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.
Below is a response Fellow Healer in New York had to a previous “Ask Jane” Q & A. For the original Ask Jane Q & A with Sally that this response is about, click here.
Fellow Healer in New York: YES.. and integrity means wholeness with self …watching the game may just be more in Integrity for this man, then following a promise he in retrospect will prob. not make again!
Jane: Being in integrity with himself is not about the action Sally’s husband (I’m calling Jake) decides to take one way or the other. It’s the process by which he gets there. People often take a stand on one particular action in order to feel in integrity with themselves, in order to hold some kind of boundary. But they only need to do that if there is an unhealed issue that results, for example, in them tending to give up their needs for the sake of the other person’s needs, if they don’t rigidly take this kind of stand. And so doing it that way is a part of an emotional defense system that ends up causing a separation with the other person in order to feel you can have your own needs met. This is the kind of dynamic that often occurs in relationships in which people believe it’s not possible to both be in integrity with yourself, and also be vulnerably and intimately connected to the other person.
The only way around that is to engage in dialog and be willing to explore your own unhealed issues (limiting decisions*), which requires letting go of control, rather than taking control, and results in transformation.
Jake had agreed to go to the event with Sally. But when he realized there was a crucial football game on TV that was really important to him that conflicted with him going to this event, his knee jerk emotional response was feeling forced to go to the event with Sally or she would probably get really upset. And so he emotionally rebelled by blurting out that he wasn’t going, before he could get his conscious mind around what he was doing. So basically his knee jerk response causes a separation, believing this to be the only way he could get to do what he really wanted to do. This is based on the very common belief that if we stay connected in reality with each other when there appears to be conflicting desires, there won’t be a solution. In other words that it’s not possible for life to work out well for all concerned. So Jake caused a separation because he believed that there inherently was a separation between his desires and Sally’s. It feels far less painful to cause a separation from an invulnerable, defended place, then to feel at the mercy of there inherently being a separation between himself and the person he loves, when he’s coming from a vulnerable place. And that is because if that would turn out to be true, it would be evidence that life doesn’t work.
But the truth is — the only thing that could create this situation not to work out well for all concerned are the limiting decisions* each person brings to the table, that causes each to respond from a defended place, rather than being open to a solution.
As it turned out, after they discussed the situation, a friend of Sally’s came to town and Sally asked her to go with her, which worked out well. What was keeping Sally stuck in having bad feelings toward Jake was a limiting decision* in her.
* Limiting Decisions: Unconscious decisions, usually made before the age of 6 or 7, such as “I am bad,” “I am not good enough.” “People can’t be trusted.” They are always some form of deciding that life doesn’t work, and usually that there is something inherently wrong with you.
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.”
____________
“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.”
____________
“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.”
________
“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.”
______
“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.”
Our perception of reality is extremely impressionable, and can change from moment to moment, depending on how we interpret the experiences we have in life. We can feel up or down, depending on if things are going our way or not. If, for example, money is currently abundant, or we just got a new client, we may feel that life is good and feel very empowered. But maybe the next week, we lose several clients, and our boy or girl friend leaves us, and our best friend is angry at us. And this then triggers limiting decisions*, such as we are a failure. And so then we may feel very negatively about life. And then, perhaps, the following month the person we have a crush on calls and asks us on a date, and business sales start coming in. And for the moment we are no longer feeling like a failure. Most people define their experience of reality according to what is happening in the external world around them. And that puts us in a very disempowered position, because we are dependent on what the world around us does, and how it responds to us, for our sense of well-being.
People don’t generally realize that our internal state is caused by our interpretation of how we are affected, rather than something objective out in the world 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. Interpreting our experience of life in this way is orienting our lives around the world external to ourselves as the source we are dependent on, which puts us in an unstable, uncentered state.
Now there are many people who, to a large degree, have a certain amount of emotional stability, and generally create a positive world around them. But depending upon the kind or intensity of how they are affected, they can also be completely knocked off of their usual sense of reality. And, besides individual limiting decisions* being triggered, that has to do with commonly held beliefs about the nature of reality.
We are generally dependent on the extremes of other people’s negative behaviors being controlled in order for us to keep a positive sense of reality. You could say that’s what defines a civilized world. And when we find ourselves in situations in which this extreme is being acted out in our presence, an overwhelming perception of reality that we usually keep in our unconscious gets brought to the surface, like a nightmare or boogeyman. And that’s what makes the idea of someone perpetrating some violent act particularly difficult for us to deal with. It resonates with deep-seated, primal beliefs about the nature of reality.
Perhaps it’s the reason for the popularity of horror films, or the reason there is so much violence in movies and on TV. You could say it brings that material out in the open. But they are not being brought out in a way that can bring truth or healing. And I think that is because the general human consensus is that dark, destructive forces have huge power over us. And the best we can do is keep them submerged in the unconscious — or, from a child’s perspective, in the closet and under the bed.
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 they end up doing about it is also an unconscious process, which often doesn’t end up serving them.
*Limiting decisions are decisions made usually before the age of 6 or 7 years old, that are some form of deciding that there is something inherently wrong with you, and/or some form of that life doesn’t work — Such as “I am bad,” “I am worthless,” “People can’t be trusted.”
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 is from Chad in Rancho Santa Fe:
Chad: Let’s say a friend of yours has a limiting decision* that they’re stupid, and you point out something to them that they did that ends up triggering that feeling in them. Then you are suddenly affronted by the fact that the person was triggered, even though you didn’t do anything to them on purpose. So the question is what do you do when someone gets triggered by some innocent remark you made?
