Selected from the “Life is Meant to Work” Webinar,
and emailed-in questions people sent.
To listen to this webinar introduction, click here.
(People’s names are changed to protect their privacy.)
Sally: Jane, excellent synthesis and conclusions of this complex topic. Will each session be one hour?
Jane: Yes, each class in the 12-week Course will be an hour.
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Randy: Are you going to be teaching A Course in Miracles in this course?
Jane: No. I absorbed what was meaningful to me to absorb from A Course in Miracles. I studied it very intensely and it brought me to new ground in which I was seeing things from a different perspective. And from standing on that perspective, I tapped into a whole other thought system from my own direct experience.
I got the idea from A Course in Miracles that life is meant to work. And when I started seeing clients I started holding that in place. I didn’t really know that it was true. But I was holding it in place, and I was insistent on holding that in place. I think I was born to do that, as I can’t figure out any other reason why I have held onto it with such strong intention. So whatever happened, I interpreted it from the frame-or-reference that life is meant to work. And as a result, I started tapping into a whole body of work, which has kept unfolding and has made the work I do very effective. Because TimeLine is such a fast process, I could almost immediately see the result of holding “life is meant to work” in place. So it has been like a living laboratory over these past 14 years, seeing the results of standing on that premise, and finding that it is true over and over again. We clear the limiting decision, and the person’s life reconfigures itself and proves that it has nothing to do with the way life works, or the external circumstance.
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Jean: It sounds like by the time a person is 50 they might have made hundreds or thousands of limiting decisions. So how long do you think it might take someone, an average person whose life isn’t working, to release enough limiting decisions so their life could work?
Jane: First of all you don’t keep making limiting decisions until you’re 50 years old. Limiting decisions are made before the age of 6 or 7, sometimes in adolescence. It’s rare that you make any limiting decisions beyond that age.
The number of limiting decisions and the length of time it takes to clear them depends on the soul’s path. Some people have a lot of stuff going on — by which I mean a lot of limiting decisions that surface — and they just have to deal with them. They’re set up to make a lot of progress in this lifetime. Other people seem to have an easier path, with less limiting decisions to deal with. And it seems to vary from lifetime to lifetime. It depends on a combination of your soul’s particular path, and how much progress it decides to make in this lifetime. It also has to do with the evolutionary process of your particular soul and of humanity in general. At a certain point a more evolved level of functioning is expected of you in order for your life to work well.
In general when a person works with me, they work for a while and arrive at a place that works for them, at the particular stage in life they are at. I had one woman who cleared the issues she needed to clear in relation to her husband, and their relationship now works wonderfully well, and she was finished. And I haven’t heard from her since. For some people, we clear the issues that were currently of concern to them, and I don’t hear from them for a year or two. And then they come back to clear more, according to what’s up for them in their current life experience.
But that’s about the TimeLine sessions, and that’s different from what I’m doing in the “Life is Meant to Work” program, which has to do with the larger perspective, it shifts how you are experiencing life, and your perspective on what reality is. It’s working with getting you in alignment with the evolutionary process.
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Anita: If life is meant to work, what about catastrophes such as what happened in Haiti, the death and destruction wasn’t the result of their limiting decisions. It might be the result of limiting decisions of those that are causing global climate change. We’re making decisions and other people are making decisions. So possibly what happened is other people’s limiting decisions can have a limiting effect on us. Some people’s decisions can change the world. They affect everybody. To take an attitude that everything one endures is as a result of one’s limiting belief is to imply that we are islands unto ourselves and are unaffected by what takes place around us.
A baby born with an arm protruding out of its back because of the depleted uranium dumped in Iraq by the Americans, has not created its own reality. A 7 point earthquake that kills and harms huge numbers of people is not created by the limiting beliefs of those people. The fact that the over-population, pathetic housing conditions, poverty and ignorance of the people is a condition of American foreign policy conditions … (Anita wrote a very long question, too long to include here, so this is just a small excerpt.)
