Transformational Teachings from Counselor Jane Ilene Cohen

This is a part of the “Ask Jane” Series,
in which Jane answers questions
you email to her that of concern to you.

(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

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

Julian: In the news recently there is focus upon ‘hacker victims’ in UK newspaper mess. Then there are people who express frustrations with life as if a victim of the world.  I’m wondering how you might characterize the difference between these two?

Jane: Regardless of the external circumstances, being a victim has to do with attitude and interpretation.  If your general attitude toward life is that it works well for you, then when something that seems to not go your way happens, you’re likely to interpret what happened from an empowered perspective.  If you’re general attitude is that life is hard or difficult or that it doesn’t work well for you, you’re likely to interpret what happened from a disempowered (or victim) perspective.

Whether you’re able to come from an empowered or disempowered place or not has to do with where you perceive the source of your well-being comes from.  If you see yourself as being dependent on what people outside yourself do toward you for your well-being, that puts you at the mercy of what other people do, which feels disempowering.  If you approach life from a larger perspective, knowing that there is a larger truth or guiding principle, that is inherently positive, that gives meaning to everything you experience in life — then you don’t feel at the mercy of whatever happens to occur in your life.  And as a result you approach whatever happens from a positive, empowered attitude, which then enables you to much more easily find solutions to whatever the challenge is and move in a positive direction.

This is a part of the “Ask Jane” Series,
in which Jane answers questions
you email to her that of concern to you.

(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

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

Mitchell (a TimeLine client of mine) does not like being dependent on anyone.  And because he is extremely intelligent he has always been able to figure things out himself.  He’s now at a point in his life where he realizes he needs to expand his world beyond the limited home life he has created, but finds himself resistant to doing that.

Jane: Your life is confined to the limits of your intellect, and your personal experience from the perspective you’re standing on.  That is highly limiting.  You can’t expand your world if you can’t go beyond yourself.  To expand your world means there is something larger than you you’re dependent upon.

Mitchell: I don’t understand the concept of being dependent upon something greater than myself.

Jane: Most children start out viewing their parents basically as God, because they are physically and emotionally dependent on their parents for their well-being and survival.  But when children run into a conflict where something traumatic happens that shakes their perception of reality about themselves in relation to their parents, they then generally contract into making a generalized limiting decision* about those they are dependent on.

For example they might decide those they are dependent on can’t be trusted or that they are inadequate.  In this case they then build a defense system, such as relying on no one but themselves in life, which is what you have done.  This then limits your life to what you can personally conceive of and to what is in your control.

Or the child might make a limiting decision* that he can’t trust his own perception of reality because his perception caused him to be in conflict with his parents, or to get in trouble with them, or to be wrong.  This causes him to be dependent on authority figures and what other people think.

Or highly evolved souls, instead, basically shake the walls of heaven and demand to know what this experience means.  They then, instead of making a limiting decision*, expand to a more evolved perception of that situation, that expands their understanding.  They are then letting divine inspiration show them a greater truth than what they had understood before.  The child then is depending on a larger source.  As each person evolves he finds ways to tap into this larger source, whether he defines it in those terms or not.

People either rely on human authority, or their own defense systems, or a larger source, which then connects them with their own direct experience.

Limiting Decisions*: Unconscious decisions made in early childhood, such as “I am stupid,” “I am bad,” “People can’t be trusted.”

This is a part of the “Ask Jane” Series,
in which Jane answers questions
you email to her that of concern to you.

(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

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

Aaron: We used to have a sense that we were important.  Our labor was necessary.  You worked your way up in a company, and you had value to the company.  There was a set way to get acknowledged for your value, as you advanced in your position.  Now with everything being done through computers, with so many potential resources out in the world, it’s hard to get a sense you have importance in the workplace.  You’re pretty much interchangeable.  Young people today don’t have a sense of how they can advance themselves in the world.  They don’t have a sense that they have importance or value out in the world.  What’s your perspective on this?

