn it into iron. At times, they are not signs of our foolishness or cowardice, but of the genius of our intuition, which knows that our brilliance and our courage are uncommon, and that they need more time to reach the level we have chosen to live at. James Hillman characterizes Manolete, the famous Spanish bullfighter who stunned the world with his fearless style and apparent indifference to the threat of the gigantic bulls which hurtled past him, as a "timid and fearful child" who spent his time at home painting and reading, clinging to his mother, and avoiding the games of other boys, who played soccer and pretended to be famous bullfighters. Strange and melancholy, Manolete's withdrawal from the world of his peers seemed to be a way of hiding from his Fate, at the same time as he slowly conserved the energy and developed the focus and the gravity he would need to meet it. Although he sensed what was to come, Hillman writes, "How could this nine-year-old boy stand up to his destiny?" [4] He needed time. Sometimes, our apparent flight from our purpose is a way of preparing ourselves for it. Like little ants, some of us are born to carry great loads. No wonder so many of us flee from the weight, seek the refuge of lighter lives, try to "disappear into the crowd." Somehow the daimon always manages to track us down, either with remorse or with renewed commitment. He who would be born again must understand that the Universe is filled with wheels, that beginnings and ends are only moments, and that there are many places and many ways to get back on board, to reclaim what is precious.

No doubt, time changes the face of many dreams. Sometimes it is for the better; sometimes something irreplaceable is lost, but there is still gold in the debris. I remember once, when I was very ill, feeling myself sliding down the slippery slope of meaninglessness into complete blackness, towards extinction; my body, unenthused by any sense of worth, was compliant, and I could feel it beginning to come apart. That's when, suddenly, in the blackness before my closed eyes, appeared a golden light, and in that light the shining faces of some of the kids I had taught in the school, years before. At that moment I knew that, even though I was far off course in life, I had still made a difference even as I fell out of the sky of my most cherished dreams. Where I had crashed, I had loved, and I had beautified the place of my accident. Thanks to the gratitude that radiated from those shining faces which I had thought were not enough to justify my life, the sickness that preyed upon my sense of pointlessness receded.

A man who loves is never pointless.

A man who is fair, is never worthless; even if he was meant to save the world, that small part of himself he did not betray or fumble is still worth its weight in gold. Our life purpose is like that, a construct of many layers.

Even if we cannot revive the full glory of dreams not known, or not lived in their prime - even if Autumn can never carry the missed Spring on its shoulders - there is still redemption in salvaging that part of our purpose that we can.

Our foolishness, the opposition we meet, the gaps between our eyes and hands, the trembling legs which flee instead of stand, until tears give us courage, all of these obstacles and shortcomings peel the layers of our dream away, one by one; and yet, there is never a final layer to us, there is never an end to the pages in the book.

It is never too late to be a part of oneself, never too late to rescue the jewel of the soul's crown from one's mistakes. Whether it is connected to a world or to a single life, it still matters.

The old and the beaten have one more season, if they can learn to forgive themselves.

The daimon's youthful face, now so different from yours, may be streaked with tears, but it still knows the way; and you, and who you are meant to be to us, are still the reason it has not gone.

Young or old, new or aged, confident or wounded, do not waste your life!

May no false barrier, inner or outer, kill your joy and keep you from yourself. And never let our prejudices or our ignorance deter you!

Don't waste your life!

The spirit you thought had left you is still nearby. You are closer to being you than you imagine.

Don't waste your life!

We are on your side, even those of us who do not know it.

Don't waste your life!

*excerpts from:

http://rainsnow.org

 

NOTES:

[1] Hillman, James. The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling. New York: Warner Books, 1997. Page 8.

[2] "… we all lose something precious when a fellow human being chooses not to listen to his daimon", unless, of course, it is a case of what Hillman refers to as "the bad seed": a man who is driven towards the attainment of infamy, like Hitler, or Escobar. (Then, the question must be asked, can the daimon be diverted towards a positive alternative; can it be guided to choose another path than darkness to express its tremendous energy?) For a contrasting view of the "bad seed", see Alice Miller's For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-rearing and the Roots of Violence, which examines the life of Hitler with the perspective that behavior is far more malleable than the "he-was-born-evil" approach allows. While some find that approach too sympathetic to Hitler, Miller's exploration is actually an effort to help Humanity by preventing a recurrence of future Hitlers, by means of providing a paradigm for understanding his genesis through family dynamics.

