Coming into Alignment with the External World
Highlights of Jered NLP TimeLine Therapy Session 5-4-09
(Client’s name is changed to protect his privacy.)
Overview: Jered is saying he thinks his difficulty in doing things like meet deadlines and due dates has to do with him being an “in-time” person. He thinks this causes these things to not take on the significance they should, and causes him to not make his obligations important enough to meet the terms of his agreements. He thinks part of the problem he has functioning in business is because these kinds of things are just not natural for him to do.
(“In-time” and “through-time” are NLP definitions of the two main ways people inherently organize time. “In-time” people go with the flow, don’t like closure because they want to keep their options open, don’t like planners, calendars and watches, and often have a hard time being on time. “Through-time” people decide how they want their life to be and make it that way. They feel anxious if they don’t have closure, and love planners, calendars and watches. They feel insulted if people are late.)
Transcript Excerpt of Jane’s Teachings: “The rule of thumb is life is meant to work. And even though logically it looks like that kind of functioning would be more difficult for an in-time person, it’s just a shift in approach. It’s perfectly possible for you to be able to flow in the way that you need to flow for your business and have it work, if there are no unhealed issue in there. You may not see or be able to figure out, from the current ground you are standing on, how that would work, but it’s never about the nature of who you are, or the way time inherently is, or the way life is that’s causing the problem. I’m half in-time and half through-time, so I can understand both sides of it. And when I’m in my in-time mode, and things are flowing right, it all works. When things are not flowing right, it doesn’t work. And there’s a reason why it is or it is not flowing right. And that has to do with whether there are unhealed issues or not, which cause you to be in the flow or not in the flow. In-time people need to be in the flow. Whatever way of relating to time is natural to you, there’s a way for it to work in relation to other people and the world around you. Whether it’s one kind of timeline or another kind of timeline doesn’t not inherently cause a problem.”
(Jered was saying that he feels fears and doubt, related to functioning in the world, but he doesn’t know exactly what about.)
“There seems to be a separation for you between where you are, and where the world is — a lack of alignment. The challenge for you is to have your internal experience come into alignment with that which is outside of yourself, whether it’s people or deadlines or whatever it is. It is necessary to intersect your internal world with the world outside of yourself in order to meet obligations, to do what you need to do to survive, to stay within the law, etc. You’re afraid that you can’t do it because your internal world is not hooking up easily with the external world. For some reason, intersecting your reality with the reality outside of yourself, is a struggle for you. And that can be really frightening, because you might not do what you need to do to survive. Or you may not do what you need to do to follow the law so you don’t get arrested. Or you may not do what you need to do to make a friend, or to be on time to something that really matters to you. It could be frightening if you don’t feel confident that you can intersect with the world outside of yourself to make things work. I promise you that it’s not about the nature of life. There’s an unhealed issue in there. And we can get to it. And we can clear it.”
(Jered is saying he is unconvinced that unhealed issues are the basis for all of these problems.)
“Because I’m documenting this on my blog, when we clear things, and you shift, and you see that things work that you thought could not possibly work, it’s going to be down in black and white. This whole work is a demonstration that life is meant to work, and that’s one of the things that excites me so much about it. The only thing that keeps life from working are the unhealed issues. Clearing limiting decisions is an evolutionary process, it’s an expansion, it’s a straightening out, it’s an aligning.”
(Jered was saying he can’t see how it could work.)
“You’re looking at the problem from within the frame-of-reference of the ground you’re standing on. And the ground you’re standing on is distorted by the limiting decision, which makes it appear impossible. You can’t solve the problem from the distorted ground that you’re standing on. So I have to figure out what the distortion is that you’re standing on that is making life not work for you. Whatever the outside obligations, deadlines and things along those lines are, they represent authority to you, which causes you to disconnected from them. Your internal experience is not in alignment with the external authority making demands on you.
The parent’s job is to help the child relate to the external world, so that eventually they can function in relation to the external world. There’s some really significant way that your parents didn’t do that. They were actually preventing you from relating to the external world. They had a very limited way they wanted you to function, within their limited perspective that felt really stultifying to you. The way your father set it up, if you functioned from your own understanding and experience of reality, you wouldn’t be following the rules, so he’d punish you. So you have to do things in a way that doesn’t make sense to you, by understanding what he wants you to do from his point-of-view. And if you do it just the way he wants you to do it, from his point-of-view, which makes no sense to you, then you won’t get punished. But if you do it in a way in which you’re really engaged in it, using your intelligence and creativity in making it better, he’d punish you. So there’s no alignment between you and the authority, in terms of meeting an outside obligation. This would make you rebel and avoid getting into the territory where you’re connecting with a deadline or an obligation. Because to you it’s painful and it’s against yourself. You don’t see it as something that you can work with, that is a positive experience, in which you can bring your real self into the picture, and connect with the external obligation or deadline. No wonder you avoid it.”
The limiting decision Jered cleared: “Authority restricts him from being himself.”
The first event in which he made the limiting decision: He was 5 or 6 years old. It was early morning and time to wake up, but he’s still asleep. Father came and said it was time to wake up, but he didn’t want to. So his father poured a glass of cold water on him, which was a shock to him. Jered then made the decision that his nature rhythm or cycle was being disrupted by the outside world, and he was out of sync with it. Just a few minutes more of sleeping would have put him in sync with everything. But being pulled into it was very unpleasant. The reason he had to get up was the bus was coming. Sleeping a few minutes more would not have made him late for the bus.
Transcript Excerpts of Jane’s Teachings during the TimeLine Process: “You interpreted your father as the outside world because he’s the one that woke you up. But in this situation the real outside world was the bus, that was coming at a certain time, and that was the actual reality requirement. And you would have had time to sleep a few minutes longer, and still made the bus. Your father was just the intermediary, misinterpreting the situation for the purposes of his own unhealed issues.
To you, your father represented authority, which is a person who is an intermediary between you and the outside world. Now, just because your father was in the position of having control and power, and he was acting like the authority, doesn’t make him the authority. Authority is a concept, beyond any individual person. Authority is supposed to represent truth. That’s why you give them the power. And your father, in this moment, was not doing that. He wasn’t representing truth. But because you made this limiting decision, from that point on, you have attributed everybody who appears to be in the position of authority, as being unreasonable and out of alignment with you. But the real authority is truth and life and the divine; the real and larger power, which defines reality. And in this event, you were perfectly well in alignment with reality and truth. And your father was out of alignment with reality and authority. He was functioning from his own unhealed issues from a dysfunctional place. The decision you made is that the authority restricts you from being yourself. And then you confused the authority with the outside world.
This is very similar to Bennet. He has also avoided authority, probably for similar reasons. He’s a very one-of-a-kind person like you are. And both of you have restricted, to a very large degree, the possibilities you could do in life because of this. You’re had to reinvent the wheel over and over again. You create the whole life that you live in, completely different and completely done by you, and you haven’t gotten to use all of the wonderful things that have been developed by other people, that fall under the category of authority to you. So you have been separately and stubbornly only doing the things that you’ve devised in order to keep your independence from authority, which has totally restricted you, probably especially in business. It’s caused you to be limited to what you already know. I’m sure it’s restricted you in every area of your life, personal and business.