Jane: You’ve asked a lot of good questions. This is a large subject and central to the teachings in this 12-week course and can’t be comprehensively explained in this brief Q & A format. So I’ll just answer some pieces of it.
Your limiting decisions only have to do with you. And other people’s limiting decisions only have to do with them. You are never controlled by someone outside of yourself. When you clear the limiting decision, you find that your life shifts, no matter what it is that others are doing.
The alternative perspective to this is a judgmental good-versus-evil perspective, which is one of the causes of the problem — not a solution. This is the perspective that causes people to be in fear, feel they have to control each other, to believe that what they really want will be damaging to others, and all kinds of misconceptions that leads to people attacking each other in the name of defending themselves. It causes people to be afraid of being who they really are, in their full power.
I know this can be hard to grasp. That’s why it’s a 12-week course, because you have to really get into the specifics of how experience is formed in order to untangle this whole thing.
Even on a very direct, relatively benign personal level, limiting decisions appear to make life impossible, and so without really understanding how that works, it’s hard to understand it for more extreme and global situations. The examples I gave in my introduction, about clients’ whose lives turned around from appearing to be impossible to being possible, give some insight into that.
The amazing thing to me is that, whatever the situation is, when you clear the limiting decisions that are at the root of the painful emotions that come up in the situation — when you clear them, your experience of reality does shift.
Yes, we are all affected by each other, but whether our response is an emotionally triggered one or not, is the issue. A trigger means that your experience of reality is distorted because of limiting decisions in that area of life. You can tell whether it’s a trigger or not according to whether your response is empowered and resourceful or not.
What your mind does with each piece of experience, the way it interprets the meaning of it determines whether you go toward solutions or in the opposite direction, regardless of what is happening in your external environment.
It’s probably not possible to understand events and circumstances such as the current disaster in Haiti, or a child being born deformed, outside of the perspective of a soul’s journey. Facilitating, and therefore experiencing, the TimeLine process (a hypnotic NLP process) with many people who have gone back into past lifetimes has given me a valuable perspective on the human process in relation to these kinds of events.
I’ll give you a typical kind of example, of which I have had many similar ones. Let’s say the limiting decision we’re working on is that the person is defective. And in the person’s present here-and-now life, he has a learning disability, which has been limiting his possibilities in life.
In order to clear a limiting decision it’s necessary to go back to the very first event in which it was made. So let’s say we are brought back to a past lifetime, to an event that even I can’t reframe into life is meant to work, because it appears completely impossible — such as being born without legs, and the only means of survival is to do work that requires walking. I have learned that when that kind of thing occurs, it’s not the very first event in which the limiting decision was made. And when we do get to the originating event, you can see where the person’s interpretation was flawed or limited in scope. So, with the cooperation of his unconscious mind, we go back to an earlier lifetime, when he was a 2 year old child, and his parent expected him to be able to do a chore way beyond his development, and when he couldn’t, was abusive to him. So we can see here the problem is the child believing the parent represented reality, not the actual circumstance. And that can easily be reframed with help from me and their present-moment adult perspective.
The reason the person continued that limiting decision into following lifetimes — sometimes even escalating it, such as being born without legs — is because after the limiting decision is made in the originating event, the unconscious mind is invested in proving that it is true, and structures the person’s life experiences in order to prove it. This affects what happens in following lifetimes.
However, when this limiting decision gets cleared, the person’s unconscious mind reconfigures itself and solutions to their present moment life dilemmas become apparent. I’ve seen it happen over and over again.
Now the person going through these different experiences — sometimes extremely painful experiences — is a part of that person’s soul path. But the evolutionary process is to move into increasingly greater alignment with universal truths and with life, in order to move each person toward empowerment, happiness and well-being — toward a state of enlightenment. It’s a process based on love. A major purpose of the 12-week course is to facilitate people moving into this greater alignment.
