Transformational Teachings from Counselor Jane Ilene Cohen

Transcript Excerpt of Jane’s Teachings
during the “Shifting into Your New Consciousness” group 10-1-09

(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.”

During Lita’s NLP Timeline Session10/15/09

(Client’s name is changed to protect her privacy.)

(The limiting decision* Lita is clearing is “Men have all of the power.”  The first event in which she made this decision was in a past lifetime, in which men having all of the power was assumed by everyone in that culture at that time.  Lita was saying that at that time when she made the limiting decision*, that’s just how it was.)

Transcript Excerpt of Jane’s Teachings “When the general experience in a particular social environment holds in place the same dysfunctional idea, that means that virtually every person at that time had that as a limiting decision*. The men and the women had the limiting decision* that men have all of the power.  So everyone was holding that paradigm in place.  That gave you the impression that that’s how it is. But that doesn’t make it true.  It just means, in that limited human perspective, that’s what was being held in place.

So the first stage is everyone accepts it.  They don’t consider there is any problem.  That’s just the way it is.  The next stage is someone like you who is more advanced, is saying, ‘Hey, I don’t like this.’  And you start getting an inkling that there is something wrong with things being that way.  That is the first step toward shifting it.  Even getting a sense that there is another possibility is a miracle, because it’s an evolutionary leap.  And then the next stage is to actually clear the limiting decision*, which requires you to really get that the physical form of power, that men’s power superiority was based on, is not the only form of power there is.  It’s the most primitive. It’s not true that those with the most physical power are the most powerful, because if it were true, the big woolly mammoth would be in control.  Therefore it becomes obvious that intelligence is far more powerful than brute physical strength.  There is emotional strength, intellectual strength and spiritual strength, which also relates to the power to heal, which is extraordinarily powerful.  So spiritual power is the most powerful of all, which is the reason why the whole idea of witch burning came up. That’s the fear of emotional-spiritual power.  If it wasn’t so powerful, they wouldn’t be burning women for having it.  So clearly there are much more powerful forms of power than brute physical force. And the only reason people don’t realize it is because of the limiting decision. And now at this time in history, both men and women are beginning to recognize that holding in place the old paradigm is not beneficial to either women or men. It’s extremely hard on men.”

(Lita was saying if she were a man she’d feel so ashamed of what men have created through the ages.)

“Men having controlled a large aspect of life in the past is fully as much women’s responsibility as men’s, because men and women have both held in place that paradigm.  In that past life time, you were holding in place that men have all of the power, which means that you were just as responsible for them having all of the power, and therefore for things being out of balance.”

* For a definition of limiting decisions, 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.

Fellow Healer in New York is questioning Jane’s response to Linda, in which Jane said it appears that Linda gets attracted to men who are unavailable.  Fellow Healer’s question is in response to the last “Ask Jane” Q & A about Linda in San Diego’s Question “Why do I Keep Contacting my Ex-boyfriend?”

For the original Ask Jane Q & A from Linda, click here.

Fellow Healer: I know many people who are available in some situations and with some people and not others.  Boundaries, likes, dislikes, who knows?  Is someone 100% one or the other? I have been told by people in my life that they see me as unavailable and others see me as quite available.  Maybe I was unavailable to just that person and for good reason!

Fellow Healer then relayed (in the context of an article he wrote) an experience where a woman (he’s calling Katie) contacted him from a dating service, but he had already started dating another woman (Lea).  He went out with Katie just as friends, and felt more drawn to her than with Lea, the woman he was dating.  But out of loyalty, he stayed with Lea.   The relationship eventually didn’t work out.  He kept up his friendship with Katie and when he wanted it to go deeper, and became open, vulnerable and available to her, she dropped out of the relationship.

