As I mentioned in my newsletter last week, these are challenging times for many people. And the question of whether humanity is moving forward or backward is not necessarily obvious. We have clearly made huge advances in many areas of human experience, but are also facing potentially disastrous outcomes from directions humanity has gone in, and continues to go in.
A couple of people responded to the invitation I gave last week for dialog. And their responses are in the previous blog post. My own perspective on this actually requires far more space than I can use in a newsletter article, and is in fact a major focus of my 12-week “Life is Meant to Work” tele-seminar. And so, in my below article, I’ll give you an overview of some of where I’m coming from, which as always is based on the principle that life is meant to work.
I invite you to participate in further dialog about this or any other topic that seems important to you, by going to my contact form — click here.
I look forward to hearing from you,
Jane Ilene Cohen
Intuitive & Transformational Counselor
(760) 753-0733
The Challenge in Front of Us
An Overview by Jane Ilene Cohen
Up until now, in the human evolutionary process, we have been making progress toward increasingly more consciousness, intelligence, truth and love. And now we are being faced with a shift that is a quantum leap beyond where we have been before. It seems clear to me we are in the midst of a transition period, in which there is increasingly more pressure to make this shift. And eventually the shift is going to just happen, ready or not. For those who have not prepared themselves for it, it will probably be a much rougher transition.
Up until a certain point, humanity’s idea of progress was more or less working, as we hadn’t yet reached a tilting point. But it has been based on some fundamentally false premises. These are that the physical world is the basis of actual reality and is the source of real power, and that the source of our well-being and survival therefore is the physical world and people outside of ourselves. And therefore we believe that they are also the sources of our individual and collective problems. And so this is where we are focusing our efforts for solutions. We have been using our considerable resources to gain increasingly more control of the world around us, and to amass more and more power and resources based on this. Our goal becomes having more and controlling more, as if that will give us what really matters to us. But the result is actually the opposite.
It appears to me that it takes us having pushed this old paradigm to its limits (so that there is nowhere further to go with it), and getting to the point where the disastrous outcomes of doing so are so apparent that we can no longer ignore them — before we are willing to make this shift that feels to us like jumping off of a cliff. It’s giving up the idea that our safety lies in our human control, and instead relying on something we have no control over, based on the recognition of the totally benevolent nature of reality (the Universe, Life….).
It is making the shift into a new survival system, as radically different as shifting from breathing water, to breathing air. Rather than, from within a limited human perspective, relying on controlling the world and people external to ourselves for our safety and well-being — it’s coming into a co-creative relationship with a larger non-physical source, which can only be accessed from inside of each individual soul. It is a recognition that the nature of reality works wonderfully well, when it isn’t distorted by human control.
The bottom line is that none of us is at the mercy of what others of us do or don’t do. We can’t rely on other people to do what is good for them, or for us, or for our ecosystem; and we also can’t force them. Putting our energy and focus in that direction is not moving toward actual solutions, but in the opposite direction. It is standing on the ground that caused the problem in the first place. The basis of greed and corruption is believing the physical is the source, which is inherently a framework of limits, leading to power-struggles or sacrifice.
Where I believe the solutions lie is in each of us moving toward recognizing how we are using our own individual, non-physical power. (By non-physical I mean what motivates or gives life to the physical, such as love, truth, spirit, intelligence, consciousness — or the unhealed, unevolved aspect of it, such as manipulation, lies, fear, avoidance, and so on.) And it takes recognizing where the source of our well-being and survival really comes from, and moving toward a co-creative process with that larger source. This requires letting go of the control.
What is in the way of this is a fundamental power-struggle that humanity is engaged in. And it has to do with us focusing on substitutes for what really matters to us, and building up substitute worlds as a part of this power-struggle. It also keeps us from accessing our real power. (This last paragraph, in particular, is a large subject that I only have just touched on.)
To learn more about the “Life is Meant to Work: Prepare Yourself for a New Reality” 12-week Tele-seminar, click here.
“Do you believe that we, as humanity, are moving forward? Or do you believe we are going backwards. What makes you believe what you believe about this?