So this is just a brief response, with much left unexplained, to a deep, complex subject that the “Life is Meant to Work” course is set up to address in depth.
For information about the 12-week Life is Meant to Work Main Course,
and to Register, click here.
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 Fellow Healer in New York
Fellow Healer: A dear friend of mine, who has worked the Law of Attraction (LoA) religiously for years, ended up broke at her mom’s house. She called me distraught wondering why the universe isn’t bringing her the wealth she meditated on. What the LoA professors neglect to tell us is that our soul is on a journey and that journey will be fulfilled. Soul trumps LoA. My friend now sees that going home offered her valuable healing time with her family and was vital to her path.
Jane: I agree with your conclusion that the soul’s journey trumps everything else. However, the Law of Attraction does work perfectly, and people are always manifesting, but not necessarily what they consciously desire. To manifest what you consciously desire, there has to be some combination of alignment between the conscious mind, the unconscious mind, and the higher self (i.e. the soul’s path). When the conscious mind is in alignment with the unconscious mind, you are likely to manifest what you consciously want. What causes conscious/unconscious mind misalignment are limiting decisions*. Limiting decisions cause misalignment with what is really true. They then cause the person to manifest the distortion that the unconscious mind now believes to be true. I.e. if the person decides there is not enough, that is what they will manifest. When the limiting decision* is cleared, the unconscious mind now aligns itself with the truth of abundance.
But the soul’s journey also affects how effective particular people are at manifesting what they desire. Many people use, or try to use, the Laws of Attraction to manifest things that are not necessarily in their highest best interest (which also is a result of limiting decisions*). At some point in the soul’s journey, the higher self does not allow that. So this then requires the soul to evolve to going toward what truly benefits them — what I refer to as “enlightened self-interest” — before they will be effective at manifesting what they desire.
* Limiting decisions are unconscious decisions made in early childhood, and are always some form of deciding life is not meant to work and/or there is something inherently wrong with you.
The world as we know it is rapidly changing. The old structures and ways of participating, functioning, surviving, and prospering, that we have relied upon in the past, are rapidly becoming obsolete. This course will help you make sense of a world that no longer makes sense in the old frames-of-reference.
In this webinar Jane Ilene Cohen, Intuitive & Transformational Counselor, Author, Writer and Visionary unveils a totally positive thought system, developed through the work with her clients over the past 14 years. This thought system is what has enabled her to facilitate profound life changes, reversing their experience of life not working. At the center of it is the principle Life is Meant to Work. This thought system explains what causes your life to not work. It profoundly shifts your experience of reality, allowing your life to come into its full expression of abundance and well-being.
You’ll learn:
How your perceptions of reality get distorted, putting you out of alignment with larger universal truths, causing life to appear to not work.
How this relates to the individual and global crises we are in the midst of.
A new thought system that re-orients your experience of reality to be in alignment with life and universal truths, facilitating your awakening into a more conscious, creative, and abundant life of well-being .
How to become aligned with the evolutionary process, which is pushing humanity into a more evolved perception of reality — so that your personal transition into it will be an easier, more harmonious process.
This webinar is taught in three parts: the free introduction (begins 1/11), the pre-course (begins 1/19), and the main course (begins 2/2).Free Introduction:
Free Introduction:
In the free introduction, Jane will be interviewed by Mo Bailey about the positive new thought system she will be teaching in the Webinar. You’ll get an overview of what this course is about.
When you sign up for this free introduction, you’ll also receive Jane’s list of “The Top 10 Reasons Relationships Fail.”
This 2-week class on Tuesdays or Wednesdays is the prerequisite for the 12- week main course. In it you will learn how your perceptions of reality get distorted, putting you out of alignment with larger universal truths, causing life to appear to not work; and how this relates to the individual and global crises we are in the midst of.
When you register for the Pre-Course you will also receive Jane’s list of “The 10 Most Common Limiting Decisions People Make.”