Jane: The issue of whether you are or you aren’t really available is only significant in the context of whether or not your relationships are working well for you.  If they aren’t, this could be a part of what’s not working well.  Limiting decisions*, and the patterns resulting from them, can be very particular to the individual person; and what is apparent on the surface, may not ultimately be what the pivotal limiting decision* turns out to be.  The limiting decisions* are generally covered over by an emotional defense system, meant to avoid the pain of the limiting decision*.  The emotional defense system is the dysfunctional pattern that people get into.  The pattern for you could, for instance, be that you are available when the woman is not, and you are not available when they are.  And the underlying limiting decision* holding that in place could be something about fear of abandonment, resulting in avoiding relationships in which both of you are actually available for a committed intimate relationship, so that you never have to feel the pain of being left.  (This is strictly a guess.)  There always is a pattern in there if something isn’t working well, but it’s not always so easy to ferret out what it is.

Fellow Healer: I did consequently try some email exchange with Katie to understand her side.  In response, I got an email lecture on my diet and the need to go within to heal.  It was an intense preaching with angry undertones that I had no idea where it was coming from.  No matter how you put a nice new age twist on it, or try turning the responsibility on me, her behavior toward me is plain ole strange.  No matter how enlightened we get, our behavior can and will hurt others.”

Jane: From what you described, Katie is clearly functioning from an emotionally defended place, no matter what terminology it is couched in.  But if there wasn’t an unhealed pattern in you in relation to her, and limiting decisions* holding that pattern in place, you would not have been in the pain you ended up being in, and the whole scenario with her wouldn’t have unfolded in the way it did.  The pain you are feeling is the pain of the limiting decisions in you. All Katie did was trigger the pain that was already there, that comes to the surface when someone triggers it.

* For a description of “limiting decisions,” click here.

This is a part of the “Ask Jane” Series, in which you are invited to send questions of concern to you to Jane.

(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

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

From Linda in San Diego

Linda: I had a very physical relationship with my ex-boy friend.  There was never emotional intimacy and the relationship was very superficial. I set myself for a failure by choosing and tolerating a situation that just didn’t work for me. It was a purely physical situation when in fact I needed and wanted more.  After 6 months and some rudeness on his part I decided to stop trying so hard to make this relationship work even if it felt good in the moment.

Even though we’re no longer together, I recently emailed him to meet with me because there was an important thing for me that I need to tell him. What I feel I have to tell him is that he hurt me a lot when he was disrespectful and rude and I wanted to tell him when and how he hurt me.  But I am just thinking now, should I say this to him? He doesn’t care much about me I think. He may not even remember and the only one that has the resentment is me. Please tell me what to do because he is going to call me or write me when he comes back from a trip so we can meet.

Jane: What is it you think you’ll get from telling him he hurt you?  Are you wanting him to confirm your experience of his behavior?  Are you trying to change him?

Generally dysfunctional intimate relationships are a part of a pattern formed as a result of limiting decisions* made as a child, most often in relationship to a parent.  People then recognize a potential intimate relationship based on this.  In this case, the pattern probably has to do with men who are not available, which is then the kind of men you attract to yourself.  And then you try to change that person into someone who will be there, rather than finding someone who is actually available in the first place, because as long as you have that limiting decision it’s difficult for you to conceive of a man who is really available.  You basically don’t realize you have a choice.  This is the reason you tried to settle for a purely physical relationship in the first place.

I suggest you write him and say you changed your mind, and that you wish him well, but have realized there really isn’t anything between the two of you to relate to each other about.

* For a description of “limiting decisions” click here.

Transcript Excerpt of Jane’s Teachings during
Nancy’s NLP TimeLine Therapy Session 7/29/09

(Client’s name is changed to protect her privacy.)

“It appears that you decided at an early age to take on the male role, because men seemed more important and had the power in the world.  And on top of that you had a limiting decision about what being male is.  There is a distortion about the role of the male, based on an old paradigm.  So you’re in the old male-female paradigm, and you’re taking on the male role.  In the old male paradigm — which is actually quite hard on men, as well as hard on women — the man has to be in control, he has to have the power.  If he’s more vulnerable, he’s not being a man.  If he doesn’t have the control and power, if he’s not in charge, then he’s failing as a man.  And the man is supposed to carrying the burden of providing, and taking care of the woman.  And if he can’t do it well, then he fails as a man.  And he feels humiliated. And the woman expects that of him as well, and she puts him down if he’s not acting ‘like a man.’  So it appears that you take on that paradigm, but put yourself in the role of the man, and expect yourself to always be in control of everything. The way you approach having control is you mimic the kind of control that you perceive men to have in the old paradigm.”

