Transformational Teachings from Counselor Jane Ilene Cohen

Below is a response from RL to my invitation for dialog about the direction humanity is going in and the challenge in front of us.  Underneath that is my response to RL.  If you can a response to these you can send it to me using this blog’s contact form.

_________

RL: “GM foods are a fantastic idea, initially, produce mass quantity of food to feed people more quality food…  Of course there are people who want to monopolize on this instantly, such as Monsato, maximizing profits by contracting deals that cannot be withdrawn. This is done without being cautious to the effects, and giving time for science to perfect the process. Hydrogenated oil… when created at first, great idea! Food shall not spoil so quick… yet 30 years down the line we find its ill effects, but to completely ban it from use is impossible, as to the multi million dollar agreements of companies like crisco and mcdonalds. But 30 years down the line we find Hydrogenation of food is useful on sugar starches, to create an indigestible sugar that is great for diabetics, and does not cause insulin spikes.   Every discovery has an application, we just need to find the correct one, and the key requirement is patience. Money is the root of all evil….”

Jane: “To me, what you are saying boils down to: Because of greed, some people take advantage of, and have huge power over, other people.  This perspective is that we are victims of the greed of other people.

When we look at these kinds of issues, the focus is generally on those who take advantage of other people, as if they are the problem. This is not recognizing that those other people are just as powerful as those who “take advantage of them.”   The problem isn’t those who take advantage of other people; it is what causes those other people to give their power away and let themselves be manipulated.  And it is not others they are being manipulated by.

What people really desire are, for example, being powerful, valuable, successful, loved, safe and so on.  And having those is the true nature of people.  But people make limiting decisions* as children, which cause them to believe that can’t have those things, in whatever area it is that they make limiting decisions* in.  Because this feels deeply unacceptable to them, they develop emotional defense systems that cushion them against, or compensate for, not being able to access those.  People then get invested in symbolic substitutes for these that they feel they can control — such as buying expensive things they don’t need; drinking excessive alcohol; and eating unhealthy comfort foods that give them a false, but  immediate, sense of well-being.  These kinds of symbolic substitutes give them the feeling that they are powerful, valuable, successful, lovable, safe and so on.  People tend to buy into symbols of what gives them a sense of well-being.

When we go toward symbolic substitutes, we are believing that the source of our well-being is outside of ourselves.  This is what addictions are all about.  They are something physical that we believe we have control over that will give us a sense of having something we truly desire, but feel unable to access, such as love, emotional nourishment, power, success, significance and so on.  But in reality, an addiction is something that becomes out of our control, and ends up having control over us.

And so these symbolic symbols ultimately have harmful effects on us, as well as often on other people and our common environment.  This is because they not in alignment with reality.  They result in excessive consumption of resources and pollution in one form or another.  And they bring us into an increasingly deeper sense of hopelessness, because we’re looking in the wrong direction for solutions.  They cause us to rely on those who provide these symbolic substitutes believing they are the source of our well-being.  Those we believe have huge power over us, such as Monsato in your example, only have that power because we are giving it to them, believing them to be the source of what we need, as if that source could come from something outside of ourselves.”

Limiting Decisions*: Unconscious decisions, usually made before the age of 6 or 7.  They are always some form of life doesn’t work and usually that there is something inherently wrong with you, such as: “I am bad, not valuable, a failure…” “People can’t be trusted.”  And so on.

From the “Life is Meant to Work” tele-seminar

We know this because life is set up so that what really benefits us is the way forward, and what harms us is the way backwards.  There are certain kinds of behaviors people tend to go toward that lead to our lives working less and less well.  They are behaviors or things we think benefit us, but really don’t.  Examples are: one person giving up their power to another in a relationship, in order to be taken care of, leading to being increasingly more dependent; or eating foods that feel comforting, but clog your arteries and cause obesity; or excessively drinking alcohol to feel good in the moment, but that harms your liver and causes you to behave in ways you later regret; and so on.  These are examples of what I call “substitute desires” that are not in your real self-interest, but substitutes for what you really desire, based on limiting decisions* that you can’t have what really matters to you.  It’s pretty clear that they are harmful to us and lead us backwards.

But moving toward true or enlightened self-interest, such as moving toward love in relationships, eating foods that are actually good for you, and developing yourself in areas of your life that are truly fulfilling and important to you — these lead your life forward.  This means that going toward what feels good to the higher part of you moves you forward.  It leads you toward who you really are, it leads you to the Divine in you, it leads you toward your inherent contribution in life.

Whether a particular behavior feels good to you or not depends on what part of you you are relating from.  And so if, instead of your higher self, you are letting the unhealed parts of you rule, then you believe your substitute desires are what you desire.  And eventually, any negative system is by its nature doomed to self-destruct, because it’s going in the opposite direction of what really matters to you, and what really benefits you.

The purpose of the evolutionary process is to move increasingly more toward our enlightened self-interest, that which truly benefits us.  The whole universe, every particle of All-That-Is, is set up to move us toward what truly benefits us.

If we observe the human evolutionary process we can see that it inherently is benevolent, moving us toward our greater well-being.  For instance, in the earlier evolutionary stages, it appears primitive people were constantly in danger of not surviving as a part of their daily lives.  And their lives were extremely physically arduous, taken up with just surviving.  There were limited choices and limited opportunities.

