Transformational Group Teachings 4/23/09
Transcript Excerpts of Jane’s Teachings during the
“Shifting into Your New Consciousness” group experience
(Participants’ names have been changed to protect their privacy.)
Interpreting “The World Is Meaningless” (A Course in Miracles)
(Janet said she has difficulty accepting what “A Course in Miracles” says about the world being meaningless.)
(To Janet) “It’s not that there isn’t any meaning. It’s that the meaning we generally give things has nothing to do with what they actually are. The way I interpret what the Course is talking about is basically when you’re in everyday life, for instance walking down the street and looking at another person — what people mostly do is make an assumption about what they are seeing before they actually see it. They decide what truth is before they experience it. And you can’t really know anything that way. You have to enter into a situation with your awareness open, allowing space to take in something new. In this case, you are opening a space for that person’s being to tell you who or what she/he is. And that’s what those exercises in the Course are about. I found them to be very transformational.
I think this is particularly difficult for you, because you are uncomfortable about not knowing in the first place, because it makes you feel perhaps stupid, or not respected, or not an authority, or not worthy, or whatever it is. There’s a very significant limiting decision in there that is causing you to not allow things to be what they are. And I think it’s also blocking you from a big gift you have. You have a quality of innocence. You come into a situation not knowing, which is exactly what the Course is asking you to do. You have the potential to understand things in a very new and unique way. That means you have something to offer from your beingness. But you don’t value that. Rather than allowing yourself to be in the position of not knowing, you try to get rid of that experience as if there is something wrong with it. This then causes you not to know, because you’re blocking the potential for knowing the depth of what’s really there that aligns with something larger than your limited egoic human self.
You could say each person has the potential to be a channel for specific vibrations, or knowledge, or possibilities in the universe, because of just the nature of who they are, or maybe because of what’s really important to them on a soul level. If you come into the situation with your channels open, you can receive information that other people can’t receive, because of who you are. But if you are trying to fill in the space right and left by giving opinions and asking questions and doing all of these things which you tend to do that controls things — if you impose something on what is external to you, without allowing it to speak to you, to tell you what is there — then you’re blocking yourself from receiving your connection with the divine, or your connection with the universe, or your connection with a larger source of knowing that can come just through you.”
Ego Perfection vs. Divine Perfection
(Renee was saying she sees Janet as making huge progress, but Janet never seems to realize it.)
“I think you (Janet) being hard on yourself and not recognizing when you make significant progress, relates to this decision you have about not knowing. It has to do with you not appreciating your real gift. You’re always comparing yourself to some other that you respect, that’s not you. And until you get to be that thing that you respect that’s not you, you don’t feel you’ve gotten anywhere. But of course the truth is, since it’s not you, if you got there, it wouldn’t be a good thing anyway. It wouldn’t be progress at all. It would be just the way we described Aaron and the mask of perfection he has been so invested in. He has thought to achieve that would be progress. Both of you have worked really, really hard at being something you consider more perfect than who you really are. But the ego and the Divine versions of perfection are radically different. Divine perfection is becoming more and more fully who you really are.”
Men Feeling Threatened by Female Emotions
(Randy was saying he thinks Jane is being too hard on Janet, about what she is saying about Janet’s defense system.)
(To Randy) To you the world of live material or emotions is dangerous. You don’t trust it, although you’re learning to trust it more, as you’re experiencing what happens when we really get down to the real live material. You are looking for emotional safety. A defense system like Janet’s is providing emotional safety for a particular type of person, with a particular kind of dysfunction. And Janet has gotten acceptance by relating from that place. So it feels safe all around. But it also is stuck. The fear you have about the real, live emotional material is based on an unhealed issue and structure. And when you have that healed, then you will be able to participate in relating on a much deeper and more transformational level.
It’s similar to what Chandler was saying all those groups back, that he falls for certain kinds of women that make things feel emotionally safe. His mother was similar to your wife, but worse. She was actually schizophrenic — really emotionally not safe. And so you (Janet) make men with that kind of emotional background feel safe, which then perhaps makes the world feel safe to you. You feel you have a place in the world that is supported by men. It’s a defense system that causes people who have an interlocking defense system with you, to want to be around you. It allows you to feel wanted or needed, without anyone feeling threatened by you because you’re not challenging to them. But, in the process, you’ve abandoned your real emotional self and end up giving away your power. Perhaps that emotional aspect of you makes men who have difficulty dealing with emotions, uncomfortable and feel threatened.”
Redefining Reality
(Janet said her mind went blank when Jane was talking.)
“That’s what generally happens when I’m revealing the ground a person is standing on, which is the way they form what reality is. I’m causing a reframe right at that point, which feels like I’ve pulled the ground out from under you reality.
You are a totally amazing person. The reason I’m saying these things to you, and really pinpointing it as hard as I do is because I see the distinction between your defense system and who you are. I’m getting to where you really are, the real you, the part of you that you have been masking over with a false persona — not letting people see the real, tender, vulnerable, emotional, true self underneath that.”
Projection vs. Responding to What’s Actually There
(Janet said she feels Anita often judges and disapproves of her. Then Anita said she was being a mirror for Janet.)
(To Anita) “While it’s true that people see things in others that reflects some vibration in themselves, people can, at the same time, actually be seeing something about the other person. It’s not always just projection. Both things can happen at the same time. I think people, more often than you are aware of, have that same response to you of you being judgmental and disapproving, as a first response. So that’s information for you to have. It might be a way you are getting people to keep away.”