(Nancy asked what the new paradigm for men is.)

“I think the new paradigm for both men and women is just more of a male-female balance, for each.  So the man is more in contact with his emotions, secure enough in his own power to not have to be macho, not have to have the control, but to be truly who he is.  So he doesn’t have to put out a false bravado, pretend to be this perfect, all in control, all in charge, powerful being.  Rather than having a façade of the way the male is supposed to be, he can actually be who he is.”

The limiting decision we cleared through the TimeLine Process: “Women are not important.”

The first event in which Nancy made the limiting decision: Many lifetimes ago.  She is an Egyptian woman, carrying a pot of water on her head.  She is very thin and frail.  She is just waiting until her life is over, as there is nothing enjoyable about her life.  Men are treated as very important and have all of the pleasures and privileges and woman are treated as possessions.  She made the decision earlier when she was four years old.  Her one year old brother died and her father was devastated.  A year later a sister was still born, and no one had much of a response.

Transcript Excerpt of Jane’s teachings during the learning part of the TimeLine process: “This girl (you in that lifetime), was participating in limiting herself to the way other people describe reality, which is that she had to be limited because she was female.  And now when she lets go of that decision there are many more possibilities that will open themselves up to her. So as she’s going through life, she’s no longer limited by the closed-in perspective that women were supposed to be in.  And then she can participate in evolving that whole misguided frame-of-reference forward.  So when she lets go of that limiting decision, that’s an evolutionary step, because most of the woman at that time made that same limiting decision, and they were participating just as strongly as the men were at holding that dysfunctional idea in place.”

Transcript Excerpts of Jane’s Teachings
during Janine’s NLP TimeLine Therapy Session 7-22-09

(Client’s name is changed to protect her privacy)

Overview: Janine is struggling with frequent feelings of overwhelm when she tries to function at work or just daily life.  It seems to come from an imagined pressure of a time constraint.  On her mother’s side of the family, at least 3 generations back, the women had nervous breakdowns from having to do too much work.

Transcript Excerpt of Jane’s Teachings, in the process of getting to what the limiting decision was that needed to be cleared: “Part of the problem seems to be you feel very disconnected from the world that is external to you.  If you’re disconnected, dealing with the world can feel overwhelming.  It appears to me that you feel disconnected because you think there is no way to participate from your true self, so you have to be disconnected from yourself in order to relate to it. The limiting decision probably has to do with how you interpret this external structure that you feel disconnected from.”

(Janine was saying she has to come out of her inner world in order to be with it.)

“This is where the misconception is.  This is not truth. The limiting decision may be that there is a separation between you and the external world.  Believing that means that you are not having the influence that you’re meant to have on the common world that we’re all experiencing.”

(Janine is saying that’s been her experience that she doesn’t have much influence.)

“Perhaps this is about bringing the feminine as a presence into common experience.  You and your mother, and grandmother, and generations of woman back, have not felt they had a right to exist in the world, to be a presence in this world, as if the world belonged to the male principle, and that the world couldn’t be influenced and configured and reshaped from the female influence.  It is time for female influence to be integrated into the human experience.  It’s time for your influence to be integrated into the human experience. The old paradigm is that the common world is men’s domain.  They shape and they rule it, and they are supposed to protect the women, but it’s their world.  In past eras woman couldn’t have too much impact or they’d be killed.  They were considered to be witches. They were considered to be some blasphemous unnatural force.  Your influence in the world will come when you are allowing your presence to be a creative force.  This means that you are allowing yourself to enter into this very malleable, mutable common world — whatever this shared ether is that we are all in — in which every time a person moves they are influencing the shape of the whole.  And this is what we need to get to the bottom of, why you don’t enter into this.

You think you are being present, and for some reason people just don’t respond to you.  But people don’t respond to you because you are not being present.  So now we have to get to why you’re not.  Now we’re trying to figure out why you don’t enter into the mix and therefore don’t have influence.”

(Janine was saying that what resonates with her is that no one wants her there.)

