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Guiding Principles Made Simple

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1. We are happy when we befriend Reality.

2.There is only one Reality. Reality is how things are right now.

3. It’s what we think about Reality, not what happens in Reality, that makes us feel happy or unhappy.

4. What we choose to think about Reality determines how happy or unhappy we are.

5. Our thoughts create our feelings, and our feelings prompt us to act the way we do. By choosing our thoughts carefully, we decide how we are going to feel.

6. When we think others are responsible for how we feel, we naturally blame them when we feel bad. Blaming others separates us from our friends and makes us unhappy.

7. We cannot make other people happy and they cannot make us happy. Only we can make us happy. Only they can make them happy.

8. When we think others are in charge of our happiness we think we must either make them happy, or we must change, or control them so that we can be happy. This puts us on the Bully Triangle.

9. All of us automatically misbehave when we believe painful, unhappy thoughts. It’s our painful thoughts that cause us to think and act in mean or unkind ways.

10. Taking responsibility for our own thoughts, feelings, and actions and letting others be responsible for their thoughts, feelings, and actions allows us the freedom to live a happy and successful, life.

 

What We Focus On Is Reflected Back Through Immediate Life Experience …

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There seems to be quite a lot of mental confusion about what comes first: seeing or believing… Most of us tend to think that there must be visible evidence of something before we can believe in it as real, or possible. However, the opposite is true. We must first believe something is possible before we can see it in concrete form. The concrete manifestation of what we expect (and believe) happens as a result of our belief in it.

In other words, we can only see what we believe; we must believe it to be ABLE to see it. We see evidence for what we believe immediately upon believing it.

Here's an example: Take the thought, “I am exhausted,” When you think that thought, how does your body feel? Doen't it weigh you down immediately with a sense of physical exhaustion? These are the feelings that go along with the thought/belief “I am exhausted.”

We say, ”but it is true! I AM exhausted!” Yes, you are exhausted in response to believing that thought  … and remember … what we focus on amplifies. So if you regularly remind yourself of how tired you are, what feelings are growing? What would happen if you were to  shift your focus from “I am exhausted” to remembering other,  less focused upon, more positive thoughts, that are nonetheless also true, such as  “I feel fulfilled,” “satiated,”or “well-stretched, and useful …?” What feelings do those thoughts arouse?

An Important question to ask yourself: “Would I rather feel better or prove how exhausted I am? What do I have to do and feel to prove the thought, ‘I am exhausted?”Notice the difference in immediate results. Our shift in tone of thought automatically and instantly shifts our emotional tone to a higher note. Reactions come from feelings. Feelings follow thoughts.

Our emotional and physical body are obedient servants to the dictates of the mind; if the mind says, “I am exhausted,” the body will feel and act the part and we will feel immediately the harvest of “tired” that feeling and reacting from that thought brings.

To feel better, (isn't that what we really want?) we practice turning our focus away from the way things are now- and focusing instead on a “lighter” subject … we want to stop feeding the negative thought, “I am exhausted.” and  go in a new vibrational direction, by moving to a lighter, less heavy thought, such as:”This deep breath I am taking allows me the perfect space to appreciate how blessed I am to be living a full and creative life … a life that unfolds before me effortlessly …  Everything I need is provided, and sometimes it comes even before I ask for it. I am well nurtured and loved… I rest in that knowing…”

Practice… practice … practice consciously directing  your thoughts … this is the key to becoming a co-creative collaborator with the Universe in designing the life of your desires.

Even Betrayal Serves …

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We tend to beieve that if we are living “right” we will achieve “success” (as if such a thing exists … ).

But this is not what Jesus the Christ modelled through his life example. His life is one that thousands of years later is still extolled as the example of an Exalted Life. The story of Jesus is indeed a beautiful demonstration of Universal Design. There was nothing in that life drama that did not teach, show, and demonstrate the message Jesus came to share. And certainly not the painful parts … the life of Christ had to be exactly every bit as bitter sweet as it was … to achieve its purpose.

Jesus, like all of us, came to live out his story – a seemingly very painful story on so many levels – but unlike most of the rest of us, Jesus lived out his story with intention and purpose. He knew that his life was as it was orchestrated to be, and he pointed that out again and again to his disciples and followers – that he was here to bring salvation by demonstrating his own salvation from death.

He was not in resistance to the happenings of his life. He knew all along the road he was walking down and where it would lead … or so we are told – yet that did not stop him from loving Judas, the man who betrayed him – Where might the story of Christ be today, if over two thousand years ago, Judas had refused to play his part? A betrayer was necessary.

