(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.

Question from Jered (Real names are never used):

Jered: What is your thinking on the Wikileaks guy, Assange. Is there a balance in that mess or …?  I question the practical usefulness of disclosures and Assange’s seemingly righteous stance. The world is a delicate place at times.

Jane: It’s difficult to know the effect that Assange revealing these documents is having on the world.  A multitude of things are happening in the world on multiple levels, much of which isn’t being talked about.

And whether Assange is coming from a place of truth and reality inside himself, or it’s a part of his emotional defense systems, I don’t know.  Very likely it’s some of both.

There are many forces and dynamics happening in the world that are a part of a complex evolutionary process.  And all we can do is to play our part in this universal drama, from within our own personal perspective and experience.

The reason that someone like Assange, who is affecting things on a global level, has such a huge impact is because of the general human belief that our safety and well-being is dependent on what the people outside of ourselves do.  And so we live in a world based on trying to control each other. And in fact, one statement Assange seems to be trying to make is about letting go of the control.  Although, his emphasis seems to be on other people letting go of the control, rather than himself.

The world is in great flux right now, and getting ourselves in the position to ride with the flow of life seems to me vitally important.  And that means letting go of the control.  But we can’t let go of the control as long as we believe the source of our safety and well-being is at the mercy of the world outside ourselves.

It’s a good thing that the book and movie “The Secret” (which teaches how to manifest into your life what you desire) has been so popular.  Even though the majority of people don’t have a lot of success making it work, many people have enough success with it to pay attention to it.  This makes it more acceptable to conceive of the idea that the source of our survival and well-being has to do with an internal process, not something imposed externally.

It’s not about what other people do; it’s about what you do.  Each of us is a leader, because we are presenting a model of reality with every thought we think, and expression and movement we make.  We are in a transition period, moving into taking personal responsibility for the world each of us is creating.  We can no longer afford to blame it on what the other person is doing.

The world you experience depends on the vibrational stream you enter into, the kind of energy you tap into — whether it’s positive and loving, or fearful and hateful, or somewhere in between.  That’s the world you are entering into.  And that’s the reality you project out into the world.

Stock piling resources, and building empires, and creating “foolproof” strategies — only to have the stock market tumble, home values bottom out, and the financial world destabilize.  How many symbols of being in control have you lost this year?  Your house?  Your job?  Your retirement funds?  Your relationship?  Have you been trying to regain that control in order to lean on it again for your stability?  Or have you been allowing the loss of it to reshape you, to transform you, to shift how you are looking at and approaching life itself?

There is no safety or stability in being in control.  But that is not a lesson the world could learn as long as the old ways of doing things seemed to be working.  Really engaging is the opposite of control.  It is putting the truth out there to be seen.  It is a process of vulnerably being present with each other and life itself.  This is giving up the control to a larger truth and reality than human control, and finding out that this larger source is based in love.

The bottom line of what this transition requires is love.  It takes love to let go of trying to control our experience, and to engage in life instead.  It takes a recognition of the love that’s all around, which is the ultimate gift.

(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.

From Sally in Solana Beach: My husband agreed to go to an event with me that was important to me.  But a few days before the event he realized that an important football game was playing that night, which he hadn’t known about and he blurted out that he wasn’t going to the event because he wanted to stay home and watch the game.  I told him that I had thought he was a person of integrity, but because of how he acted I realized that he really isn’t, if he could just blow off his commitment to me like that.  He did realize shortly after his response that he hadn’t behaved very well, and suggested we discuss possible solutions.  But I am still seeing him as a person without integrity because of how he acted.  He obviously didn’t see me as a very high priority.  Don’t you think this shows a lack of integrity?

Jane: I’d say, clearly your husband was coming from an emotionally triggered place — at least in his initial response.  But it doesn’t mean to me that this shows he is a person basically lacking in integrity.

I think this brings up something important for you to look at in yourself.  Leaning on ridged rules, as you seem to be doing, is a way to avoid relating in the moment, where you reveal where you are at, and engage back and forth about what’s really happening, such as “I’m triggered,” “This is how I’m feeling”, “This is really important to me.”  If you avoid relating in the moment, you don’t have to be vulnerable, you don’t have to reveal anything, and you don’t have to engage.  It’s just, “This is the rule; you follow it or you’re bad.”

And that’s a place that people often fall into in areas in which they have limiting decisions*, because they don’t trust life to work the way it really is. And I’m guessing a significant limiting decision* was triggered in you by this situation, bringing up emotional responses beyond what the situation really called for.  For example, the limiting decision* could have to do with you not feeling valued or that there isn’t anyone you can count on.  And you’re projecting the pain of the limiting decision* onto your husband, which is why you are being ridged about it, and why you’re drawing a broad generalization about him.

Since — after his initial knee jerk response — your husband was open to discussing this with you to find a solution, it appears to me that he’s not creating an impossibility.  But if you take a ridged stand on a judgment about what this means about his character, you have shut the door to a way forward.  When you’re really being present — engaging, revealing, and being vulnerable, you don’t need to have ridged rules, because you are interacting in life, and life does work when you’re really participating in it.

So — you recognize that your husband had a dysfunctional response, you look at the limiting decisions being triggered in yourself and in him, and you work through it.  A way forward will become clear, when you are really able to be present with each other.

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

(Participants’ names are changed to protect their privacy.)