“And the difference between that and how I’m seeing it is, and that you are there. It’s like someone saying this piece of the Divine, we’ll either welcome it or not — whereas it is I Am. We’re talking about I Am Presence.  And the female principle is a part of the I Am Presence, but doesn’t know it, or has been withholding it for some reason, as if it is not really a part of it. It’s responding as though there’s a choice if it is not welcomed in.  And so the mistaken idea is that the female presence is not a part of universal experience, that it is somehow separate from the common experience.  The idea is that this is the territory of the male, that the male is supposed to influence this level of experience, and the female is supposed to be under the male, or supposed to be in a different realm.  That the sky, or the ether, or the air, or the medium that we’re all living in is the male province, and that the female presence is not a part of the common experience.  But the female presence is a part of the I Am, and so it’s not a matter of getting permission.  She is there.  But there’s a denial of that.  There’s an ignoring of the truth of that.  And why is that?  That’s the question.  Why is it that the female feels she has to ask permission to exist, and that she has to focus on the male, with the male being at the center of the universe?  What is the decision that is perpetrating this misconception, ignoring the I Am Presence of the feminine?  One of the long-standing male-female principles is that the male dominates and the woman is submissive, as a defining way of male-female, as a part of the sexual attraction.

From what you said, your father wanted to be in control and he wanted to shape things.  He ruled the family.  He wanted things to be in his own image, which is the old paradigm of God. God made things in his own image, and God is always thought of as male in mainstream religious thought. The whole religious frame-of-reference always is that the male dominates and is God.  The male is the creator. And the male power should not be questioned.  There’s no sense that the female is a part of the I Am Presence.  Both male and female have held in place the old paradigm that the male is the I Am, not the idea that the male and female are the I Am.  The female has to ask permission of the male.

So the issue is can a woman, living from the heart, shape the world. When you step out of your room in the morning, and you walk across the room, are you creating a heart-wake?  And do you create the way things are supposed to be done, based on your female presence, your female heart presence? Are you being creator? And why not?  There is no sense from you that it is your birth right. There’s no sense that you are I Am.  That’s what we need to get to.

When you are in your heart out in the world, you are not standing in your presence.  You are acting as if you are entering the presence of something else, as if you’re a visitor.  There is some way that you don’t give yourself permission to be the ground, to be the air, to be the medium that we all live in. You don’t give yourself permission to be I Am.  This is the evolutionary process we are engaged in.”

Transcript Excerpts of Jane’s Teachings
during Janet’s NLP TimeLine Therapy Session 5-5-09

(Name of client has been changed to protect her privacy.)

(Jane was talking to Janet about a pattern Janet has in which she gives herself away in order to accommodate other people, in order to get them to like and accept her. Janet was saying she doesn’t see what she’s giving away that’s so important and why that’s a problem.)

“What you’re giving away is truth. You’re giving away your real responses to things. You’re giving away you being in the picture. You’re giving away what really matters to you in order to accommodate someone else so they’ll like you and they’ll approve of you. It’s a huge sacrifice.”

(Janet was saying some people would argue that marriage is all about sacrifice. Her husband has this expectation that she’ll always be turned on to him whenever he has the need for it, and that’s not the case.)

“The issue here is whether trying to manipulate truth works better than truth. Following truth takes radical faith in life, in truth, in things working to the best and highest interest for everyone concerned. If you don’t, but instead try to manipulate things, according to how you think it’s going to work, it generally backfires. If you follow what’s really true, things can evolve and transform, so that you end up with something better. But if you try to twist truth around to accommodate someone, especially if you’re trying to make up for someone’s unhealed issue (which people frequently do), it doesn’t lead forward. If a person (in this case your husband) has an unrealistic expectation, then there’s got to be an unhealed issue in there. He may have an expectation that the woman is supposed to accommodate the man, which is an old paradigm, and it’s not based on truth. (Janet said he did.) It’s a power dynamic between men and women, that has to do with an evolutionary process.”

(Janet said she didn’t think it’s possible to have both a long-term relationship and sexual happiness.)