This is the main 12-week course. See the above initial description for a summary of this course. When you sign up you will also receive Jane’s list of the “Top 10 Attributes of an Evolved Leader.”
The Pre-course is the prerequisite for taking this course. If you miss it, you can sign up for the audio recording, which will be available by Jan. 28th. If you miss the free introduction, the audio will be available by Jan. 14th.
(Participant’s name is changed to protect her privacy.)
(To Laura) “You have a distorted idea of what women’s relationship with men are, or women’s value in relation to men, or just the nature of how men are. It’s an old paradigm that has been pretty widespread, but it seems to be stronger in certain cultures. There is probably some impossibility that you see in relation to relationships with men, based on what your father was like, on what the whole male-female culture was like in your culture, the way your mother related to your father — the whole macho thing, the whole man is to be worshiped kind of thing. But it’s not something that’s really tolerable, especially to a woman who has outgrown it. You have outgrown that old paradigm. You can’t go backwards. You’re too much in your power. If you have limiting decisions holding that structure in place, then you wouldn’t have a concept that it’s possible to have a relationship with a man that’s different. There are men who don’t fall in that category that aren’t like that. There are men who are emotionally available. There are men that don’t demand to be treated like they’re the center of the universe. This is not inherent in the nature of men. This is the nature of your limiting decisions based on cultural limiting decisions. And so until you clear those, you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. You know that it doesn’t work for you, but you don’t really know, on an unconscious level, that there’s an alternative.
This old paradigm is actually just as hard on men as it is on women, because it’s a huge burden the men have to carry. In this paradigm the man has to be the one in power, and has to be the strong one, and has to support everybody, and bring in the money, etc. I had a client who was from Italy and he told me, in the Italian culture, the father has to buy a house for each of his children. It’s just a huge burden. And if the man doesn’t do those things a man is supposed to do, he’s not considered a man, and he doesn’t feel good about himself. And the women think he’s not a man if he’s not this macho guy. So that puts you in a bind, because you think that men who act like this, you don’t really want to be with them on the one hand; but if they don’t act like this, you don’t have respect for them.
The whole paradigm is not in relation to truth. It’s not in relation to the way people really are. It’s not in relation to how men really are. It’s not in relation to how women really are. It’s not in relation to the real dynamics between them, so it doesn’t really work. It only works when people force themselves into a mold, which means they have to repress and disempower themselves. And eventually when people evolve past that, where they can’t stand it any more, that whole form of relationship starts falling apart. And you’re right in the midst of that, so you have to heal those issues in order for you to be able to be in a relationship with a man that will work for you, because you can’t force yourself into the old mold any more. You’ve gone too far.
If you have to be a lesser power in relation to men, that means you can’t be fully in your power. But you’re a powerful woman, and if you really stood where you are, that would be obvious. And you keep giving your power away, by trying to be something you think men will want. But when I look at you, I see so much value just in who you are, without you doing any of that stuff. And if you were to function out of that, you would be in your strength and you would be directly relating to life and to people from that direct experience. So there’s some switch in there that needs to happen, allowing yourself to be fully in your power.
Giving your power away is the same thing as giving yourself away. It means rather than you being there in your experience, defining your reality, you are forfeiting it to the other person. It’s you letting them define reality. So instead of you being out there seeing this, doing this, whatever — you now are looking at them as if they’re supposed to define reality for you, and they’re supposed to tell you whether you’re valuable or not. So rather than directly engaging in life, you let go of your perceptions. You let go of what’s important to you. You let go of what you value. And instead you’re valuing what they think of you, rather than valuing life, or whatever you’re engaged in.”
(Participants’ names are changed to protect their privacy.)