Think about it; what would be different about the quality of our own life, if we were able to accept, as Christ did, that the unruly people, the betrayers, usurpers and all of those people in our life that don't “act right” or “treat us right,” as those who love us by playing the painful roles in our unfolding drama of our life story?

Afterall, how can we play out the whole drama of our life story without these contrasting roles? Are they not as important as those who openly support and love us, in terms of how they “enlighten” us about what we DON'T want?! Doesn't the contrasting role these provocateurs play teach us more about what we DO want instead?

What would we know about resurrection and new life, if Judas had not played his part to set Jesus up for the crucifixion? For me, the revelation through Christ that rebirth/resurrection is on the other side of Death – was a big point that Christ came to demonstrate. He did not come to show us how to live according to the world's idea of a successful life. He came to demonstrate that life is story, and cannot destroy us at all!

Isn't it interesting that we, as Christians, have gotten more focused on what was done TO Jesus – i.e. the “betrayal,” rather than what He modeled FOR us about death and rebirth. Talk about demonstrating that Death does not exist! He did that! Why is it that we don't talk about THAT?

I like to practice seeing my life through a non-judgmental lens that focuses instead upon the purposeful teaching, and revelation that comes to me through things unfolding exactly the way they do in my life story. I like to see my life as happening exactly the way it needs to happen for me to attain the higher understanding of who I am above and beyond my limited story.

 

Let's practice together this opportunity to meet life with the question, “How does even this painful life event that I am experiencing in life be something that is FOR me, for my remembering to see the difference between what is real and what is not … Nothing is wasted … nothing … at all.

Dreaming Myself Awake; The Victim Mind-Set Revealed

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I want to share a powerful dream I had recently that did a beautiful job of illustrating how the victim mind takes over our consciousness and invokes internal terror. This dream has awakened me to a whole new level of seeing life. Perhaps you will gain something from it as well.

The dream: I was happily living with my lover in our home, which was a huge stone chamber that was perched on the side of a mountain. My home was more like a cozy cavern than a cave;  it was spacious with high ceilings and lots of natural light. It was truly beautiful and comfortably decorated with large rugs and wall hangings and a huge bed in the middle of the space, overlooking the mountain view below.

My lover was a fit and handsome young man, and we were happily enjoying our time together. We were physically close and ageless, and we laughed easily together. At one point we were in the bed. He was scantily clothed and I was naked beneath the covers.

Suddenly, three big, threatening men, barged into our space and accosted my lover. They paid no attention to me at all, but they pulled him out of the bed and began to threaten and abuse him. I watched, but did not get involved. They hurled accusations at him which I knew were not true. I knew he had done nothing wrong. I did not want to reveal my nakedness  so I stayed beneath the covers, observing as they brutalized my lover.

The whole time I watched them abuse him I knew they could not hurt me. Nor did I feel particularly fearful for him. On some level I understood that it was an illusion and not real and that they could not physically touch me at all …

Nonetheless, I consciously chose (and it felt distinctly like a choice) to play a part in the unfolding drama, and so I did. I took on the role of the traumatized victim. “Putting on” a glassy, unfocused gaze, as if I were in shock, I played the part of the horribly impacted victim, while, in fact,  internally, I remained detached.

And then, I became my lover – I mean, I literally felt what it was to inhabit his body and feel his feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. As him, I saw myself  at the mercy of the three thugs who beat me and tossed me into a deep pit made of sheer rock sides. I felt what it was, to be thrown into what I perceived to be a death trap of no escape. I was totally into the role of being him, and felt I was at the end of my life – that there was no way out.

Then I was back again in my female body, lying in my bed, surrounded by these three thugs. They taunted me and made threats, and I played the part of being a victim in shock, until I started believing the part – but not completely. During the whole time there remained a very conscious part of me that knew that nothing could really hurt me. I knew it was pretend – a charade; that in fact, I was fully protected, and thereby untouchable. They could not physically go beyond the invisible barrier around my bed which served as a bubble of protection.

Even knowing that I was ultimately safe, I watched myself choose to play the part of the victim, pretending that they had power over me, and that I was at their mercy. Half believing the lie and half knowing it was not so.

I suddenly got tired of the whole game of playing victim, and wanted the thugs to just go away. What is so interesting to me, however, is that instead of calling them on their phantom game, or simply refusing to participate, as one might expect; My dream ego decided to exacerbate the game instead. I chose to go deeper into the role I was playing,  and so I proceeded to scream loudly for help … as if I thought that would somehow scare them off.