Getting to the Gold
(To Anita) “What it keeps turning out that this group is about, is uncovering the masks and defense systems, in order to get to the real self. And the real self is gold, totally gold. My job seems to be to ferret out that wonderful self that is being hidden behind the defense systems. So this isn’t about tearing you down at all. It’s not something like, ‘Well, how do I fix this horrible defense system that people have this response to.’ That’s not what it’s about. It’s about penetrating through it to get to the real you. Now, if your defense system is pushing people away, then you, like many others, are defending against your real self being seen because of negative limiting decisions you’ve made about your real self. So the process unmasks your real self, and then you get to find out that people really, really like your real self. And that is transformational. That’s what I’m trying to get across to Janet. She thinks this persona of knowing everything is far more acceptable than the very, very vulnerable, emotional person she really is. And she’s totally mistaken about that.
It’s the same thing with Aaron. He thinks coming across as perfect, and an expert at everything, and never getting anything wrong, makes him worthy; and that being touched and moved and eccentric and different and not fitting in, is completely unacceptable.
It’s Not About Getting It Right
(Anita said she doesn’t feel safe in the group because, when she reveals her real responses, someone in the group often has a defensive response to it.)
(To Anita) “The reason you feel it’s not safe is because, like Aaron– and maybe you (Aaron) can help Anita in this if you can see it in relation to her — you think that you have to get it right, or something bad will happen. This isn’t about getting it right. Aaron has been trying for a long time to get it right. And doing that is the problem, not the solution. Being who you are and showing who you are is perfect. There’s no right way to do it. So if you show up and your defense system is showing, so what. If you show up and you say a word that someone takes offense to, so what. If something is uncovered about you, that’s perfectly fine. It’s part of a process for getting deeper. There isn’t a right way to do it. This is not about you figuring out how to do it right. And that’s what you are trying to do, and it’s a losing battle, because that’s not where this is going. You think you being able to figure out how to get it right is the only way to have it be safe. And that’s a mistaken idea. That’s a limiting decision that has nothing to do with reality. You’re perfectly safe here, even if your defense systems are showing all over the place, and you keep on getting it ‘not right.’ This is about transformation, not about getting it right.
Perhaps the issue is actually more about engaging and interacting. For you, disengaging may be what feels safe. And this group is about engaging. And that’s why ‘getting it right’ has no relevance, because ‘getting it right’ doesn’t have to do with engaging. In the process of engaging, ‘getting it right’ is irrelevant. “
Getting to Truth
(Randy said that Renee says these really pointed things to people, and then does a lot of talking to cover it over and soften it up.)
(To Renee) “You often do say things that are zingers. And then it’s probably accurate that you do the softening part. Last week something really important came up about you, assuming that it was accurate. You were talking about feeling you don’t fit in, and feeling inappropriate. And I was saying the common denominator that connects people is love, that you don’t have to be the same as someone else in order to connect with them. All you have to do is connect with love.
And then you said you didn’t know what love is and didn’t feel connected to love. This was an eye-opener about you that was very honest of you, and seemed very important. It struck me as probably true, and that there’s some way you are deeply and fundamentally disconnected. And it’s possible that when you say things about people, because there’s this disconnection, it could come out in a very harsh way, if you don’t soften it. And perhaps there’s anger there, which is why it comes across so harshly.
In order to turn this thing around, you’ve got to get to where you are in the first place. I need to understand on a deeper level what this is all about. I’m just beginning to understand this thing, and I don’t totally get it yet. And it’s really, really courageous of you to reveal it in the first place.
The point here is to just allow yourself to be inappropriate. It’s not the end of the world. We need to get to the truth before we can untangle it to get to the healed place. If Renee just comes out with it straight, she has some really zinging comments that could be very stinging right at the heart of something. And she might be really inappropriate and the other person might feel really hurt. This is what she’s afraid of. And she’s been trying to soften it. And this is stuck right there. We’ve got to unstick it. Renee is afraid she is some horrible monster. Well it will not end up being that. You’re dealing probably with a lot of anger. But you have been glossing it over so much that we don’t know it’s anger, so it never gets released. If you reveal it for what it is, so we can get to the bottom of it, it never means you are a hideous monster. It never means that. It simply means that there are some things twisted around so they are not flowing the way they are meant to flow. And you’ve had such a lid on yourself that it can’t get untangled. It means you can’t get to the love. It’s getting in the way of love.
The purpose here is not so Renee will say things that hurt other people, but for her to reveal how she internally responds in order to untangle whatever this is. As always, when we get to the very bottommost truth, you will find it is positive. It is love, whether you feel connected with love or not. That is the truth underneath there.
Using Other People’s Responses to You
(To Cherrie) “You questioned in the last group whether you are in integrity as much as you want to be. I think it’s very productive to be looking at that. We’ve pretty much gone past the place where you are much affected by what other people think of you. What I see is that you’re tremendously more in your power than you’ve ever been. And if someone has a negative response to you, it’s not that you’re letting them define reality for you, but you’re taking it as good information that can give you a clue about something you might want to look at. And now you can afford to take a deep look at yourself and ask, ‘Am I the way I really want to be in the world? Am I being really in integrity in my relationships with other people?’
I think there may be some decision in there that people aren’t basically honest and therefore you feel like a fool if you relate to people with integrity. You feel you will be taken advantage of. And you have been taken advantage of in your life. But the reasons you’ve been taken advantage of are probably not what you think.” (This issue will be gone into in more depth in the NLP TimeLine Therapy session Cherrie will be having next week.)