[3] Shakespeare, William. Julius Caesar. Act IV, Scene III, Lines 246-249.

[4] Hillman, p. 15-16. I first saw parts of this material on Manolete quoted in "Free Will Astrology" by Rob Brezsny, in The Village Voice.

What Are You Trying To Prove?...

What Are You Trying To Prove?...
by Melodie Beattie

You don't have to prove anything to anyone.
Not even to yourself.
A subconscious desire to prove ourselves may be hiding at the root of our fears, the root of our tension,
the root of our need to do and be more...

Accompanying it can be a burning belief that we aren't good enough, that we need to compensate for some deficiency in ourselves in order to take our place on this planet...

We may feel like we have to earn our place, earn our right to be here. Like we're being watched and judged, graded...

You don't have to prove anything to anyone.

You're fine just the way you are. You have energy, vitality. You have particular gifts and talents. You have been learning your lessons just right in your life...

Let go of the need to prove yourself to others -
to parents, people from the past, people in your life today

Could it be the one you've really been trying to prove something to is yourself?

The answer is simple:

Learn to approve of yourself.

Love and accept yourself the way you are.

Then step right up and take your place in the universe!

Take Back Your Personal Power---

---Take Back Your Personal Power---

Stop Being Blamed and Start Creating An Incredible Life---..by Lisa Whatley

Have you ever had a person in your life who literally thrived on playing the blame game? You know the ones that are constantly belly aching that it’s your fault? Then you actually believe them, so you play the game of fixing all of their problems! You become the rescuer? I did! I didn’t realize it at the time of course because that is a life lesson that I was working on mastering and boy did we play a good game together! We danced in victim consciousness together creating disaster after disaster for ten years! He created, I rescued! He created, I rescued! Then one day he got himself in another situation (and of course this was all my fault!) I was so sick and tired of continually putting forth all my energy into fixing his problems that I threw in the towel--
I quit That’s the day the light bulb came on! I realized that I was not allowing him to take responsibility for his own life

I was doing him the worst service possible-

I was dis-empowering him! I was taking his power away by fixing all his problems not to mention dis-empowering myself! That’s the day I gladly, and I mean gladly, handed him his life back on a gold lined platter! Ahh to peace once again----

Blamers are people that refuse to take any kind of responsibility for their own lives-- When things go wrong in their life they tend to blame other people-- Whether something goes wrong at home, work or school they try to find someone else to blame-- I have found they tend to blame those that love them the most-- Why? Because these will be the first people to ‘fix’ their problems and become their rescuers-- Blamers will rarely admit to their own problems-- Typically the statements you will hear from them are “It wasn’t my fault--- How was I suppose to know?-- “It’s your fault--” etc-- Their dialogue usually goes something like this------ -If only you had done something differently, then I wouldn’t be in the predicament that I’m in--- It’s your fault-

By blaming other people for the problems in their life, they become powerless to change anything Their thoughts hold them in victim consciousness

They believe and hold thoughts of:

* I cannot change my life

* I am a victim of circumstance

* I am a victim of my past

* Life is hard

* There is always more work to be done

* Plus numerous other ones

In order to move past this, they must begin to think differently-- They must change themselves-- We all know by now, that we can’t change anyone but ourself, right? We can’t change the blamer, we can only work on changing ourself and our reaction to the blamer-- I learnt that I needed to stop being the rescuer! We know it’s not our fault, so no more fixing it! How far are you willing to sacrifice yourself for someone else’s problem? That’s a tough question, but how low will you go? Take a tough love stance and let them take responsibility for their own life-- They created it-- They need to learn whatever it is that they have created so let them experience it themselves! If this is a spouse or child, it’s even harder because nine times out of ten, the problem effects your marriage and your family-- I’m certainly not saying this is going to be a walk in the park! It isn’t easy but you have to stand your ground the second they present their next problem to you
Ask them what ‘they’ are going to do about ‘their’ problem

A temper tantrum will likely ensue, leave the room if you have to and don’t send negative energy back into the cycle! Come back to it after they have completed their dramatic hissy fit

This is an excellent opportunity for you to learn the limits on your boundaries and also stretch your compassionate detachment muscles! All very empowering tasks and ones that will bring empowerment knocking on your door---