I, then woke myself up with my own cries for help.

It puzzled me as I pondered the dream upon awakening, that the feminine part, or my Divine Feminine, as I came to understand her, who knew better, would consciously choose to play the victim all the way through to my literal wake-up moment! Why in the world … ?

While you might be thinking,Wow, what a disturbing dream, – to me, this dream delivered a potent message  (I do not refer to it as a nightmare because I was enlightened by it). Delivered straight from the psyche, it came as a support for the deep work I've been doing for years towards making victim patterns conscious. I believe this dream came to awaken me to Reality –  and it did just that.

It awakened me in a way that I feel to my depths, right up to this moment, several days later. My rude wake-up in the wee hours of the morning allowed me to Wake Up and see the total story of what my mind likes to believe is real. I have felt immensely relieved with a new level of freedom since the dream. It is as if I woke up from the dream of dreaming my own unhappy dream.

As I have reflected on this big dream, I have come to see its relevance, not just for me, but might well serve many on some level.

My dream starts out with a beautiful description of a highly elevated home with a “rock solid” foundation. Located in the mountains, which may represent an ascended state of being, as symbolized by its high ceilings, light-filled room  (the light of consciousness). The couple was happy and content in one another's company, and greatly enjoying their time together, and they were content in their nakedness. (sort of like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden) This amply describes the natural state of well-being that is accessible to us all once we know how to return to it.

There on the mountain-top, I am living as both sides of the couple, polar opposites of one another, and yet compatible. The Divine Feminine part of me who remembers and does not forget who I am, and the male Earth ego, who totally gets caught up in the mind-made, or victim story of who I think I am.

I associate the Divine Feminine as being that part of me, and in all of us, who knows I am eternally safe, who does not feel threatened ever because she knows that nothing can destroy the I am – even when appearances say otherwise. She knows that we are of eternal substance. She is totally vulnerable in her naked innocence and yet totally indestructible; she cannot die. She witnesses life, but does not get involved in the drama of it, except (evidently) when she chooses to do so – and then she becomes the action-oriented, reactive-prone, masculine counterpart who likes to wrangle with reality. (Or at least that is what she did in my dream.)

The male counterpart may be that part of us that forgets our true nature. Perhaps he represents the logical mind who analyzes life according to the world's standards. He is that part of us that falls into the deep pit of drama, and is overwhelmed with feelings of being unfairly treated and abused. In my dream he appeared strong.  He represents the one who gets taken down by the three thugs, which, I believe represent the self-destructive voices that live in our own  mind and who attack our vulnerabilities with false accusations and abusive negative thoughts. It is these fear-breeding, mind-made thugs that throw us into the pit of hopelessness, where we are held prisoner as long as we buy their lies and negative spin which says there is no escape.

Again, one of the things that got my attention most about this dream was how the Divine Feminine who knew I was NOT a victim, nevertheless chose to play the part anyway! Why would she do that?

I immediately begin to think of all the ways I have proclaimed victim status. For instance, by emphasizing the negative side of a situation, rather than looking for the more positive possibilities. Perhaps I have done that as a way to join in co-misery with someone else – a sort of bonding ritual. Or perhaps I believed that doing so would elicit some sort of help, or rescue. Knowing that I am okay, I have at times,  opted to play the part of the travailed against victim.

And then it occurred to me that the Divine Feminine might choose to play victim as a legitimate move. There might even be a real purpose and design to it! The more I thought about it, the more I see how that could be … it prompted me to ask the question, how else would I know so much about victim consciousness except by taking on the victim role uncountable times in my own life? So the real question is: What does it teach me? What lessons does it bring me? How has it served me to play victim?

In asking myself these questions, I experienced a total shift in the way I saw my life. I realized that my life was perfectly designed for me. It brought me the lessons that led to the answers that I came to discover. Every part of my life, the highs and the lows, the struggles and challenges, have all been part of what I came to experience – in order to prepare me for the work I came to share. My central focus has been on learning all about the mind and especially the mental state of victim consciousness. I had to go there – deep into the throes of victim consciousness to truly understand it so I could move beyond it and become a way-shower for others stuck there too.  I saw that my life experience, with its many flavors of victim, was required learning for the role I am here to play.  I saw that I chose this path through the brambles of life, as challenging as it has been, because I wanted to understand the victim archetype intimately. My own Essential Self chose to experience, and experiment, with the various roles of victim for the opportunity to share it with those who, like me, want to live beyond it.