Jane: The issue here is who or what is defining your experience of reality.  Is it being defined from outside yourself or from inside yourself?  In the old paradigm it was your boss, and the structure of the company, that was defining what your value was, according to how well you fit into what serves the interests of the company and/or the people who control it. You knew you were of value to them if you got a raise or a promotion, and you climbed up the corporate ladder.  But this definition of value is limited by the particular perspectives of the people who control it.  It is therefore defined by a human construct, which is not necessarily aligned with what is inherently true.  Human constructs can’t define your actual value.

This hopeless feeling you have been describing is highlighting that people are mistaken or dysfunctional about how they are defining their feeling of importance.  When it’s coming from outside of yourself, it is based on the limitations and fallibilities of human beings. There’s no stability there.

Just because the old ways of doing things are no longer working, doesn’t mean things are going backwards.  What it means is that a step forward in the human evolutionary process is now being required.  We’re moving from the outside world defining our experience for us, to a more direct connect with reality.

In the evolutionary process, it seems life allows things to work at a less evolved level, until it’s time for humanity to evolve further.  When that occurs more is required of people for their lives to work.  This means the less evolved way of doing things becomes increasingly less workable, because it’s out of alignment with reality.

It’s now time for a major evolutionary shift, and the shift is occurring.  For people who aren’t participating in the changes that are needed for the shift, it’s a harder process.

This is a part of the “Ask Jane” Series,
in which Jane answers questions
you email to her that of concern to you.

(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

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

As you may recall the last “Ask Jane” was a continuation of a dialog with William whose wife of nearly 30 years had become so emotionally out of touch with reality, it became impossible for him to live with her.  And the comfort and stability he had built up in his life with her for all of these years had been pretty much shattered.  The point of my answer to him had to do with the only thing that really happened is he learned that he was looking in the wrong direction for his source of well-being and stability.

In response to that “Ask Jane,” I received this request from a reader:  “Will you please expound next on what actually gives us stability?”

The answer to this is a large subject, beyond the scope of this newsletter, and goes to the heart of what the “Life is Meant to Work” Thought System Course I teach is about.  So, for this article, I’ll just touch on a piece of it:

The source of the deep feeling of instability for William was he had had more faith in his ability to control the outcomes in his life to result in his benefit, than he had in the inherent nature of how life works. Real stability has to do with coming into alignment with what is actually true, with what is real, the inherent principles and foundations of Life, Truth, Love, Consciousness, Intelligence — present-moment reality; and allowing it to transform your experience — and you — in the process.  It requires letting go of human control.

People generally don’t consciously relate to Life itself (or an overall Intelligence or Consciousness, or a Divine Presence….),  which is not in human control — unless perhaps when they’re in some sort of crisis that they see no solution to that they believe they can control.  This is based on the deeply ingrained, underlying belief that life doesn’t work — or that it’s just arbitrary, and not something that can be counted on.

And it is based on the idea that what is actually real is the physical world, and can be controlled by human beings.  It’s just a question of:  Who is controlling whom?  Who is the source of well-being for whom?  Who is defining reality for whom?  We either control them or they control us.

William had been trying to control the outcome of what is actually true in his life with his wife.  And he was assuming that this huge change that has been happening in their lives would end up being harmful for both of them, rather than trusting that if he followed what is actually true, the shifting and changing that would result from it would move both of them forward in their personal growth and life’s path.

Another way to put it is we generally believe truth is against us.  People often compromise themselves in relationships rather than revealing what is really true from their perspective, because they don’t believe it could possibly work out if everyone did that.  It means they don’t put themselves in a transformational — which is another way of saying “evolutionary” — process where the whole picture could shift and change in a way that they don’t control, and can’t foresee the outcome of.

From the human perspective, putting oneself in that position is counter-intuitive.  That is because it is switching survival systems.  It is relying on a whole different system for your safety, stability and well-being.  In order to be willing to do that it is crucial to really get that — when your experience of reality is not distorted by limiting decisions* — life inherently does work.  It is switching from what I call the “substitute world” to the “real world,” which is one way to describe what the shift in consciousness is that the world is in the midst of now.