Jane: First of all it depends on the particular type of relationship you have with the person, how vulnerable you want to be, how much energy you want to put into it. If this person is someone with whom the relationship really matters, I would say the healthy response would be to reveal to the person how you are responding to him. Relating in general is about revealing whatever is going on inside of you in response to each other. When you get affected, that is the beginning of a dialog, and so then you respond by revealing where you are. You always can participate in a dialog, which is honestly revealing where you are. If you’re triggered and you know it, you can reveal you’re triggered.
Chad: I’d like to have the way to deal with it when it’s happening, like a script.
Jane: Having a script is not the solution. You have to reveal where you are in the moment, which is more of an emotional risk. And since it’s revealing, it’s vulnerable, as opposed to judging or attacking. You might say, for instance, “I feel upset and surprised that you had that response. I didn’t mean what I said to be a criticism. What did it mean to you?” Or you might say, “I feel really triggered by your reaction, as I thought what I said was just a neutral comment. It’s bringing up in me concerns that it’s not safe to say what’s on my mind. Why was this upsetting to you?”
It is leaning on truth to move things forward, versus leaning on mollifying the other person, or manipulating things to calm him down, and not have things get out of hand, and upsetting. And you can do that, and try to calm things down, but it won’t get anywhere. It won’t be a deepening of the relationship. It won’t evolve things forward, because it won’t be bringing anything to truth. And it’s also not respecting the other person. If it’s a relationship that matters to you, then you want to get to truth. And you start with yourself, by revealing the truth of where you are, and trusting the larger medium that you’re both under — which is what I call the larger source, or Intelligence or Truth — to bring a larger perspective beyond the individual experience, and move things forward. If you allow the larger truth to be there, it opens possibilities. It makes things clearer. Whereas you could never figure it out with limited human intelligence to manipulate the situation in order to have this and that work out. But if you put truth in there, then perhaps you or perhaps the other person might see something you never saw before, or maybe something might happen that opens things up. And it might get messy for a while, but if both of you stay in the dialog, then you’ll get to a deeper place of truth.
* Limiting decisions are unconscious decisions made in childhood that are always some form of deciding that life is not meant to work, and usually that there is something inherently wrong with you, such as: “I’m not valuable,” “I’m powerless,” “the world is a dangerous place.”
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.
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.
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.
(Names of participants are changed to protect their privacy.)
How Change Works
(To Anita) “This has to do with how change occurs.What frequently happens is I work really hard to get someone to see what the issue is, and then immediately they want me to tell them what the solution is so they can get rid of it without having acknowledged the truth of it in the first place.But the solution doesn’t necessarily come immediately.The unconscious mind has got to grasp it, and has got to acknowledge it, and really sit in the truth of what it is before the next step gets revealed.And so with you and Aaron, that has been the challenge.Just getting both of you to a place where you really get what we’re talking about is a huge step in itself.”
About Emotional Defense Systems
(The immediate issue with Anita is she won’t allow herself to be seen where she is.She keeps deflecting the focus by appearing to be talking about one thing, but jumps from one thought to another in a way that doesn’t actually get anywhere, so it’s impossible to follow her.Anita said she caught herself doing this jumping around during the week.Jane asked Anita what were the circumstances in which she caught herself doing that.Anita said she doesn’t remember.)
The fact that you don’t remember what it is, I think is part of the defense system. A defense system is different than a limiting decision.It’s the tactic your unconscious mind has developed to protect the limiting decision from becoming conscious.
The defense system we’re currently talking about, that you and Aaron use, is to run others around the block by twisting logic.If people try to follow what you are saying when it gets any where near the defended issue for you, they get crossed-eyed as they’re trying to follow it.People lose track, they can’t figure out what you’re saying.So they figure there must be something wrong with them.But it is actually impossible to follow, because the intention of the defense system is to make it impossible.(Anita said she was sorry.)Oh, it’s totally not something you’re doing on purpose.No one here blames you for it.People’s defense systems are tricky.They are extremely good at defending what they’re trying to defend.And it’s on a very intuitive and unconscious level, like slipping in between the radar.I suggest the next time you get an awareness of doing that, you immediately write it down, and start helping yourself get conscious of what you are doing.”
—
(Aaron said he used the wrong words last week when he was describing his experience, when he said people had called him a liar.)
“Here we’re seeing your defense system right as it’s happening.You saying that people called you a liar, was not a mistake.It was a very good thing you said it because it revealed the truth of how you actually responded to what was said.It wasn’t accurate.People didn’t call you a liar.But you revealed that that’s how you experienced it.So we don’t want you to now get a better mask and cover over the fact that that’s how you actually responded by using a more “appropriate” word.We finally got some truth there, that you felt people were calling you a liar.There is a lot of other emotional material underneath that, but the important thing is you revealed an aspect of yourself.The point I wanted to make sure we keep conscious, from what I got last week in relation to you, is about the whole issue of you crying, and whether it was genuine or not.It appears the underlying issue about this has to do with it being important to you to connect with the group (i.e. other people).But since you haven’t really acknowledged that it is true that this is important to you, then everything gets confused from that point on.
(Aaron said he does want to connect with the group, but he doesn’t know how.)What I’m saying to you is not about knowing how to do it. The first step is to truly acknowledge that that’s what you want.And there must be some really strong defense system in there against acknowledging it, causing you to do all of these manipulative things to try to make this connection without admitting it, which ended up in you appearing disingenuous, which then is what people respond to.So admitting connecting with the group is important to you, is where you need to start.”
