Jane Ilene Cohen will be interviewed by
Kalon Women Community’s Founder, Sandra Levitin
August 4th at 6:30pm Eastern Time / 3:30pm Pacific Time
Suppose you could… Change your perspective of reality in a way that would deeply empower you to take charge of your life no matter what is going on in your outside world and no longer struggle at trying to make life work.
Intuitive & Transformational Counselor, Teacher and Author, Jane Ilene Cohen, will share the personal journey that brought her to a totally positive new thought system, based on the principle “Life is Meant to Work.” This thought system, combined with her NLP training, is what has enabled her to facilitate profound life-changing results for her clients for the past 14 years.
Other Topics include:
“Limiting Decisions: How Your Perception of Reality Gets Distorted”
“Is Life Meant to Work or Is It Not?”
“Self-Interest vs. Enlightened Self-Interest”
To hear the show and/or ask any questions call (347-884-8656)
The preview call audio for my upcoming
“Life is Meant to Work” 12-week Tele-seminar — is now here.
In this preview I share the personal journey that brought me to a totally positive new thought system, based on the principle “Life is Meant to Work.” This thought system, combined with my NLP training, is what has enabled me to facilitate profound life-changing results for my clients for the past 14 years.
I also describe some of the basic ideas from this thought system, addressing these 3 topics:
“Limiting Decisions: How Your Perception of Reality Gets Distorted”
“Is Life Meant to Work, or Is It Not?”
“Self-interest vs. Enlightened Self-Interest”
In addition you’ll get the main details of what is included in the “Life is Meant to Work” program.
I hope you enjoy the audio, and I welcome any comments, responses or questions you might have.
Warmly,
Jane Ilene Cohen
(760) 753-0733
Excerpts from the Preview Call
“When I took a stand on life is meant to work, it’s like I walked through a portal or a gateway in which a whole other landscape was now visible or available to me.And I started tapping into a whole body of knowledge that I had no idea of before.”
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“The reason ‘The Secret’ and the Law of Attraction has become so popular is it is about being able to manifest into our lives what we desire, rather than feeling at the mercy of forces outside of ourselves. But many people have difficulty in making this work for themselves, or have success with it only in specific and limited areas of their lives. Really understanding how to effectively use the Law of Attraction requires much more than what is generally taught, and represents a step forward in the human evolutionary process. The meaning of this goes way beyond being able to manifest a certain number of dollars per month, or buying the fancy new sports car. It is a shift in where we understand our source of safety and well-being comes from.”
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“From the very individual perspective to the larger global perspective, many people experience life as not working. But they don’t understand how we are participating in creating this, just believing it to be the nature of how life is. And therefore we are looking in the wrong direction for solutions.”
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“We experience reality as something objective that is external to us, and that imposes itself on us. But our perception of reality is, in fact, very subjective and changeable, because we are never experiencing reality directly. We are only experiencing a model of reality. There are thousands of bits of information that are bombarding our senses every moment, and it would be impossible to take all of it in. So we filter in a very small percentage of it, and filter out most of it. What we decide to filter in or out is very subjective and changeable. This means, to a large degree, we are choosing our experience of reality, as opposed to reality imposing itself on us.”
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“Our internal state is caused by our interpretation of what is happening out in the world, rather than something objective that is happening to us. And we don’t realize that our interpretations are very often a result of projecting our limiting decisions onto something or someone outside of ourselves.”
“It’s crucial to understand how subjective, changeable and effectible our experience or perception of reality is, in order to have a choice about what to do about it. Most people believe this instability has to do the nature of reality, and don’t realize that it’s actually internal to themselves. And since the internal process causing it is generally very unconscious, what we end up doing about it is also an unconscious process, which often doesn’t end up serving us.”
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.
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 question was from Fiona in Oceanside (Real names are never used):
Fiona: I’m always sacrificing my own welfare for the benefit of my husband and my parents, in order to make them happy. They seem to be so unhappy and have so many difficulties in their lives. And so I end up not doing what’s good for myself. I don’t know what to do about this.
Jane: You are not responsible for another person’s suffering. Each person is on their own personal path in life. And if they find themselves in the position of suffering, it’s because of an unhealed issue, a limiting decision that they made, not because of the nature of life. For instance a person might make the limiting decision that there’s not enough to go around, and as a result of having made that decision, they always find themselves in financial difficulty. The unconscious mind is invested in proving that our limiting decisions are true, which is the reason that people keep finding themselves in the same kind of life patterns over and over again, even when they know better. From what you’ve previously told me, your parents have locked themselves into a very limited and controlling way of living their lives, in which they don’t allow anything in that doesn’t fit what they are used to. And by doing this, they are holding in place their unhappiness. And then they are expecting their children to compensate for that.