“There’s an inherent conflict between passion and compromise. Passion has to do with what you want, what you desire, what really matters to you — very strongly. If what really matters to you, what you really desire strongly is in the picture, that’s not compromising. You have to be full out where and who you really are in order to be connected to your passion. And where is your passion in life in general? (Janet started to cry.) What’s painful is that there’s something you have given away that’s really important to you. It’s that there’s some way you have compromised yourself out of the picture in order to have security and connection and feel included, and accepted, and whatever else it means to you.”

Janet: “Don’t you think compromise is necessary for long-term relationship?”

“No.”

Janet: “Does this mean that I have to have it always my way?”

“No.”

Janet: “Well how to do you work it out then?”

“In relationship with anyone whether it’s your marriage partner, or a child or whoever it is, both of you are under the reality of what is really true. And I’m not talking about ‘I want this. I want that.’ I’m talking about enlightened self-interest. You have to be connected with what really matters to you. What really matters to you is enlightened self-interest and is connected to the Divine. But if what you desire is coming from an unhealed issue, it won’t work. So you have to deal with the unhealed issue.

What’s happening between you and your husband over sex between you is there is something going on in him, and very possibly in you as well, that is distorted because of unhealed issues. And so one or both of you wanting something different than what the other one wants, in a way that causes either of you to be untrue to yourself, is not reflecting truth and reality. It’s reflecting an unhealed issue. When the unhealed issue is dealt with there won’t be a conflict.

So when there’s a conflict in relationships, it’s not a matter of one person or the other person compromising his or herself. It’s a matter of investigating it to find out where there’s an unhealed issue that needs to be worked on. Even if your husband doesn’t work on his issues, you addressing the unhealed issue in you, will probably ease the situation for him, or it may put more pressure on him to deal with it.”

(Janet was asking how doing that would specifically turn out.)

“No one can figure out the ins and outs in advance. All you can do is clear the unhealed issues as they show up, and come into truth — just keep coming into truth, keep coming into truth, keep allowing truth to open things up. It’s not possible to figure out in advance this Divine wonder of what happens when truth and evolution open things up, and untwist the distortions of the unhealed issues.”

(Janet was saying she believes she has to sacrifice her fulfillment in order to have security. She’s afraid that if she’s in contact with her passion and desires they’ll be so strong that they’ll take over and she’ll leave everyone close to her and her security behind. And her desires would be so strong that they won’t be rational, they’ll cause her to be in danger, they’ll cause her to not survive.)

“It may be that you are an extremely passionate person. We know that you’re very emotional. But, so far, you haven’t been using your emotions to empower yourself. Most of the way you’ve experienced them is disempowering to you. They make you feel weak to a large extent and that may be because you’re holding back your passion. You’re holding back the aspect of your emotions that are powerful, in order for them to not put you or other people in danger. You’re afraid of what will happen if you release them.

This is perfect timing that this is coming up, because it’s very much in alignment with what’s happening in the group. This is coming up for Cherrie and for Renee, and it’s probably going to be coming up for Anita. Renee is afraid if she says the way she really sees things, without softening them, she’ll be some hideous monster. Cherrie feels she would end up being very aggressive and dominating if she doesn’t hold herself back. I can see how exciting this will be when we untangle this and release the amazing power in these very, very powerful women.”

The limiting decision Janet cleared in the TimeLine process started out as: “She has to sacrifice her fulfillment in order to have security.” In the process this lead to clearing the decision that “She is bad.”

After the TimeLine process it also came out that there are limiting decisions that still need to be cleared, concerning Janet’s relationship with sexuality, which are contributing to both her and her husband each feeling they have to compromise what is important to them in the relationship.

Transcript Excerpts of Jane’s Teachings
during the “Shifting into Your New Consciousness” Group Experience 5-7-09

(Participant’s name has been changed to protect her privacy.)

(Cherrie was saying she has been getting really angry when her male house guest has been ordering her around, and demanding she get him tea, etc. And she has been rather rude in saying ‘no’ to him. She has been recently feeling she doesn’t want to put up with anything from anyone. And it’s been particularly coming up with men.)