* Limiting Decision:  An unconscious decision made in early childhood that is some form of that life doesn’t work, and usually that there is something inherently wrong with you — such as “I am powerless,” “bad,” “without value;” or “The world is a dangerous place,” “People can’t be trusted,” and so on.

This is a part of the “Ask Jane” Series,
in which Jane answers questions
you email to her that of concern to you.

(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

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

As you might recall from the last “Ask Jane,” William’s wife has been becoming increasingly more disconnected from reality, and her psychiatrist hasn’t been able to help her.  She has become increasingly more difficult to live with, basically using her relationship with William to remove herself even more out of reality, by obsessively focusing exclusively on him having to be with her and do things for her every moment.  William had hoped that this was just a temporary phase, but he is now having to face she has to go into a full time residential program.  And until he finds one for her, he has to move out of the house, for his own sanity (and hers).  He has spent his whole life building up a comfortable and stable life, which he has been very successful in achieving in his life with his wife.  And now his wife has gone off the deep end and is wrecking havoc on that stability.

Jane: When people are younger they have to make their way.  They have to engage in life and put effort into making things work.  They have to try new things, which may make them uncomfortable.  When people get older and get married, many have this expectation of comfort and stability, and they build their life around achieving that.  They “settle down” and basically give up moving forward in life. The idea is that each partner has committed to staying in that relationship no matter what, in order to maintain the stability of this unit.

William: Don’t you think the majority of people look for safety and stability and comfort as their ultimate goal?

Jane: What people often associate with safety, stability and comfort is actually retreating from engaging in life, into a world they believe they can control. For example, people often make their significant others the center of their universe, rather than Life itself.   You’ve been trying to get your sense of stability from your relationship with your wife and the physical life you’ve built together, rather than having those be a part of your relationship with life.  And now, the person you have been trying to create stability with is falling apart.  And so your life feels like it’s falling apart. Your real source of stability is not, cannot, be another person.  Your real source is a larger truth, a larger frame-of-reference.  And if you’re not relating to that, then your world is inherently very unstable.

When you retreated into the comfort and stability of your marriage and comfortable life, the problem is you were sinking into an unconscious state.  The roles people have generally relied upon in marriage, business, religious life, and so on — such as how a wife or husband acts, how to advance in business, who defines what being good is — that are supposed to create stability, have been based on a lack of individual consciousness.  That is why they require you to lean on something pre-defined and set.  What is happening right now in human experience is a major shift toward increasing consciousness.  It’s a significant evolutionary change.  This means the old forms that are based on being unconscious are falling apart.  They’re losing their relevance.

William: Wouldn’t this road block that’s come along be earth shattering for anyone?  Wouldn’t anyone be upset when they’re going along a road, whether it’s a wrong road or not, when their partner goes crazy and all of a sudden you have to switch roads?

Jane: It depends on what you’re leaning on for your stability, whether you’re going to experience it as debilitating or not.  There is a huge difference between when you’re conscious and connecting on your life’s path, to life the way it really is — and when you’re invested in something that buffers you against actually engaging in life.  That is inherently unstable, because it’s an avoidance of truth.  The only thing that has really happened to you is you found out that you were mistaken about where real stability in life can be found.  And rather than continue to invest yourself in a mistaken direction, you have the opportunity to switch gears, and move toward what will actually give you stability.

This is a part of the “Ask Jane” Series,
in which Jane answers questions
you email to her that of concern to you.

(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

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

William, an NLP TimeLine client of mine, has been married for almost 30 years.  His wife (who I’ll call Terry) has been increasingly losing her connection with reality over the past several months.  She is under the care of a psychiatrist, but doesn’t seem to be making any progress.  She has lost almost all interest in life and is obsessed with being attached to William virtually all of the time, getting upset if he does anything that doesn’t include her.  William has been working through the issues in himself that have been triggered by his wife’s behavior toward him, and is responding in increasingly empowered ways.  But it’s now becoming clear that things can’t keep going the way they have been, as it’s taking a large toll on him.  He went to a session with Terry and her therapist, and the therapist said if Terry doesn’t make any progress in her behavior she will recommend William leave her, as there is no point in both of them going down.  She recommended Terry enter a full time live-in program where she can get the help she needs, but Terry is unwilling to do that.