This is most likely a pattern for your family that has been going on for generations, and keeps perpetrating the idea that suffering and sacrifice are necessary. It is representing a paradigm of reality that life is about suffering. And now, as an adult, you are attracting into your life similar kinds of people, so you can play the same role in relation to them. You taking on other people’s suffering, in order to relieve them of it, is reinforcing this mistaken idea. It is not helping. It’s coming from a limiting decision in you. But you coming into joy and working on your own life, and clearing these issues for yourself, and getting into a place of joy and happiness, and not taking on suffering — is representing a paradigm of reality that is helpful for all of those around you.
*Limiting decision: A 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.
From Ginger in San Marcos. (I never use people’s real names.)
Ginger: In your newsletter, you brought up self-interest and how people immersed in fundamental, repressive religious dogma, with no legitimate outlet for human desires, may act out inappropriately. I have a dear friend, who recently became very active in a church. I sent her an invitation for a new thought series and received the following preachy email. I would love to hear your perspective on how to best handle this.
“Please do not send me this kind of information. There isn’t anyone or anything that has the power to ‘connect with your soul’ other than Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. The New Age has really gotten a hold of many. And sadly, they are deceived about the truth. I pray you would flee from these sorts of things, and find your true worth and purpose in life is for the ONE who made us. I encourage you (because I care and you are my friend) to read your bible, begin with the book of John. Only there you will hear the truth, the word of God.”
I feel attacked, judged and hurt, although I love her and want the best for her. I am feeling that this friend may have moved into a new vibration that doesn’t support the energy I want around me. It seems a shame to throw this friendship away if some clear communication can resolve it.
Jane: The energy behind your friend’s email seems to be coming from fear and anger — both in relation to what you might be representing to her that has the potential of influencing her, and also coming from limiting decisions in her that are causing her to take such a blind stand on concepts that don’t appear to be something she is really coming into her own experience with. The issue is not the content of what she is saying, but the invulnerable and separating way she is saying it. When a person is taking a ridged stand on concepts around which to orient reality that are based on a fixed source outside of themselves (usually some written document or some central charismatic leader), rather than being grounded in their own experience, there is no way to relate to them about it. Instead there is a separating wall, based on fear.
Fundamentalism is about not trusting your own experience of reality. One of the reasons people gravitate toward fundamentalism is it gives them the sense that if they join it, they can be identified with a powerful authority — in this case the word of God. So a person, for example, that has made the limiting decision that they are powerless, or they can’t trust their perception of reality, or they are inherently bad, could gravitate toward some external symbol of authority and righteousness that can’t be questioned because it is seen as the word of God. And that way they don’t have to deal with their own limiting decisions, and they don’t have to build up their own strength and personal empowerment. But instead they are building up a separation between themselves, reality, and other people. Separation leads to mistrust, and mistrust leads to fear. The unspoken demand is you have to give up your own perception of reality to their control, as an agent of the only source of truth.
There are three choices I see that you have in relation to how to respond to your friend. One is to join her in her separated place, which is inherently against anyone who doesn’t agree with her stance — which clearly is not a choice you wish to make. Another is to be at odds with her. You would only make this choice if you are not secure in your own perception of reality, because you would see her as a threat, which is how she appears to be viewing you. Or, you can relate to her beyond her defenses to where and who she really is, which she may or may not be open to.
It appears to me that your friend is in a major power-struggle to hold her perspective on reality in place. And the question is whether you are going to let that define your reality or not. She is reflecting a fearful, separating, and conflicting perception of reality, in which there is a power-struggle going on. Are you going to step into the fear and separation and power-struggle, where you and your friend are at odds with each other — or are you going to stay in a heart-connected place, and relate from there to who your friend really is?
You may be right that she has stepped out of a vibration you can relate to, but it won’t hurt to practice relating to her from your own defining of reality and see what happens.
I also suggest you upfront acknowledge that you are both coming from perspectives that are different from each other’s, to just make clear where you are. And make an agreement to not try to convince each other of your points-of-view on religion.
From the “Life is Meant to Work: Prepare Yourself for a New Reality” tele-seminar.