As we are approaching 2012 and as we keep getting ecologically more out of whack, and the weather gets more freaky, and as the global economy keeps being on shaky ground, and as unemployment is still high, and as terrorists seem to get increasingly more sophisticated and hard to control — many people believe we are going backwards, and feel increasingly more hopeless. Now is the time to get conscious about how we are feeling about all of this. It is time to take a good look at what this all means and where we are heading.”
Response from Scott Grace: “My answer is we are moving forward, and there is a reaction to progress that is extremely fearful by many who want things to stay in the dark. The more many of us expand, the more some folks contract.
And with the internet and all the ways people exchange information, the darkness and greed that has always been there is getting exposed, reported about, brought to the light. So it only seems that things are getting worse. The truth is, the bad stuff is getting exposed and revealed so it can be healed. We are evolving! Yes there is hope.”
Response from Mark Moran: “It seems the moral decline in my opinion is in the hands of the current media and dishonest politicians. The apathetic consumers that don’t boycott bad books, film, etc. are equally to blame. A positive higher ground is the path to pursue tempered with reason. Are we going backward? I have asked myself that same question over and over… “
Do you believe that we, as humanity, are moving forward? Or do you believe we are going backwards. What makes you believe what you believe about this?
As we are approaching 2012 and as we keep getting ecologically more out of whack, and the weather gets more freaky, and as the global economy keeps being on shaky ground, and as unemployment is still high, and as terrorists seem to get increasingly more sophisticated and hard to control — many people believe we are going backwards, and feel increasingly more hopeless. Now is the time to get conscious about how we are feeling about all of this. It is time to take a good look at what this all means and where we are heading.
Starting in my next newsletter (Wednesday (Sept. 15th) I’ll begin a dialog about this subject. I am inviting you to participate by emailing me what your thoughts are about this, and anything you feel moved to say about it.
As those of you who have been following my work must know by now, the foundation of my work is based on the principle “Life is Meant to Work.” And so from my end I’ll be addressing this subject from what I know because of standing on that ground.
You can respond by commenting on this post, or by sending me in a message on my contact form. Just click here.
This is a part of the “Ask Jane” Series,
in which Jane answers questions
you email to her that of concern to you.
(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)
Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.
Question is from Jered in Mission Valley (real names are never used)
Jered: Recently I’ve had useful (?) feedback on business projects. This person’s viewpoint is that the glass is always half-empty. It’s a challenge to hear rain on the parade. Yet sometimes this ‘braking’ action leads me to other – less enthusiastic perspectives.
It seems to me this goes back to the core about limited decisions*. Maybe you can comment on how these negative people have a balancing effect?
Jane: I gather that this person is calling to your attention possible pitfalls to the business projects you presented him with, which may cause the projects to fail.
Here are some thoughts, from the perspective that you might have a limiting decision* that is blocking the success of your business projects: Let’s say you have a limiting decision* — for example perhaps something like “No one wants what you really have to offer.” The way it works is, once the limiting decision is made, the unconscious mind becomes invested in proving the limiting decision is true. In other words, people manifest into their lives whatever the limiting decisions are that they have made. In this case, the result might be that the way you conceive of possible business projects causes potential buyers not to be attracted to them.
People often create emotional defense systems for the purpose of buffering the pain of their limiting decisions, or compensating for them. So in this case, perhaps you tend to create an overly rosy picture of your projects to compensate for really believing that no one wants what you have to offer. And this defense system keeps you from functioning in reality.
Then this person that you have described, comes along who doesn’t follow the social norms of being polite and tactful, and being positive about your project — basically coming across to you as being negative — and he’s not giving you the expected feedback you are pushing for that overlooks the reality of what you are actually presenting him with. So this man’s behavior then punctures your emotional defense system, and you feel as though he is “raining on your parade.”
If, instead of having a knee jerk negative response to his input, you can step back and investigate whatever might be true in what he is presenting to you — beyond whatever distortions he might be bringing to the table — then yes, I agree that you can gain some positive and useful insights as a result of this.
* 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.
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.”
For information about the “Life is Meant to Work” Audio Course, 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.