(Janet told the group about a man she read about who was a talented dolphin trainer.  And he was so sensitive to dolphins that he knew that the dolphins hated being captive and many become very depressed and commit suicide by stopping breathing.  He quit his job and wrote some publication describing this.  And now he steals dolphins in captivity and frees them, putting himself in jeopardy of being arrested.  Janet then said that she once had a research job in which they were dissecting live lobsters and running tests on them.  The scientists told them that the lobsters didn’t feel anything.  But Janet could feel them screaming, and so she quit the job.)

(To Janet) “Both with this fellow and with you, part of what’s in the picture and messing things up is an adversarial belief system that’s causing you to relate to this in an adversarial manner, rather than make a positive contribution. Your positive contribution is that you are so sensitive that you can hear the lobsters screaming. So this information, this is a contribution, and doesn’t have to be adversarial. It’s similar to what I said last week about that it doesn’t have to be that one person is right and one person is wrong. That’s not what it’s about.  It’s about people contributing their piece in the puzzle.  Now people sometimes put input into the picture, that’s not really their piece in the puzzle, like perhaps the scientists saying the lobsters don’t feel anything.  That’s probably coming from a defense system of some sort. But if you have something that’s really genuine from you — that’s invaluable. That’s a treasure. And so rather than feeling you have to fight someone, or vindicate yourself to someone, or prove something — look for the open channel to contribute this miracle of information.  This is a piece of the Divine, this is a piece of truth, or the Universe or however you want to put it. There’s a place for it.  It’s a gift.  It’s a very fine-tuned sensitivity that both you and this other fellow have.  He’s putting himself in an adversarial position, but he doesn’t need to.  I’m sure if he wasn’t internally experiencing the world from a limiting decision causing an adversarial defense system, he would find a way that he would be embraced and that he could utilize his very fine-tuned sensibilities to contribute something invaluable.  And you too, you don’t have to fight somebody.  It’s a wonderful gift if you don’t see it in terms of being adversarial.  In fact, the adversarial energy is adding to the very thing you’re trying to fight against.

The process of evolution has to do with coming more and more into what’s really true.  And so human experience keeps evolving more and more toward what’s true.  And what’s true is not adversarial.  What’s true is not about criticism.  What’s true has to do with people putting into the picture their piece of the puzzle, their perception of things, and this isn’t against someone else’s perception.  It’s an addition.  And if you add each of these in there, then you get a much better idea of what the whole picture is. Now in the old frame-of-reference, in which you’re right and I’m wrong, and I’m going to criticize you, if someone puts their piece of the picture in there that looks different than what another person puts in, that person then feels they’re being criticized.  But it has nothing to do with that.  It doesn’t mean there isn’t any space for that person.  If you bring the participants all into the picture, and then you see something that has far more dimensions and far more truth, and can catalyze something altogether different.”

(Participants’ names are changed to protect their privacy.)

(Rita told the group she hadn’t been there last week because she had a class she went to on sex.  Melanie said something about thinking Rita went to this class because she wanted to immediately get into another relationship with a man, and that that was more important to her than coming to the group.)

(To Melanie)  “You’re assuming what this class is and the meaning of it for Rita, and then having made the assumption, and without asking her about what it was, you scold her.  You’re so sure that your assumption is accurate, that you don’t stand in the question. This group is about standing in the question.  You reveal your response, and then you find out what’s actually there. You walk into the unknown to a place where you don’t already know the answer, which is extremely important for transformation.

Not allowing yourself to stand in the question and stand in a place where you don’t know — that seems to be one of your largest defense systems.  It is filling in the space, not leaving it open to find out what’s actually there, because in your original family it was very dangerous to allow your mother to take over the situation, because she’d be violent.  So you were filling in the space all of the time to distract her, to make it safe for yourself.  And you’re doing it less now, but that’s still one of your major defense system.  It’s ‘don’t ask a question, don’t stand in the question, don’t leave any space for whatever is really true in the situation.’

Your perspective, as well as Rita’s perspective are both important pieces of the puzzle.  It’s not a matter of one person being right and the other person being wrong.  The piece that you added that was very important, was how important this group is to you, and how important it is to you that everyone else is committed to putting 100% in. Now that adds to the picture.  And it does not conflict with Rita’s perspective and where Rita was coming from that was important for her.  It’s just that there are different pieces of the puzzle that different people bring into the picture, and they’re all important, and they’re all legitimate.

When we get these different inputs from different people looking at the situation different ways, it’s like different facets to a picture. And you put it together and you have a much richer idea, sense of truth. And it doesn’t exclude anybody. And it’s not one person is right and one person is wrong.  It adds another color. It adds another dimension in which not only is there room for everyone, but everyone has an important part to play or important piece of the puzzle.”

(Melanie responded to a group interaction about her response to Rita as if she’s being criticized.)

“This is an example of an inner world that you carry with you and you interpret input that you get from within that world.  So what people were noticing about you is that you were scolding Rita. And so now you think that if anyone has any response to you, they’re scolding you. You were taking what people said as a criticism of you because that’s the world you live in, a world in which people criticize each other, rather than including people as a part of the picture. The way I’m looking at it is it’s all positive.”

(In an interaction in the group, Aaron had a response which he withheld. He said he did that in order to let things play out as they would, without him interfering with them.) “Aaron doesn’t see that if he has a response to something, that response is an integral part of what is happening in this moment. You think that you putting something in the picture distorts the situation. But the opposite is true. If you don’t put in what’s true for you in the moment, then you are distorting the picture, because you exist. Your response exists. You withholding it, is you keeping your piece of the puzzle out of the picture so the whole can’t morph into what it’s meant to morph into.”