The life of every living organism must be based on self-interest. Every moment of our lives is based on it. Breathing, eating, sleeping, loving, helping others. A plant turns toward the sun in order to get the nourishment it needs. And it’s flourishing gives us pleasure. If it were to deny itself what it needs to do well, would we think it was being virtuous? The very nature of life is based on self-interest. You are ALWAYS doing what you conceive of as self-interest, even if it’s denying your self-interest in order to be what you believe to be virtuous. The reason you would do this is because it makes you feel better about yourself. If doing what you believe to be virtuous ended up making you feel bad about yourself, you wouldn’t do it.
Following your own self-interest defines who you are. It is the expression of who you are. When you are allowing yourself to move toward your enlightened self-interest you are contributing who you are to the whole. You are revealing a piece of creation.
Even if you are not connected to your enlightened self-interest, you must start with the self-interest you can access in order to move toward more enlightened self-interest. Those who deny their self-interest are living in an artificial shell, a false persona, in a false world. They are not authentic. Life around them is devoid of anything real, and therefore anything of real nourishment or value.
Before you made limiting decisions, and before you started creating false personas and false worlds, you were living in a state of true self-interest, i.e. what really benefited you. Your focus was on life, truth, experience. You were led by what mattered to you. That is what guided your every moment — opening up your life, experience, and development. You were participating in living, flowing, experiential truth.
What makes suicide bombers so frightening and difficult to combat is their denial of the most basic self-interest of being alive. They, presumably, believe they are following the self-interest of doing what it takes to be virtuous, by doing God’s work. And they look forward to their reward in some version of heaven.
The people who are the most disconnected from their own most basic self-interest are the ones who act in ways that are the most distorted and dysfunctional. And it generally results in out of control behavior, under the radar of consciousness. For example people who are immersed in fundamental, repressive religious dogma, who can find no legitimate outlet for their human desires, can tend to act out sexually dysfunctional and destructive behavior in situations where they think it can remain hidden or not talked about, such as molesting children.
It is not possible to deny one’s own self-interest. It will be expressed in some form, either in its pure form or, as a result of being denied, in its distorted form. In its distorted form, it is likely to be destructive.
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.
From the Life is Meant to Work Prepare yourself for a New Reality
teleseminar
A pivotal question at the bottom of how civilization has organized itself is “Is humanity inherently good, or is it bad, or is it simply weak and corruptible?” The bottom line way we define the answer to that has to do with what we believe people would do if they weren’t controlled. And that has to do with the issue of self-interest. If people are not controlled, or if they don’t control themselves, they will go toward their own self-interest. And so the issue then becomes how we perceive what self-interest is.
The idea that self-interest is bad, is based on the idea of original sin. In other words it is based on the idea that if people pursue what they desire, what really matters to them, including human desires, they will break Divine laws and will cause harm to others. But the problem here is not inherent in the nature of self-interest, but in how we conceive of what self-interest is.
When many religious perspectives or spiritual philosophies define human self-interest, they are actually defining human emotional defense systems, which get built up as a result of having made limiting decisions. And when they are advocating letting go of desires, this is also the framework they are referring to. People’s emotional defense systems result in them going toward substitutes for what they desire rather than the real thing. And these substitutes are generally harmful to oneself and others.
But humanity doesn’t live solely in their emotional defense systems, and we are in an evolutionary process through them. Desiring these symbolic substitutes is not the nature of humanity or human desire. People going toward these kinds of desires (that can often be addictive, and that we associate with shallowness, perversion or lacking in self-discipline) does not have to do with the inherent corruptibility or weakness of human beings, or the nature of human desires. Self-interest is inherent in any living creature. It’s not the self-interest that is the problem, it is the substitutes for it that are the problem. And the substitutes are created because of the denial of the real thing. The way to enlightenment is not a denial of our self-interest, or of our human experience, it is the recognition and embracing of the truth of what it is. It is coming into experience, not avoiding it — which means the difference between realizing that the nature of reality is positive, that if we come into what is true, it leads us to the highest good of all concerned.
On the one hand most of humanity doesn’t have any concept of the depth of the distortion of our perception of reality, and how much we are living and forming our perception of reality from an upside-down and insane perspective. But on the other hand, there is little concept of the inherent goodness of the human soul, that what the truth is about who we inherently are is total goodness, not in spite of our self-interest, but because of it. This is because what we really desire leads us to love, truth, connection, meaning, everything true and real. What it is human beings truly desire is a part of the truth of the universe. It is beyond any false persona or egoic self. It is what can bring us out of the perception of the limited physical world we were born into, in which we forgot who we are beyond the physical experience.
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.
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.