My dream showed me the clear reality of who I truly am. It separated me from the victim role I have often played, and indelibly imprinted the truth of how perfectly designed by me my life is and has been!

Realizing that I cannot be harmed has opened my eyes in a way that I had not experienced before. Once again, I remembered  that I am safe, protected and literally untouchable by anything beyond love. I am love. I am innocent. I am made of consciousness which cannot be destroyed. This is who I am. Who we are.

Awakening to seeing the truth of who I am has made it harder to forget that I am made of eternal stuff. I am awakened to the Reality that I can choose, and to remember that the victim story is a total fabrication and illusion. It does not matter which I choose, because both visions (of myself as a victim or as an Eternal Being) have meaning and gifts to offer. However they do offer very different returns: one vision entails much less suffering than the other. I also see that it is possible to opt for playing victim and still remember that I am acting the part and not truly a victim at all.

Let me end on this note: there is nothing about our life that we did not choose – either consciously – or otherwise (mostly). Your life, like mine, is perfectly designed as that Divine Essence in you, for purposes that go beyond worldly standards of wealth, success, or fame.

I see that I have chosen a life designed to deliver me from victim consciousness by walking me through it. And now, I have decided to experience the Reality of a life lived by a woman who remembers who she is. I walk in total gratitude, knowing that I am loved, protected, and abundantly provided for. I am awake to my true nature. And blessed beyond measure. I am so grateful for nightmares that bring gifts of awakening.

Blessings, Lynne

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Living My Process In “Real” Time …

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My life has always been an educational experience. I have come to see that we never arrive at a place of completion in life because life is like a fast river that is ever flowing towards us; it brings to us, in its flowing stream, the challenges and obstacles that are perfectly age appropriate for us in the moment. I remember as a young mother thnking that no sooner than I get my child to, say, age two, when suddenly they are three, and a whole new strategy, relevent and specific to that age, is needed. If felt like I was always having to learn new strategies to apply to the present moment, and having to let go, as irrelevant, the strategies of yesterday.  I have found this to be true in all arenas of my life. Now in my sixties, I find myself again, treading water, trying to navigate new, and often turbulent waters, in an effort to bring myself up to speed on dealing with life as a senior citizen. Not just the aging part either, but similtaneously learning to make peace with decisions I made in my recent past that turned my life topsy-turvey in a completely upside down way.

I was 64, a time in life when one is “supposed” to be settled down, with the one we have settled down with, for the “last stretch” of life. There are rumors that this time of life is “supposed” to be easy,  moving at a slower pace, where one enjoys the harvest of ones life, so to speak.  Many of my friends are married and seem to be biding their time, waiting to fulfill their vow, of “til death do us part,” I, on the other hand, chose to leave my marriage of 23 years, because I would not/could not make peace with settling for less than I wanted in relationship.

We had an amicable toleration policy between us that we put in place in the very beginning, back when that somehow sounded like a good idea to me, perhaps because I didn't take it too seriously. But then I discovered that I wanted more. I found myself aching to feel reached for, to be desired, and yes, quite frankly, adored. Anyway I definitely wanted more than to just be tolerated. But that was not in the bargain we made and it only made things sticky between us whenever I brought the subject up, The longer I lived with our agreement the more intolerable toleration became for me – until finally I moved on.

I am not going to pretend that I have not many times considered the possibility that I made a “wrong turn” by leaving. It certainly seems it might well have been easier if I had stayed and made the best of it – after all it was not all THAT bad,  but then again, I've never been one to settle for things. So I chose to go. Besides there is an inner knowing that whispers to me (when I am willing to listen) that “wrong turns” are sometimes the only way to bring us into right alignment.

But that does not mean I have not suffered from a lot of guilt and remorse for daring to violate the status quo of a marriage that, by many standards, was a good and stable one …  And there were many who judged me for breaking our marriage vows. But in the end, I realized that my husband appeared as glad to see me go as I was to leave. Not that there was terrible animosity between us – as a matter of fact, we are friends still, comfortable in one another's presence; perhaps we are even better friends now than before – certainly there is much less struggle on my part to get something that was not there to be had, and that has made it easier to be with each other again.