(To Chas) “The way it works is after you made the limiting decision that who you are is unacceptable, you then built up a false persona that is what you considered to be acceptable to the people you wanted to be acceptable to. These will be people similar to the original significant people in your life you made the liming decision in relation to. Those are then the kind of people who you will attract. You will attract people who are attracted to the false persona, not who you really are. And then if you try to relate to those people with your real self, they’re probably not going to have a positive response to you, because they fit a whole scenario in which the real you is not acceptable, so that’s how they’re going to respond to you. You’re selecting people who will respond positively, perhaps, to the substitute persona that you set up, depending upon what the structure is that the limiting decision is formed around. So as you start changing, and becoming more of who you are, you are very likely to find that the people you attracted with the false persona don’t fit you any more. But you’re also more likely to be open to people who actually like you. I think everybody in this group really likes you.”
… “It’s similar to what I have said to Janet many times before, because both of you are very emotionally vulnerable. Your real strength probably has to do with you coming into your vulnerable emotions and accepting them, stepping into them. And this is a foundation from which to build whatever you want to build, whether it’s your law practice, or your relationships with you family, or whatever it is. It’s where your gifts and strengths are. You probably don’t realize the power of your vulnerable emotions.
(To Janet) To you, if it comes from male logic, you think that’s the only way you’ll have the right to make waves, or the only way you’ll be taken seriously. Then you have the right to have an influence in the world. But that’s not the way you’re going to make waves. You are going to make waves with the power of your emotions, because that’s where your strength is. Emotions are very powerful, and you may be afraid of that. And it will have an influence, and you may be afraid of that. What you just said is you’ll be held to a higher level of conduct, and I think that’s what you could be afraid of. You have said before that once you start getting into your passion, what it is that you want, you’re afraid you going to be like a dictator, and make things all the way you want. And this perhaps relates in some indirect way, to a higher standard of conduct. There’s some misconception that’s in the mix of this, that’s confusing the matter for you.
What is also the mix, which it might also be important to you, Chas, is enlightened self-interest. It’s a very important concept. When we’re talking about power and we’re talking about what matters to you. When we’re taking about your passion, and about really getting out there in your power — then the issue of self-interest comes into the picture. It’s important to understand the distinction between self-interest as a defense system, which is what selfishness is — and enlightened self-interest, which is what really matters to you, and which is in alignment with life, the universe. If it really matters to you, then that is the truth. It either matters to you, or it doesn’t matter to you. That’s just a fact. So that makes it a part of larger truth. If you make the limiting decision that you can’t have what matters to you, whether it’s love, or acceptance, or being valuable, that’s where things get confused. Generally before you make the limiting decision having these things are not an issue. You just go toward what makes you happy, what matters to you. But after you make the limiting decision, for instance, that you’re not valuable, then being valuable becomes an issue. Since you then don’t think you’re valuable, then you do symbolic things that make you feel you are valuable, such as buy an expensive house or car, whether or not you can really afford it. So people go for these symbolic things. But these symbolic things are not what really matters to you. People think, ‘Oh I want this, I want that, I want that, and that’s self-interest.’ But that’s not what enlightened self-interest is. Enlightened self-interest is the real thing, not the symbol. If you’re going for the real thing, then it can only have a positive influence on everyone and every thing, because it’s in Divine order. It is truth. It is the way things really are. But when you’re going for something that is a symbolic substitute, and not what you really want, then it comes from a blocked and distorted perspective, and that puts you out of alignment with truth. And then somewhere down the line, it’s going to not turn out well, because it’s not in alignment with truth.”
(Participants’ names are change to protect their privacy.)
(After a discussion about people in the group hiding their power.)
(To group) “Many people feel that if they let out their real self, they would be too much for other people.This originates from childhood, when children often can feel that if they came out with their real selves, it would be too much for their parents, and their parents couldn’t handle it and they’d fall apart, and therefore they (the child) wouldn’t survive.Children come in to this life, completely outside of the framework of their parents’ emotional defense systems.And in one moment, with one word, they can shatter the parents’ defense system. One look, one word of truth … something that’s outside of the control of the parents’ defense system, can be extremely upsetting to the parent.The parent can then act as though the child has done some horrible thing and has this huge power.But the child is just being a child, not doing anything but just expressing who they are, and just saying things the way they see them. But truth is enormously powerful.Often the child then makes limiting decisions based upon how the parent responds.But the parent’s response is not reflecting truth. And so the child can get a mistaken idea about what it means to be in your power and the effect it has.”