William has been feeling conflicted over the commitment he made to his wife, about if it would be wrong for him to leave her — if he’d be failing in his commitment to her, showing lack of character.

Jane: The question is what you are committed to.  From a shallow kind of perspective, people can be committed to what makes them feel good in the moment.  And so when things get difficult they just leave.  On the other side of the pendulum, a person can blindly follow whatever they make a commitment to, no matter how they end up feeling about it, which is how some people approach their marriages.  They feel that after you make that commitment, come hell or high water, a moral person just sticks with the commitment.  Many people have stayed in very unhappy marriages on the basis of that.

Or, you can make a commitment to be true to yourself.  Now being true to yourself is not necessarily the easy route, it’s not necessarily what feels good in the moment.  It’s not a shallow decision.  It’s a decision to follow truth, and following truth may require you to go through experiences which are difficult, including transformational kinds of experience.  Truth is not the same thing as just doing something because it feels good.  If you’re truly in love with someone and really want to be with them, but the dynamics between the two of you are very painful, if you follow what’s really true for you, you’ll probably make a substantial effort to work through the issues in yourself as long as you can see a way forward.  Generally the energy will be in there as long as you feel life in the relationship, a spark in which you see or experience that there are possibilities or there is potential there.

If, however, you’ve worked through the stuff that is coming up for you, as far as you can, and if the other person is not committed to making the changes that they need to make, that are causing the relationship to not be in your best interest, then what happens is the energy starts going out of the relationship for you.

The commitment is to what’s really true inside yourself, including being committed to the truth of how you really feel about Terry.  And I believe you truly do love her.  And so the commitment might be to keep the door open for her, for now, if she can walk through it. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be living with her, or that you have to relate to her in any particular way. Right now she’s got the door closed; she’s not available to be in relationship with.

I don’t know what you should actually do, but it appears to me that she’s got to face the reality of the situation between you. If you sacrifice yourself for her because you feel sorry for her, it is probably not doing her any favors. Catering to her, and feeling sorry for her, and sticking with the commitment you made to a particular relationship form isn’t going to create change, and change is desperately needed right now.

This is a part of the “Ask Jane” Series,
in which Jane answers questions
you email to her that of concern to you.

(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

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

Question from Jeffrey (written before recent events in Egypt)

Jeffrey: I’m wondering your perspective on increased human violence? …the Moscow airport, Tucson rampage, border fences, deranged individuals killing police.  Each successive day leads to another carnage event…then the next higher level of security. It’s never ending cat ‘n mouse. What might human society be unaware of that is resulting in such destructive behavior? Is there anything we can do to reverse or arrest this escalation effect?  Or maybe it’s all relative…bad apples just a part of civilization.

Jane: We are in a major transition period in terms of what it takes to create stability, well-being and survival.  In the past there were clearly spelled out ways of earning a living and moving ahead in your profession; there were spelled out ways of what it takes to be a good, moral person; there were clear roles you were supposed to take on to create a stable family — what a good husband, wife or child is; and so on.

But many of the definitions and structures holding these in place are falling apart or rapidly changing.  And this is on top of the more global challenges of financial instability, global warming, and so on.  What people leaned on for structuring their lives is serving them less and less well, and holding less and less meaning for them. People feel, in many ways, they no longer have a stable way to take care of their basic needs that they can count on.

These old structures and models and roles did give people stability, without people really having to be conscious or having to relate directly to life itself.  But the evolutionary process is one of moving toward greater and greater consciousness.  What works during one particular stage of evolution won’t necessarily work during another, as evolving forward is inherent in life.

And those who are invested in the old forms are having a hard time in this transition.  The more the investment is, the harder the transition.  And this can lead to varying degrees of social chaos and violence.