Since leaving the marriage, I have realized that the judgment I felt from others was really simply reflecting the voice of accusation that was living in my own head. My leaving has had ramifications on many levels. Blaming myself for leaving a marriage that wasn't overtly abusive, that didn't threaten my safety, or cause me to suffer, left me feeling undeserving of a better life  – and  so the things I left the marriage to open the way for, became the very things I would not allow myself to have. I believed on some deep archaic level that I didn't deserve to be happy, so I punished myself with negativity and poor choices that left me with little to show for my years of hard work as I moved into retirement.

A sense of self-rejection such as I had never before experienced left me feeling lost and isolated. Even my business suffered to the point that I found myself unable to supply the niceties I had grown used to in my accustomed lifestyle. I had to make hard choices, and simplify my life in ways I had not had to experience since I was in my twenties. My ego took a hard knock, and I began to see myself through different eyes. But slowly, like the phoenix rising from the ashes, I came to see how necessary all of this was for me. It has been a long slow process of shedding grandiose ideas of myself, and of who I thought I was in the world. Moving to a city where no one knew me, was unsettling and it opened me to humility, often through the doorway of humiliation. Insisting on living according to the principles I teach meant forcing myself to see all of this as somehow good and necessary for me, or else resort to seeing myself as a victim on the victim triangle. So again and again I reminded myself that my life is a necessary initiation; that it was meant to be FOR me … Slowly I discovered things about myself that I would never have known if I had not ventured out of the safe, but stifling cocoon of stagnacy that my former life had become.

In spite of the much suffered regret, I can say today, now 2+ years since leaving my marriage, that I am grateful for the journey of self-revelation that this whole process has taken me through. No, it has not been easy, but I remind myself many times that being easy does not automatically mean better; it often takes contrast in life to help us to better recognize what is most important to us. Life challenges either grow us by showing us who we really are, or they flatten us. I have never been one who is willing to be flattened by life. From early on in life, my priority has been self-discovery at any price, and personal expansion and personal freedom has taken precedence over security and safety,

I continue to learn  … exponentially it seems. I am learning how to find happiness in the simplest things; a sunny day, the breeze in my hair, a curious duck on the pond, my kitten curled up in my arms, or a bike ride with a friend – life is SO rich even when my pockets are empty. And I have found that my work is again returning to full thrive in the midst of it all. My personal journey has provided me with more compassion, perhaps I am even more authentic today as I sit with those, who like me, are simply in the midst of their own intense life initiation. I have learned what it is to struggle and question, and to go down in the trenches, and I often speak to myself through you.

I am learning through the challenges of these past two years how to move beyond self-toleration, and that is a marvelous thing. I have accepted the challenge of forgiving myself, realizing there is really nothing to forgive me for , unless it is somehow a crime to seek ones hearts desire. This growing sense of self-accpetnace for choices I made in the past allows me to finally move beyond that past to a fresher perspective of what is today … and I am getting better all the time at shifting my thoughts away from the old negative spin, and better able to focus on the gifts in the grit. I am finding the blessings in my life lessons, even the hard ones, and I find that regret vists me less and less often.

Recently I had a dream that seemed to sum up my recent journey:

I was trying to escape from negative spirits (my judgments, and fears)  who were chasing me and my baby (representing my new life). There was a school building (representing the learning process of my life journey) between me and the parking lot where my get-away car (vehicle for moving on with my (baby) new life) was parked. I had a choice to make: I could take the long way around the building but I knew that I would have to fight off the negative spirits (painful beliefs I carry) to get to my car and I wasn't willing to go the distance it would take  (to stay in my marriage perhaps?) So I decided to take the shorter route through the school building – even knowing that I would have to face the ghosts from my past which I could see roaming past the windows and through the halls inside the school. Standing in the door and holding it open for me was a headless friend, (perhaps he, like me, had “lost his head” by opting to take the short cut thrugh the doubts and fears intensified by my past.) Even though I was afraid of dealing with him and my past, I knew that choosing to struggle through the school (my initiation) was going to be the shortest, most direct route to moving on with my new life (baby). Perhaps I chose, by cutting through the school building, to face my fears, my doubts, and my unresolved judgments from past choices to get to the other side.

This dream brought me relief somehow,  perhaps because it reinforced the idea that my choice to leave the marriage was my way of forcing myself to deal with the ghosts of my past.  It suggested that my journey through the past two years has been an initiation, rather than a mistake; that it has been purposeful in opening me to self-forgivness and a necessary process for releasing my past.

I may have more facing of my past yet still to be done. I am ok with my journey being what it is today. But what I know right now is this: Everything we experience has purpose and it is therefore FOR us. And knowing that gives me great hope for the new life that lies ahead – for me – and for you.

Blessings, Lynne

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