What questions do you have?
Send it to “ASK JANE” (Names are changed to protect your privacy.)
Just go to the “Contact Jane” page and ask your question in the contact form.
Below are questions from Susan from Carlsbad, CA:
Q: “I have a question about healing past traumas. I recently recovered a traumatic memory of being kidnapped and assaulted when I was a teenager. The memory was repressed by PTSD and drug induced amnesia. Over a period of 6 months, I recovered my complete memory and now wish to seek justice. Though I feel strongly about prosecuting my kidnapper for a very serious crime, several spiritual counselors have advised me to just focus inward on healing myself. While I don’t think that healing should be solely dependent on a legal outcome, I do believe that taking responsible action is an empowering step in the right direction for healing to take place. What do you think?”
A: “I gather from your question that the reasons you are thinking about prosecuting this person are to help yourself become empowered and to facilitate your healing.So I’m assuming that a significant aspect of what you are wanting to heal is feeling powerless.Whenever you (or anyone) feel you can gain power by taking an action toward another person, you are, in fact, holding in place an underlying feeling of powerlessness and the illusion that they have the power and you don’t, so you have to get it from them.It is not possible for this other person to have disempowered you in the first place.The only thing that can happen is for you (on an emotional level) to give your power away.Regaining it has only to do with your internal process, and nothing to do with that other person.
From the perspective of my work, trauma originates in limiting decisions formed in childhood, when something occurs that you don’t have the conscious tools to make sense of.These decisions — made on an unconscious level — are always some form of deciding there is something inherently wrong with you and/or that life is not meant to work.Limiting decisions are never true.The source of your limiting decisions are inside you, and have nothing to do with anything outside of yourself. (For a complete definition of limiting decisions, click here.)
One of the major ways people cushion themselves from their limiting decisions is through the emotional defense systems they set up (unconsciously) to avoid them.Part of this defense system can be projecting the pain of the limiting decisions onto another person or situation, and then taking action against that external source, which can then give you the illusion of having power and being in control.But this won’t help you regain your real power.It will just reinforce the mistaken idea that the problem is the enemy outside yourself that you need to conquer to win back your power, which in fact you never really lost in the first place.”
(After a further communication from Susan)
“My advice does not have to do with me telling you what I think you should do.If your motive is, as you said in your recent communication, “about revealing information which could be used to prevent this particular group from continuing to harm others,” I see no objections to that.If it has more to do with your own healing and empowerment, then my advice has to do with where I believe your focus should be.”
Transcript Excerpt of Jane’s Teachings during an NLP TimeLine Therapy session with Janet 2/25/09
(For a definition of “TimeLine Therapy,” click here.)
For a definition of “limiting decisions,” click here.)
(Client’s name is changed to protect privacy.)
“I think we’ve cleared enough so that you don’t experience yourself as a powerless, victim anymore.It’s more an unconscious choice now against being in a place of power.Perhaps you feel there is a discrepancy between having power and going towards the highest good.I think in order for you to relate to your children, seeing them as in their full power, you’ll have to be in your full power yourself, otherwise you won’t have common ground to relate to them on.That goes for all your relationships with everyone.You have to relate to them as being without their power, because you keep yourself without your power.That’s very commonly how parents hold their children back; they try to relate to them on the level they see themselves on, and try to limit their children to the limits they find themselves in — which is really unfortunate.”
The limiting decision Janet cleared during a TimeLine process:“Having power would corrupt her.”
The first event in which the limiting decision was made:She was 12 years old, and pretended to go to bed, and then snuck out to a friend’s house instead.Although she felt powerful because she had planned it out and successfully executed it, she felt guilty about it, felt it was wrong.