From Laura in Del Mar
Laura: I’m in a really great relationship with a man now, and things are going really well. But I keep feeling afraid something will go wrong, and he will end up leaving. I’m concerned that because of that I’ll try to control things and that will actually cause him to leave. Any advice?
Jane: Many people in relationships believe their happiness and well-being depend on having that special person to fulfill their lives. They have this internal image of what he or she will look like and be like. And they have this belief that everything will be alright when they have this person. But this is not where the source of well-being is, and any form of trying to make something outside of yourself the source of anything that really matters to you is eventually doomed to fail.
So let’s look at what it is you really want. Perhaps it is love, emotional nourishment, connection, security… The source of those things is not specific people. If you don’t have those in your life it is because you don’t have the emotional channels open to receive them. Limiting decisions, such as you are not loved, you are not safe, you need a man to take care of you, you are not valuable, and so on, will cause you to have the channels closed to receiving love, a sense of your value, feeling safe in the world, etc.
The universe is filled with resources, but they may not come in the form or direction you expect them to come in or from. When you are receiving what really matters to you, you are receiving it from the universe, through some vehicle, such as a particular person in your life. The source is the universe (or Life, the Divine, or however you conceive of it).
When you try to make it a specific person, you are putting huge weight and pressure on that person, and basically end up trying to control them. This may give you a sense of panic, because the truth is you can’t control that person. And you also can’t control the universe. What you can control is finding out what channels in you are closed that are causing you not to receive what really matters to you, and finding a way to open them up. This means clearing the limiting decisions that are closing the channels. One method for doing that is the NLP TimeLine 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.
Question from Jered in Mission Valley
Jered: It occurs to me that the failure of big companies — such as General Motors that received bailouts — are not so much an example of limiting decision, as they are of “broken” organizations. GM had to break before old methods were discarded for new. It makes me think of change with people. Clearing decisions are baby steps. But traumatic events have outsized consequences – huge steps.
Jane: This is a complex subject that can’t be explained, so that it’s easily understood, in a few paragraphs. I will be going into this more fully in my upcoming “Life is Meant to Work” webinar as part of explaining how our experience of reality gets out of alignment with Universal Truths. But here is a brief explanation that I hope is helpful.
The failure of big companies, such as General Motors, is most likely based on perspectives of self-interest that are out of alignment with reality. Whenever there are perceptions that are out of alignment with reality, there are limiting decisions* at the root of it.
People with similar limiting decisions* come together and hold in place a collective perspective on reality. People are very invested in the particular way they perceive what reality is, which represents their source of stability, survival and well-being. It is the ground they are standing on. That perception of reality is often greatly distorted by limiting decisions* they have made. In general people are not willing to give up that ground unless forced to. That’s why it sometimes takes a major crisis before individuals — and especially a group of people, such as a major organization or company — are willing to restructure their perception of reality. They have to perceive that it is in their self-interest to make a change. The process of evolution occurs as what people perceive of as self-interest becomes increasingly more in alignment with what actually benefits them.
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 was from Fellow Healer in New York who made this comment in the context of his description of an ex-girlfriend’s treatment of him, and also the way he observes people, including new age-type people, acting toward others.)
Fellow Healer: “… ACIM says the only sane response to our brother, even when they act out, is to love him. No holy book says lecture, scold, and runaway. No heart would say that either…. True self needs love too. It’s all one. When we love all in the trinity, then all flows. Now is the time to return to love. Love. Just love. Love is the secret!!!”
Jane: Yes, of course, the answer always comes down to love. It’s certainly an important place to focus our attention, and it would be great if everyone could just decide on love and be there. But getting to love is an evolutionary process (both on a personal, individual level, as well as on a human evolutionary level). The path to love isn’t always obvious or straightforward. Many things people think they do out of love are not really about love.
For instance, in your earlier email about you being “loyal” to the first girlfriend, therefore staying with that relationship (even though you knew it wasn’t right for you), and saying “no” to the second girlfriend (who you really wanted to be with) — it appears you felt you were doing this out of love or kindness to the first girlfriend. But since it was not in truth, it was not in Divine order. And it was not following enlightened self-interest. And enlightened self-interest is an extremely necessary ingredient in order to be moving toward love. (But that’s another whole subject altogether.) So it’s not necessarily that obvious or straightforward. There are a lot of elements potentially involved.
The way to solve human hurt is to move toward clarity about what is really happening in reality. Therefore there’s no getting around the fact that in order to eliminate your emotional pain, your personal transformation is required. There is no short cut that will have a lasting result.