(To Cherrie) “This probably has to do with a male-female paradigm, in which the man has the power and bosses the woman around. And the woman is trying to get empowered, and knows on one level that she shouldn’t be acquiescing to the man. But on another level, her insides are prone to doing the thing for the man because she really does think he has the power. So she has to fight someone about it, and she’s fighting him. If there wasn’t a power-struggle in there, on the part of the woman, she would just say, ‘No. It doesn’t seem appropriate for me to do it.’ or ‘No. I don’t feel like doing it.’

You’ve gone along with men acting like this before, because you’ve had such a thick defense system. But the defense system is getting shaken up, and is no longer serving you, and therefore you are more present emotionally and vulnerably in a way you haven’t been before. You’ve had a tough exterior. You’ve had a way of being in which no one could get through to you. You had a winning and engaging way of appearing, but you weren’t really available to be engaged with. But that’s been getting punctured. And now, you don’t have such a tough hide any more. And it’s enabling us to get to the stuff that we probably couldn’t have gotten to before. You had a very, very effective defense system that worked extremely well. And it’s hard to give up defense systems that work that well. Your defense system enabled you to function at a very high level in a lot of different areas, and you were skating along just fine. But it started crumbling a while back when you started getting in trouble financially. And then in the course of working through what was at the bottom of that, you were facing that you didn’t really care about people, which was extremely brave and honest of you to admit to yourself and me. And now we’re at a level that’s much deeper than before, where all of the things that have been pushing and pulling at you emotionally, and have been upsetting to you, that you can no longer defend against, you are now really having to deal with.”

Transcript Excerpts of Jane’s Teachings during the
“Shifting into Your New Consciousness” group experience 4/23/09
(Participants’ names have been changed to protect their privacy.)

(Randy was saying he thinks Jane is being too hard on Janet, about what she is saying about Janet’s defense system.)

(To Randy) “To you the world of live material or emotions is dangerous. You don’t trust it, although you’re learning to trust it more, as you’re experiencing what happens when we really get down to the real live material. You are looking for emotional safety. A defense system like Janet’s is providing emotional safety for a particular type of person, with a particular kind of dysfunction. And Janet has gotten acceptance by relating from that place. So it feels safe all around. But it also is stuck. The fear you have about the real, live emotional material is based on an unhealed issue and structure. And when you have that healed, then you will be able to participate in relating on a much deeper and more transformational level.

It’s similar to what Chandler was saying all those groups back, that he falls for certain kinds of women that make things feel emotionally safe. His mother was similar to your wife, but worse. She was actually schizophrenic — really emotionally not safe. And so you (Janet) make men with that kind of emotional background feel safe, which then perhaps makes the world feel safe to you. You feel you have a place in the world that is supported by men. It’s a defense system that causes people who have an interlocking defense system with you, to want to be around you. It allows you to feel wanted or needed, without anyone feeling threatened by you because you’re not challenging to them. But, in the process, you’ve abandoned your real emotional self and end up giving away your power. Perhaps that emotional aspect of you makes men who have difficulty dealing with emotions, uncomfortable and feel threatened.”

Transcript Excerpt of Jane’s Teaching during a Shifting into Your New Consciousness group experience 3/5/09

(Participant’s name is changed to protect her privacy.)

(To Janet) (About Janet feeling not taken seriously at home, and her husband and son’s dismissive attitudes.) Men tend to easily see themselves as the center of the universe, and women tend to see the men as the center of the universe, and there is a lot of conflict that happens because of that. But both men and women are evolving and bringing more balance to this. And even though that is still entrenched in your family structure — inside of that, is a very, very interesting dynamic of you struggling with these issues — to some degree openly — with your family. Sometimes you’ll try something. Sometimes you’ll try something else, or you’ll reveal your emotions in a big way, or relate to family members differently than you have before. You do all of these different things. An observer could see a person openly working on growing and changing and transforming, and trying things and relating in different ways. That’s a wonderful thing. And most parents don’t show any of that. They don’t try to grow or evolve. They just do what they think will get them certain results. And the fact that you’re out there doing that is very important — regardless of how successful you are at one point or another. And you have made a big impact on your family. You are now relating to them radically differently and more effectively than you related to them before, and they must realize that. And it’s an amazing thing that a mother would love them so much that she would try so hard to find the best way to relate to them. It’s just very moving.”