The solution is learning how to relate directly to life itself, rather than leaning on and being at the mercy of human constructs and definitions from those outside of you.  One way of putting this is it’s moving from leaning on some external, static, authoritative defining of how things should be — to something much more fluid and changeable, requiring much more personal responsibility.

This is a part of the “Ask Jane” Series,
in which Jane answers questions
you email to her that of concern to you.

(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

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

Excerpt from a TimeLine Session with a client I’ll call William (not his real name)

William is having problems in his marriage.  His wife likes to always be in charge and generally insists on things being her way.  She has very strong desires and opinions about everything, and is not open to what matters to others.  William, on the other hand, isn’t much in contact with what he wants, but generally finds himself “going with the flow” in life.  Going with the flow has generally worked out well for him, and he seems to find interesting opportunities for himself that way.  But in his marriage it’s causing major problems.

Jane: Going with the flow is basically moving along with where the real life energy is, which is a very important ability to have.  But in this case, between you and your wife, it’s instead a part of an emotional defense system.  It’s a part of a dysfunctional relationship between you.  She becomes the flow for you.  She determines what the flow is.  Although, when she’s doing that, she herself is not actually connected with the flow of life.

The issue is “Who is defining reality for you?”.  People often go along with what’s happening around them as if that’s just the way things are, not realizing that they are letting themselves be controlled by other people’s energy.  That’s very, very different than going with the flow of life.  You have to be in contact with your self, with your enlightened self-interest, with your own direct experience in order to really be going with the flow of life.  If you are not connected with that direct experience, and you let the flow of your energy be defined or controlled by someone else, it can be disastrous — as you’re finding out.

William:  I guess you’re then flowing down the wrong branch of the river.

Jane: It’s not the river at all; it’s someone’s distortion of reality.  Really going with the flow is directly connecting with reality, the heart of things, the real life energy — which is what Divine Order is about.  It’s what makes things work.

When you’re really going with the flow — when you’re really connected to the nature of the way life is — then things works amazingly well.  But when you let yourself be taken over by someone else as a result of not being connected to your own direct connection with life, that’s when things get messed up in your life. It’s your limiting decisions* that disconnect you from your own direction experience, and therefore accessing your own path in life.

* Limiting Decisions: Unconscious decisions made at a very young age, which are always some form of deciding that life doesn’t work and usually that there is something inherently wrong with you — such as “I am stupid, unlovable, without value….”  “People can’t be trusted….”

This is a part of the “Ask Jane” Series,
in which Jane answers questions
you email to her that of concern to you.

(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

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

This a continued dialog with Jered about the Australian Founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, who has been responsible for leaking sensitive secret government information out into the world.

Jered: My concern is the wisdom and consequences of these disclosures since there’s no way Assange read 250,000 sensitive documents.

Jane: What is the purpose of judging the wisdom and consequences of his disclosures?  I guess you’re wondering what the righteous thing to do is.  Should we allow government to keep certain things secret and who should be in control of that? Is that covering up things that should be known by the general population?  But if we don’t keep these things secret, is that causing even more harm?

Focusing on trying to control each other is a losing battle, and if we look out in the world that becomes pretty apparent.  We can’t control the terrorists, we can’t control which political party wins and the laws they end up passing or revoking.  Sometimes things go our way, and sometimes they don’t.  But that’s not the real playing field.  And the shift the world is undergoing right now is increasingly making that clearer.  We have been looking in the wrong direction for solutions. 

Whether Assange’s actions are wise or not is not the issue.  He did what he did, and apparently is going to continue doing it.  You could say he is in a dialog with the world, and the world is in dialog in response.  And how you relate to the dialog will be a learning experience for you.  The dialog itself is what opens up truth.  As I said in the previous post, the issue now is engaging rather than trying to control.  Engaging is where the resources, safety and well-being can be accessed, because it’s hooking into a larger truth, a larger framework beyond any individual person’s control.  It’s participating in life, rather than trying to control it.

This is a part of the “Ask Jane” Series,
in which Jane answers questions
you email to her that of concern to you.

(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.