Excerpt of Jane’s teaching during the TimeLine Process: ”From your parent’s point of view, you disobeying them (as representing authority), was a morally bad thing.What I see is that adolescence is a time when children start differentiating themselves from their parents, start becoming independent, thinking through things on their own, making decisions on their own.But it didn’t seem as though your parents were open to the idea that you might have ideas or wishes different than theirs that needed to start getting heard.There couldn’t be a discussion with them about that.It was either their way or no way.Often what parents do is keep their children limited to their own frame-of-reference, as the safe or wise thing.However children are generally more evolved than their parents, which seems to be the way evolution works.And even though children have less experience, and knowledge, still there is something in them that must expand beyond their parents.And that’s coming into their power.Now, if you took on your parents’ perspective and thought that what you wanted to do was morally bad, rather than a process of exploring, finding out, and understanding — then that would cause you to decide that making your own decisions is bad.
The point here was this is a natural part of a child’s development.At a certain age in adolescence children need to start doing things their own way, differently than what their parents would want them to do, and it may not even be a wise choice, but it’s necessary for them in order become independent, differentiated people moving toward adulthood.They’re moving toward being able to make decisions from their own perspective, from their own inner wisdom, from their own knowing what’s true.And it’s a process.It’s not something you can do well when you start, but you have to learn how this thing works, and you can only learn when you are starting to experience and make decisions about reality from your own perspective, not from the perspective of parents or some outside authority.That’s a totally necessary stage in development.And there was nothing to feel guilty about that.
Your parents probably had an attitude that it’s a moral mandate that you must do what your parents tell you to do.You must be obedient, no matter what they say, just for the sake of being obedient, rather than look at what they’re saying, make sense of it and decide, ‘OK, this is how they feel about it.Does this make sense for me?’This dictates that you must not understand life from your own perspective, your own understanding of what is true and real, in order for you parents to have control over you.And this basically is what is handed down from generation to generation.
This has to do with a false moral attitude, which puts people in a false relationship to authority, so they never grow up learning to decide or evaluate reality from their own direct experience.It creates followers who can’t bring to the world their own perception of reality.Because you took on your parents’ false idea of morality, coming into your own power, by definition, was doing something bad.That means, being distinct from them, being who you are from your own point-of-view, accessing reality from your own perspective was considered to be immoral and bad.This is profoundly important to understand.This is an evolutionary issue for humanity in general, because this whole idea of how parents relate to children, and the idea of following authority, versus being guided to understand what reality is — that’s an old paradigm, and it holds humanity back.
This is a trap that many people get into who have a very strong internal mandate for being good, and righteous and moral.A lot of people have a very strong mandate for being that.And when they get the wrong idea of what that means, it’s very confounding and confusing, and people make a lot of very dysfunctional decisions based on this misconception of what being good really is.And at the bottom of that struggle is the belief that who you really are is basically bad — the whole idea of original sin.If you know that who you really are is totally good, then you would know that whatever is really true for you would have to be good.
Know that whenever your daughter does whatever she needs to do to differential herself, it will probably trigger you, because it could very easily be a step beyond where you feel comfortable.It is in the nature of children in the evolutionary process to go beyond where their parents already are.So it will very likely be outside of your comfort zone.That doesn’t mean you have to allow whatever she wants to do.It can be difficult to make the distinction.It has to do with not standing on your high moral horse, like your parents did.You parents were coming from leaning on authority, perhaps originating with the church.So they’re mindlessly obeying the church, and then they, in turn, expected you to mindlessly obey them. So it’s just a chain of dysfunctional thinking.I don’t mean that you shouldn’t provide any structure or guidance.But you have to make sure it isn’t just some rote thing that you’re following, but rather something in reality that she can understand and can follow.And it’s not just your will against hers.It’s that you’re guiding her to figure out what really is the best thing from her point of view.
(For a definition of “TimeLine Therapy,” click here.)
For a definition of “limiting decisions,” click here.)