As humanity has evolved it has moved from a limited physical perspective, to increasingly greater consciousness, which has opened up increasingly more knowledge and possibilities, including being able to focus on more than just survival.  Humanity has also moved from a limited understand of what power is to a more expanded and evolved one.  And therefore it has moved from abusing those with less physical power, such as children and women, to more empowered lives for more of us.  Laws created by humanity have also moved increasingly more toward being based on understanding and compassion rather than revenge and punishment.

The fact that the human evolutionary process is moving toward greater intelligence and an increasing sense of who we really are, is evidenced when you observe the younger generations, who are generally much brighter and more conscious than preceding ones.

These are just a few examples of humanity’s evolution forward.  Of course there is also a great deal that is unevolved in the world, and people tend to notice where life or the human experience appears unevolved, without taking into account the huge evolutionary steps humanity has already taken.

The whole point about life being meant to work is that life is set up in a way in which that is the natural outcome, if you come into the truth of what life is about.  The process of evolution is a process of moving toward what is actually true, as opposed to the unevolved misconceptions we started out with or developed along the way — such as the belief that physical power is true power, that men are more valuable than women, that punishment is an effective way to teach children, that exploiting workers is good for business.  These ideas were based on limiting decisions* and substitute desires, and therefore were not the direction of the future.  When the truth was discovered that there are much more effective forms of power than the physical, and that women are an invaluable asset in the world, and so on, we discover that life works much better, because these are based on truth.  Every time innovators push through new ideas propelled by inspired insights, we discover a deeper truth about how life works, which then brings us into alignment with what is true, thereby causing life to work increasingly better.

And so we can see that the evolutionary process is an intelligent and benign process.  It causes the expansion of truth, intelligence, love and compassion.  We discover as we evolve forward that love works better than hate in relationships, in business, and in teaching children, and that compassion works better than brute force.   Even in warfare we discover that addressing populations’ needs is more effective in gaining allies than bombing them.  Evolution is, in fact, leading us toward love itself.

* Limiting Decisions: Unconscious decisions usually made before the ages of 6 or 7, that are some form of deciding that life doesn’t work and usually also that there is something inherently wrong with you, such as “I am bad,” “I’m not valuable,” “People can’t be trusted,” and so on.

To listen to the Preview audio for the next “Life is Meant to Work” Tele-seminar, click here.

For the info page with all of the details about the upcoming “Life is Meant to Work” Tele-seminar, click here.

Transcript Excerpt of Jane’s Teachings
during Melanie’s NLP TimeLine Therapy session 8-7-09
(Name is changed to protect client’s privacy.)

“The role of rules in human life is an evolving process.  People, in their less evolved stages, have a greater need for rules than they do as they become more evolved.  This is because they’re not present enough in the here-and-now to be in alignment with Divine order.  They need an external structure, because they don’t have the connection internally.  And so they need a parent, basically, whether it’s in the form of the church or policeman or a physical parent, or some outside authority that tells you ‘You may not do this.  You may not do that.’  The evolving of this process is slowed down by limiting decisions* (made on a broad cultural scale and passed down through the generations) that people can’t trust their actual experience or desires.  So then it becomes a question of — do we need the structure because we really can’t trust ourselves, or because of limiting decisions causing us to believe we can’t.

Related to this is the idea of original sin, which leads to the limiting decision, something along the lines, that who you inherently are is bad, so you have to be controlled.  It is the belief that if you do what you want to do you’re going to do something bad. This dysfunctional concept gets in the way of people trusting that what really matters to them is beneficial, and therefore they must control themselves and lean on external authorities and concepts to determine the way to structure or run their lives.  And so this ends up with old unevolved and dysfunctional patterns being handed down generation after generation.

(Melanie is saying her mother used to say, “I have to control you.  That’s what parents have to do.”)

“Your mother thought this because she saw how she herself was, and she thought that’s the nature of people.  She couldn’t control her temper, she couldn’t control herself sexually, and she was an alcoholic.  Now, when a person is out of control like she was, there is some way that she’s blocking herself from going toward what really matters to her.  Instead, she’s going for substitutes.

Any kind of addiction, including sexual addiction, or any of the addictive things your mother did were substitutes for what really did matter to her.  And you are now blocking what really matters to you.  The reason you can’t trust yourself, is because you’re not giving yourself what you really need and want, and therefore you are addicted to substitutes.  Addictions are a substitute for what you really want emotionally, such as love or acceptance.  So if you have made a limiting decision, for example that you are not lovable or worthy of love, you give up on getting the real thing and try to get it through symbolic substitutes that you can control.  But when you try to get love or acceptance or some form of emotional nourishment by eating or drinking or smoking, or any other kind of addiction, you’re not satisfied because it doesn’t give you what it is that you’re really wanting.  And so you keep trying to get more and more of it, because in the moment it gives you a temporary feeling of satisfaction.  You can love and be loved infinitely, because emotions are not physical and therefore are limitless.  Whereas food or alcohol are physical and there’s a limit to what you can physically put in your body, and so eventually physical addictions take their toll on the body.”

* For an in-depth description of “limiting decisions,” click here.