Knowing beforehand that this is a repetitive cycle where both people are getting their desired energy fix, will make it easier to remain de-attached to the blamers problem

Why? Because now you as the rescuer will be taking responsibility for your part in the game! The blamers gets satisfaction for not taking responsibility for their life along with the boost of power and control they feel they have over you when you do fix their problem

The rescuer gets satisfaction for being the hero and solving the problem

If you are at the point now in your life of rolling your eyeballs in disgust because here comes another problem to be fixed, then you are well aware that it is time to change things! Where do you start? Yourself-- You can use positive affirmations-- Write them down on some index cards and carry them with you, put them beside your night stand, hang them above the kitchen sink, on the mirror in the bathroom and even stick them in your visor of your car! You can also change your thought pattern by replacing a negative thought with a positive one whenever they creep in-- Once you become aware of your thoughts you will be amazed at how much negativity is hanging around up there having a pity party! Another method is going into a slight meditative state and re-programming your mind with positive beliefs and positive thoughts-- Visualization is also very effective-- You can visualize yourself with the desired outcome of resolving the issue at hand-- Not fixing the person’s problem, but resolving the issue between yourself and the blamer-- Hard feelings, how you will handle it, how you see them re-acting to you, etc------


Throughout our history, there have been many great, wise people from all walks of life that carry the same basic understanding: what we believe we will somehow create This is so much more powerful and truthful than once thought! We truly are the creators of our life! The continual thoughts flowing through our minds is the projection of our soon to be reality! Regardless if the thoughts are positive or negative, what you think, you will create! James Allen once said, “The outer conditions of a person’s life will always be found to reflect their inner beliefs” Maitri Upanishad says that everything that happens in our own world is a reflection of how we think---
“One’s own thought is one’s world---

What a person thinks is what he becomes
We are powerful beings, waking up to the true potential of who we really are--

Be aware of what thoughts you allow to stay in mind-
Your future is being created by you and only you----

I remember reading a study a while ago. In this particular experiment, they had ten ‘average’ people dress the same and line up in front of a panel of convicted robbers. Five of these ‘average’ people had low self-esteem, had fears of being attacked by someone and no self-confidence. The other five ‘average’ people had high self-esteem, didn’t carry any thoughts of being attacked and were very confident. The panel of criminals knew none of this information. They were asked to pick three people they would choose to be their next victim by appearance only. Each criminal picked three out of the five low self-esteem category! Why am I telling you this? Your thoughts are energy. What you think is sent out. For these particular people, their thoughts are projecting I am a victim. The criminal picks up the signal and targets that person. Even though these thoughts were fearful and not something they wanted to happen, it happened because they were thinking it. They created it Powerful! This is what I would classify as a fatal attraction! These attractions occur daily through this hidden language of energy/thought

Granted it goes both ways, negative creation and positive creation

We interact through our energetic body...
the invisible field surrounding our physical body

Our thoughts make up a part of this energetic body-

If you have the desire to change your life, regardless of what condition you want to change, change your thoughts and your belief system Thoughts and beliefs that we have about ourselves and the world alter our perception, our hope, our energy, our health, our mood, our actions, our relationships, our entire life! Thoughts are extremely powerful and creative

The example above was a negative one, now imagine how powerful you can be if you change your thoughts to positive ones

Attracting wealth, great health, vitality, love, positive relationships, the list is endless! It is yours to create as you are the creator, so start creating joy and the perfect life you have always wanted today----

What kind of thoughts are you allowing to create your life--
ummmm......


May Your day be full Of Wonder and Awe...
May Your Heart Sing Nothing But Love Songs---
And May Your Words Speak-The same---


BLESSINGS OF LOVE & LIGHT

Be Blessed...

Losing friends

It’s been that kind of year for me.
Losing friends.
Major changes in my life this year for spiritual reasons have really tested my friendships.
I found out some who I thought were friends, have failed me.
But then there have been those who have stuck by me in some of the toughest of times. THANKS TO THOSE _<*>_

Sounds like God is purifying us and getting rid of the dross,
like refining gold or silver.

And then...
there have been those,
& then...
there are those...that still are...
And that will continue to be...

I know I'll have many opportunities to develop new friends.

Maybe It's For the Best.